Hole and Corner (17 page)

Anthony couldn't tell her anything. He had only three ideas in his head. To get away. To think. To tell Shirley about the emeralds.

He sat where he was for five minutes, because he had to make up his mind whether to try and retrieve the diamond brooch or leave it pushed down between the seat and the back of the sofa. He found it difficult to decide, but in the end he left it where it was. As he walked away from the house, he felt sure that this was the best thing to do. The brooch was quite safe. If he had tried to get it out, he might have bungled, and then the fat would have been in the fire. It was no good having an explanation about the diamond brooch when the far more valuable emeralds were still missing and he had no idea of their whereabouts. He must get to Shirley without delay and talk things over. This idea swallowed up all others.

It was still dominant when he drew up in the station yard at Ledlington and ran up the steps into the hotel. And then, as the porter moved to meet him, it came upon him with all the force of a sudden and unexpected shock that he had registered Shirley last night under a made-up name, and he no longer had the slightest recollection of what that name might be. The initials must have been A.L. to correspond with his suit-case, and the Christian name—yes, the Christian name was Alice—unless it was Agnes. But when he tried to recover the surname, half a dozen names like Leslie, and Lawlor, and Lester, and Lyons slipped into his mind as easily and inconclusively as they slipped out again.

Meanwhile the hall porter stood attentive. Anthony was rather pleased afterwards with the way he got out of the mess. There was no perceptible hesitation before he said,

“I think a friend of mine is staying in this hotel. May I see the register?”

The man came back of course with the expected, “What name would it be, sir?” but a tip and a repetition of the word register did the trick.

Anthony gazed at the words in his own writing which described Shirley as Miss Alice Lester, British, and the nest minute he was asking for her with a pleasant confidence which did him credit.

“Yes—Miss Lester. Will you please tell her her brother is here.”

The pleased confidence was disastrously shattered by the hall porter's reply. He said in the casual tone in which he would have said the most casual, humdrum thing,

“Miss Lester's gone.”

Anthony said, “
What?
”

The man repeated the blow.

“Miss Lester paid her bill and left round about eleven o'clock, sir.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Shirley sat in the slow Sunday train which was making its way station by station to town and Anthony. That was the only clear idea in her mind—she had simply got to get to London before Anthony left for Ledlington. She couldn't risk waiting for him at the Station Hotel. The horrible placard she had seen said, “
Disappearing Girl. Important Clue
,” and she had instantly jumped to the conclusion that the hunt was up, her hiding-place discovered, and that she might at any moment be arrested with the emeralds in her possession. They were as little in her possession as she could help, but the fact that they were in the pocket of Anthony's pyjamas inside Anthony's suit-case wouldn't really help her very much with the police, since she and the suit-case were quite obviously running away together.

The train stopped at Snedholm. A cold, horrible trickle ran down Shirley's spine. She didn't feel safe when the train was going, but she felt like a microbe under a microscope the moment it stopped. All her bones turned to jelly, and the platform and the booking-office were like something in a bad dream. They were empty, but at any moment they might sprout police—dozens of them, each with a warrant for the arrest of Shirley Dale.

Nobody got out at Snedholm, and nobody got in. The guard had a short conversation with a lounging porter on the subject of Ledlington United's chance of getting into the Second Division. Both appeared to belong to the gloomy type of football fan whose home team never has a dog's chance owing to the perversity of the club officials.

“Now if they was to play Lanky Stevenson—” said the porter as the train began to move.

“Not much they won't,” said the guard, after which Snedholm receded and Shirley's bones became bones again.

The worst time of all had been when she was screwing herself up to take her ticket and get into the London train. It wouldn't have been so bad if there had been a crowd, as there would have been on a week-day, but at eleven-ten on a Sunday morning there was only one other passenger, a young man who looked as if he had been up all night. He yawned as he took his ticket, yawned as he waited for the train, and vanished, yawning, into a third-class compartment next the engine. Shirley got in as far away as possible, and from first to last she had the carriage to herself.

