Look to the Lady (27 page)

‘I suppose you need money yourself,' said Campion quietly.

‘Naturally. I've spent two fortunes in my time,' said Mrs Dick without boast or regret. ‘That's why I've got to get hold of another. You don't think I'm going to allow a little rat like you to interfere?'

‘You underestimate me,' said Mr Campion with firm politeness. ‘Manly courage, intelligence and resource are my strong points.'

He raised his voice during the last words for the first time during the interview. Instantaneously there was a clatter of hoofs beneath his feet, followed by several thunderous kicks on the woodwork which shook the building.

‘Bitter Aloes,' said Mrs Dick significantly. ‘She's in the box beneath here. You're in good company. Keep your voice down, though … she's vicious with strangers.'

‘Not too matey with the lady of the house,' observed Mr Campion more quietly. ‘I saw you playing together in the yard like a pair of kittens. I thought she'd get you with her forefeet.'

‘She killed a boy last year.' Mrs Dick's voice was brisk but expressionless. ‘I was supposed to have her shot but I wangled out of it. The little beast came on her unexpectedly. I saw it happen. It wasn't a pretty death. Those forefeet of hers were like steel hammers.'

Mr Campion hunched his shoulders. ‘You have a curious taste in pets,' he observed. ‘Fingers Hawkins and Bitter Aloes make a very fine pair. But suppose we cut the melodrama and come back to business? In the first place – merely as a matter of curiosity, of course – how do you hope to get away with it?'

‘What can prevent me?' said Mrs Dick with placid assurance. ‘You seem to forget why I was invited to enter into the business at all. My position is unassailable. I can go where I like with impunity, and surround myself with as many rough customers as I like without rousing any suspicion. That's the advantage of a profession and a reputation like mine.'

‘I see,' said Mr Campion. ‘And this reputation of yours plus the state of your financial affairs which rendered you practically desperate, got you the contract, as we say in big business? But what I meant was, how do you expect to get clear away – go on living here, for example?'

‘Why not? Mere suspicion can't upset a standing like mine. Even if the police arrested me, what possible reason could I have for stealing a gold cup? It isn't saleable, you know, and I'm not the sort of person to collect drawing-room ornaments. The police are not the people to press the question of my employers. Once I have hold of it I can do exactly as I please. The Gyrths daren't blare their loss abroad. Frankly, I don't see how the police would come into it, and ordinary county feeling has long since ceased to affect me. I assure you I've come through worse scandals than this will ever cause.'

Mr Campion was silent, and she shot him an inquisitive glance through the gloom. ‘Well?' she said.

‘I was thinking how clever they are, these employers of yours,' he said slowly. ‘You're right. You're unassailable. In fact, there's only one danger point in your whole scheme.'

‘And that?'

‘Me,' said Mr Campion modestly. ‘You see, I know the rules of the society as well as you do. You, I take it,' he went on quietly, ‘are thinking of killing me?'

‘It would be absurd of me to let you interfere with my affairs,' said Mrs Shannon. ‘You might possibly have been useful to me, but as it is you're a damned little nuisance. I'm not thinking of killing you. I'm preparing to kill you.'

‘So this is Suffolk,' said Mr Campion. ‘Commend me to Chicago. I hate to keep raising objections, but won't you find my body about the place more than just a social nuisance? I know the police are forgiving, friendly people, but they do draw the line at a body. Perhaps you're going to bury me in the garden or throw me in the creek? Do tell.'

The woman made no reply, and he went on.

‘Before you get busy, however, I must do my singing exercises. Listen to this for an E in Alt.'

He threw back his head, and the shrill bird cry that had sounded over the heath the previous evening now echoed through the little room. The grating above Mr Campion's head was open to the heath, and the sound escaped clearly to the sky beyond. Again he shouted, and the horse below clattered and kicked violently in her stable.

Mrs Dick began to laugh.

‘If you've been relying on that pack of Gypsies,' she said, ‘it's kindest to tell you that I had sent them off the heath this morning. You're alone. You seem to have played your cards very badly. In fact,' she added with sudden seriousness, ‘you're such a damn failure that you're beginning to irritate me.'

