Red Shadow (13 page)

“A note! Did you see the back? Was there writing on it?”

“No.”

“You are
sure?
No figures? Nothing like a formula?”

She shook her head.

“No—no—nothing at all.”

He fell into a silence, staring at the notes he had taken. In a little he burst out.

“If there was no writing on the note, it couldn't be the formula of the Sanquhar invention. That wouldn't be a matter of two, or three, or four bits, but of a whole pile. The note must be a clue to where the papers are—the key of a hiding-place. And Vassili has one part, and he thinks that Laura has one part, and he thinks that there may be another part, or parts, but he is not sure. The parts are of no use by themselves, but if anyone can put them together, he will get the Sanquhar invention. That is what I make of these things.”

Catherine nodded.

“What is the Sanquhar invention?” she said.

Alec Stevens moved her out of his way and got down from the table.

“My dear, you had better not know.”

“I wish to know.”

“Your kettle is boiling.”

She made the tea and set it to draw.

“Sasha—what is the Sanquhar invention?”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“Vassili says it is death.”

Catherine took up a knife and began to cut a lemon.

“And you say that we are all alive,” she remarked.

He came up to the tray and poured himself out a cup of tea.

“It is at least dangerous stuff,
liebchen
, and you'd better leave it alone.”

Catherine put lemon into his cup.

“What is the Sanquhar invention?” she said.

Alec Stevens sipped his tea.

“I can't tell you because I don't know. Nothing makes one so discreet as not knowing.”

“Tell me what you know,” said Catherine.

“Yes, I suppose I had better. You mustn't blunder though. You must keep your head and remember just where you are with Vassili—
and
with Laura.”

“That is easy. With Laura I know nothing—with Vassili only what I have told you. Now what do
you
know?”

He drained his cup and set it down.

“I don't know very much. Vassili knows more—I would like to know as much as he does. But I will tell you what I know. In 1918 this Sanquhar was making experiments for the British Government—I believe he had had a stupendous success. Then there was an explosion and everybody was killed. Do you understand?
Everybody
. The War Office experts who were witnessing the experiment, and Sanquhar, and all his assistants—they were all wiped out. No one remained who knew anything, and all the papers were supposed to have been destroyed. As a matter of fact the explosion was arranged by our people, and the papers had already been removed. But here's the rub—they disappeared. The agent who removed them disappeared. It was believed at the time that he had been fool enough to get caught by the explosion. Our people wiped the whole thing off the slate. And then three years ago—” He stopped. “Give me some more tea.”

Catherine took the cup with a steady hand, filled it, added lemon, and gave it back to him. Then she said,

“Three years ago?”

He hesitated.

“Three years ago—well, you are
not
to know this, Trina—three years ago when I was in Chicago I met this man. I will not tell you his name. He is dead now. He was dying when I found him. He had been shot in a quarrel, and he told me his name because he wanted me to send money to his mother. He had plenty of money—too much. I remembered the old story, and I pressed him about this money. Well, he knew he was dying, and he told me. He took the papers about the Sanquhar invention out of the safe, and he hid them—to make his own profit. He hid them, and he bid himself. Then the Armistice came before he could make his bargain, and he sold the papers to the head of the Hallingdon combine—to Mr Bertram Hallingdon. I reported what he told me, and our dear Vassili became Mr Hallingdon's secretary. And now, my dear, you know as much as I do, and I'd better be getting along. I've got to think this over. I think Bertram Hallingdon had taken some pretty elaborate steps to prevent the Sanquhar invention getting into what he would consider the wrong hands.” He broke off with a laugh. “What I want to know is, where do I come in? It seems to me that Vassili is getting more than his share. He gets Laura, and Laura's money; and now he's in a fair way to get the Sanquhar invention too. Do you know, it almost seems to me as if Vassili was getting more than is good for him.” He smiled at Catherine pleasantly, and his eyes were bright.

“What are you going to do?” said Catherine. Her voice had a disturbed sound.

