Rolling Stone (29 page)

“Mad all along, I should say. Good God, Fabian—do you mean all this—is it true?”

Fabian Roxley said, his voice quite gentle, quite indifferent,

“Hardly the sort of thing one makes up to pass the time, sir. I'd have carried it through if it hadn't been for Terry. A damnable mistake to let one's feelings get involved. I couldn't stand not knowing—about Terry—”

Garrett gave his harsh laugh.

“You must have known damn well what was likely to happen to Terry Clive if she got in Maud Millicent's way! What happened to Louisa Spedding?” He barked the question at Fabian, and saw him wince.

He said, “Don't!” in a shuddering whisper.

“And why not?” said Garrett mercilessly. “You can do the thing, but you can't bear to hear about it! That poor devil of a butler got in your way. He recognized you, and so there wasn't any way out of it—you shot him! Capital punishment for recognizing Mr. Fabian Roxley—a government servant—part of our machinery of civilization—part of our system of law and order! I wonder what he thought about it all before you shot him—but perhaps you didn't give him time to think! Louisa Spedding recognized Maud Millicent. Capital punishment for that—and, I imagine, no time to think! Terry Clive on the edge of recognizing you. You've quite a good brain, Fabian—what did you think was likely to happen to Terry Clive? And you sit there and whine about your feelings, and tell me you haven't been able to sleep! What do you expect me to do—tuck you up in bed?”

The violence with which the last words were spoken appeared to penetrate that dazed indifference. Fabian Roxley got to his feet and stood there staring.

“What are you going to do?” he said. “Arrest me?”

Garrett's face for once was a blank. He looked past the big, unsteady figure as if it was not there. He said coldly,

“I'm not a policeman, thank God. You'd better go.”

Fabian went on staring for a minute. Then he turned and went towards the door. Garrett's voice followed him.

“Terry Clive has been found.”

Roxley stopped dead, put a hand on either jamb of the door, and stood there with his back to Garrett, swaying. His voice caught in his throat. He tried to speak before he got out the one word,

“How?”

“How do you suppose?” said Garrett in the cold tone which made a stranger of him.

There was a long and dreadful pause. Then Fabian Roxley straightened himself and went out of the room and across the hall. Garrett heard him groan. So did Terry Clive. She lifted her head from Peter's shoulder and pushed him away.

“What was that?”

She got up and opened the door. Fabian turned and saw her. She said his name, very quick and frightened,

“Fabian—” And then louder, “Fabian, what is it?”

The change in his face might have startled anyone—that grey haggard mask suddenly alive with rage, congested—the eyes glaring. Terry cried out and fell back against Peter. She said, “Fabian!” again, and hardly recognized the voice which answered.

“A trick! All a trick! You've tricked me—the lot of you!”

“Fabian!”

Words poured from him with a kind of maniac fury.

“Dead, were you—dead, and driving me mad! Whilst you laughed at me with your lover—who was dead too! Dead, and mad, and—no, no, not yet—you needn't laugh yet! I'm not dead yet, and I'm not mad—not yet—not yet!”

He wrenched at the door, flung it back upon its hinges, and went in a blind rush across the landing and down the bare stone stairs, taking three steps, four steps, five, in a clattering stride which checked and tripped but never fell. They heard the footsteps become hollow and faint. They heard them die away.

Terry stood shuddering in Peter's arms. Garrett came out of the sitting-room, gave them his familiar scowl, and slammed the door.

CHAPTER XLI

Scotland Yard next day. A brief, exhausted sleep in Garrett's narrow slip of a spare room, where the bed was as hard as Maud Millicent's mercies.

Terry had not thought that she would sleep, but she laid her head on a brickbat of a pillow and knew no more until nine o'clock. Peter appeared to have slept in a chair. He was in very good form, and he and Garrett between them made her eat quite a good breakfast.

