Beggar’s Choice (9 page)

About five minutes later the driver got the engine going, and we drove back to town. I spoke to him when we had gone a little way, but he didn't answer me. Then I said something about the car, and he didn't answer that either, so after that I left it alone.

X

Anna Lang stood just inside the big hall door of Linwood House. She stood leaning on the door with her left hand, whilst with her right she held the catch that would slip the lock at a touch. She was listening intently. Behind her the house was dark except for the small lamp which burned beside the telephone. She had taken off her cap and veil and smoothed her shining black hair. It defined her head in close waves as formal and as natural as the marble ripple in the hair of some sculptured nymph.

She leaned against the door and listened intently. The moment she heard the car stop she pulled the catch and let the door swing in.

A man came up the steps with as much haste as a stoutish medical practitioner permits himself.

“I'm so glad you've come,” said Anna.

Dr. Monk came into the hall.

“How is he?”

“I think he's asleep. I'm so glad you've come. I was so frightened.”

“Well, well, I'll just go up and see him.”

She went before him to the stairs and switched on the light on an upper landing.

“He didn't remember anything about it when I got him back to bed.”

“Well, well, I'll just go up and see him.”

She went up with him, and stood on the threshold of the large room where John Carthew lay sleeping quietly in a huge old-fashioned four-post bed. A nightlight burned on the double marble washstand. The room was shadowed, drowsy, and rather close behind the heavy crimson curtains which shut out the night air.

Dr. Monk went over to the bed. Anna held her breath. He mustn't wake.

Presently Dr. Monk came back, motioned her out of the room, and shut the door.

“He seems all right,” he said. “Tell me what happened.”

Anna spoke what she had rehearsed, with her large dark eyes looking at him mournfully out of a colorless face. Suppose he didn't believe her.

“He went to bed at ten. I read till after eleven. Then I went up to my room, and the servants shut up. I felt restless and hot, and after a bit I went downstairs and took a turn on the terrace. I suppose I was out half an hour. When I came in, I found my uncle's door ajar, so I looked in to see if he was all right. He was lying in a faint just inside the door. I got some cold water, and he came round at once and let me help him to bed. He didn't remember anything about it, and I thought I'd better call you up.”

“You're sure he was unconscious?”

“Oh yes.”

“He seems quite all right”—in a puzzled tone.

They moved together to the head of the stairs. As they began to descend them, Anna said,

“You must be feeling that I've brought you out for nothing. I'm so sorry.”

“Not at all,” said Dr. Monk a little gruffly.

“If I ever have to come through the village at night, I always think how dead it is—as if it might have been dead a thousand years. I don't suppose you saw a soul.”

Dr. Monk gave a malicious snort and rubbed his hands together.

“Then you suppose wrong, for I saw Car Fairfax.” He took a step down as he spoke, but Anna stood perfectly still above him, her hand on the banisters.

“
Car? Car?
” she said in a low voice.

“Car Fairfax,” said Dr. Monk, looking up at her with his small gray eyes. He had begun to feel distinctly less cross. He admired Anna a good deal, and was pleased at the effect of his speech.

“
Car?
” said Anna. “Car Fairfax—
here
?”

“Just outside Turner's, holding a torch for a chauffeur who was doing something to a car. The man took the torch from him as I passed, and the light went right on Car's face. It was Car all right.”

“Oh, don't!” said Anna. She had begun to tremble very much, and the words were hardly audible.

“Why? What's the matter?”

She shook her head.

They came down the rest of the flight into the hall.

“Dr. Monk——”

“What is it?”

“Do you think Car came here?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I don't know if I ought—oh, I must tell some one.”

“What is it?”

“I told you I went out. I came in because the library window was open.”

“You mean you left it open.”

“No—I didn't go out that way. I went out through the garden door. It has a spring lock, and I had the key. It was shut all right, because I tried it, but the library window was ajar.”

“Do you think Mr. Carthew——”

“I don't know what to think. Suppose he came down and let some one in, or suppose he heard some one in the library and got up. His room is just above. I don't know what to think.”