After Snedholm there was Rainwell, and after Rainwell, Melbury, and after Melbury, Chington St. Mary, and Repford. There seemed no end to the sleepy country stations, each with its single porter. All the potters looked as if they had just waked up and would go to sleep again as soon as the train had passed. But no matter how innocently bare, at every station Shirley dissolved in terror and expected the worst.

The country villages gave place to bungalows and semi-detached houses in every stage of construction, merging gradually into rows of yellow brick houses. The next stop was a junction, and the next after that the terminus. Shirley had to nerve herself to get out, walk along the platform carrying Anthony's suit-case, and give up her ticket at the barrier. When she found herself on the other side, she was conscious not so much of relief as of a kind of flat bewilderment. She had made such a tremendous effort, and now that it was spent, she had a come-to-the-end kind of feeling.

She walked about twenty yards, and then put the suit-case down and stood there. She didn't know what she was going to do next. She lifted her eyes and saw on the station wall immediately opposite the large round face of a clock. The hands stood at five minutes past one. Shirley stared at them. Five minutes past one … Then she had missed Anthony.… Why, he had said that he would be down in time to lunch with her in Ledlington. He would arrive, and she wouldn't be there. He might be arriving at this very minute, and she wouldn't be there.…

Her mind began to wake up, and the waking hurt.

What a fool she had been to think that she could possibly catch him in London. No—not a fool to think that she could catch him, but a fool who just simply hadn't thought at all—had seen that placard, panicked, and rushed blindly along the first way of escape—had landed herself thirty-five miles from Anthony, who was probably calling down the most hideous curses on her head. Shirley had never been so ashamed of herself in her life. She had run like a rabbit, and she had always despised rabbits. The most dreadful part of it was that she couldn't feel in the least sure that she wouldn't do it again.

She stared forlornly at the clock and wondered what she was going to do next. In the dim and faraway time before she had slipped out of the ordinary world into a nightmare one o'clock was lunch-time. This was Sunday in a bad dream, but on an ordinary week-day Mrs Huddleston's lunch would be coming in on a tray and Shirley Dale would be saying “Cheers!”, scrambling into her coat and cap, and bursting into Revelston Crescent with the joyous feeling that she wouldn't have to listen to any more symptoms for an hour and a half. She would be ragingly hungry, and she would be wondering what Mrs Camber was going to give her for lunch.

She woke up still more. The word hungry seemed to be wandering round in her mind. It occurred to her that perhaps she
was
hungry. Perhaps some of this cold, sick, empty feeling was plain everyday wanting something to eat, and not sheer shameful cowardice. Perhaps if she had something to eat, her knees would feel stronger and her head less like a balloon which might at any moment float away. Anyhow it was worth trying.

The refreshment-room was empty. She tried to remember whether refreshment-room tea was nastier than refreshment-room coffee, or whether Bovril and milk would be worse than either. She made it coffee and a ham sandwich, and retired with them to one of the depressing little tables against the wall.

The coffee wasn't too bad. It was hot and sweet, and it helped the sandwich down. It wanted a lot of helping, but when it
was
down her head had stopped feeling like a balloon. She got another cup of coffee, and the least repulsive bun on view. If she went on sitting still and eating and drinking in a perfectly ordinary way, perhaps her mind would begin to work again and she would be able to think what she had better do next.

Someone else had been drinking coffee at her table. The cup had left a sticky brown ring, and there were cake crumbs. A blasé winter fly crawled languidly on the outskirts of the ring. A crumpled newspaper lay sprawled across the chair on the opposite side of the table. Shirley put out her hand to take the paper and drew it back again. “
Disappearing Girl. Important Clue
”—the headlines which had been on the placard would be inside the paper. She ought to pick it up and find out what had happened. If she hadn't the nerve to do it she was a triple rabbit and had better go down the drain and have done with it. She certainly didn't deserve ever to see Anthony again.

