Walk with Care (18 page)

Garrett balanced his pipe in his hand and regarded it frowningly.

“Mannister!” he said. “By gum—Mannister!”

“Mannister may have come to you, or he may merely have been sent.”

“Meaning you're not sure whether he's a knave or a fool?”

“I am not sure about anything,” said Mr Smith. “I am going to tell you what Jeremy Ware told me, and I am going to tell you what Mrs Denny told me. You must draw your own conclusions. I saw them yesterday. I should like to say I am convinced that Mrs Denny is keeping something back—something, I think, which concerns that house in Tilt Street. I think it possible that she has—er—consulted Asphodel professionally. The affair seems to me to have a good many ramifications. At the moment I want to know how long Miss Phoebe Dart has been in Tilt Street, and where she came from, and where her money comes from. And I want to know the surname and family history of a young girl whose Christian name is Rachel—”

“Rachel?” said Garrett sharply.

“Yes,” said Mr Smith. “The name seems to—er—strike a chord.”

“No,” said Garrett. “No—it's nothing to do with it. Ridiculous! It just happened to remind me of something.”

Mr Smith's eyebrows rose.

“And may I ask what it reminds you of?”

Garrett shook his head impatiently.

“No—it's nothing. Get on with this story of yours.”

“Has Mrs Denny communicated with you yet?” said Mr Smith.

“No, she hasn't. Was she going to?”

“I advised her to do so very strongly.”

Garrett's barking laugh rang out.

“Don't you know better than to give a woman advice? At your age!” He laughed again. “She won't take it—they never do.” He flung himself back into his chair. “Well, let's have the yarn! I'm listening.”

CHAPTER XXVII

JEREMY FELT BETTER AFTER
he had rung up Mr Smith. The thin, ghostly voice of Ananias greeting him with “Johnny, come down to Hilo!” had been heartening, and Mr Smith's comment more heartening still. He might not have felt so much encouraged if he had known of Garrett's sardonic presence. As it was, he went home humming under his breath,

“My hair was greased with good bay rum. I wore a red geranium”

As he came up the stair to his room, Mrs Walker came out of the sitting-room with a note in her hand,

“You hadn't been gone not half an hour, and I do 'ope it's not important. Very civil the gentleman was that brought it, and Oh, 'as he gone out?' he says. ‘And that's a pity,' he says. And he asks when you'll be in, and I says, “'Eaven knows, sir, but he 'asn't said as how he'll be late.' And then he says, ‘Well, give it to him when he comes in, will you?' And off he goes, and here it is.”

Jeremy opened the note. It was from Mannister, and it was quite short. It ran:

“Dear Ware,

I am called out of town for the night. M. Brunon may be ringing up from Paris between nine and eleven. I want you to be here to take the call. Just say I've had his letter, and that everything is in train. Say I was called away very
unexpectedly
,
and that I am writing. He won't ring up after eleven-thirty. Let yourself out as before.

“B.M.”

Jeremy looked at the note. Then he looked at Lizzie Walker and said, “Well, well, well—”

“Are you going out again, Mr Jeremy?”

“Not till nine o'clock. Did you ever put salt on a bird's tail, Lizzie?”

Mrs Walker bridled.

“Now, Mr Jeremy, none of your nonsense! I've got a nice fish pie in the oven for you—hake and shrimps, with cheese and bread-crumbs over the top—my Aunt Martha's receipt.”

Jeremy enjoyed the fish pie, but he didn't enjoy the last sentence in Mannister's note. Last time he had been told to let himself out of Mannister's house he had had a near shave of being saddled with the theft of an important letter. What was going to happen this time? Was anything going to happen? Impossible to say. Impossible not to go. If your employer tells you to be on the spot to take a call, you've either got to be there or cease to be employed. All the same he didn't like the look of it very much. Not very much—no. The curious thing was that instead of feeling depressed his spirits were rising. If Mannister hadn't told him to go back by the front door, he might very well have found himself climbing in at the scullery window. The house drew him, and the adventure drew him, and Rachel.

From the Evans' room next door the not untuneful baritone of Mr Evans arose in song:

“
I was drifting on,

Not a hope in view.

But just when I least expected it,

I found you.

Clouds were all around.

Sunny days were few.

Then just when I least expected it,

I found you”

Mrs Evans' voice cut in, high, shrill, and complaining—higher, shriller, and more complaining still. Mr Evans' baritone dropped to a growling bass. Mrs Evans' shrillness soared to a shriek. Something that sounded like a saucepan hit the party wall and clanged to the floor. Another thrilling instalment of the Row was in progress.

