Mr. Zero (2 page)

Gay let go of the pink shoulder and stood back.

“When is she coming?”

Marcia looked at a new wrist-watch.

“Well, she's due now, but she's always late.”

“Why is she coming here? If she wants to see me, why can't she come and see me? Why drag me here?”

“Really, darling—
drag!
And we had to get you here because of Francis! You see, even Francis couldn't think there was anything odd about Sylvia coming to say goodbye to me before I go to Java. At least, I think he might if he knew her as well as we do, but I don't suppose he does—not about things like that. Now look here, she really does rely on you to help her, because when I was coming away yesterday she simply gripped my hand and said, ‘Where's Gay? I
must
see her. Do let me know where she is.' And she couldn't say any more than that, because Francis was there, but she pinched my hand till I very nearly screamed, so I thought I'd better find you and let her know. And the minute she heard you were coming, she said she'd dash round in a taxi—and I expect that's she.”

The telephone bell rang from the pink pedestal beside the bed. Marcia took up the receiver, listened for a moment, and spoke into it.

“Lady Colesborough?… Oh, yes, I'm expecting her. Please send her up.” She turned to see Gay reaching for her hat.

“You can see Sylvia yourself, Marcia.”

Marcia's colour rose.

“Darling, you can't go—you
can't!
She's come here on purpose to see you. You
can't!”

“Watch me!” said Gay. She snapped out the words, shut down her lips in a determined scarlet line, and pulled up the collar of her dark grey coat.

“Oh, Gay!”

Something in Gay said, “Run for it!” and she ran. But before she had taken a dozen steps along the corridor she was pulled up short. Sylvia Colesborough was coming towards her—Sylvia pale and lovely, with her golden hair under a little grey cap, and a pale grey squirrel coat falling open over a dress of pale grey wool. She said, “Oh, Gay!” in her lovely helpless voice, and Gay knew that it was too late to run away. Whatever Sylvia Colesborough's trouble was, it was going to be Gay Hardwicke's trouble from now onwards.

She went back into Marcia's room with Sylvia, and found it empty. A little bright flame of rage flickered up in Gay. It burned in her cheeks and set a dancing spark in her eyes. She looked at Sylvia in the pink brocade chair and said,

“What on earth have you been up to?”

Sylvia Colesborough was taking off her grey suede gloves, frowning a little because the third left-hand finger had caught itself up on the big diamond in her engagement ring. It was a very big diamond, a single stone surrounded by fine brilliants. The gloves were very expensive gloves. Sylvia laid them in her lap and folded her hands upon them. She was wearing a pale rose lipstick and nail-polish, and green eye-shadow, but she had the sense to leave her eyelashes alone. Nature had painted them a full six tones deeper than her flax-gold hair, and, lavishly generous, had tipped the curling ends with gold. It was these lashes and the almost midnight blue of the eyes they screened which gave to Sylvia's beauty a certain exquisite strangeness.

She lifted those lovely eyes and said,

“Oh, Gay!”

Gay tapped with her foot upon the rose-coloured carpet.

“That gets us a lot farther, doesn't it!” she said.

“But, Gay darling, Marcia said—”

“Marcia would! She always did fob you off on to me when she got half a chance!”

A sweet, fleeting smile touched Sylvia's lips.

“Darling, you were so clever. You always got me out of things. I've always said you're the cleverest person I know. You will help me, won't you?”

Gay leaned against the ornamental rail at the bottom of the bed, a rail of rose-coloured enamel with bright gilt knobs.

“Now look here, Sylvia, why should I help you? We were at school together, I was your bridesmaid, and you're some sort of fifteenth cousin. You've never written me a line since you got married, you've never been near me since I came to London, and I've never been inside your house—”

“Oh, but I didn't know—”

“Oh, yes, you did, because I wrote and told you—I told you Mummy and Daddy were going to Madeira and marooning me with Aunt Agatha. And did you rally round? Not a rally! Did you take the trouble to lift the receiver from that mother-of-pearl telephone thing you had for one of your wedding presents and coo into it, ‘Darling, do come round and see me'? You know you didn't. Sylvia, if you look at me like that, I'll throw something at you—I really will!”