Then Uncle Basil, arriving all in a hurry, and shaken quite out of his usual immaculate neatness. His hair was ruffled, and he was badly shaved. It was very comforting. When you have always taken someone for granted as family, and then had a sick moment when all the foundations have given way and the roof is falling in, it is naturally helpful to find that the accustomed figure has survived the crash. There had been a moment—moments perhaps—when Terry had seen this figure in a nightmare, horribly transmuted into the image of murder. They were gone. This was Uncle Basil who had always been kind, even if he appeared to be more interested in stamps than in his ward. The rough chin and the untidy hair were most reassuring tributes. Terry found herself clinging to him and being very warmly kissed.

And then Scotland Yard. Statements. People who wanted to know all about everything. About the picture—James Cresswell's Turner which was the apple of his eye. Last heard of, it had been in a garage, in the boot of Spike Reilly's car—only of course not really Spike Reilly but Peter Talbot. And then on Wednesday night James Cresswell had a mysterious telephone call telling him he would find his picture just inside his own gate. And he did. But no one seemed to know how it got there, and they all wanted to know very badly. Until suddenly Colonel Garrett chipped in and said in his most offhand voice,

“Lot of fuss about nothing. Thought he'd better have it back, so I took it back.”

Someone with a very starchy voice said,

“Oh, you took it back? May I enquire how, Colonel Garrett?”

Garrett stuck his chin in the air. His eyes snapped.

“Easy as mud,” he said. “I drove the car out of the garage—one-horse place, man and a boy doing something else—drove down to Heathacres, rang up from a call-box, drove back to town.”

“And may I ask why?”

Garrett shrugged his shoulders.

“Valuable picture. Cresswell probably glad to get it back again. One-horse garage not the place for a Turner—definitely.”

Terry's heart warmed—she could have kissed him. But you can't kiss people at Scotland Yard—“He didn't want Peter to get into trouble. He's a lamb.”

Then more talk. Everyone wanted to know a lot of things which Terry would very much have liked to know herself—things about Maud Millicent, about Jake, about the Bruiser. And quite suddenly she thought about Alf, and broke in upon the grave-faced men and their statements.

“Oh, please, will someone find Alf. He's a bull-terrier—and an angel—and if they've all run away—and I expect they have—there won't be anyone to feed him, and he does so hate being shut out in the yard, poor lamb.”

One of the men was rather nice. He had very blue eyes. He laughed and said that Alf had been found and they were very glad to know what his name was and that he was an angel, because he had bitten two policemen under the impression that they were burglars and it might soothe him to be properly addressed.

Terry relaxed. She produced her friendliest smile.

“Oh, do you think I might have him? He was the one bright spot.” She was aware of Peter's eyes upon her, poignant with reproach, and blushed vividly as she stuck to her point. “He was—really. And of course he thought the policemen were burglars if they came breaking in. Do you think I might have him?”

“I daresay it might be arranged—with Jake. We haven't got him yet, but when we do he—er—won't be in a position to keep a dog for some time to come. By the way, Mr. Talbot—” he turned to Peter—“I think you were lucky to get away as you did last night. Your derelict house on the edge of the cliff is Lattersley Hall, Sir John Lake's property. When it had to be abandoned on account of the dangerous state of the cliff three years ago, he built again about a mile and a half inland. Well, his garage was broken into last night and his new Rolls taken. A very daring piece of work, and I daresay we can all make a guess at who was behind it. It was the only way they could have escaped. If they hadn't had a car, we'd have got them. And, considering the car they got, you were very lucky indeed not to be overtaken on the road. I see you took about ten minutes telephoning to Colonel Garrett.”

Peter smiled engagingly.

“And then I took a wrong turning.”

“By accident, or by design?”

“Well, I had an idea it might be safer. It made us a bit late getting to town, but Mrs. Simpson is a very enterprising woman, and I thought there had been enough shooting.”

“Have you traced the car?” snapped Garrett.

The blue-eyed policeman smiled a thought grimly.

“Oh, they dropped it like a hot coal as soon as it had served their turn. It was found abandoned in a Chiswick by-road. We've got the Bruiser, and we shall probably pick up Jake and Bert in the course of the day, but I expect we can whistle for Maud Millicent Simpson. Unless one of them gives her away.”

