Rolling Stone (14 page)

“Are you going to tell me you read it?”

“Well, I'm afraid I did. You see—”

“No, I don't, but I'm going to. And to start off with, I'd like to know who you are. You're passing under Jimmy's name, and that's his suit-case, so if you don't want me to send for the police you'd better make a clean breast of it all. And don't think you can take me in either, because I didn't bring up Jimmy Reilly without getting to know when anyone was telling lies. Now you tell me straight who you are and what you're up to! Are you a crook?”

“No, I'm not.”

“Jimmy was. I suppose you know that?”

“Yes, I know that.”

She nodded.

“You're a gentleman. Jimmy wasn't, though he fancied himself and looked down on me because I worked for my living. If you're not a crook, I suppose you're a detective or something like that.”

Peter said, “Something like that.”

He looked at her solid, distressed respectability and told her how he had changed passports with Spike Reilly and taken on his job. She listened, sitting there on the edge of the hotel bed, and as she listened, Peter became aware that she was believing what he said. When he had finished, she said “Oh dear me!” again. And then,

“You're doing a very dangerous thing, sir. I suppose you know that.”

“I suppose I do,” said Peter soberly.

“Jimmy worked with a lot of very dangerous people. He got into trouble when he was only nineteen and ran away to America, and he was in trouble there, and in prison too. And I never thought I'd be glad our mother was dead, but I was then. It wasn't from her side he got it, I'm sure. She and my father were cousins, so she married into her own name. And there's no one can say Speddings weren't respectable right as far back as you could go, but my father died when I was ten years old, and she married Cornelius Reilly within the year. And left a widow again six months later with Jimmy on the way. Oh, dear me—he was a beautiful baby. And she died before he went wrong.”

“Miss Spedding,” said Peter slowly, “do you know who they are—the people your brother worked for?”

“I know they're dangerous.”

“I think you know more than that. You wrote a letter to your brother—I think it was about one of these people.”

She said, “Oh, no, no!”

“I think it was. It was about a Mrs. Simpson whom you used to know, and you had met her again.”

She got up. Her colour had faded a little.

“I haven't got anything to say about Mrs. Simpson. If you read my letter to Jimmy, you know that. I told him straight it wasn't any good his asking—and if I wouldn't tell him, do you suppose I'd tell you?”

“Well, I hope you will. You see, I know a good deal already. I know she was a Miss Deane—Miss Maud Millicent Deane. And she married Simpson, and that's when you knew her.”

“There's no harm in knowing anyone,” said Louisa Spedding. “She was all right when I knew her.” She stopped, looked at him uncertainly, and said in an altered voice, “What do you want me to say? Mr. Simpson died very sudden—people do die suddenly, don't they? People said things, but if there'd been anything wrong, there'd have been an inquest. I don't know what you're trying to make me say.”

Peter knew. He said,

“Did you know her well? How well did you know her?”

She stared at him.

“I was cook in the house—they kept three. And I was there two years. There isn't much you don't know about someone you've lived with for two years. I won't say she wasn't always very pleasant.”

“And you recognized her again at once?”

“Oh, I'd know her again anywhere.”

“I don't know how you could be sure after so long.”

“Well then, I could,” said Miss Spedding. “There's something I'd always know her by.”

“And that is?”

She shook her head with decision.

“Least said, soonest mended. I've kept out of a lot of trouble in my time by not talking, and I'm not going to do different now. And if you'll take my advice you'll go back to your right name and your right place, and not stir up a lot of trouble for yourself when there's no need.” She turned towards the door.

“Miss Spedding,” said Peter, “you say there's no need to stir up trouble. It's these people who are stirring it up, you know—theft, blackmail, murder. There was that poor chap of a butler at Mr. Oppenstein's—you must have seen about it in the papers—what harm had he done? Seen someone he might have recognized, and so they killed him. And so perhaps they'll kill someone else if they're allowed to go on. Do you think you've got a right to hold your tongue?”