“The window was open. Was anything disturbed?”

She hesitated. Then without speaking she crossed the hall and opened a door. Dr. Monk followed. She touched a switch, and the library sprang into view—a heavy, handsome room with maroon curtains and old, comfortable leather chairs.

“The curtains were drawn, but the door was open,” said Anna slowly.

The room was high. There were two windows—long French windows, opening to the ground, as Dr. Monk well knew. Between the windows stood a large mahogany bureau with a cupboard above and three drawers below. The top drawer was not quite shut.

Dr. Monk walked across and looked at it.

“That drawer——”

“I know.”

“Did you look to see if anything's missing?”

“I didn't like to. I—I was frightened.”

“Well, you'd better see now.” He pulled out the drawer. “Doesn't keep valuables here, I suppose—does he? Hullo! Some one's been rummaging!”

The papers in the drawer had been turned over. A check book lay open across them.

“Hullo!” said Dr. Monk again. “Hullo, hul
lo
! Some one's been up to something—yes, by Jove, they have!”

Anna tried to push the drawer in, but her hand shook. She leaned against the desk and said in a choking voice,

“Oh—don't!”

Dr. Monk glanced at her sharply.

“Would you know if anything had been taken?”

He pulled down the flap of the bureau and exposed more confusion. There was a row of pigeonholes above the desk. Everything had been bundled out of them—papers, a timetable, pencils, an old pen, a bunch of seals, stamps, and some neatly docketed bills; whilst, across the tangle, stretched a light chain ending in a bunch of keys.

Anna exclaimed and caught it up. The keys fell jangling against the wood.

Dr. Monk looked at her. Those big eyes of hers were brimming over with fear. Odd. He would never have suspected her of being easily frightened. She was as white as a sheet of paper. Those very beautiful lips of hers had lost all their red.

Dr. Monk admired Miss Lang more than a little. He was fifty, and a very comfortable bachelor. He didn't want to marry any one, but Anna made him feel agreeably young. Her pallor and her distress moved him dangerously; he didn't feel at all sure that he might not commit himself in some way if she went on looking at him like that. Dangerous—very dangerous. But how agreeable. Lovely woman. Midnight. Danger. The position of consoling friend——

“My dear Miss Anna——” said Dr. Monk. He said it warmly and with a slight tremor in his voice.

Anna's eyes came to his face. Then suddenly her lashes fell; a shiver went over her. She gathered up the keys and, turning, shut the bureau top with a jerky movement. There was an awkward silence. She broke it at last, speaking in a low voice and not looking at him.

“You won't—tell any one—will you?”

“My dear Miss Anna——” said Dr. Monk again.

“I shall have to tell my uncle,” she said. “I wish I needn't, but I must.”

He felt more and more puzzled.

“Is anything missing here?” There must be some reason for this extraordinary agitation of hers.

“I don't know.” Then, with an abrupt change of voice, “Are you sure that it was Car whom you saw?”

“Oh, quite sure.”

Was she changing the subject? Or did she mean—what did she mean? Some of her color had come back.

“I'm keeping you, and it's most dreadfully late. Goodnight.”

This was dismissal. He accepted it with a sense of danger averted. He might have made a fool of himself in another minute. It was, somehow, disappointing not to have had the chance. He felt a little dashed as he said good-night and stepped out into the dark. But before he reached the car Anna called him back.

“Dr. Monk!”

He could see her only as a soft black shadow against the dimly lighted hall. She stood in the half open door and spoke quick and low.

“Did he look ill?”

“Who?”

“Car.”

“Bless me—no! Why should he? I only saw him for a moment. I thought he looked a bit thin.”

“You didn't think he was ill?”

“Has he been ill?”

“I don't know.” She opened the door wider and slipped across the step. “Dr. Monk——”

“What is it?”

“You won't—you won't tell any one you saw him?”

Now why should she ask him that?

Her hand touched his arm just for a moment.

“Please.”

“But why?”

“But I can't tell you. You won't tell any one—will you?”