“They won't,” said Garrett. “They won't know anything. That's why we've never got her. She'll change her skin and save her bacon. You won't see hair, hide or hoof of her, the she-devil. You'll get the others, and they won't know anything, any more than Fabian Roxley did.”

“I wish he hadn't got away,” said the man behind the desk.

Terry lifted startled eyes.

“Has he got away?”

The blue-eyed man nodded.

“For the moment. But we shall get him of course—we shall get him.”

They signed their statements, and came out into bright sunshine, clouds rolling back and the sky blue overhead.

“I must go and see Aunt Fanny,” said Peter. “After wasting a good wreath and lot of undeserved affection it's the least I can do. Terry—if I came and fetched you in an honest off-the-rank taxi, do you think you would come and have tea with her, and—er—with me?”

Terry looked at him, and looked away.

“I might.”

“They don't seem to be going to arrest me or anything of that sort. Bygones, I gather, are going to be bygones. Spike Reilly is dead and buried, and nobody is going to cast stolen passports or pictures up at me. Frank, in fact, has squared the police. So what about it?”

“I'd like to.”

“All right—half past three.”

“Miss Talbot doesn't have tea at half past three!”

Peter grinned.

“Did I say half past three? I meant three o'clock.”

“Peter, she doesn't—”

“My sweet, it's going to take us quite a long time to get there—quite a long time.”

It did. The honest taxi wasted time in the most sympathetic manner. The blue went out of the sky, and the sun disappeared for good and all. It turned rather dark and very cold. If anyone had been looking for weather signs they might have prognosticated fog.

Peter and Terry were entirely disinterested in the weather. They sat side by side in the taxi and felt shy. They had known each other so short a time as time is measured by days and nights, and hours and minutes. They had been thrown so violently, so intimately together, and now just how did they stand? They didn't quite know. Emergency had given place to convention and the civilized life. They talked about everything and everyone except themselves. Frank Garrett. Fabian Roxley—poor Fabian, and how dreadful. The nice man with the blue eyes—he really was nice, wasn't he? And Alf—oh, Peter, I do want him so badly!

Peter laughed.

“You'll have to teach him not to bite policemen.”

“He thought he was being a noble defender, poor angel. Do you think I'll be able to get him?”

“I should think so.”

Alf had broken the ice. Terry came a little nearer.

“Peter, do you think they'll get Maud Millicent? I don't think I shall ever feel safe if they don't.”

A hand was slipped inside her arm. It certainly made her feel safer. Peter said,

“They'll do their damnedest. The bother is no one knows what she looks like. Garrett says that's always been the trouble. When things get too hot she just turns into someone else and starts all over again. They don't know what they're looking for.”

“We saw her,” said Terry. “There ought to be something—something—”

Peter gave a short angry laugh.

“We saw a mask, and a wig, and some clothes, and a lot of make-up, and nobody's going to see those particular things any more. They weren't Maud Millicent—they were just things she was wearing, and she won't be wearing them again—you can bet your life on that.”

Terry shivered.

“What does she look like really? Doesn't anyone know?”

“Louisa Spedding knew. And she's dead.”

“Isn't there anything you'd know her by?”

“I don't know. I don't think so, unless—” He laughed suddenly. “You know, when she was the old woman with the cough and I was in the taxi with her going to be gaoler to you, I thought about what I could do to have a chance of knowing her again, and I snipped some little holes in her dress.”

“What with?”

“Just nail-scissors. I thought they might be handy—and they were. So there's a magnificent clue for the police. They've only got to find a black skirt with five little nicks cut out of it and they've got Maud Millicent. I've put it in my statement, so there they are—they've only got to find the black skirt.”

There was a silence. The taxi pursued an even fifteen miles an hour. Peter put his arm round Terry and waited to see what she would say. She didn't say anything.

“Terry—”

She looked up, and down again very quickly.

“Terry—”

A dimple appeared in the cheek nearest to him—a first appearance as far as Peter was concerned.