She picked up the paper, unfolded it, clenched her teeth to prevent them chattering—and had her reward. For the very first thing she saw was the heading, “
Disappearing Typist In Bearer Bonds Mystery. Police Clue”;
and, a little way down the page, a portrait of a damsel with a great deal of smile and permanent wave labelled “
Gladys Filentz. The Disappearing Girl. Have You Seen Her?
”

Gladys and her permanent wave swam away from Shirley into a quivering mist. She shut her eyes, drank some more coffee, and waited for the mist to clear, after which she read all about Miss Filentz and the bearer bonds she had carried away in a suit-case. She even felt a little sorry for her, because it didn't seem at all likely that she would get away with them, and, thief or no thief, Shirley was sorry for anyone who was just going to be arrested. Only what a joyful, joyful,
joyful
relief that it wasn't Shirley Dale.

She went rapidly through the rest of the paper just to make sure that there were not any lurking references to emeralds, or a missing diamond brooch, or Mrs Huddleston, or Revelston Crescent, or Shirley Dale. There was a headline about an American millionaire's will, but she passed it without a glance, because of course it couldn't have anything to do with her. If she had been less sure of this, she might have discovered that the millionaire was William Ambrose Merewether, and if she had gone on reading to the end of the paragraph, she might have come upon her mother's maiden name. It was there for her to read: “My cousin Jane Lorimer.” But she didn't read it. She was looking for her own name, or Mrs Huddleston's, or “
Robbery In Rjevelston Crescent,
” or, “
Historic Emeralds Stolen.
”

When she didn't find any of these things, she put the paper down on the opposite chair and sat back with a thankful sigh. What a mug-wump she had been. If she hadn't panicked and run away, she might have been having lunch with Anthony at this minute. She wondered where he was and what he was doing. And then suddenly her mind got to work and she realized that she had been sitting here for the best part of half an hour drinking coffee and wallowing in refreshment-room sandwiches and buns when of course she ought to have been telephoning to let Anthony know where she was. She picked up the suit-case, looked at the clock on the dingy wall, and ran. It was thirty-five minutes since she had got out of the train. It was five-and-twenty minutes to two, and if Anthony had got down early to Ledlington and found her gone, she might very well have missed him. She called herself all the worst names she could think of as she stood in the telephone-box and waited For “Enquiries” to find out the number of the Station Hotel.

It seemed a terribly long time before she got through. The hall porter's “Hullo!” sounded faint and far away:

“Ullo, 'ullo, 'ullo!”

And Shirley in the telephone-box:

“Is that the Station Hotel, Ledlington?”

“Hall porter speaking.”

She tried hard to keep her voice from sounding frightened. She said,

“Is there a Mr Leigh in the hotel? He was coming down for lunch. Has he arrived?”

And then on the last word she remembered all in a devastating flash that Anthony hadn't been Mr Leigh last night but Mr Somebody Else, and she had been his sister, but what their name was supposed to have been she hadn't the very faintest idea, and unlike Anthony she couldn't fall back on the register. The receiver chattered at her ear, the hall porter receded. She racked her brain for the name, and found nothing but a blank. Things had gone on happening yesterday with such unremitting speed and intensity, what with being accused of stealing sixpences from Miss Maltby, and finding Mrs Huddleston's diamond brooch in the hem of her coat, and running away to Emshot, and finding Miss Maltby there, and running away to Anthony, and getting engaged to him, that by the time it came to being Anthony's sister at the Station Hotel in Ledlington her mind had reached saturation point and absolutely refused to take in another thing. It was no use searching for the name, because it wasn't there. Her mind had simply never taken it in. Besides, she had already asked for Mr Leigh. What would the hall porter think if she suddenly said, “I don't mean Mr Leigh—I mean somebody else”?

Here a very helpful squib went off with a bang in the middle of her frightened thoughts. “What on earth does it matter
what
the hall porter thinks? Damn the hall porter!” And right on the top of that, here he was on the line again.

“No one of the name of Leigh in the hotel, madam.”

Shirley braced herself. After all he couldn't even see her, and she might be speaking from anywhere in the world. She toyed with the thought of Japan. How very, very comforting to be talking to the Station Hotel at Ledlington from Osaka or Tokyo. It was a lovely, lovely thought. But even if she wasn't in Japan, she was an anonymous and disembodied voice as far as the hall porter was concerned. She said,