The Dower House Mystery (22 page)

“You have been kind. I am not myself.” He could just catch the words as she spoke very low and with her head turned away. Then, as he moved to go, she pushed the heavy door, and it fell to between them.

Chapter XXVIII

Agatha Moreland's letter describing her interview with Mrs. Thompson was written immediately after that interview and dated Tuesday. It reached Amabel Grey on the Wednesday morning, by which time Agatha herself was experiencing a slight reaction in the direction of everyday commonsense. She was ready to have Amabel to stay with her, but she couldn't help hoping that she would not come. It didn't look well to give one's sister a small room with no fireplace, when one's maid had a comfortable fire. Of course, Amabel knew how fussy Anderson was, and she had expressly mentioned that she could only give her the fireless room. All the same, it didn't look well; and she hoped that Amy would make other arrangements.

She lunched with Isobel Le Mesurier—a woman's lunch-party. She found herself, after lunch was over, sitting next to Mrs. Henry March, whom she met for the first time. Jane March, who had been Jane Smith, and who, as Jane Smith, had had an Astonishing Adventure, was a small person with indeterminate features and an engaging something about her. One could not describe Jane, but one liked her—everyone liked her. Agatha liked her at once, and found herself talking as she would have talked to an old friend. On an impulse of confidence she dropped her voice and said,

“I went to a medium yesterday.”

“Why?” said Jane.

“Well—I just did. I was worried.”

Jane's little nose wrinkled.

“Did she unworry you at all?” she asked briskly. “I suppose it was a she-medium—they generally seem to be women, I don't quite know why. Henry would say it's because we're the predatory sex.”

Mrs. Moreland ignored Henry. She ignored everything except Jane's first question.

“She did—and she didn't,” she said slowly. “That's to say, she set my mind at rest about the thing that was troubling me—the thing I really went to her about—; and then she nearly frightened me to death about my sister who has just taken an old house in the country. Do you believe in haunted houses, Mrs. March?”

“Not if you mean ghosts,” said Jane. “Of course there are always rats, and smugglers, and things like that.”

Scepticism had its usual effect. Agatha's cooling faith boiled up.

“It's all very well to laugh,” she said, “but if you'd been
there
, Mrs. March. I just went to her on a sudden impulse. She didn't know my name, or my sister's name, or anything about us, and she described Amabel, and the house she's in, and—and everything. And she said Amabel was in the most frightful danger and ought to leave the house at once. And when I asked her what it was, she just screamed and fainted, and couldn't remember anything afterwards.”

“How frightfully clever of her!” said Jane—“the fainting, I mean. I expect it made you creep about a hundred per cent. more than anything she could have described.”

Agatha warmed to her subject, and enlarged upon the darkened room, the crystal, the medium's strange, far-away gaze, and the thrilling tones of her voice. When she had given Mrs. March every detail of the interview, she said,

“I don't mind saying that she convinced me—and I believe she would have convinced you too if you'd been there. Now, tell me, Mrs. March, what do you really think about it all? What would you say?”

“I should say she'd been got at,” said Jane briefly.

Mrs. March did not go straight home. It was a fine afternoon, and she went for a walk along the Embankment. She found herself thinking a good deal about Mrs. Moreland and Mrs. Moreland's story. There were reasons why it touched certain chords in her memory.

She had been walking for about quarter of an hour, when she suddenly became aware that she was being followed. There was a man a little behind her, on her left, whose step kept pace with hers. She quickened her pace without looking round. The man quickened his; all at once he was beside her. He began to speak. She turned, prepared to freeze him off the face of the earth, and stared instead in unmitigated astonishment at one of the last persons whom she had ever expected to see again—Molloy, the Anarchist Uncle.

Those who read the “Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith” will remember that, shortly before the close of that adventure, Mr. Geoffrey Ember had instructed two Comrades to eliminate Cornelius Molloy. Jane, his late wife's niece, had always imagined that this elimination had been effected, and that she no longer possessed an anarchist relation. She therefore exclaimed, “Good gracious!” and fell back a step.