She said, “Mrs. Simpson hasn't got anything to do with that.” But she looked away and didn't meet his eye.

“Your brother thought she had.”

Louisa Spedding turned again, and spoke sharply.

“What right have you got to say that?”

“I've got a right to say it because it's true. I told you he talked when he was dying.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he could find out who it was he was working for. He wasn't talking to me, you must understand, but to this employer of his. He said, ‘Maud Millicent Simpson—what do you say to that? If I can find out about her, I can find out about you,' and a lot more of that sort of thing. And he'd been asking you about her. I read your letter, you know. You can't really look me in the face and say you don't believe Maud Millicent Simpson is mixed up with this business.”

Miss Spedding stood where she was. She made no attempt to look him in the face. After a minute she said in an unwilling voice,

“You're a gentleman—you haven't any call to meddle with all this. There are the police, aren't there? It's their work, and they're paid for it. What has it got to do with you?”

Peter put his hands in his pockets, jingled a coin or two, and smiled affably.

“My dear Miss Spedding, I don't like blackmail, and I hate murder.”

She frowned suddenly and distressfully.

“Jimmy hadn't anything to do with murder,” she said in a shaken tone.

“No, I don't think he had. But I think they meant to try and fix it on him.”

“If I thought that—” said Louisa slowly. She came a step nearer. “What makes you say a thing like that?”

“Well, your brother was over here that week-end. Do you know why?”

“He was sent for.”

“Do you know why he was sent for?”

She looked away.

“He didn't know himself. They made him come over, and they sent him back again. He didn't know why.”

Peter jingled the money in his pocket.

“That's why. If the Oppenstein affair had gone right, they'd have sent him back—with the picture perhaps. If it went wrong, they could put the blame on him.”

Miss Spedding's colour rose high.

“It's a good thing he's dead and out of it—and it would be a good thing if you were out of it too.”

“I'm going to get them out of it first,” said Peter in a cheerful and determined voice.

CHAPTER XXI

Louisa Spedding stood there flushed and irresolute. She was afraid, but she was angry. She had not shed a tear for Jimmy Reilly, but there was a heavy weight on her heart. If it wasn't for
them
, he'd be alive and respectable—they might be keeping a little shop together the way she'd often planned it. And then murder—that wasn't right. They ought to be stopped. Perhaps this young man was the one to stop them. She said,

“What do you want to know?”

Peter laughed.

“More than you can tell me. But I expect you can tell me some of it. Look here, how did your brother come in contact with these people? Can you tell me that?”

“I'll tell you what I can. He met a man called Grey when he was in America. It wasn't his name of course. Jimmy never knew his real name.” She stopped, looked at him very straight, and said, “If I tell you what I know, you've got to leave me out of it. I don't want any trouble. And it's no use the police coming round—they won't get a word out of me.”

Peter nodded.

“They shan't worry you. I shan't say who told me.”

He felt a strong excitement. Why didn't she get on with it—why didn't she speak?

She said, “All right, I'll tell you.”

She went back to the bed and sat down. Her knees were shaking. There was a lot of wickedness in the world. Jimmy was dead. She had always tried to do her duty and live respectable. People who did murder had got to be stopped. Perhaps this young man would stop them—a real gentleman, and nice teeth when he smiled.

She got out her handkerchief again and wiped her forehead.

“This is gospel truth I'm telling you. Jimmy picked up with this man Grey. He wanted to get away from America because of something he'd done—”

“Do you know what it was?” said Peter.

An old-fashioned and unbecoming blush suffused Miss Spedding's face.

“It was one of those kidnapping cases. I don't know what I felt like when I heard about it. But there—it was the company he'd got into, and this Grey told him there was easy money to be earned over here if he'd do as he was told and not ask questions, so Jimmy took it on. He was to go on the Continent and travel about, and he'd be told what he had to do, a bit at a time, in a cipher they had. Mostly it was posting letters. He didn't tell me what they were, but it was something to do with insurance companies.”