Dr. Monk said he wouldn't, and then went off wondering why she had asked him that, and what in the world Car Fairfax was doing in Linwood at that hour of night, or at any hour, if he wasn't seeing his uncle. Then quite suddenly the keys, Mr. Carthew's swoon, the ransacked bureau, and Anna's frightened eyes rushed together in his protesting mind and supplied an answer which upset him a good deal.

XI

Mrs. Bell panted up the stair with a plate of hot meat pudding in one hand and a letter in the other. Both hands being occupied, she knocked on Mr. Fairfax's door with the edge of the plate and then, taking the letter between her teeth, wrestled with the rather stiff handle for a moment and burst in.

Mr. Fairfax was standing at the window with his back to the room. As soon as she had retrieved the letter she burst into speech, at the same time setting down the plate with a bang calculated to attract the most absent-minded person's attention.

“And if you please, sir”—it was Mrs. Bell's way to start sentences in the middle—“and if you
please
, sir, there isn't nothing nastier nor cold suet—or if there is, I haven't come across it, not yet I haven't.”

The meat pudding had a mound of potato on one side of it and a little hill of green cabbage on the other. There was plenty of gravy. Even cabbage smells good to a very hungry man.

Car turned round in a hurry.

“Mrs. Bell, you shouldn't—I can't,” he stammered.

Mrs. Bell slapped the letter down beside the plate. Her large round face was hot and red with cooking. Her large red hands were still steaming from the hot water in which she had just plunged them. Her apron was not very clean, and she had a smudge on her cheek. She spoke in a tone of angry authority that carried Car back to his nursery days:

“Now, Mr. Fairfax, you look here! What ha' you had to eat these last two mortal days? Bites, and crusts, and chippings of cheese, and such-like. You set right down and eat a proper meal whilst it's hot! And if you wants to argue you can do it afterwards—for suet's a thing that won't be kept waiting, not if you was a duke.”

“Mrs. Bell——”

“Take and eat it up!” said Mrs. Bell in a warning voice. She backed through the doorway and banged the door.

When Car had finished the last shred of cabbage, he opened the letter. It had a London postmark and had been cleared that morning. He read it with steadily increasing surprise:

D
EAR
S
IR
,

I must apologize for not having kept the appointment made with you yesterday over the telephone. I hope you did not wait very long. I was delayed by a slight accident to my car, and did not reach Churt Row until nearly eleven. As you were not there, I presumed that you had given me up and gone home. If you will be at the same place at the same time this evening, I will endeavor to be more punctual.

Yours truly

Z.10 S
MITH

The writing was clear, upright, and a little formal. Car stared at it. There was no word that he could possibly have misread. There was not the slightest ambiguity about the phrasing. Mr. Smith was apologizing for not having kept his appointment last night. But somebody had kept it—the fat man had kept it. The fat man was Bobby Markham. Or was he? For the moment he didn't feel sure about anything.

Then he took hold of himself. He was quite sure that he had talked with Anna Lang in Linwood last night, and Anna had spoken quite openly of Bobby. Yes, the fat man was Bobby Markham. And it was Bobby Markham who had gone through the tobacconist's shop and into the inner room whilst Car was waiting to make his inquiries about the International Employment Exchange. Where, then, did Mr. Z.10 Smith come in? So far he existed, very elusively, as a profferer of five hundred pounds; as Box Z.10; as a voice on the telephone; and now, as an apologist for having failed to keep an appointment.

Bobby Markham had kept the appointment. But how did Bobby Markham know that there was an appointment to keep? And how did Bobby and Anna know that Box Z.10 was offering him five hundred pounds? Of course any one might read an advertisement. But how did they know that this particular advertisement had been thrust upon Car Fairfax? It was all very complicated, and if there had been a little more margin between him and sheer starvation, he would have put Mr. Smith's letter into the waste-paper-basket and thought no more about it. He wouldn't starve to-day, thanks to Mrs. Bell's meat pudding. He had been giddy with hunger all the morning. To-morrow he would be hungry again. Five hundred pounds was five hundred pounds. He wouldn't forge a check for it, but he would do a good deal; and if the job was a risky one, so much the better.