Mr Campion's eyes were hard and anxious behind his spectacles, but his expression of charming inanity had never wavered.

‘Talking of failures,' he said, ‘where's your success? You're no better off than when you started. You haven't got the Chalice.'

‘It's perfectly obvious where it is,' said Mrs Dick slowly. ‘I was a fool not to think of it before. In that secret room in the east wing they make such a fuss about, of course. That was clear to me as soon as I found the cup in the chapel was spurious. I shall have the Chalice tonight.'

She spoke with complete assurance, a tone that dismissed any other possibility as absurd. Mr Campion stiffened.

‘I see,' he said softly.

He took off his spectacles and put them in his pocket. It was growing very dark in the loft, and although he was not altogether unprepared for what followed, the suddenness of her attack caught him unawares. He saw the flash of the woman's arm in its white shirt-sleeve upraised, and the next moment the thong of her whip caught him full across the face and sent him staggering back against the wall beneath the grating.

He was vaguely aware of voices outside, but he had no time to think clearly. Mrs Dick was lashing at him with the same cool skill and deadly accuracy with which she had subdued the mare who was trampling wildly in the box beneath them. He threw up his arms to shield his face, and reeled backward as she drove him into the corner.

She came after him, feeling in the hay-strewn floor with her foot. At last she found what she sought. With a single vicious twist of her heel she shot back the iron bolt of the hay-shoot, precipitating the young man into the maelstrom of flying hoofs below.

Instinctively he threw out his hands to save himself, and his fingers caught at the edge of the trap.

For a sickening moment he swung suspended in the air. Mrs Dick, bending down to draw up the trap again, kicked his fingers from their grasp as if she were flicking a stone out of her way.

Then she drew up the door by the slack rope and slipped the bolt home.

—

B
ITTER
A
LOES
was as frightened by the sudden intrusion into her box as was Mr Campion by his equally sudden descent. She started back, rearing and screaming, her forefeet beating wildly in the air. It was this momentary respite which saved Mr Campion's life.

Set across the corner of the stable, some four feet below the ceiling, was an old-fashioned iron hay-basket, just low enough to allow the horse to pull out mouthfuls of fodder as she desired, while saving the bulk from being fouled on the ground or in the manger.

When Mrs Dick kicked Mr Campion's fingers from their grasp, he dropped, and was actually in the low wooden manger when Bitter Aloes reared above him. Pressing himself back into a corner to save himself as much as possible from the flying hoofs, his head brushed against the bars of this hay-basket. The mare, frenzied with fear and with bad temper, rose up on her hind legs once more, pawing frantically in the gloom.

Campion leapt for the iron basket, drawing himself up into it, and at last crouched, his head and shoulders battened down beneath the rebolted trap and Bitter Aloes snapping at him not six inches below his feet. Even at that moment he could not help marvelling at the simple villainy of Mrs Dick's arrangements. A stranger found savaged to death and probably unrecognizable in a racehorse box would convey only one thing to a jury's mind, especially if the lady supplied any necessary details to show that he had entered the stable for some nefarious purpose. Twelve good Suffolk men and true would consider it a case of poetic justice.

With his head and shoulders still smarting from her whip and his body growing numb in its unnatural position, which he knew he could not hold for long, he listened intently. Bitter Aloes had quietened considerably, but he could still hear her snorting angrily and the swishing of her tail in the darkness. Outside he was vaguely aware of a bustle in the yard. Mrs Dick and her party of raiders were about to set out. He realized that she must have some very definite plan of action, and his heart failed him as he thought of the Tower completely unprotected save for Val and a handful of servants, all of whom would be taken by surprise. It would not only be robbery with violence, but robbery by a group of picked men, each a master in his own particular line. Such a party could hardly fail, since they had such a very good notion where to look for their spoil. The difficulty of tracing them once the coup was made would be unsurmountable even for Scotland Yard, since the treasure itself could never be traced.