Sylvia's lovely eyes had widened piteously. A clear, round tear brimmed gently over and rolled quite slowly and with immense effect down a faintly tinted cheek. Gay's little angry flame burned higher. If Sylvia would only get cross—but Sylvia never got cross. You might call her the most awful names, and she didn't resent them, or hate you. She just cried, and made you feel what a brute you were. She was making Gay feel like that now. A tear rolled down the other cheek too. She didn't wipe either of them away, she just let them fall on to the pale grey gloves, and said in a lost-child sort of voice.

“I know—I've been horrid. There isn't any reason why you should help me, only—I'm so frightened, and I don't know what to do—I don't indeed.” The tears were falling faster now. They welled up, ran over, and fell. They kept on falling. They put out Gay's little angry flame. She would have to take a hand. She had known that all the time of course. You can't just let an idiotic creature down because it doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain. She tossed back her hair and said,

“Oh, I'll help you. You always knew I would. Stop crying, Silly Billy baby, and tell me what it's all about. Whatever have you been and gone and done?”

III

Sylvia drew a long sighing breath, Dabbed her eyes with a mauve handkerchief, and opened a grey suede bag with a diamond initial on it.

Gay cocked her eye at it.

“Wedding present?” she enquired.

“No—Francis—for Christmas. Rather nice, isn't it?” From an inner pocket she produced a scrap of newspaper. “There—you'd better read it.”

The piece of paper was about five inches long and two inches wide. It looked as if it had been torn off the edge of the
Times
. On the blank margin there was scrawled in pencil:

“Same place. Same time. Same money.”

The words stood one below the other like the rungs of a ladder, the letters coarsely printed with a blunt blue pencil. Gay frowned at them:

“What does it mean?”

“I didn't go,” said Sylvia in a tired voice. “Then I got this one.”

She fished out another piece of newspaper. A tear splashed down on it and smudged the blue pencil, but it was legible enough. In the same coarse scrawl Gay read:

“Tomorrow without fail, or your husband will know.”

Her lips tightened. What an absolute first-class prize idiot Sylvia was.

“Look here, Sylly, it's no good beating about the bush. What have you been doing that Francis mustn't know? Is it another man?”

“Oh,
no!”
said Sylvia. “Oh, no—really not, darling. I—I
wouldn't!”

Gay was a good deal relieved, because if there wasn't another man, the obvious thing to do was to tell Francis Colesborough and get him to wring this blackmailing creature's neck. She said so with a good deal of vigour. A vivid little creature in spite of the dark grey coat and black beret. Eyes, colour and lips were all alive as she pointed out the folly of practising concealments from your husband.

“You go straight home and tell him and you won't have any more trouble.”

Sylvia paled visibly, clasped and unclasped her hands, and appeared completely panic-stricken.

“Oh, Gay—I couldn't!”

“Why couldn't you?”

“Oh, Gay, I couldn't—I really
couldn't!”

Gay leaned back against the bed. What was it all about? She said,

“Sylvia, what's Francis like?”

Because, after all, that was what really mattered. You
could
tell things to some people, and you couldn't tell them to others. Everything really depended on what Francis was like.

Sylvia responded with a slightly puzzled air.

“Well, he's tall—and fair—and—”

“Yes—I saw him at the wedding, and that time at Cole Lester. But I don't want to know what size collar he takes, or what his handicap is at golf—I want to know what he's like in himself.”

“Well, he's much older than I am. Let me see—you and Marcia are the same age—and Marcia is twenty—and I'm two years older—so I'm twenty-two—and Francis was twenty years older than me when we married—and that was a year ago—”

Gay looked at her almost with awe.

“In fact, he's forty-two. Sylly, can't you really remember how old you are without counting up from Marcia and me?”

“You're so good at figures,” said Sylvia in a helpless tone.

The conversation seemed to have slid right away from Francis. That was what happened when you tried to talk to Sylvia—you slipped, and slid, and didn't get anywhere at all. Gay made a determined attempt to get back to Francis.

