Walk with Care (22 page)

CHAPTER XXXV

JEREMY HAD HAD A
day of it. Geoffrey Deane did not return after lunch, Mannister having apparently dispatched him on an errand which he did not particularize. As a result, Jeremy had Mannister all to himself—and Mannister in a worse temper than he could have believed possible. It was not merely that everything that Jeremy did was wrong and, being wrong, had to be done again, but there was behind all this unreasonable carping a something which he would have liked to have had a look at in the open. He thought of a knife hidden in a cloak. That was it—a hidden knife, a hidden grudge, a bitterly pointed anger. At least he thought it was that.

Jeremy did not get away until seven. Then he had something to eat, went out for a tramp, and dropped in at a cinema. He got back to Nym's Row just five minutes before Rosalind arrived there, and, letting himself in with his key, was astonished to see the light still on in the Walkers' kitchen and Lizzie Walker up and dressed.

“And thank the Lord you're no later, Mr Jeremy!”—with an air of judicial reproof.

“What's up, Lizzie?”

Mrs Walker produced a small folded note and handed it to him.

“You 'adn't been gone half an hour when it come, and I promised as I'd give it into your own 'ands the first d'reckly minute you come in, which so I 'ave, and you can't get from it.” he did not feel that it would be possible for anyone to stop him.

He went up to the door and planted his thumb on the bell-push.

Nothing happened.

He kept his thumb where it was and listened. He could not hear anything at all. That didn't mean that there wasn't anything to hear. The bell might be ringing downstairs in the kitchen, and if the kitchen was at the back of the house, it was quite likely that he wouldn't hear anything.

After a minute or two he shifted his thumb and pressed again.

Nothing happened.

He didn't really believe that the bell was ringing in a back kitchen. He didn't believe that it was ringing at all. He thought he was ringing a dead bell in an empty house. After an interminable five minutes had passed he was sure of it.

He went back into the road and looked up at the house. There was a lamp at the corner of Marsh Street, and a lamp at the entrance to the mews. The house was about midway between the two lamps. They shed scarcely any light upon it, and from within it was not lighted at all. Not a window showed a glimmer, and the fan-light over the door was black.

Jeremy went back up the step, groped for the knocker, and laid on to the door with it. If there were anyone in the house, they would be bound to hear.

Nothing happened.

The most dreadful conviction that the house was empty took hold of Jeremy. And if it were empty, where was Rachel? Where had they taken her? The words of her note rang piteously in his mind: “I'm frightened to go. They mean something wicked. I'm not to come back again—
ever.”

He said, “That's not true. I'll bring you back.” He did not know he spoke the words aloud, The knocker had fallen back into its place. His hand dropped from it and he went down the step and across the road. He couldn't break down the door. He must have help. He must telephone to Mr Smith and tell him what had happened.

It took him a quarter of an hour to reach a telephone-box. It was nearly eleven when he got through and heard Miller in his perfect telephone manner regret that Mr Smith had been dining out and had not yet returned.

“What name shall I say, sir?”

“Mr Ware,” said Jeremy.

“He may be in at any moment, sir.”

Jeremy thanked him and rang off. He must try Garrett. He had forgotten that he hated Garrett, and that Garrett thought he was a criminal. Garrett stood for the law, an impersonal justice which would not allow Rachel to be hurt.

There were a lot of Garretts in the directory. He found the right one. A sleepy voice presently informed him that Colonel Garrett was out of town. He might be back to-night, or he might not be back till to-morrow. And, again, “What name shall I say, sir?”

“It doesn't matter,” said Jeremy, and slammed the receiver back.

He walked back to Tilt Street and found the same dead, dark house. He made up his mind then and there what he would do. It was getting on for half-past eleven. He would go back to his room and wait till twelve o'clock. Then he would get into the Tilt Street house from the back. If Rachel wasn't there, he would go down into the cellar and see if he could get through into Mannister's house by the scullery window. Rachel might go there to look for him as she had done before.

At the corner of the mews he amended his plan. He wouldn't go to his room till the last minute. He would patrol Tilt Street. If he walked as far as the corner and then a few paces along, he could make sure that Rachel was not taken away either by way of Tilt Street or Mannister's house. They would have to use a car, and he would hear it.

He did not know that a car had turned out of the mews just before he reached Tilt Street on his return from the telephone-box. It was Mr John Brown's taxi. It held Gilbert and Rosalind Denny. They missed Jeremy by a bare half minute.

