Look to the Lady (24 page)

‘You've got a lucky face, my dear,' she said. ‘You'll get a nice husband. But you won't get Orlando.'

Considerably startled by this unexpected announcement, Penny smiled at her and started after Lugg, who was making for the little car as fast as his dignity would permit.

‘'E calls 'isself Orlando among the gippos,' he said. ‘A funny old party, wasn't she? See 'er groinies? – Rings, I mean. Close on a thousand quid's worth there, I reckoned. All made from poor mugs like us. One of 'em told my fortune once. A journey across the water, she said. I was in Parkhurst inside of a month.'

Penny was not listening to him. ‘But what does it mean?' she said. ‘What's he got them to do?'

Mr Lugg made an exaggerated gesture of despair. ‘They're old friends of 'is,' he said. ‘'E goes off with 'em sometimes. 'E don't take me – leaves me at 'ome to mind the jackdaw. That's the sort of man 'e is. You got to face these things. I can see a rough 'ouse afore we've finished.'

They had reached the car by this time, and Penny did not answer, but as she climbed into the driver's seat yet another caravan passed them heading for the camp. She glanced across the heath to where the stables lay just visible in the distance. For a moment a gleam of understanding appeared in her eyes, but she did not confide her thoughts to Lugg.

They drove home through the winding lanes to Sanctuary.

‘'Ere! Wot's this we're in?' said Mr Lugg, after some seventeen sharp turns. ‘A blinkin' maze?'

Penny, who had grown used to his artless familiarity, smiled. ‘It's a long way round by road, I know,' she said. ‘It's only five miles across the fields. This road dates from the time when one had to avoid the wealthy landowners' property.'

As they passed Tye Hall Beth and the Professor were at the gate. They waved to her, and Penny pulled up and got out.

‘Look here,' she said to Lugg, ‘you take the car back to the Tower. I'll walk home.'

Still grumbling a little, Mr Lugg obeyed, and Penny went back along the white dusty road to where her friends were waiting.

‘We're waiting for the post,' said Beth cheerfully. ‘Where's your funny little friend this morning?'

‘Goodness only knows,' said Penny awkwardly. ‘He went off last night, leaving a note to say he was going visiting. I believe he knows something.'

The Professor, very coolly and sensibly dressed in yellow shantung and a panama hat, stroked his neat little beard with a thin brown hand. ‘Is that all he said?' he inquired. ‘I'll say that sounds very odd.'

‘To walk out at a time like this,' said Beth. ‘It's not like him.'

‘I think he's up to something,' said Penny, anxious to dispel any wrong impression. ‘He left Lugg and me a most extraordinary errand to do. That's where we've been. We've taken a red silk bag to an old lady who looked like that figure of Hotel in your drawing-room, Professor, all wrapped up in coloured print. She's a sort of Gypsy Queen, I suppose. There's a whole crowd of them camping on Heronhoe Heath.'

The Professor's round brown eyes widened perceptibly. ‘Well, now, isn't that strange?' he said, and appeared to relapse in deep thought.

‘She seemed to understand what it was all about, anyhow,' Penny went on, ‘which was more than I did. And she said something about tomorrow, as if he'd made a date or something. He's an extraordinary person, you know.'

Beth opened her mouth to agree, but she was silenced by an apparition which had just appeared leaning over the field gate which split the high hedge directly opposite the Tye Hall drive. A startled exclamation escaped her, and all three of them turned and stared at the dishevelled figure which clutched the topmost bar of the gate for support.

‘Val!' Beth darted across the road, the other two behind her. The young man was deathly pale. He looked ill, and as he made a move towards them he swayed drunkenly. The Professor unhooked the gate, and, hitching the boy's arm round his own shoulder, half led, half dragged him across the road and up the path to the house.

‘Don't chatter to him now, girls.' The Professor spoke firmly, silencing a chorus of questions. ‘He looks real bad to me. Beth, cut up to the house and get out some brandy and ice water. Penny, my dear, give me a hand with his other arm.'

‘I'm all right,' said Val weakly. ‘I've been doped, I think. Only just came to myself – heard you talking and staggered out. I'm a silly ass, that's what I am.'