“Think things over,” said Alec Stevens. “I think very well in a car. Go back to bed—and mind you don't make a noise.”

Catherine washed the tea-things and put them carefully away before she went upstairs. She left everything in darkness and went slowly up the dark stair. She was tired and she was cold, and in the depths of her heart she was afraid. She went into her own room and opened the connecting door. Again that curious sense of peace came to her from the room where Laura slept. She could not enter this peace, but she was deeply aware of it. She got into bed, and fell into an uneasy sleep.

In the next room Laura lay dreaming a long strange dream. She had slept and wakened, and slept again and dreamed. She thought she was on a very wide and desolate moor in the hour between dusk and darkness. For as far as she could see there was no end to the moor. It climbed by a rough and precipitous ascent to some distant ridge as yet quite hidden from her, and as she climbed, she heard a great wind driving up behind her with a sound like all the winds of the world blowing together. It passed her with an unimaginable roar, and it beat upon the moor until a spark kindled there and was blown into a wide, tremendous sea of flame, and the voice of the fire joined the voice of the wind. But Laura walked on. Her feet were set on a straight pale path of light. It lay across the darkness of the moor like the track which the moon lays across the sea. It lay across the violent shock of the wind, and was not broken; and it lay across the devouring flame, and it was not consumed. As long as Laura walked upon it she was safe. She thought that her wedding veil was wrapped about her, and that the hem of it blew out against the fire. She put out her hand and caught it back again. The flame licked her hand and came up over her head like a golden tree that dropped sparks instead of leaves, but she was not afraid. She walked on her appointed path. There was a deep calm in her heart.

CHAPTER XVI

“I Thought it was broken, but Sasha had the bright thought that it might be only the battery that was run down, so I went into the town this morning and here we are. It plays. See!”

Catherine put down a rather battered-looking portable wireless set upon the foot of Laura's bed and tapped the lid encouragingly.

“I got Paris just now. Some one was singing
Ciri biri bin.
It made me feel homesick.”

“Is Paris your home?” said Laura.

Catherine sat down on the bed and began to twist the box this way and that.

“I have no home,” she said. “Sasha would say that a sensible woman doesn't want one. In Russia there are to be no homes any more—they are individualistic and anti-Social.” She broke off with a faint mocking laugh and said, “I was happy in Paris—once.”

“Only once?” said Laura.

She was dressed for the first time and sitting in an old-fashioned basket chair with red padded cushions. It felt strange to be up. Her illness seemed to have set years between this afternoon and the last time that she had worn this dull blue jumper and skirt. They had come here in her box, and Catherine had warmed them at the fire and given them to her to put on. It seemed so long since she had worn them last that she could not help a queer recurrent feeling of surprise that they should still be in existence. It was like suddenly finding oneself dressed in the things one had worn at school. The jumper was very soft and comfortable. It had a little red and black and green embroidery at the wrists and down the front. She felt glad that it had come across the gulf with her.

A very faint, thin sound of music touched the silence. This too seemed to come from across a gulf.

“Some people are never happy at all,” said Catherine. “Personal happiness is a mirage—you hope for it, you follow it, and you find yourself in a bog, my dear. There—that was Paris then. Well, I will leave it for you to play with. Vassili wants me to take the car down for petrol.” She flung out her hand in a gesture. “I was in the town this morning and he said nothing, so I must go back. He has his nose in a report, or a letter, or a something—I do not know what—so it is Trina who has to go. My dear, I tell you it is a bad thing to be good-natured. I have a cousin who has such a bad temper that everyone spoils her. They speak softly, they never contradict, they run to do what she wants—and all because they must keep her in a good temper. Once long ago she was ill, and her doctor said, ‘Do all that she wants—do not cross her.'” She stood up and stretched with her hands above her head. “Eh, my dear—what a convenient prescription! Anna has gone on having it made up ever since. I think I will have an illness and send for her doctor.”