He began to walk up and down. He didn't think Rachel was there to be taken away; the house was so dark and dead. All the same he wasn't trusting it. It might have Rachel hidden there. It might have her locked in, or drugged, or—He shuddered away from the word that looked at him out of the dead house.

He could see both houses as he walked backwards and forwards from the far corner of Tilt Street to the other side of Marsh Street—fifteen steps and a turn, and another fifteen steps. Mannister's house was all dark too. The air was heavy, and dark, and very still. A distant clock chimed three quarters past the hour. Jeremy waited for the stroke of twelve and walked back to the mews.

CHAPTER XXXVI

WHEN RACHEL HAD LEFT
her note with Mrs Walker she went very sorrowfully away. She had risked a great deal to see Jeremy, and he wasn't there. He wasn't there, and the woman with the rosy cheeks didn't seem to know at all when he would be there. She had given Rachel to understand she would never be surprised if Jeremy were to stay out the best part of the night. To be sure, she put it down to industry, not to roistering; but it was almost equally discouraging, since Rachel knew that, wherever Jeremy was, he was not in the library of Bernard Mannister's house. She knew this, because she had taken the risk of coming through the cellars. She had never risked it before except when everyone was asleep. She wouldn't have risked it now, only she was so frightened that the greater fear swallowed up the less. In the event, the risk had never touched her. She had stood on the inner side of the door at the head of the cellar steps and listened to the voices in Mannister's kitchen just across the passage. Then, when all the voices were at their loudest, she had opened her door and walked upstairs. The hall was empty. When she passed the library door it was open, and she looked in to see whether Jeremy was there. The library was empty too. She opened the front door and walked out into Marsh Street.

When she found that Jeremy was not at home, she walked slowly away. Her heart cried to him to be where she could find him. She stood still under the lamp at the entrance to the mews and, shutting her eyes, prayed for Jeremy to come and find her. When someone touched her arm, she thought that he had come. Her eyes opened on a deep tranced look of joy. Her lips parted to say his name. And then in a moment she was running breathlessly. The hand that had touched her was a fat and dirty hand. The face that belonged to it had bleared eyes and a leering smile.

Rachel ran, but she had not gone twenty yards, when her arm was caught again, and this time in a grip which she knew only too well. Phoebe Dart's voice rasped at her ear.

“Are you mazed, Rachel, running the streets like this? And how did you get out—that's what I'd like to know.”

Rachel did not tell how she had got out. She went back into No. 1 Tilt Street with Phoebe because there was nothing else to do, but to all Phoebe's questions she opposed a pale, wordless resistance. The questions were followed by one of those fierce scoldings which had terrified her from childhood.

“And if I wash my hands of you and leave you to
Her,
it'll be no more than what you deserve!”

With this for a climax, her door was locked and she was left to go supperless to bed in the dark.

She had no intention of going to bed. Phoebe would not come up again; that was one thing she could count on. When Phoebe had scolded herself to a standstill, she never came back; she locked the door and left you alone.

Rachel's room had a small window which looked out at the back. It was an attic room at the very top of the house. Another attic looked out to the front, and between the two a ladder ran up to a trap-door in the ceiling.

When Rachel had waited a little while, she opened her window and leaned out until she could touch the water-pipe which ran down from the gutter in the roof. There was a nail sticking out of the wall beside the pipe. On this nail there was a loop of string, and attached to the string was the key of the front attic, the key which, she had discovered, would open her own door too. She had found this hiding-place for it because neither she herself nor any part of her room was safe from Phoebe's search. She unhitched the key now and opened her door with it, coming out upon the dark landing between the two attics. She had slipped off her shoes, and in her stocking feet she could move as soundlessly as a shadow. She came to the head of a very steep, narrow stair and leaned over it listening. There were two bedrooms on the next floor. There was no sound there. Rachel had so delicate a sense of hearing that she was instantly aware that this floor below her was empty.

She came down the stairs and looked over the next flight. Here there was one room only, the double room divided by curtains, in which Asphodel received her clients. There was someone in this room. A very, very faint something that was less than a murmur just stirred upon the air. It was scarcely sound, but it told Rachel that there was sound within the room. She had discarded her cloak and cap. She wore the thin black dress in which Jeremy had seen her. She made no sound at all as she came down the stair and stood in the angle between the two doors, listening.

