Hole and Corner (6 page)

Anthony came round the table and said, with the teasing note back in his voice,

“Do you always drop your bag?”

She said, “Nearly always,” and put her hand on the clasp to fasten it.

And then an odd thing happened. It was just as if something ran tingling up her arm from the fingers which were touching the clasp. She moved a step nearer Anthony, and felt her shoulder brushed by the white fur wrap of the queer-looking woman at the next table. The tables were really too close together. A funny breathless feeling came up in her throat, and all at once her fingers moved with a jerk and the bag was open again. She didn't know why she had opened it, but as soon as it was open she saw a bright twist of silver cord sticking up against the black satin lining.

She said, “What's that?” in a quick uneven voice. Then she jerked at the silver cord, and up came the little shiny
diamanté
bag which had hung from the wrist of Miss Ettie Miller until half way through dinner. Shirley held it out to Anthony Leigh. “That's not mine,” she said. “How did it get into my bag?” And with that Ettie Miller jumped to her feet, pushing her chair aside and crowding into the narrow space between the tables.

“I'm sorry, but that belongs to me,” she said. Her voice was loud enough to attract attention. Heads were turned. A couple of waiters stood by uneasily.

Shirley looked towards the voice. She was rather pale, her eyes were wide and puzzled. The little shiny purse dangled from her outstretched hand.

“Is it yours? How did it get into my bag?” she said.

And then Anthony was at her shoulder with his hand slipped just inside her arm. He said,

“Yes, it's hers.” And then, to the woman in red, “Miss Dale's bag was on the floor. Perhaps you picked it up by mistake.”

Ettie Miller made no movement to take her bag. She said, still in that unmodulated voice,

“Well, it's a funny sort of mistake that gets your purse with the best part of five shillings or so inside it into someone else's bag.”

Shirley held out the silver cord. Her eyes never wavered from Miss Miller's face.

“Won't you take it if it's yours? I don't know how it got into my bag.”

The whole thing had only lasted half a minute, but it was half a minute too long. Alfred Phillips came round the table with a decided “That's enough, Ettie!” Whereupon Miss Miller said, “Oh, I'll take it all right,” and did so with a very pronounced shrug of her shoulders. After which the pressure of Anthony's hand became insistent, and Shirley, obeying it, turned and walked away.

She had half the length of the Gold Room to walk, and some curious glances followed her and Anthony. She kept her head high, but the cornets of the room were full of a mist that stung her eyes. What a horrible thing to happen. But she mustn't let herself think about it yet—not whilst all these people were looking at her. She felt a terrified longing for some dark place to hide in. The lights were very bright. The room was full of people. She and Anthony were walking, but they didn't seem to be getting to the door.
Anthony
—Don't think about Anthony. Don't think about anything.

They came to the door at last, and through an archway lined with mirrors to an empty corridor. Shirley looked straight ahead of her as they passed the arch, but she could just see herself and Anthony reflected endlessly from either side of it—a hundred Anthonys and a hundred Shirleys. No, far more than a hundred, only it made you giddy to think how many there were. And every one of the Shirleys feeling as if someone had struck her a blow in the dark. And every one of the Anthonys wishing that he had never set eyes on her, because he hated scenes worse than anything else in the world, and there certainly had been a scene—

And then Anthony said, “You all right, Shirley?” and his voice was kind.

She said, “Yes.” The answer was only just audible.

Anthony did not find it at all a convincing sort of answer. He pushed open a door inscribed “Residents only”, and took her into a smallish room with some very comfortable chairs in it.

“But we're not residents,” said Shirley, still only just above a whisper.

Anthony put her into the most comfortable chair. Her knees were shaking so much that she stopped bothering about not being a resident. The chair wasn't big, but it was very soft and comforting. He sat down facing her and said in a cheerful matter of fact voice,

“And now what's all this about?”

Shirley felt so grateful that she could have kissed him then and there. He wasn't going to treat her with stony politeness as if nothing had happened, or believe the simply frightful things which that horrible woman had hinted. He was going to be just ordinary, and friendly, and kind. She said, “Oh, Anthony!” and he patted her knee and told her to pull herself together.

“It was that woman's bag all right, because she had it dangling on her wrist all the time she was fidgetting with that beastly white fur thing, and then about half way through dinner she settled down and I didn't see it any more. But how on earth did het bag get inside yours?”

Shirley's right hand held her left hand very tight. She sat up stiffly and looked him straight in the face.

“Anthony—do you think I put it there?”

“Of course you didn't.”

Her eyes held his with a strained, insistent look.

“I don't want you to be polite.”

“I'm not being polite.”

She did not move her eyes, but she lifted her right hand and brought it down upon her knee with a sort of despairing effort.

“It's no good saying the sort of things you think I want you to say. I want what you really think, because you see, it's happened twice in a few days, and I don't know how that woman's bag got on to my arm when I was waiting for the bus, and I don't know how this woman's bag got inside mine.” She repeated the gesture with her hand. “Anthony, I don't
know.
”

“What do you think?” said Anthony Leigh.

She drew in her breath sharply before she answered him. There was a look in her face as if she were trying not to wince away from a blow.

“It's not what I think. It's what you think, or what anyone would think.”

He said, “Well?”

She was still looking at him. She was very pale.

“Anthony—either someone put that bag on my wrist and put this one into my bag, or else I'm a thief and took them deliberately, or else I've got a screw loose and I took them without knowing what I was doing. You don't think I'm a thief—but do you think I'm a kleptomaniac? Because why should anyone try and plant bags on me like that? It's too utterly balmy.”

Anthony leaned forward and took the hand which lay upon her knee. It felt cold and stiff as he covered it with his own.

“Shirley—one minute—has anything of this sort ever happened to you before?”