“Blackmail about the pictures—yes, that would be it. Go on,” said Peter.

“There were other things too, but they kept him pretty much in the dark. Sometimes he saw this Grey, but he didn't see anyone else.”

“Did anyone else see him?” said Peter. “That's what I want to know.”

“I don't think so,” said Louisa Spedding. “This Grey, he was the go-between. The ones who were behind it all, they kept themselves to themselves. They wouldn't want for anyone to be in the way of seeing them—only this Grey that they had to trust. And from what Jimmy said, they'd got such a hold over him that they
could
trust him.”

“Then it was only Grey who knew Spike—your brother—by sight?”

“That's right,” said Louisa Spedding. “And I'll tell you how I know about that in a minute. Well, this Grey got into a motor accident over in Austria, and he was so badly hurt that he died, and when he was sure he wasn't going to live he told Jimmy some things.”

“What did he tell him?”

Louisa Spedding had her last moment of hesitation. Afterwards, when she had come out of the room and was walking down the stairs, she couldn't think what had come over her. She supposed it was Jimmy being dead that made her feel as if it didn't matter what she said, but she wished that she had held her tongue. Now, with Peter watching her, she let it run.

“He told Jimmy it was a woman who was running the whole thing, and there was a man in it too. He said the woman used to work for a very big crook called the Vulture, but he was dead now. He said he had worked for him too, and when this picture business began this woman sent for him to work under her. They didn't want more people in it than they could help, and Grey had to find them what they wanted.”

“
They
?” said Peter sharply.

Louisa Spedding nodded.

“This woman, and the man who was working with her—”

Peter broke in.

“Who is he?”

“Jimmy didn't know. That was the great secret, because he was somebody high up that nobody would suspect. Grey told Jimmy that, and he said to watch out for him, because he'd tear anyone up as if they were a bit of old paper if he thought they were getting dangerous. But he said the woman was worse. He said she could get away with anything, and no one ever crossed her and came out of it alive. That's what he said.”

Peter leaned forward. He could hardly hold his impatience.

“And he told your brother her name, Miss Spedding—he told him her name?”

“He said she'd got a dozen names, and she could look like a dozen people. And he said her own real given name was Maud Millicent, and he said that away back when he first knew her, her name was Simpson. And that's why Jimmy told me about her, because he remembered when I was in service with Mrs. Simpson, and he'd an idea he'd heard the whole of that name before—Maud Millicent Simpson. And I don't mind saying it gave me what you might call a fright, meeting her again on the top of all that. And if I'm to tell you what I think, it's this—you've got to be careful, because she's watching you. Why do you suppose I'm here this morning?”

“I've no idea,” said Peter.

“Or how did I know where to find you?”

He laughed.

“Still no idea.”

“Then I'll tell you. I was rung up on the telephone. I'm housekeeper at Sir John Morleigh's, and there's a telephone in the pantry. The butler said it was for me. And there was someone saying ‘Miss Spedding' in a voice I could have sworn I'd never heard before—a kind of a silly giggling voice like a girl's. And it said, ‘Your brother Jimmy's over again. I expect you'd like to see him.' So I said yes, I would, and she said, ‘Hurry along and go this morning then, or you'll miss your chance, because he's going away again.' She gave me this address and rang off. So I left the kitchen-maid to do the lunch and came along.”

Peter was leaning over the end of the bed. He straightened up now with a jerk and walked over to the window. The morning was turning to fog, but the misty street and the yellow-grey sky were somewhere away outside his consciousness—he looked at them, and he did not see them. His thoughts raced.

Someone had sent Louisa Spedding to see him. Why?

Someone had given her this address. Who knew it?

The last question answered itself first. Garrett knew it. But he didn't know where to find Louisa Spedding. At least he hadn't known between twelve and one o'clock last night.