‘Hold on. Don't talk for a bit,' the Professor advised, as he led the little party into the house by the side door from the lawn. ‘No, it's all right,' he said to an excited maidservant who met them. ‘Don't alarm Mrs Cairey. Young Mr Gyrth has come over a bit faint, that's all.'

The girl vanished with a startled ‘yessir,' and the Professor turned his charge into the library, where Beth was already waiting with the brandy and water.

Val would not be silenced any longer. ‘I asked for it and I got it,' he said, as he sank down gratefully into a deep saddleback. ‘Gosh! I've got a head like fifty champagne suppers.'

‘But what's happened?' said Penny and Beth in chorus. ‘And,' added his sister as the thought suddenly burst upon her, ‘where's the Cup?'

Val's clouded eyes grew hard for a moment, and he tried to struggle to his feet as the recollection returned to him. Next moment, however, he had sunk back again helplessly.

‘They've got it,' he said apathetically. ‘Where's Campion?'

Penny made an inarticulate noise in her throat and then sat down by the table, white and trembling.

Beth seemed more concerned about Val than any Chalice, however. Beneath her kindly ministrations the boy began to recover rapidly. He looked at her gratefully.

‘I'm giving you an awful lot of trouble,' he said. ‘I don't know how I got in that field. I woke up and heard you talking and staggered out, and here I am.'

‘Now, my boy,' said the Professor, ‘what happened? Can you remember?'

Val considered. ‘I was at Campion's flat,' he said. ‘I sat up late, reading, with the Chalice in the suitcase actually on my lap. A damn silly place to put it, I suppose. I hadn't undressed – I didn't mean to go to bed. Early in the morning, about two or three I suppose it was, I heard a fiendish noise going on outside. I looked out of the window and saw a sort of free fight in progress round that Police Station downstairs. I was wondering what was up when I heard someone in the flat behind me. He must have had a pass-key, I suppose.'

He paused reflectively as he tried to piece together the jumbled events in his mind. ‘Oh well, then,' he said at last, ‘– curse this headache, it's blinding me – then I got a crack over the skull, but not before I'd caught a glimpse of the fellow who swatted me. I recognized him. When I was down and out,' he added awkwardly, ‘I went into all sorts of low eating houses. And there was one off Berwick Street, in Soho, just by the market, you know, where I used to see a whole lot of odd fishy characters going in and out. I think they had a room at the back. Well, this chap who hit me was a man I'd seen there often. I spotted him at once. He'd got a most obvious sort of face with a curious lumpy nose.'

He stopped again and the Professor nodded comprehendingly.

‘Then you were knocked out?' he suggested.

‘That's right,' Val agreed. ‘But I don't think I was out more than a couple of minutes at the most. I remember getting in a hell of a temper and charging downstairs; the only thing clear in my mind was that dirty little dive off Berwick Street. Outside there was still a young battle going on, and I charged through it. I think I sent a bobby flying in the process. Of course, I ought to have taken a few of them with me, but that didn't occur to me at the time. They had their hands full, anyhow.'

‘And when you got to Berwick Street?' said Beth, who had listened to this recital of her hero's with wide-eyed enthusiasm.

‘Well, that was about all,' said Val. ‘I charged into the place like a roaring bull and asked the proprietor chap for the man I wanted. He took me into the back room, where I waited, fuming, until a great lout of a fellow came in and before I knew what had happened I got a towel full of ether or chloroform or something in my face. That's all I remember, until I found myself sitting in the hedge in the field outside here, feeling like a half resuscitated corpse.

‘I say,' he added suddenly, ‘what's today? I mean –?'

‘You're twenty-five tomorrow,' said the Professor. ‘By the look of you you've been lying in that hedge since early this morning. Thank goodness it's dry weather.'

‘How did I get there?' said Val in bewilderment. ‘I tell you, I was laid out in a filthy little dive off Berwick Market last night – no, it couldn't have been last night. The night before, then. I suppose they injected something. Chloroform wouldn't have kept me under all that time. Here – where's Campion? I must let him know. Although,' he added morosely, ‘I suppose he's heard all about it from the police by now.'

