The Fourth Plague (4 page)

He walked over to where Lady Morte-Mannery stood watching them.

“I am sorry, Lady Morte-Mannery,” he said, a little stiffly. “I shall not be coming back to the house. An important engagement has called me to London.”

She murmured her sorrow conventionally, though she was by no means displeased to see the back of a man whom at first she had regarded as one who might easily be influenced to her views. Her views, it may here be remarked, were peculiar.

“Why has he gone?” she asked her husband, as the car drove through the main street of Burboro'.

Sir Ralph, who was glowering with rage, vouchsafed a snarling answer.

“How do I know? Why do you ask ridiculous questions? Because he's a fool,” he went on viciously. “Because he's a blackguard. He's grossly insulted me, and I'll never forgive him.” He was in a white heat of temper, and for the whole day brooded on the affront which had been offered him.

Vera made one or two ineffectual attempts to smooth his ruffled plumage. She was particularly anxious to get him into a good mood. She had one or two requests to make, which in his present frame of mind she knew would be rejected without thought. Her efforts were unavailing.

“I wish you wouldn't potter round,” he growled, when she went into the library on the pretext of tidying away some books which had been left out by some careless guest.

“Oh, come here,” he said, as she was going out of the room. “Here's a bill from Burt's. How many packets of prepared oats did we have in last week?”

“I forget, dear,” she said.

“Six,” he growled. “Do you know we have never had more than four before?”

“Mr. George liked it for breakfast,” she answered.

“Mr. George!” he almost shouted. “Don't mention that man's name. Why is Bulgered charging 1s. 0½ d. a pound for his beef? It's monstrous—change the butcher. I wish to goodness you'd show some interest in the conduct of your house, Vera.”

He scowled at her under his white shaggy brows.

“You go on as if I was made of money. Practise some sense of economy. My dear girl, before you were married you counted every penny. Imagine they are your mother's, and count mine.”

With a shrug, she left him. He was utterly impossible in these moods. She went into the drawing-room wondering how she should approach her lord on the subject which lay uppermost in her mind. A girl sat in one of the windows, reading. She looked up with a smile as Vera entered.

“Isn't it a bore?” she said. “They've just told me that Mr. George has gone back to town. He played such beautiful piquet. Why has he gone?”

She rose lazily, putting her book down. She was a tall, beautiful girl, of that exquisite colouring which is the English gentlewoman's heritage. The well-poised head was crowned with a luxurious mass of russet gold hair. Her eyebrows, two delicate lines of jet black, were set over a pair of the loveliest eyes that man ever looked into. At least, so thought many a man who knew her. Even Sir Ralph, self-engrossed and contemptuous, he said, of beauty, had commented upon their liquid loveliness.

A straight nose, and a firm, rebellious chin, a perfectly calm mouth, completed the picture. As she moved she displayed the grace of her slender figure. Every movement suggested the life of freedom—freedom of field and road—eloquently, as did her complexion of the softening qualities of her native Ireland.

“The horrible thing about being a poor relation,” she said, as she dropped her strong hand affectionately on the other's shoulder, “is that one can't command the friends of one's rich relations. I should have told Hilary George: ‘You cannot go to London, however pressing your business may be, because my niece Marjorie, wants somebody to play piquet with her.'”

Vera shook the hand from her shoulder with a scarcely perceptible movement.

“Don't be silly, Marjorie,” she said a little tartly. “Ralph's very worried. Hilary has been awfully rude to your uncle.”

The girl's eyebrows rose.

“Rude?” she repeated. “Why, I thought they were such good friends.”

“He has been very rude,” she said again. “By the way,” she said, “your man is coming down to-day, isn't he?”

The girl's face flushed. She drew herself up a little.

“I wish you wouldn't say that sort of thing, Vera,” she said. “I do try to be nice to you, and you never lose an opportunity of speaking unkindly.”

Vera laughed, and strolled across to the piano. “I didn't know that was unkind,” she said, as she seated herself, and pulled out some music from the rack at her side.

The girl followed her, her hands behind her back; she stood behind her.

“Do you like me, Vera?” she asked.