“Ah!” said Mr. Molloy. “You've an affectionate heart, Jane. When all's said and done, one's own kith and kin are the best. ‘It's overcome with joy she'll be, and you must be careful'—that was what I said to meself, and that was why I've been following you these ten minutes past.”

“Good gracious!” said Jane again. “I thought you were dead.” If she was overcome with joy, she appeared to be controlling her emotion with considerable success.

“Oh, I'm a hard one to kill,” said Molloy easily.

Jane began to walk on.

“Look here, Mr. Molloy, what do you want?” she inquired. “I can't stand about here talking to you, and I'm certainly not going to take you for a walk. So, if you want anything—and I suppose you do—, you'd better tell me what it is.”

Molloy looked down on her from his impressive height. His handsome features wore a look of melancholy reproach.

“There's the hard-hearted English for you,” he said. “Isn't it likely that I should feel drawn towards me own flesh and blood, and feel the need of a kindly word from them?”

“No, it's not,” said Jane. “Not in the least. And you know as well as I do that I'm not your flesh and blood—thank goodness. Now, will you please come to the point. What do you want?”

Molloy sighed heavily.

“It's a broken man I am, and only wishful to die in peace without interference from the police.”

“I don't think you'll die for quite a long time,” said Jane, “I don't really. You look like the green bay tree at the very height of its flourishing, if you don't mind my saying so. Now, it's no good beating about the bush. What do you
want
?”

“Shall we turn and walk back?” said Molloy. “I'll be telling you as we go, and not feel I'm taking you out of your way. Now, it's this way, me dear Jane,”—his voice took on a rich and luscious roll—“this is a wicked world, and we're all poor sinners, Heaven help us. But there's times when we can give one another a helping hand.”

“That sounds beautiful,” said Jane. “Who do you want to help—the police?”

A gleam of admiration showed for an instant in Mr. Molloy's fine dark-blue eyes. Jane was so remarkably quick in the uptake; it was a pleasure to do business with her.

“You have it,” he said simply.

“I thought so. And what do you want in return?”

“Just the leave to die peaceably,” said Molloy, with exquisite sadness.

Jane looked at him with an odd little smile.

“Come along,” she said, “let's have the horrid details. I suppose, you've got something to sell, and you want me to tell Henry, so that he can go to the Chief and find out whether they'll let you off your just deserts.”

“You have it again,” said Mr. Molloy.

Jane made a grimace.

“All right, out with it! Tell me what it is, and I'll tell Henry. That's all I can promise to do. Whether Henry goes to the Chief or not, and what the Chief does about it isn't my affair. It'll all depend on whether they really want your information, I expect.”

“They'll want it fast enough,” said Mr. Molloy easily. “It's what they'd be giving the eyes out of their heads for. Do you think I'd have run the risk I'm running this very minute if I didn't know that what I'd got to tell would see me safe?”

“You do talk a lot, don't you?” said Jane. “I never knew anyone who talked so much and said so little.” She glanced at her watch. “I'm going home in two minutes, so for goodness sake come to the point and tell me what it is you've got to sell.”

Molloy looked pained.

“And that's an ugly word between friends,” he said. “There's no man living can put it on me that I'm an informer.”

Jane March stamped her foot.

“You've all the virtues. Would you mind just taking them for granted, and telling me what I'm to tell Henry.”

“Well, then,” said Molloy—he dropped his voice, came nearer, and breathed down the back of Jane's neck—“'tis the French forgeries.”

“Don't do that!” said Jane involuntarily. Then, wheeling round so as to face him, she asked in rather breathless tones, “The forged notes? Do you mean it, do you really mean it, Mr. Molloy?”

Molloy resumed his full height and folded his arms.

“I do,” he said. “But, mind you, Jane, it's a business that'll want delicate handling. I'm a gentleman meself, and I'll not deal except with gentlemen—and I'll not go to the Yard neither, not if they were all to go on their bended knees. I've me reputation to consider,” he concluded in his grandest manner.

