Red Shadow (11 page)

She shut the door sharply on him, came back to the bed, and slipped her arm round Laura.

“What did he do to you … Nothing? Then I shouldn't cry about it. Drink your tea, silly!.… Oh yes, I won't let him come back—I promise you..… Stay with you? Yes, of course I'll stay with you. I never came across a man yet that knew when he wasn't wanted..… Yes, yes—I've said I'll stay with you, haven't I? And now you'll eat some bread and butter and have another cup of tea.”

CHAPTER XIII

Catherine Werner came into the study about an hour later, shut the door behind her, and surveyed Basil Stevens. She had changed into a very tight silk dress of the shade called fuchsia. There was a fine green bloom upon her pale skin, and her lips were the colour of orange-peel. It is safe to assume that she would have scandalized Mr Rimington.

Basil Stevens was at the table writing furiously. He looked up as she came in, wrote a little more, dipped his stylograph unnecessarily, wrote again, and finally flung the pen to the other side of the table.

“Why do you look at me like that?” he inquired angrily.

Catherine's single line of eyebrow made an exaggerated arch.

“A cat may look at a king,” she said, separating the words like a child learning to read. “And that, as Sasha would say, is another English idiom. Do you find that I have come on with my English?”

“Why do you look at me like that?” He rapped out an angry oath. “You'd better be careful! You will go too far some day!”

Catherine tilted back her head and laughed.

“You are a fine lord of creation, are you not? Listen to him—so clever, so superior, and with so much tact! Oh, my dear Vassili, you have really too many accomplishments! You are too clever! Now, if I had had to manage this affair——”

“I will
not
be sneered at, I tell you!”

“But who sneers? You shock me, Vassili. I
appreciate
—I
admire
—I say to myself, ‘How bold—how dashing!' Now, if I had wanted to find out whether Laura had had a letter, I should not have been bold and dashing like you—oh no!”

“Some people are too clever to live,” said Basil Stevens in an unpleasant tone. He pushed back his chair and came round the table. When he was close to her, he took her by the shoulders and held her facing him. “Well now—if you are so clever, you can find that letter. It's got to be found—make no mistake about that.”

Catherine snapped her fingers under his nose.

“Got to be found? And you begin by scaring the life out of the girl! Now listen to me! I will not have her scared—and I will not have her made ill again. I'll help you to find the paper if you behave like a rational being, but not otherwise.”

His grip relaxed.

“What do you propose?”

“To bring her into the other room. She will jump at it, because I can leave the door open into mine, and that will reassure her—she needs it badly. I can't congratulate you on her feeling for you at present. No, my dear Vassili, you need not glare at me. I am not Laura—I am very tough.”

“You want to move her?” he said, frowning.

“I have said so. You will have to help me carry her, but you will be a beast of burden and no more. You are not to speak. I will guarantee that she takes nothing out of the room she leaves, and you may search it until you have found this terribly important letter. That, I think, will be better than frightening her into a seizure.”

He let go of her and stepped back.

“Yes,” he said—“yes. That is a good plan. The letter must be found. She would not destroy it—no, that would be impossible. And afterwards——”

“What?”

He flared into sudden anger.

“What is that to you?”

Laura was carried over the landing which she had crossed on her own bare feet an hour or two before. Catherine had been quite frank.

“He wants a paper which you have—or which he thinks you have. Why can't you be sensible and let him have it? He is not a good person to get bad with—is that right? Never mind, you will know what I mean. If he wants a thing, he must have it. He is like that. If you make him angry—” She shrugged her shoulders. “You want him to leave you alone, don't you? Very well then, give him the lawyer's letter, and get well in peace.”

Laura looked at her with a wide, clear look.

“I can't give it. It wasn't from the lawyer—it was from Mr Hallingdon—and I destroyed it.”

“Why?”

“He asked me to.”