Jeremy arrived on the doorstep of No. 29 Marsh Street at ten minutes to nine. The night was black dark and the air heavy with a rising fog. As he came along Tilt Street, the lamps were being submerged. Someone knocked against him at the corner of the mews and stood for a moment clutching him and coughing a thin, old man's cough before starting off again with an unsteady limping step. Jeremy didn't care about being clutched in the dark. He wondered why a half crippled invalid couldn't stay peaceably at home. He was glad not to have far to go.

James admitted him, made up the fire in the library, and set out drinks on a small table. While he was bending over the hearth, Jeremy slipped back the section of bookcase which masked the safe and made sure that the door was fast. If anyone had had the bright idea of leaving it open a second time, he was going to have his trouble for nothing. If the safe wasn't locked, he would call James' attention to the fact, and between them they would have to seal the thing up in such a way that Jeremy couldn't be accused of tampering with the contents.

The safe was locked.

Jeremy withdrew his hand and pushed the book-shelf to.

“Anything else I can do, sir?”

“No, thanks, James.”

“Mr Mannister said you would be letting yourself out, sir.”

“Yes, that's all right.”

“Then I'll be getting off to bed, sir. I let the staff go at eight, Mr Mannister being away. A good early night is a thing I do appreciate—once in a way, as it might be. So if there's nothing more I can do for you, sir—”

“Not a thing,” said Jeremy. “Get off to bed. Pleasant dreams. By the way, do you dream?”

James turned by the table which held the drinks. He looked more like an ant than ever. Two little wisps of grey hair stood out like antennæ on either side of a melancholy bald expanse of forehead.

“Dream, sir?” There was a faint brightening of his eye.

“Dream, James.”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“You do?”

“Oh yes, sir—every night and all night long, sir.”

“And what do you dream about?”

James' thin figure took on an eager forward stoop.

“You wouldn't believe the things I dream, sir! Why, last night I dreamt I was burning at the stake and someone came along and choked me with my own h'ashes. And last Friday week I was the Czar of Russia afore any of these Bolshevists had got going, and I'd only to sit down to my table with my gold pen and ink and write as many death warrants as I felt inclined to.” He coughed and smoothed his chin. “It gives one a feeling of power, if you understand what I mean, sir. I'd only got to write my name as it were, and the man was dead.”

“That's why you want to get off to bed early? But it's a bit of a toss-up, isn't it? I mean you might dream you were the poor devil the warrant had been signed for.”

“Yes, sir—that has happened, sir. Not very pleasant at the time, but it don't go on for h'ever. Nothing goes on for h'ever—not in a dream.” He smoothed his chin again. “Good-night, sir.”

The door shut upon him, and Jeremy sat down to wait for M. Brunon. It was pleasantly warm in the library, and most pleasantly and gratefully still. That evening's instalment of the Evans' nightly row had been longer than usual, and even after the actual hostilities had ceased, the uncontrolled and passionate sobbing of Mrs Evans had gone on and on and on. It was a decidedly agreeable change to be in this wide, warm room and hear the faint occasional sound of traffic just touch the silence and fade again. Jeremy got himself a book and a drink, and brought the most comfortable chair to exactly the right angle.

The time slipped smoothly by. When the clock struck ten, it took him by surprise. He went back to his book, but before he could really lose himself again the telephone bell was ringing. He sat down to his own table and put the receiver to his ear. He hoped to goodness that the line was going to be good. Brunon would probably be annoyed at Mannister's absence, and as a rule people who were annoyed either sputtered or fuffled.

He said, “Hullo!” and heard nothing but a crackling sound. After three more hullos a refined female voice inquired what his number was. Having been supplied with the information, she faded off the wire and the crackling began again.

Jeremy continued to say “Hullo!” At about the sixth repetition someone said, “Here you are!” and suddenly Mannister's voice beat on the drum of his ear.

“Hullo! Is that you, Ware?”

Jeremy held the receiver away. Mannister always spoke into a telephone as if he were trying to fill the Albert Hall. He said,

“Ware speaking, sir.”

“I am speaking from the country—from Rossleigh. I have left my keys behind.”

“Oh, have you, by gum!” said Jeremy to himself. Aloud he said,

“Your keys, sir? Where?”

Mannister's voice reverberated angrily.

“You do not imagine that I left them behind on purpose! It was an unfortunate inadvertence on my part. I was hurrying to catch a train, and at the last moment I had occasion to open the safe. I had just relocked it, when I was called to the telephone. As I rang off, James announced my taxi. I must have put the keys down upon your table.”

Jeremy drew back from the mouthpiece. The table was a model of neatness. There was no cover for so much as a single key. He leaned forward again.

“They're not on this table, sir. If you'll hold on, I'll have a look round the room.”

The keys were not on Mannister's own table, or on the mantelpiece, or on any of the book-shelves, neither had they slipped down into one of the deep chairs.

Jeremy came back to the telephone.

“I can't see them, sir. Are you sure?”

The wire thrummed with Mannister's exasperation.