Jane's foot tapped the pavement.

“H'm, yes,” she observed. “It wouldn't do for your friends to know that you'd sold them, would it? Now, for goodness sake, come down off that high horse of yours and get to business. Let me see, it's four o'clock, and I'll have to get hold of Henry—h'm—” She paused for a moment, then nodded and went on, “This'll be the best way, I think. I'll give you my telephone number, and you can ring me up from any public call-office at eight. They may want to see you to-night at the flat. Would that do?”

“I'd need a safe conduct,” said Molloy—“just the Chief's word that I'm free to come and go whether we do a deal or not.”

“Well, I can tell you all that when you ring up,” said Jane. “Good-bye.”

Molloy continued to walk beside her.

“You've not asked for me daughter Renata,” he said—“your own cousin.”

“How is she?” said Jane impatiently.

“She has twins,” said Molloy. “Boys, six months old.”

Visions of two little Arnold Todhunters arose in Jane's mind. She had characterized her cousin Renata as a white rabbit, and her two meetings with Renata's husband had roused her to a state of contemptuous fury.

“Good gracious, how perfectly dreadful!” she gasped.

“And there's a hard, unwomanly speech for you!” said Molloy.

“My good man, you never went up a fire-escape in the pitch dark behind Arnold Todhunter and had him dropping things on your head all the way, like I did.”

Molloy contemplated her for a moment by the light of a street lamp.

“Well, well,” he said, “there's one thing, nobody would take you for Renata now, as like as you used to be. I'd a photograph from her only last week, and she'd make two of you and a bit to spare.”

“Life has its compensations, after all,” said Jane.

Chapter XXIX

At a quarter past eight that evening there were three people in Jane March's drawing-room.

Jane herself was standing on the hearth-rug in a boyish attitude with her hands behind her. Captain Henry March was at the little writing-table on the opposite side of the room. He had pulled his chair sideways, and sat with one elbow on the table and his legs crossed. In the largest armchair sat Sir Julian Le Mesurier; he filled it very completely. A writing-block lay on his knee; his large fingers fiddled with a fountain pen.

Henry March looked down the room towards the door.

“He ought to be here,” he said.

“Henry, you're a fidget,” said Jane. She turned to Sir Julian. “In about half a minute, I know, he'll ask me all over again whether I'm sure I've sent Lucy out, and whether the infant Henry can be depended upon to sleep through the proceedings and not listen at the door. Just in case he does, the answer in both cases is ‘Yes.'”

Piggy had begun to draw a large black cat at the top of his sheet of paper.

“Henry and I are both in a fidget,” he said. “I conceal it better than he does—that's all, my dear.”

The cat was a heraldic cat, a cat rampant. It had long, fierce whiskers and a tail like a bottle-brush.

The bell of the flat rang suddenly. Jane went to the door. They heard her voice, and a deep, rolling answer, then her voice again. Henry March frowned. The door opened and Jane appeared. Behind her, the commanding figure of Mr. Molloy.

Mr. Molloy paused upon the threshold, and inclined his head in greeting.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” he said. Then, advancing a step, he indicated Jane with a sweeping gesture. “I was saying to me niece”—Henry March winced—“I was saying to me niece Jane that it was me wish that she should be present at this interview.”

Henry March said “Nonsense!”

Jane raised her eyebrows at him, and Mr. Molloy said in his deepest tones,

“I can retire, or I can remain—it is for you, gentlemen, to choose which I shall do. But”—he came forward into the room—“if I am to remain, I will ask you to remember that I am here at very considerable risk—that me motives may be impugned and me character defamed on account of the public service that I propose to render. It is, therefore, me wish that a member of me family should be present.”

Henry March remembered that he had seen this man move a huge audience to tears and laughter in Chicago—the meeting had subsequently been dispersed by the police. In Cornelius Molloy the Stage had lost an actor to the world.

Sir Julian looked at Jane and nodded.

“You will remain,” he said, “as a witness to Mr. Molloy's unblemished character—he seems to feel the need of one.”