Vera looked round, and stared at her.

“My dear child,” she said, “don't be absurd. I don't dislike you.”

“But you do,” persisted the other. “I have seen it so often. I've had such convincing evidence, and it makes me a little unhappy.” She drew up a chair by the side of the piano and sat down.

“Don't play,” she said, “just let us have a heart-to-heart talk.”

“That's the kind of talk I loathe. I've just been having a heart-to-heart talk about Quaker oats,” said the other. “But this young man—what's his name?”

“Gillingford—Frank Gillingford,” said Marjorie, steadily.

“You are rather keen on him, aren't you?”

“I am hoping that he is rather keen on me,” said the girl, her sense of humour getting the better of her resentment.

“What is he, an engineer or something?” asked Vera, touching the keys lightly with her sensitive hands.

“Something of the sort.” And Marjorie changed the conversation. “Didn't uncle rather—rather”—she hesitated for a simile—“as Mr. George would say, ‘whack it into' that unfortunate person?”

“You mean the burglar?”

Marjorie nodded.

“I don't think he got any more than he deserved,” said Vera.

“Do you really think he came after uncle's collection?

“Why not?” asked Vera, without looking round. “It is a very valuable one. There are medallions there worth three or four hundred pounds each—there is one there worth a thousand, at least,” she added quickly. “I believe that is so.”

“But what use would they be to him?” persisted the girl.

“Well—” Vera shrugged her shoulders.

“You are asking me to give a psychological survey of a burglar's mind,” she said, “and that I am not prepared to do.”

Marjorie walked back to the window and looked out on to the dismal landscape. It had been raining for the last hour, and the trees looked especially miserable, half enveloped as they were by a mist which was driving up from the Medway valley.

“I shouldn't advise you to discuss the question of that sentence with your uncle,” said Vera across her shoulder. “He is rather sore; I think that was the cause of his quarrel with Hilary George.”

The girl made no reply. She could not understand Vera. She had always been an enigma to her. That she was a disappointed woman, Marjorie knew. She had expected to inherit a life of luxurious calm; instead, she had merely succeeded the house-keeper, whom Sir Ralph had thoughtfully discharged, and had, moreover, dated his discharge as from the date of his wedding.

Vera was an ambitious woman. She had set no limit upon her possibilities. She had come, as she had thought, into a wider world, to a larger life, with scope for the exercise of her undoubted genius, but had found herself restricted to the prosaic duties of housekeeping for a querulous and a mean old man.

Marjorie's reverie was cut short by the sudden cessation of the music. There was a little pause, and then Vera's voice asked—“Where could I raise five hundred pounds?”

II. —THE CALL OF TILLIZINI

MARJORIE TURNED WITH A start.

“Five hundred pounds?” she repeated.

Vera nodded.

“I want that sum,” she said, “for a purpose. You understand that this is confidential?”

“Oh, quite,” said Marjorie, “but it is a lot of money. Couldn't you get it from Uncle Ralph?”

“Uncle Ralph,” repeated the other, contemptuously. “He wouldn't give five hundred potatoes! A demand for five hundred pounds would estrange us for the rest of our lives.”

She gave a bitter little laugh.

Marjorie knit her pretty brows in thought.

“I can't think of anybody,” she said slowly.

“Then don't,” said Vera, briskly. “I don't know exactly why I asked you.”

Further discussion of the subject was made impossible by the arrival of Sir Ralph himself.

He had evidently forgotten that any strained relations existed between himself and his wife, or that her iniquitous extravagance in prepared oats had ever come between them.

“Vera,” he said, going towards her, “did you notice a man in the court to-day, a peculiarly foreign-looking man?”

She thought a moment.

“Yes, there was a person sitting near—” she nearly said Hilary George, but deemed it tactful to mention another barrister who had been engaged in the case.

“How did he impress you?” he asked.

“I should like to say that he did not impress me at all,” she said, with a smile. She was most anxious to restore him to good-humour. “But unfortunately, I did take particular notice of him; rather a distinguished-looking man, clean-shaven and with a lined, thoughtful face.”

Sir Ralph nodded.