“How did you destroy it?” said Catherine. She was sitting on the bed, and as she asked the question, she leaned on her hand so that her face came close to Laura's. She saw a bright flush change it.

“Well, my dear—
how?
”

Quite unexpectedly, Laura laughed.

“Don't tell him—and don't scold me. I crawled out of bed and I soaked the pieces of the letter in the water-jug and made them into a ball, and then I got to the window somehow and threw it out. That's why I was so cold.”

Catherine pressed her lips together and made an inarticulate sound.

“Well,” she said after a moment, “we're going to move you. Shall you like a change of room? He's going to search this one for the letter you say you've destroyed. And I'm going to search you to see you haven't got it on you.”

When they carried her into the other room, Laura had a moment of panic. Just this way she had come with the paper that must be hidden, and through this doorway, and so groping to the bed—to this bed where they were laying her now. She kept her eyes shut because she did not dare to meet Catherine's eyes or Vassili's. She kept her lids down and her lips close.

When they went out of the room and shut the door, she drew a long breath of relief and opened her eyes. The mysterious dusk was gone from the room. It was all hard and clear in the light that was over the bed. The blinds were drawn down over both the windows—cream-coloured blinds with a broad edge of string lace. A newly lighted fire burned on her left. The fire-place had bright blue tiles and an overmantel set with looking-glass. In the opposite wall on her right was a door which led into Catherine's room.

Laura lay and looked at this door. It stood for safety and protection. Gratitude welled up in her, and with it hope and a sense of returning strength. She was tired, and presently she would sleep. She would ask Catherine to leave the door open between the rooms.

She lay with her cheek on her hand, and all at once a soft ripple of laughter shook her. She could hear a distant creaking sound from her old room. They were moving the bed, perhaps even the heavy chest of drawers and the wardrobe. She wondered whether they would take the carpet up. Probably. The ripple of laughter came again. She hoped Vassili was taking up the carpet. And all the time the envelope with the torn scrap of paper in it was pinned under the box-spring mattress on which she lay.

Laura slept all night. The door stood open into Catherine's room. She slept a deep, tranquil, dreamless sleep and woke refreshed.

CHAPTER XIV

The paper ball that Laura had thrown desperately from her window was found two days later. It would have been found before but for the fact that it had never reached the ground but had lodged in a rhododendron bush.

Vassili Stefanoff spent a couple of hours in an endeavour to extract from the sodden pulp some hint of what Bertram Hallingdon had written. He had it dried to start with, and then, very delicately, he separated fragment from fragment. In almost every instance the writing was a mere smear of ink, with here or there the shape of a letter just discernible. On one fragment the word “war” could be read. Another long-shaped piece actually bore two consecutive words that were legible. He read: “will receive”, and looked up frowning as Catherine Werner came in.

“I am busy,” he said curtly.

Catherine came round the side of the table.

“Well?” she said. “Do you make anything of it? For my part I think you are wasting your time.”

“I am busy,” repeated Vassili.

“You are busy about the wrong things. What is wrong with you, my dear, is that you have no psychology. You will spend hours looking at little bits of torn paper through a magnifying glass, but it does not occur to you to spend even half an hour in making friends with your wife. Yet those pieces of paper can tell you nothing, and Laura, if she chose, could tell you all that you want to know.”

“Women have been known to lie.”

“You think everyone tells lies. You did not believe Laura when she said that she had destroyed the letter. You did not believe that she had made it into a ball and thrown it out of the window. She said she had done this, so of course you did not believe her. It seems that after all she spoke the truth. Now I tell you that Laura will not tell a lie unless she must—and then I do not think that she will tell it very well. I knew quite well that she was telling the truth when she said, ‘I have destroyed the letter—I have made it into a ball and thrown it out of the window.' I told you that two days ago. But of course you do not believe me either—it is a weakness of yours. And now that I have told you all this, perhaps you will tell me something.”

She was leaning on her hand bending over the table, her face close to his. She lost nothing of the flash of annoyance with which he said,

“What do you want to know?”