“Of course I am sure! I went straight from the library to the taxi. They are in the room somewhere, and they must be found.”

“I'll do my best, sir. M. Brunon has not rung up yet.”

Mannister appeared to feel no interest in M. Brunon. He said “Tchah!” and rang off.

Jeremy hung up the receiver and walked over to the hearth, where he stood looking down into the fire.

So Mannister had lost his keys. … Had he? And if he had, why? … It looked to Jeremy uncommonly like a variant of the open safe plant. You can either leave your safe open, and then leave your secretary alone with it, or you can lock your safe, leave the key about, and arrange for your secretary to be in the room with the key and the safe, waiting for a telephone call from Paris. If there is anything missing out of the safe, who should be guilty but Jeremy Ware?

Jeremy liked it less and less. He thought what a fool he was not to have cleared out before it came to this. He said, “Oh damn!” and drove a furious kick at the fire. The embers scattered, and the charred log broke into brilliant flame.

Then he turned and saw Rachel standing in the middle of the room looking at him.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SHE STOOD IN THAT
still way she had, but the first glance told Jeremy that this time she was not asleep. She wore black shoes and stockings on the feet which before had gone bare and silent over the stone flags in the old cellar. She must have moved almost as silently now, for he had not heard her come. Something had made him turn, but it was not a sound. Her dark hair no longer flowed in loose curls, but was gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck. The line of the throat was clear and fine. Instead of a nightgown, she wore a thin black dress which left her neck and arms bare. A shawl of crimson silk trailed from one shoulder to the floor, as if it had slipped just then when Jeremy turned. Perhaps she had moved, quite silently like a wild thing that has been startled, and the shawl had slipped. It had a knotted fringe, and the colour reminded him of old Cousin Emily's embroidery silks. There was a skein which he had wound—it was just that colour. Cousin Emily's voice came to him across the years: “That is what I use for damask roses. It is just the right colour.” Rachel's shawl was just the right colour for damask roses.

Her eyes met Jeremy's, and at once he had the strangest sensation. It was as if some very sensitive place had been lightly and quickly touched. The sensation was not unpleasant, and yet it was very nearly pain. He felt his thoughts a little unsteady, as they are when one has had a shock.

He came forward, not knowing what to say, and so said only her name.

“Rachel!”

Her eyes held his in a look that was at once quiet, steady, and distressed, and it came to him that she had known he would be here.

He said the first thing that came into his head.

“How did you come?”

And quite suddenly that young, earnest look of hers was broken by the prettiest quick smile. It was like seeing a piece of dark water ruffle into silver. The ripple touched her voice as she said,

“You didn't hear me come?”

“Not a sound. I believe you floated through the door. I'm not sure yet that you're not something out of a dream, you know.”

The smile came and went. She had very white teeth: Her lip trembled a little. Her eyes shone, and crinkled at the corners. And then the water was dark again. The young, mournful look came back.

“I didn't come—I was here all the time—behind the curtain.” She half turned to point at the window, and Jeremy saw how white her arm was. But her hand was brown. She might almost have been wearing a little brown glove. Forehead, cheek and chin had the same touch of the sun.

He thought, “She never tanned like that in town.” And with that he remembered the old coat she had worn in the Park, with its salt water stains. He said aloud,

“And how did you get behind the curtain, if that isn't a secret?”

She began to smile again, and then stopped. She said,

“It is a secret.” And then, “I had to come. I had to see you.”

All this time neither of them had moved, but now Jeremy suddenly came nearer. He had the feeling that she might vanish. And then he knew that this time she had come of her own free, waking will, and that she would stay until she had fulfilled whatever purpose it was that had brought her. He came and stood beside her.

“I had to see you,” she said.

“Well, I'm here,” said Jeremy.

“Yes, I know. I came here to tell you something.”

“Did you?”

She said, “Yes,” and they were both silent.

Jeremy did not mind how long the silence lasted. It shut them in together, and it was full of impalpable waves and currents of feeling which flowed and eddied about them. It was like the pause before a burst of music, or the stillness which is waiting for the dawn. Without any words, he felt that they had come nearer than he had ever come before to any human being. It was a nearness which was absolute. After what might have been a moment, or a very long time, he said,

“What is it, Rachel? What did you want to tell me?”

All at once she had gone farther away. It hurt. Perhaps it hurt her too. She looked mournfully at him and said,

“It isn't easy.”

“Come and sit down. I keep thinking you're going to vanish.”

“I won't. I came here to tell you.”

He pushed the leather-covered couch nearer to the fire, and they sat on it side by side. She had caught up her shawl. It crossed her shoulders now and flowed over her knees. The damask colour, and her black dress, and the whiteness of her skin where the sun had not caught it put Jeremy in mind of the story of the princess who was as white as snow, and as red as blood, and as black as ebony—“The Queen sat sewing at her window, and as she sewed, she pricked her finger and a drop of her blood fell on the snow that lay on the ebony casement, and the Queen wished that she might have a daughter who would be as red as blood, and as white as snow, and as black as ebony.”

