Red Shadow (18 page)

“Yes, another three minutes.” And then, “Are you there?.…
Laura
—are you there?”

“Yes.” A faint sound—a faint helpless sound.

“Are you ill? They said you had been ill.”

She had been ill last year—for a week. He remembered the dark shadows under her eyes. He remembered his fear—tenderness—joy.

“Not now,” said Laura. There was no joy in her voice.

What had they done to her for her not to care whether she was well or ill? Where had they taken her? His poor girl—his sick girl..… The old fear had him again.

“Where are you?”

“I don't know.”

His heart gave a bound. His voice came in a shout:

“
You don't know?
”

“They—haven't—told me. Jim—for God's sake—”

The words were strung on a thread of terror, and with the last word the thread broke. There were no more words; there was no more current, no more anything. He might have been in another world.

He jerked at the hook, but the line stayed dead—jerked and went on jerking and saying, “Exchange!” in a harsh, unrecognizable whisper.

“Exchange—exchange—
exchange!
”

It was like the story of the worshippers of Baal. There was no voice, nor any that answered.

He went on.

After five minutes exchange came suddenly to life. No, they didn't know who had been calling..… No, they couldn't say what exchange it was..… No, there wasn't any way of finding out.

He pitched the receiver back upon the hook and strode up and down the little room.
Laura
. What had they done to her?
Laura
—frightened—ill..…

The cold hell was gone. A devouring flame had burnt it up. His girl—his sick girl—frightened—not knowing where she was. The fire roared round him. It burnt up everything except the fact that Laura had called to him across the gulf which she had set between them. Where was she? Agatha Wimborough didn't know. But she had heard from her. The letter must have had a post-mark. If they really didn't want people to know where she was, it was easy enough to get a letter posted somewhere else. But the lawyer knew. If he knew, he could be made to say. Or if Rimington wouldn't say, he might have better luck with Stark. Clerks always knew addresses—though of course they weren't supposed to pass them on. That might be arranged—with Stark.

All at once he was full of a thundering, pounding energy. He laughed aloud, flung the tray back into his dispatch-box, slammed down the lid, and locked it, pocketing the key. Five minutes ago there had been no go in him; now he did not know what to do with this rush of strength.

What he did was to go down the steps three at a time and take the nearest way to the Embankment. There was half a gale blowing down the river; half a gale, and half a moon, with the clouds driving across it, and the water ridged with black and silver. He walked fast and far, making plans.

He would have to ring Agatha Wimborough up first thing in the morning. It would be better for
her
to press Rimington for the address. Rimington might give it if he was told that Laura had rung up. Yes, that was it. And there was no need for Rimington to know that it wasn't Agatha Wimborough who had been rung up. She could say that Laura didn't know where she was—that she was frightened. He didn't see how Rimington could refuse the address after that. As a matter of fact he couldn't imagine anyone refusing Agatha Wimborough anything that she had really made up her mind to have. She must have given up rather easily, or she would have got the address when she asked for it before.

He got back to the flat at one o'clock, went straight to bed, and slept as he had not done for the best part of a month.

CHAPTER XXII

Jim Mackenzie opened his eyes. Some one was knocking on the outer door of the flat. He looked at his watch. Half-past eight. Good Lord! Then he had overslept—and that was Mrs Mabb!

He opened the bedroom door, called out, “All right—I'm coming,” and went back for an aged dressing-gown of Turkish towelling which had once boasted a rather loud red pattern on a purple ground. The purple and the red had long ago mingled in the wash, but it could still preserve Mrs Mabb's respectability from the shock of encountering him in his pyjamas. Mrs Mabb was very respectable indeed.

She came in coughing a little and averting her eyes from the dressing-gown. She herself wore a Burberry some half dozen sizes too large for her, and the relics of an orange-coloured feather boa. A black felt hat sat on the back of her head. She had hay-coloured hair, a long pale face, and very few front teeth. She said, “Good morning, sir,” and vanished into the kitchen.