“That's the man,” he said. “I've just had a note from him. I didn't know he was in Burboro'. That is Tillizini.”

He said this impressively. At the moment, Tillizini's name was in the mouth of half the population of England.

He nodded.

“None other,” he said. “I had a note from one of the under secretaries of the Home Office saying that he was coming down. I don't know why our little burglary should have attracted his attention, but at any rate he could not have been very interested, for he did not turn up until to-day. He has just sent a note to tell me that he is staying at the George, and I have written to ask him to come up to dinner to-night.”

She made a little face.

“He's a detective or something, isn't he?” she asked.

“More than a detective.”

Sir Ralph was rather inclined to be irritable if you did not rise to his values. It was better to over-estimate them than to under-estimate them in any case.

“Surely you have read the papers?” he went on, with his best magisterial air. “You couldn't very well escape his name nowadays. He is the man whom the English Government brought over as a sort of consultant, to deal with this terrible outbreak of crime.”

“I've heard something about it,” said his wife, carelessly. “The ‘Black Hand' or the ‘Red Hand'—I forget exactly what colour it is.”

Sir Ralph frowned.

“You must not treat these matters frivolously, Vera,” he said, coldly. “I've had reason to speak to you before on similar occasions. The ‘Red Hand' is a very mysterious organization, which is striking at the very heart of our domestic security. Any man, and I may add any woman, should be extremely grateful to those who, by their gifts of divination, are endeavouring to shield the innocent victims of a band of organized criminals.”

Vera hated her husband when he made speeches to her. She knew more about the “Red Hand” and its workings than she was prepared to discuss with Sir Ralph.

It was a pose of hers, as it was a pose of certain members of her class, to profess a profound ignorance upon matters which were engaging the attention of newspaper readers. The pose of ignorance is a popular one with members of the leisured classes; popular, because it suggests their superiority to the influences which surround them; because it signalizes their independence of chronicled facts, and because, too, it is the easiest of all poses to assume and to sustain.

Vera had caught the trick and found it a profitable one. It lent her an overpowering naivete, which had a paralysing effect upon the better-informed but socially inferior members of the community, and it precluded one being bored by a long recital of the news which one had read in the morning papers in a more concise or a more accurate form. Her interest in the great Italian detective for the moment was a conventionally domestic one, for she rose from the music-stool.

“I shall have to tell Parker to set another place,” she said.

“If he accepts,” interjected Marjorie.

Vera raised her eyebrows with a little smile.

“Don't be absurd, Marjorie, of course he will accept.”

“What do we call him—Inspector or Sergeant or something?” she asked of Sir Ralph.

The spirit of revolt was stirring within her, and she permitted herself a facetiousness of attitude which ordinarily she would not have expressed. And this, despite the subconscious desire to soothe him into a complaisant mood.

She never for one moment imagined that he would advance her the money she required, but he might let her have a portion of it if she could only invent a story sufficiently plausible. The truth was out of the question. She smiled to herself at the thought. She was an imaginative woman but not sufficiently so to picture Sir Ralph in that moment of confession. She needed the money as she had never needed money before. It was not for herself—her own wants were few and her tastes simple. She might, perhaps, induce her husband to let her have a hundred if she could invent a good reason—and it would have to be a superlatively good reason to induce Sir Ralph to part with his money.

Somehow the old weariness of it all, the old distaste for the life she was living, came over her, and induced her to treat the subject in a manner in which she knew her husband would heartily disapprove.

“You will call him Doctor Tillizini,” said Sir Ralph sternly. “He is a professor of anthropology in the Florentine School of Medicine. He is a gentleman, Vera, and I shall expect you to treat him as such.”

Marjorie, who had been an interested spectator of the passage between husband and wife, had discreetly withdrawn to her book and her chair by the window. As Sir Ralph turned to go, she rose.

“I say, what fun,” she said. “Is he really coming, Uncle?”

Sir Ralph nodded.