“What you are looking for,” said Catherine deliberately.

“That is my business.”

She lifted her hand from the table and brought it down again sharply.

“Your business! Oh, my dear Vassili—what a very big fool you are! Am I perhaps to see what you are looking for, to have it under my eyes, and not to recognize it just because it is your business?”

He pushed back his chair impatiently.

“I have told you—it is an envelope.”

“All this fuss about an envelope—or about what is in it? Why can you not tell me what is in it?”

He frowned at the littered table.

“There is a torn piece of paper in it.”

“Oh—a torn piece of paper—” She flicked one of the desiccated scraps with a reddened finger-nail. “Like this?”

He shook his head, frowned more deeply, and then all of a sudden pulled out a pocket-book and, opening it, produced a square folded envelope.

Catherine watched him with a queer veiled eagerness. It lurked behind those long lashes of hers, looked out when Vassili's eyes were on his pocket-book, and was gone when he turned back the flap of the envelope and produced an odd triangular piece of paper.

“
That?
” she said, and stared at it. She saw a thin white piece of paper with strong black lettering and a torn edge.

Her brows came together.

“What is it?”

“Part of a five-pound note.”

“And you think she has another part?”

“Perhaps.”

“All this fuss for five pounds?” she said, and laughed.

Vassili said nothing. He slipped the paper back into its envelope and replaced it in the pocket-book, which he then put carefully away into an inner pocket.

“There is no paper like that here,” She touched the pieces on the desk, turning them over with her finger.

“No. Leave those pieces alone!”

“Are you sure she had it—a torn piece like yours?”

He banged with his fist on the table. It was the sudden, uncontrolled action of a furious child.

“No, I am not sure! I am sure of nothing—
nothing!
I guess—and when I have guessed, I guess again! I guess that it is she who will have this paper—but I do not know—it may be another person. Sometimes I think that Hallingdon would not put all his eggs into one basket. And then I think, no, it will be she—it must be she—and I go on guessing. I guess that the lawyer will come and see her—and there I guess right, and I make friends with his clerk before I go away, and I give him twenty pounds to send me a cable when Rimington makes any appointment that has to do with the Hallingdon affair. And then, after all, I am late—late—and I am left guessing! The clerk knows only that Rimington took an envelope out of the safe and brought it down with him—a manila envelope—here are the pieces of it.” He indicated a little pile of discoloured scraps. “But of the other paper there is no trace. She would not destroy it. But did she have it—or is it still to come? Of all this—” He made a gesture that included the carefully separated shreds of paper. “Of all this that was a long letter I can read only three words.” He picked up two of the fragments and set them upon a spade-shaped palm. “Here is the first.” He tapped it menacingly. “It says: ‘war'. Hallingdon wrote to her of war. That is one word, and again it leaves me guessing. And on this piece”—he tapped the second fragment—“there are two words, and they say: ‘will receive'. Now what is it that she is to receive? Is it the paper that we are looking for? If it is, then she has not had it yet—she has only had a letter to tell her that she will receive it.”

He dropped the fragments back upon the desk and looked past her with strained, brooding eyes.

Catherine straightened herself with a shrug.

“That seems evident,” she said.

He turned his gaze on her then.

“You think that?”

“It is quite plain. If you will take my advice, you will put all this rubbish in the fire and make yourself more agreeable than you have been these last two days.”

“What do you mean?”

She snapped her fingers.

“What do I mean? I have already told you that you have no psychology. I advise you to break your magnifying glass and take up psychology instead. Seriously, Vassili—will you tell me that Laura is nothing at all to you but a card that you play in this game of yours?”

“Why should she be?”

Catherine laughed.

“She is young. She is—” she paused—“rather beautiful. Some men might think of her—differently—
some men.
” She came suddenly nearer and put a hand on his arm. “You have married her. Why don't you make friends with her—why don't you make love to her?”