Jim went into the bathroom and struck a match. If he started the geyser now, he could shave whilst the bath was running. He would let it hot up a little before he took his shaving-water. And just as he got to that point Mrs Mabb screamed.

She was leaning against the open sitting-room door with both hands clutching at her side and a dustpan and brush at her feet. As soon as she saw Jim she screamed again.

“Oh—sir!”

“What on earth—” said Jim, and then stopped short, because he could see past her into the room.

His dispatch-box stood in the middle of the floor with the lid flung back and the tray tilted sideways, one corner on the floor and its contents spilled.

“Oh, Lor, sir!” panted Mrs Mabb. “You never left it like that, did you? Such a turn as it give me when I opened the door! ‘Burglars,' I says to myself, and if I hadn't screamed, I should ha' dropped. I'm all of a shake as it is, what with losing me key, which is a thing that I've never had happen before, all the time that I've obliged—and then to get a turn like this! You never left it that way, sir—did you?”

Jim went past her and knelt down in front of the box. It had been wrenched open; the japan had flaked off and the metal below was dinted. The man who had opened it had been in a hurry. In a hurry for what? Not for the money that he had put away last night; for it was there, tossed out on the carpet together with his cheque-book and the bundle of Laura's letters, which he had not quite steeled himself to destroy.

“Is there much took, sir?” said Mrs Mabb in a flutter of concern.

“No—I don't know. Just get on with your work, will you?”

He had put it under the money. Or had he? He had taken it out and looked at it and put it back again. And it wasn't here. He threw the notes on one side as carelessly as the thief had done.

Behind him Mrs Mabb was picking up her dustpan and brush.

The envelope was gone. He had slept like a hog, and whilst he was asleep some one had come into the flat, forced open his dispatch-case, and taken, not the money, but the envelope which had come to him from Bertram Hallingdon—the envelope which contained a three-cornered piece torn from a bank-note.

A cough sounded in his ear. Quite close to him, on her hands and knees, Mrs Mabb was brushing the carpet.

“Ow! I do hope there's not much took!” she said, and brushed back a strand of hay.

Jim controlled himself with difficulty.

“When did you miss your key?” he said.

“I told you, sir, yesterday—I come back a purpose and told you. Let myself in same as usual yesterday morning, and when I got no more than half-way down the street I wanted me hangkerchief, but it wasn't there.”

“What wasn't there?”

“Me hangkerchief, sir—and the key what I always knots in the corner. And I come back as fast as I could and told you, and certain sure I am I never dropped it. It was
took
—and a very good hangkerchief too.”

Jim got up and lifted the case on to the table.

“Mrs Mabb, do you mind sweeping somewhere else?”

“Your bedroom, sir?”

“No.”

“I can't do the bathroom, sir, if you're going to have a bath.”

“Go and do the kitchen—do anything you like to it!”

Mrs Mabb departed sniffing. Jim shut the door on her.

When he had taken everything out of his dispatch-case and then put it back again, the envelope was still missing. And Laura had rung him up last night to tell him to put it in a safe place. Laura had rung him up. Why
Laura?
Because she knew some one was after his piece of the note which Bertram Hallingdon had divided.
Laura.
How did Laura know?

He stared down at the notes which the thief had not taken. Two things stood out with the limelight on them—something that Laura knew—something that Laura did not know. Laura knew that his piece of Bertram Hallingdon's bank-note was in danger. Laura did not know where she herself was. It was like a crazy riddle—a sort of “Why is a bee when it spins?” And the answer was—Basil Stevens. Basil Stevens was keeping Laura in ignorance of her whereabouts. And Basil Stevens had come into his flat with a stolen key and broken open his dispatch-case. He was a fool, or he would have taken the money too and made it look like an ordinary burglary. Or was there method in his folly? Did he count on the torn piece of the Hallingdon note being an awkward thing to go to the police about? If money had been taken, the police would be a possibility; as it was, they were quite starkly impossible. He conjured up an inspector—a notebook—the official manner:

“An envelope missing? Containing what? A torn piece of paper? Nothing else?”