She lifted the small table beside the bed, put it by Laura's chair, and set the wireless down upon it.

“There—now you can reach it. I will be as quick as I can.”

When she was gone, Laura began to move the controls. The set was one she did not know. She lost Paris, and could get nothing else. Then she remembered that a portable has to face in the right direction, and she pushed it this way and that. Where was Daventry? She stopped with her hand on the set. Where was
she?
For the first time it occurred to her that she did not know where she was. A sort of tingling shock passed over her. It was rather like being struck by a gust of wind. She had never asked where she was, and no one had told her.

She got up out of her chair and went to the nearer of the two windows. The house stood within a walled garden. She could see the gate from where she stood, a heavy wooden door between stone pillars. Dense evergreens masked the wall and hid the road beyond. There was no other house to be seen. Clearly, she was not in London. But except for that one fact the window told her nothing.

She stood still, looking out at the grey sky and the wet trees. She remembered writing to her bank and telling them to forward letters—but if she had done that, she must have given them an address. But she hadn't ever known the address, so she couldn't have given it to the bank. Her right hand closed hard upon itself as she made herself look back to her wedding day. She had signed a letter to the bank. Yes—but she hadn't written it. Basil Stevens—Vassili Stefanoff had written it, and she had signed what he had written. She looked back and saw herself signing the letter. There was a sheet of blotting-paper across it; she had neither known nor cared what she was signing. She must have given an address to the bank, because yesterday there had been a letter from Agatha Wimborough. A tremor passed over Laura as the words of the letter came pouring back into her mind—hot stinging floods of words. Agatha reproached, questioned, and demanded. Would Laura kindly explain her outrageous conduct—and
personally and without an instant's delay?

An interview with Agatha would indeed be the last straw. Laura would have walked barefoot to the North Pole to avoid it. To stand in that torrent of words, to have every bruised place battered with questions—it was beyond her. She, who had never minded what Agatha said, now minded so much that she wondered whether any lapse of time would make it possible for them to meet. She had written in the fewest possible words to defer a meeting.

Her thoughts went from the inside of the letter to the envelope. Agatha must have written to the bank, and the bank must have forwarded the letter. Letter and envelope were both burnt. But she must have seen the envelope; and if she had seen it, she must have seen the address. Then all at once she had a little picture of it in her mind. There was the grey envelope, of the kind that Agatha always used; and there was the unfamiliar name, Mrs Basil Stevens. Well, if she could see that, she could see the address. But she couldn't. Why couldn't she? Because the address was blotted out. The picture completed itself—Mrs Basil Stevens, and then three rows of heavy black criss-cross lines.

She drew a long breath. So that was it—they didn't mean her to know where she was.

She stood quite still, thinking. She was not frightened. Things did not frighten her now. What was it that Catherine had said? “Personal happiness is a mirage.” Well, hers was gone. But there were other things. She had to keep faith with old Bertram Hallingdon, who had trusted her with his fortune and with the secret of the Sanquhar invention. Strength and courage flowed into her. She meant to justify his faith.

The secret of the Sanquhar invention weighed heavily. Bertram Hallingdon's old servant, Eliza Huggins, knew where the papers were. To protect them, Hallingdon had devised an authority which Eliza would recognize. This authority was a five-pound note. He had torn the note into three pieces and given one part to Jim Mackenzie, one to Basil Stevens, and the third to Laura Cameron. Neither Jim nor Vassili was to know where the other pieces were. Only Laura was to know that. And Eliza Huggins would only give up the whereabouts of the papers to the person who could produce the complete note. Well, Laura had her piece, and so far she had it safe; but it could not remain pinned to the under side of her box-spring mattress indefinitely. Bertram Hallingdon's carefully devised plan had already broken down in one respect. Only Laura was to know who held the three pieces, but Vassili knew or guessed where two of them were. He had his own, and he knew, or guessed, that Laura had another. It was really vitally necessary to put this piece out of his reach.