“We weren't really talking about how old anyone was. I don't care whether Francis is fourteen, or forty, or four hundred. I want to know what he's like to live with. Is he fond of you—is he nice to you—are you fond of him?”

Sylvia smiled a little consciously.

“Oh, well, he's in love with me.”

“People aren't always nice to you when they're in love with you.” Gay was remembering Julian Carr who had made such a frightful scene when she said she wouldn't marry him. “And they're not always fond of you either.” And she didn't know how she knew that, but she did know it.

“It's the same thing,” said Sylvia in a puzzled voice.

“You're very lucky if it is,” said Gay with a wisdom beyond her years. “But if it really is the same thing with Francis, then you haven't got to bother at all, because you can just go straight home and tell him, and he can deal with the blue pencil—stamp on it, or push its face in. Anyhow you won't have to bother any more.”

Sylvia looked lovely and mournful. She shook her head.

“It wouldn't do at all, darling.”

“Why wouldn't it?”

“Oh, it
wouldn't
. You don't know Francis.”

Gay blew up.

“Is that my fault? I keep asking you what he's like, and you're about as much use as a jelly that hasn't jelled!
Why
wouldn't it do to tell Francis?”

Sylvia appeared to reflect. The unusual effort brought a tiny line to her white brow.

“He'd be angry,” she said at last.

“That won't hurt you,” said Gay. “You'd much better tell him.”

Sylvia shook her head again.

“I can't.”

“I'll do it for you if you like,” said Gay handsomely. “I could do it most awfully well, because I could begin by telling him that you were the world's prize fool and couldn't help getting into some mess or other. And then I could tell him about this particular mess—and of course he'd see that it was up to him to get you out of it.”

Sylvia stood up, and stood trembling. It was as if she had begun to run away and then lost heart, or strength, or nerve—perhaps all three. She said with twitching lips,

“Don't tell him! Don't—don't—
don't!”

Gay came over to her and put her back in her chair.

“Sit down,” she said, “and don't be an ass. To begin with, I don't know anything to tell, and to go on with—”

Sylvia clutched at her wrist.

“You mustn't tell Francis! If I could tell him, I wouldn't have come to you. Promise me you won't ever tell.”

“I won't promise,” said Gay soberly, “but I won't tell.” She removed her wrist and stood back again. “The question is, are you going to tell
me?
Because if you're not, I'll be getting along.”

The faint, lovely colour returned to Sylvia's cheek. She drew a long breath and sat back.

“Oh, darling, don't go! I
want
to tell you.”

“Then get on with it,” said Gay.

Sylvia looked up, and down again.

“It's so difficult. You see, one of the reasons I can't tell Francis is that he said I was never, never, never to play cards for money. They play a lot, you know, in his set, and the points are dreadfully high, and he said I wasn't to ever, because—well, it was after he'd been my partner one night at contract and we lost eight hundred pounds, and he said he wasn't a millionaire, and even if he was he couldn't bear the strain, and a lot of things like that.”

Gay felt some sympathy for Francis Colesborough. She had played cards with Sylvia at school.

“Did you revoke?” she enquired with interest.

Sylvia gazed at her mournfully.

“I expect so—I generally do. I never can remember what it is exactly, but that is one of the things he said I'd done. So he said I wasn't to play again.”

“And you did?”

“Not bridge—baccarat.”

“And how much did you lose?” It went without saying that Sylvia had lost.

“About five hundred pounds,” said Sylvia in a small, terrified voice. If she was now the wife of the rich Sir Francis Colesborough and mistress of Cole Lester, she had spent twenty-one years as penniless Sylvia Thrale with a widowed mother whose tiny pension had only just sufficed to feed and clothe herself and her two daughters. Relations had most unwillingly paid the school bills. Sylvia had therefore always heard a great deal about money—bills and the lack of money to pay them with; bills and the sordid necessity of paying them; bills and the horrid things that might happen to you if you didn't pay them. All this had been impressed upon her in the nursery.