Now that she was so near, she could hear two voices. Phoebe was speaking. And then the other voice—Asphodel's voice. The voices came from the back part of the room, from the L behind the curtains. Rachel put her hand on the handle of the other door and unlatched it with a smooth, noiseless touch. At once the voices were more audible, though she still could not distinguish words. She pushed the door an inch—two inches—three, and heard Phoebe say in a sharpened voice,

“What are you going to do with her?”

A cold finger touched Rachel's heart. That was what she must,
must
know. They were talking about her, and she
must
know the answer to Phoebe's question.

She opened the door wider and stepped within it. This part of the room was dark. There was a light round the corner in the L. The black velvet curtains which sometimes shut it off were drawn back, but not the whole way. The right-hand curtain was between Rachel and the L. She stepped to the edge of it, parted it from the wall, and looked through the gap. The light in the ceiling was on. It shone down upon Phoebe in her old-fashioned black dress, and on the woman who had spoken with Asphodel's voice. She spoke with it now as Rachel parted the curtain. She said,

“You want to know too much, Nan.”

It was Asphodel's voice, but her clients would not have recognized Asphodel. If it had not been for the voice, Rachel would not have recognized her. Asphodel was all pallor, and gloom, and pale red hair, with a trailing velvet robe. This was a smartly groomed young woman in Parisian black, the small hat of the moment tilted sideways over lucent waves of honey-coloured hair. There were pearl studs in her ears. Her lashes and eyebrows were a flattering three shades darker than her hair, and her make-up exactly that prescribed by fashion, neither more nor less. With all this, she wore a careless air of charm.

Through the gap between the curtain and the wall Rachel studied her. She knew Asphodel, but this was someone whom she had not seen before. Yet this was Asphodel. Was it Asphodel? Or was it rather that this and Asphodel were both parts played by someone whom she had never seen?

Phoebe was repeating her question, and more insistently.

“What are you going to do with her?”

The woman who wasn't Asphodel laughed. It wasn't Asphodel's laugh. When she spoke now, it wasn't even Asphodel's voice. It was just the pretty, cultivated voice which belonged to the hair, the dress, and the delicately painted lips.

Rachel felt afraid. It was like seeing someone dissolve and form again. She looked, and could find nothing stable. There was that pretty laugh, and the new voice saying,

“Can't you trust me, Nan?”

“No, I can't,” said Phoebe Dart. “And I won't have her come to harm, and that I've told you all along.”

“Oh, harm—” There was a little laugh. “She won't come to any harm. She can't stay here—I suppose you see that?”

“Then let her go back to Talland. I'll go with her, and glad to get a rest from these stairs.”

Asphodel laughed again.

“Darling Nan, you shall have your rest. But Talland! You don't want to take your rest in prison, do you?”

Rachel saw Phoebe's face go grey. She took a step back and said in a shaking voice,

“Don't you say that word! Don't you never say it!”

Asphodel picked up a shiny patent-leather bag and took out a thin gold cigarette-case and match-box. She lit a cigarette, smiling a little all the time. Then she said,

“You won't go to prison if you do what I tell you, Nan. If you don't—” She shrugged her shoulders, and, leaning against the table which held the lamp, she blew a smoke-ring and watched it float upwards and dissolve.

Through the gap between the curtain and the wall Rachel watched Phoebe's twisting hands. She always twisted her hands like that when she was frightened. She had been Rachel's nurse, but long before that she had nursed the child who had grown up to be Asphodel—and this woman—and who knows what besides. Phoebe would do what Asphodel told her. She was a frightening person herself, but she was afraid of Asphodel.

Asphodel's voice cut across what Rachel was thinking—her new, pretty voice.

“Now, Nan, listen, and I'll tell you just what to do. She's in her room?”

Phoebe said “Yes” in a dull, sullen tone.

“Well, I'm going now. I cleared everything out this afternoon. That young man knows too much, and I'm fed, fed, fed to the teeth with Bernard and his tempers and the whole damned show. All the same I'd like to know how Jeremy Ware got on to our game. I suspect that darling of yours—but
how
—”

“She's not my darling! There's nobody been my darling but you, and you know it!” Phoebe's voice was defiant, but it shook.

“Nice of you, Nan! Well, that's what I suspect. If I was sure, I'd—” She blew another smoke-ring.