Savage with himself as much as with the woman, Campion raised himself cautiously in his perilous cradle and tried to force the trapdoor up, against the hinge, by the whole strength of his head and shoulders. There was an ominous creak and he felt to his horror that it was the staples that supported the hay-basket and not the trapdoor which were giving.

He ceased his futile efforts and crouched down once more, while Bitter Aloes, alarmed by the noise, reared again.

It was at this moment that he became aware of footsteps above his head. Someone was moving stealthily across the loft. He crouched back in the corner, fearing for an instant that Mrs Dick had returned to make sure that the mare had done her work. His alarm increased as the bolt of the trap was shot safely back and the door began to descend.

The next moment a shaft of light from an electric torch cut through the gloom and sent Bitter Aloes rearing and kicking against the outer wall of the stable. Mr Campion remained very still, racked by a thousand cramps.

The trap opened a little wider, and a soft American voice murmured:

‘Say, Campion, are you there?'

The young man started so violently that the staples creaked beneath him.

‘Professor Cairey!' he whispered.

‘Oh, you're there, are you?' The torch was turned full on his face. ‘I thought she'd got you. Hold on a minute while I let this door down. Then you can pull yourself up.'

The trapdoor descended, Mr Campion keeping his head low. A minute later, assisted by the Professor, he was dragging himself up into the loft once more. The American pulled up the trap behind him and shot the bolt.

‘I'll say it was time I dropped in,' he remarked. ‘What's happened to your face? Did the horse do that?'

‘No, that's its mistress,' said Mr Campion bitterly. ‘You've saved my life, Professor. How on earth did you land here?'

The old man rose to his feet and dusted his knees before replying. It was lighter in the loft than in the stable, and Campion could see his dapper little figure, still in his shantung suit, and the sharp triangle made by his white vandyke beard.

‘Something occurred to me,' he remarked softly. ‘A point I thought maybe you'd overlooked. So I just came along on a bicycle on the off-chance of finding you.' He paused. ‘I figured out where you were when Penny told me she's been to see those Gypsies. I trailed around the heath until I found your car. Then I was sure. By the way, your tyres have been slashed.'

Mr Campion was still looking at him as if he could hardly believe his eyes, and the Professor's voice continued with the same gentle precision, for all the world as if he had been carrying on a most normal conversation in his own library.

‘I called on the lady this afternoon,' he went on. ‘Sent in my card and said I'd come about some yearlings that I thought might interest her. She sent word that she couldn't see me, and the man I saw let me out of the front door. Fortunately there was no one around. I guessed they'd keep you a prisoner, and looking at the stables I thought what a grand prison they'd make. So I nipped into an empty loose box. I've been here about two hours.' He paused, and then added quietly: ‘You see, in my opinion it's vitally necessary for you to go back to the Tower tonight.'

‘How did you get
here?
' said Campion, still amazed by the astounding matter-of-fact attitude of the old gentleman.

The Professor chuckled. ‘I waited in a horse-box until I saw that woman fooling about with a horse. Land sakes! I thought she was going to put it in on top of me. So I nipped up a ladder on to the top floor, and I hadn't been waiting there above fifteen minutes when I heard you talking to her in here. My hearing isn't altogether what it used to be and I didn't quite make out what either of you was up to. But I heard you fall through the trap and I heard her go out. Then I had some difficulty getting the door open and it wasn't for some time that I realized where you were. The rest you know. I don't like to be disrespectful to ladies, but that woman seems an honest to God hell-cat to me.'

Mr Campion felt the weal on his face. ‘I'm inclined to agree with you,' he said.

The Professor touched his arm. ‘You must hurry,' he said. ‘Don't worry about me. I'll get back all right. If they're going to make an attack on the genuine Chalice they'll do it tonight. That's why I came along. There's a bit of tradition that it occurred to me you might not know. I'm interested in these things; that's why it stayed in my mind. Old Peck put me wise months ago. I meant to tell you before, but what with one thing and another it slipped my mind.'