‘Albert's gone,' wailed Penny. ‘And we've lost the Chalice. And yet,' she added, suddenly sitting up, ‘that accounts for it. Someone was phoning Albert up all day yesterday. I was in bed at the time, but Mary told me this morning. That's why he went off. He didn't want to scare Father or me, I suppose.'

She was interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Cairey, who put her head round the door.

‘Papa dear,' she said, ‘the postman's here. There's that special mail you've got to pay for, and I wondered if you'd like your letters too, Penny, my dear. He'll give them to you if you come. Lands above!' she added, coming into the room, all her motherly instincts aroused, ‘you do look ill, Mr Gyrth. Is there anything I can do for you?'

Penny went out with the Professor almost mechanically. Her brain was whirling with the complications of this new and apparently final development. Why on earth could no one realize that the Chalice had gone?

The postman, a scarlet-faced and perspiring East Anglian, was standing at the front door leaning gratefully on his bicycle.

‘Two letters for you, miss,' he remarked, as he completed his transaction with the Professor. ‘Your brother ain't 'ere by any chance, is 'e?' he added, raising a hopeful blue eye in her direction.

‘He is, as a matter of fact,' said Penny, considerably startled by the coincidence of such a question.

‘Ain't that lucky? The only other thing for the Tower is this parcel for 'im. If you wouldn't mind, miss –?' The man was already unbuckling the prodigious canvas bag on his carrier, and the next moment he had dumped a large and heavy parcel in her arms. ‘It's lucky you got it,' he said. ‘It feels like it's over the regulation weight to me. Good morning, miss.'

He touched his ridiculous hat and swung on to the bicycle.

Penny, with the parcel in her arms, walked slowly back to the study. Just as she entered the room something about the weight and size of her burden sent a curious thrill through her.

‘Val,' she said breathlessly, ‘open this. I think – oh, I don't know – anyhow, open it.'

There was something so imperative in her tone that the boy's interest was roused.

‘What in the name of –' he began. ‘Oh, it's my birthday tomorrow. It's probably something stupid from one of the relations.'

Nevertheless he accepted the knife Beth handed him and ripped up the cords, displaying a stout cardboard box of the type usually used to pack large bottles. Something of his sister's excitement seemed to be conveyed to him, for the hand that unfastened the slotted end of the carton shook violently.

Next moment he had pulled out a wad of straw packing and an exclamation escaped him. The Professor, Mrs Cairey and Beth bent forward, and very gently he drew out the long, slender golden cup that Mr Melchizadek's great grandfather had made.

‘The Chalice!' said Penny, a sob in her voice. ‘Oh, Val, it's all right.'

The faces of the other two women reflected her delight, but the Professor and Val exchanged glances.

‘How –?' said Val breathlessly. ‘This is incredible. Is there any message? Who addressed it?'

A frenzied search revealed that there was no other enclosure, and that the address was printed in block capitals. The postmark was illegible.

The Professor cleared his throat. ‘I guess I can understand this,' he said, tapping the relics of the parcel. ‘But how you arrived in that field this morning is completely beyond my comprehension. Who set you there, and why? It doesn't make sense.'

Penny, who had been staring at her brother during the last few minutes, suddenly stretched out her hand.

‘Val!' she said. ‘Your buttonhole!'

Instinctively the boy put up his hand to the lapel of his collar and an expression of astonishment came into his face as he detached a drooping wild flower bud from the slit and stared at it.

‘Funny,' he said. ‘I certainly don't remember putting it there. It's fairly fresh, too.'

Penny snatched it from him. ‘Don't you see what it is?' she said, her voice rising. ‘There's hundreds of them in that field where you woke up. It's a white campion. There's only one person on earth who would think of that.'

—

M
R
C
AMPION
stopped his car among the high broom bushes on Heronhoe Heath that evening and sniffed the air appreciatively. He seemed if anything a little more inane than usual, and in spite of his evident anxiety, there was something about him which conveyed that he was definitely pleased with himself.

Although he had been driving most of the day there was no trace of weariness in his tall loose-limbed figure. He locked the car, slipped the key into his pocket, and stood for a moment with his hand on the bonnet. ‘The highwayman's farewell to his horse,' he remarked aloud to the empty air, and then, turning abruptly, strode off across the springy turf.