“I hope so. I can do no more than invite him, but he is such a busy man that he may probably have to go back to town. At any rate, I am certain,” he said, a little pompously, “that he will approve most heartily of my treatment of that rascal to-day. I think it is monstrous the way Hilary George went on…”

He was still sore over his treatment by his whilom friend, and he launched forth into a sea of explanation and justification, and, incidentally, gave the girl a fairly garbled version of the scene which had occurred outside the Session House—a scene in which he had played, by his account, a dignified and proper part, and in which Hilary had lost his temper to a distressing degree.

The fire of Sir Ralph's eloquence burnt itself down to glowerings and splutterings of incoherent disapproval.

“Hilary George,” he said, “will regret this.” He spoke in the satisfied tone of one who had made special arrangements with Providence to that end.

Marjorie was following her uncle from the room, when a glance from Vera brought her back. The older woman waited until the door had closed behind her husband.

“Marjorie,” she said, in the mild and honeyed tone which the girl recognized as her “At Home” voice, “I want you to do something for me.”

“With pleasure, dear,” said the girl warmly.

Lady Morte-Mannery fingered the little silver ornaments on one of the tables which abounded in the drawing-room, and placed them as though they were pawns in a new game she was playing. She seemed to be concentrating her attention upon this pastime as she spoke.

“I want you to do something very special for me,” she repeated. “Of course, I know I can trust you about that money, and now I want to ask you to help me with a little ruse. This man who is coming to-day,” she said, “this Italian person, is really not the kind of man I want to meet. I hate detectives and all those crude, melodramatic individuals. They talk about crime and things, and besides,” she hesitated, “I can trust you, can't I?”

She looked up sharply.

“Yes,” said the girl gravely, wondering what was coming.

“Well, you know, dear,” said Vera slowly, and still playing her mysterious game with the comfit boxes and Dutch silver, “I'm a member of a club. It's a ladies' club; you won't find it in Whittaker because we do not care to advertise our existence, although of course we are registered. Well, we had rather a bother there, two or three months ago. We—we. Why should I deceive you?” she said in a burst of confidence, and with her rare smile. “We were raided! You see, dear, we played rather heavily. We did not confine ourselves to the prosaic game of Bridge. Some woman—I forget her name—introduced baccarat, and we had a little wheel too; you know.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“It was awfully fascinating, and one lost and won quite a considerable sum. And then there was a bother, and the police came in one night quite unexpectedly. Your dear Uncle Ralph was in town for the May Meetings, and I had quite a lot of time on my hands.

“It was very fortunate I escaped any serious consequences of my rashness. I gave a false name, and was brought up the next morning at Bow Street with the rest of the women—you remember, the case created quite a sensation—and I was bound over in a false name. Nobody recognized me and nobody but you is any the wiser.”

She stopped again, and shot a swift, side-long glance at the girl.

“Oh, you needn't be shocked,” she said, the acid in her tone asserting itself. “It wasn't so very dreadful, only this Tillizini man was in court that day, and I think he may have recognized me.”

“How awkward!” said Marjorie. “Really, Vera, I'm not a bit shocked, and it's not for me, any way, to sit in judgment on your actions. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to help me when I tell Sir Ralph that I am too ill to entertain this person. I'll go straight away to bed, and I want you, like an angel, to do the honours.”

“Why, with pleasure,” said Marjorie, with a little smile.

“Anyway,” said Vera, a little hardly, “Ralph won't bully you before visitors, nor will he refer pointedly to your needless extravagance in potatoes. Ralph is rather a fanatic on the question of potatoes,” she said. “There is a standard by which he judges all phases of domestic economy.”

Marjorie was filled with an infinite pity for the girl. She was not more than seven or eight years older than herself, still young enough to find joy in the colour and movement of life.

“I will do anything I can,” she said. For the second time that day she laid her hand upon the other's shoulder.

“Don't paw me, dear,” said Vera, with sudden asperity, and the warm, generous heart of the girl was chilled. Vera saw this, and tried to make amends.

“Please don't bother about me, dear,” she said, in a softer tone. “I am rather jagged; too jagged, indeed, to meet this—”

At that point the door of the drawing-room was opened, and William, the butler, came in importantly. He stood by the open door.

“Professor Tillizini,” he announced.