“No, it hasn't.” She paused, and added with a little catch in her voice, “It hasn't—
really.
”

“Those people at the next table—have you ever seen either of them before?”

“No, never.”

“You're sure neither of them was in the bus the other day?”

“Quite sure.”

The hand in his was warmer, and it had begun to shake a little. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then looked at him again, but without the same fixity.

“No, they weren't in the bus, either of them—I'm quite sure. But everybody didn't get on.” She shut her eyes again, screwing them up tight. “There were people left behind—quite a lot. They might have been there—either of them. I don't know—I wasn't noticing. I was thinking about the bag and how it could possibly have got on to my arm, and trying not to catch the eye of the vinegary woman it belonged to—and of course every time I looked up I did.” She gave him the faintest of fleeting smiles. “You know how it is. And she had the horridest sort of eye to catch—like a half-cooked gooseberry—” She pulled her hand away suddenly and sat back. “Anthony, I'm not a kleptomaniac!”

“I didn't think you were,” said Anthony.

“I don't know why you didn't—I very nearly did myself. I suppose it was the shock or something, but I had the most horrible giddy feeling that I might have done it. And then when you were holding my hand I sort of knew you didn't think so, and then the giddy feeling went away and I didn't think so either. For one thing, if I was going to steal, I'd take something that was worth having, and not a nasty little jingly bag with the best part of five shillings in it.”

Anthony was sitting there frowning. She had said there were three possible explanations, and they had just disposed of two of them. There remained the third and most improbable of the three. But why should anyone plant alien bags upon Shirley Dale? There didn't seem to be any answer to that.

“It's difficult—isn't it?” said Shirley.

CHAPTER SIX

Alfred Phillips caught a waiter's eye and ordered coffee. He had resumed his chair, and sat with his shoulder turned to the length of the room down which Anthony Leigh and Shirley Dale had taken their way, but Ettie Miller watched them out of sight with a furious gleam in those fine dark eyes of hers. Seen like that, she had a heavy brooding face, and a mouth that fell easily into angry lines. When Alfred Phillips spoke her name with impatience she turned the anger on him.

“Well, you're a nice one, letting her go like that!”

“Come, come,” he said—“it all went off very well. And you mustn't look that way—you'll be having people noticing you.”

“And why shouldn't people notice me? Haven't I just had my bag stolen, or as near as makes no difference? I should have thought the more people noticed me, the better. And they wouldn't expect me to be looking as pleased as Punch either—would they? I should have thought the more fuss there was, the better it would have suited your book. I tell you, Al, I don't understand you—I don't know what you're getting at. Why didn't you go on and run her in? You'll never get a better chance. There she was, red-handed as you may say, and instead of calling in the police all you've got to say is, ‘That's enough, Ettie.' And there's me taking my bag back, and meek as a mouse—and I'm sure I don't know why I did it—and Miss Shirley Dale going off without so much as a cross word from anyone, let alone a policeman's had on her shoulder, which is what I thought you meant or I wouldn't have taken the risks I did and get no thanks for them either!”

There was an empty table on either side of them now. The hum of the room and the sound of the gypsy music which the orchestra was playing enclosed them. They could talk as intimately and privately as if there had been walls about them and a locked door to shut them in.

Alfred Phillips let her talk. Ettie always had a lot to say, and it was no good trying to stop her. When she had got to the end of it she would listen to him, and not before. She grumbled until the coffee came. Then, as she helped herself to sugar, she rolled her eyes at him and said,

“Lost your tongue, Al?”

“Using my eyes instead. That dress suits you, Ettie.”

“Think so?”

He put a little warmth into his cold look.

“Red's your colour.”

“Oh well, I don't know. I got it a bargain.”

He looked at her approvingly.

“You're clever. But you got that all wrong just now, you know. You listen a minute and I'll put you wise. That little bit of a game with Shirley Dale—there wasn't anything serious about that.”

She stared at him, angry and surprised.

“There wasn't?”

“Of course there wasn't, any more than there was yesterday when she got on a bus with another lady's bag on her arm.”

“What did you let me do it for then?” said Ettie Miller. A heavy flush came into her face. “If I thought you were making a fool of me, Al Phillips—”

Mr Phillips moved impatiently.

“Fool nothing! This is business. Now you listen to me, Ettie! There isn't any sort of business in the world that doesn't need publicity. I'm not ready for the real job yet. Advertisement—that's what comes first—advertisement, publicity. Then when everything's set, put your business across and it'll go big.”

Ettie looked stubborn.

“That's just a way of talking. But what I say is, you'll never get a better chance than you've had to-night, and if you go throwing chances away, you've only got yourself to thank if you don't get them again.”

Al Phillips smiled.

“I can make all the chances I want. Now you freeze right on to this—to-night was only publicity. You've got brains all right, if you'll use them. Well then, how was it going to look if
you
ran her in—when the whole story came out—well, I ask you, what was it going to look like? Conspiracy, my dear—and then it would be you that would be in the dock on a criminal charge, and not her.”

“Dry up!” said Ettie Miller angrily. “What do you think you're saying? What was the good of doing the thing at all if it was all going to fizzle out?”

Mr Phillips went on smiling.

“When the real job comes off, Anthony Leigh's going to remember where that bag of yours was found,” he said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Shirley came back to her lunch next day to find Mrs Camber hovering. The door was no sooner shut than she made an agitated descent from the half-landing.

“If I might have a word with you, Miss Dale—”

Shirley looked at her in surprise. She didn't in the least want to have words with Mrs Camber. She wanted her lunch. She had been promised a good hot helping of beefsteak pudding and a baked apple, and she had been thinking lovingly about them all the way home, and Mrs Camber ought at this moment to be taking the pudding out of its cloth and helping it in portions instead of lurking on the stairs and fussing down on her like a stout agitated hen.