No—it couldn't be done. Why hadn't the swab pinched the notes? That “nothing else” made it impossible to face the police.

Nothing else
. By gum, though, there
was
something else missing!

He lifted the case, looked under it, set it down again, flung a cushion out of a chair, turned over newspapers, magazines, books; all with the knowledge that what he was looking for was not there to find. There
was
something else missing.

The thief had not only taken the envelope containing the corner of a bank-note, he had gone off with the typescript of Jim Mackenzie's broadcast talk, “Twenty Years of Invention.”

Jim stood stock-still in the middle of the floor. What the something, something, something could any mortal human being want with the typescript of a talk which had just been delivered free gratis and for nothing to the listening ears of everyone who possessed a wireless set? If a passionate desire to read and re-read Jim's carefully thought out sentences was the burglar's motive, he might have indulged it less dangerously by expending threepence on the next copy of
The Listener
.

But he had taken the torn corner of Bertram Hallingdon's bank-note.

Bertram Hallingdon's torn bank-note and the typescript of “Twenty Years of Invention.”

The words of Bertram Hallingdon's covering letter sprang into his mind: “This is the torn piece of a five-pound note. Keep it very carefully. If the whole note is assembled, it will give the key to the present whereabouts of the Sanquhar invention. The person who possesses the middle portion of the note will warn you should the need arise.” Frankly, he had wondered whether the old man had been quite sane at the last. This talk about the Sanquhar invention..… But the Sanquhar invention had gone up in smoke more than twelve years ago.
Had it?

He had destroyed Bertram Hallingdon's letter, and he had locked away the torn scrap of paper in the envelope in which it had come to him; and then—yes,
then
—he had blotted out of his neat typescript the paragraph which touched, in passing, on the loss of the Sanquhar invention.

And the burglar had taken the torn scrap of paper, and the burglar had taken the typescript.

The door opened about eight inches. In the opening there appeared a very dirty check duster, Mrs Mabb's bony hand and wrist, Mrs Mabb's long pale nose, and Mrs Mabb's pale inquisitive eyes. The hand held the duster and grasped the edge of the door; the eyes peered round it.

In an agitated whisper Mrs Mabb burst the bonds of silence.

“Your bath's a-running over, and I darsn't touch that there geyser, not after what it done to me last week. That side of me head hasn't bin right since, and I shouldn't wonder if it never was. Banged something crool and went out—and I'm sure I'd barely laid a finger on it, and the smell of gas enough to asphixicate me!”

CHAPTER XXIII

Jim had his bath, dressed, and rang up Agatha Wimborough. Amelia Crofts answered his “Hullo!” with a dismal and almost totally inaudible “Yes?”

“That you, Amelia? I want to speak to Miss Wimborough.”

He could hear Amelia sniff, but of what followed the sniff he could make neither head nor tail. That was the exasperating thing about Amelia. Why a person with such a peculiarly penetrating sniff should fade into a mere blur when it came to speech was one of life's insoluble problems.

Jim tried again.

“I'm afraid I didn't get that. Ask Miss Wimborough if she'd mind speaking to me for a minute. It's important.”

Amelia sniffed, and repeated the blur. An occasional word emerged from it like the bleating of sheep in a fog.

“
Amelia
——”

“Yes, sir.”

He got that. If she could say, “Yes, sir,” she could say all the rest of whatever it was she had been trying to say.

“Look here, Amelia, I can't hear a word you're saying. Put your mouth close to the thingummyjig and put in some lip-work! You're just bleating—and I can't hear you when you bleat. Now carry on! Where's Miss Wimborough?”

“Gone away,” said Amelia with a perfectly terrific sniff.

“
What!
”

“Gone away,” repeated Amelia tearfully. She trailed off into a blur again.

“Stop it! Do you hear?
Lip-work
, Amelia! Attention to consonants! And if you sniff, I'll send you a box of poisoned chocolates—I swear I will! That's better! Now—where's Miss Wimborough?”

“F-f-franee, sir.”

“
France!
Why I
saw
her last night.”