“What?”

A brilliant smile flashed out.

“Wait and see! Now listen! Go upstairs and give her a hypodermic—enough to keep her quiet, but not enough to send her off. There's a new black coat and hat in my room. Dress her, take her down to the bottom of Marsh Street, and walk up and down till a car stops and picks her up. You'd better clear out yourself the first thing to-morrow. Go to your sister in Devonshire. No one will bother about you there.”

“And you?” said Phoebe in a low voice.

“I'm going to enjoy myself,” said Asphodel. “It's about time.”

“And him?” Phoebe jerked an elbow in the direction of Marsh Street.

Asphodel kissed the tips of her fingers.

“Good-bye!” she said.

“What'll he do?”

“I don't know, and I don't care—I'm off.”

“No—you don't care for none of us,” said Phoebe, Her voice was heavy with pain. She walked away to the back of the room and stood there twisting her hands.

Asphodel watched her, a light smile upon her lips, her cigarette in her hand.

Rachel was trembling a little. She ought to go, and yet she could not go.

All at once Phoebe spoke.

“What are you doing with Rachel? I've got to know.”

“I'm sending her abroad. She knows a great deal too much.”

“Is she going with you?”

“Certainly not.”

“Alone?”

“She's going with a friend of mine. She'll travel as his daughter.”

Phoebe had not turned round. She stood with her back to the room and to Asphodel. Rachel thought that she was crying. She knew how Phoebe cried, with slow, painful tears which forced themselves between the reddened lids. Even now, in this strait, her heart was sad for Phoebe. And Asphodel didn't care; she smiled and blew her smoke-rings.

“Is he respectable?” said Phoebe with a sudden rending sniff.

Asphodel laughed.

“How respectable do you want him to be?”

“I won't do it if he's not respectable, not for no one.”

Asphodel went over to her and patted her on the shoulder. All her movements were graceful and alert.

“Well then, he's perfectly respectable. He's got daughters of his own.”

“And she'll be safe?”

“She'll be very safe indeed,” said Asphodel.

Her hand was on Phoebe's arm in a careless caress, her face was turned towards the black curtain. She smiled, but not as she had smiled before when Phoebe could see her. Phoebe could not see her now. She smiled as if she were quite alone, and just for an instant it was as if the woman who was behind the smoothly charming face was smiling.

Rachel's heart stood still in her breast. The lips smiled and the eyes, and the smile turned them into the lips and eyes of a devil. To think of some secret wickedness and to laugh—that was what a devil might do. Rachel was to be “safe.” That smile gave her a cold, awful glimpse of what that safety might be. It was as if a door had opened a very little way upon something which could never be forgotten. A shudder swept her from head to foot, and her whole consciousness was flooded with the sense of danger. She let the curtain slip from her hand. It came softly back against the wall and hid the lighted L.

Rachel wasn't trembling now. She was strung to a tensity of thought and action. She was at the door before the slight movement of the curtain had ceased. Her feet made no sound upon the stair. Before she came into her dark room she knew what she was going to do. She must have her shoes, and her Chinese shawl because it had been her mother's—nothing else. She wrapped it round her, locked the door on the outside, and began to climb the ladder to the trap-door in the ceiling,

She was lifting the trap, when the drawing-room door was opened two floors below. She went on as if she had not heard it. Before Phoebe's step was on the stair she had gained the loft and shut the trap again.

There was an absolute darkness in the loft, but Rachel knew her way. It was not the first time that she had climbed the ladder. During the long hours of loneliness when Phoebe, in the basement, had supposed her locked in her room, she had found an interest in exploring the loft. It ran right across the house and was full of the strange remnants of many tenancies. There were, amongst other things, two old porcelain baths, a great quantity of wire netting, half a dozen heavy broken fenders, some dilapidated furniture, and a number of old boxes and packing-cases of all sizes and shapes.

With hands that were sure in the dark Rachel found the heaviest of the fenders and lowered it across the trap. She managed to do this without making any noise. Then, moving with hands stretched out before her, she felt her way across the loft to where the packing-cases were piled. Every now and then she stopped to listen. Phoebe had never been up into the loft. A ladder made her giddy, and she had enough to do with the stairs. Asphodel had never been up to the top storey at all, but she might come now. A cold, sick shudder caught Rachel's heart and shook it. She stiffened against it and took a step which brought her up against the wall.