Jeremy smiled with his eyes and said,

“How old are you, Rachel?”

“I am nineteen.”

“I was thinking that you had come out of a fairy tale.”

Her lip quivered suddenly.

“It's not a nice fairy tale, Jeremy.”

“Isn't it, my dear?”

He saw a shiver go over her.

“No.”

She shivered again, and he said quickly,

“You're cold.”

“Yes.”

“It's those horrible cellars.”

“It's not that kind of cold—it's being afraid.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Yes.”

Jeremy put out a strong, warm hand and covered hers.

“Won't you tell me about it, Rachel?”

Her hand felt very small and cold. It quivered under his as she said,

“Some of it.”

“You're not afraid of me?”

Her smile came and went like the ripple on water, a ripple just touched by the sun. Her eyes looked into his.

She said, “No,” and the most absurd elation filled Jeremy.

“Do you realize,” he said, “that I don't even know what your name is? Won't you begin by telling me that?”

“Rachel Carew. You won't tell anyone?”

“Is it a secret?”

“Yes.” She gave a little shuddering sigh. “I do hate secrets. Don't you?”

“It won't be so bad if you'll tell me,” said Jeremy. “It won't really, Rachel.”

“Yes, I must tell you. I came here to tell you.” She put up her free hand and pushed back her hair. “You won't ask questions—will you?”

“I don't know,” said Jeremy soberly. “I don't think I can promise.”

She let her hand fall again, as if some defence had failed her.

“You
mustn't
ask. I'll tell you why I came. You know, they lock me into my room, so they think it's quite safe—they can talk, or they can go out, and they think I'm safe. You know, I do walk in my sleep. It began like that.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jeremy.

An extraordinary warmth filled all his thoughts. A spring day with the sun shining and the wind blowing—trees not yet green, but flushed with sap—hedges full of rosy twigs and little wagging catkins—an April sky brimful of light. That's what it felt like in Mannister's library on a January night between ten and eleven of the clock. That's what it felt like in Jeremy's thoughts.

“So they locked me in. But I can't stand it—it's the most dreadful feeling. ‘Prisoners and captives'—that piece always made me cry in church ever since I was little. So I found another key. My room is the back attic, and the box-room key fits it. I hid it. No one knows. They think I can't get out.”

“I see. Who are ‘they'?”

The corners of her eyes just crinkled as she shook her head.

“You mustn't ask.”

“Is it the Dart woman who locks you in, Rachel?”

She pulled her hand away, but not before he had felt how it quivered at the name. Something broke in him like warm rain.

“Rachel—is she unkind to you?” He had both her hands and was holding them to his face. “What does she do to you? Tell me at once!”

She dissolved into tremulous laughter.

“No—no—she doesn't do anything.”

“Then why are you afraid? She makes you afraid.”

“She doesn't—
really.
She's fond of me. She's my old nurse.”

“By gum!” said Jeremy to himself. He kept tight hold of her hands and kissed the coldest one.

“Then why are you afraid? You're afraid of someone.”

“I'm afraid about you,” said Rachel. “It's very nice of you to kiss my hands, but will you please stop doing it now, because—”

“‘Because' is a bad reason,” said Jeremy. “Why are you afraid about me?”

She leaned towards him then with a shadow in her eyes.

“Did someone ring you up just now?”

“If you were behind the curtain, you heard me talking.”

“Yes, I did. He was asking you about something. You were looking for something. Was it a key?”

“The key of the safe,” said Jeremy.

She pulled her hands away and put them over her face. It was as if she had run into another room and shut the door on something she was afraid of. But only for a moment. Her hands dropped. She looked at him steadily.

“Jeremy, the key is in your pocket.”

“What?”

“I think it is.”

“How can it be?”

“Won't you look?”

He stood up and went through his pockets. Mannister's key-ring was in the left-hand jacket pocket. He fished it out by the chain and stared at it.

“Well, Pm damned!” he said. “But how? How in the world?”

He remembered the man who had butted into him in the fog and clung to him coughing. A pickpocket's trick. Only this time something had been put in instead of taken out. He turned on Rachel.

“How did you know?”

A deep distressed blush burned in her cheeks.

“I—listened.”

“What did you hear?”

She bent her head. Her hands twisted in her lap.

“They want—to hurt you. It's wicked. The first time I heard by accident. They're going to send me away abroad—they won't tell me where. It frightens me, so I came down at night to listen. I thought if they found me, they would think I had walked in my sleep. I hid the key of my door, and I came down. They weren't talking about me—they were talking about you. They were going to leave the safe open and say you had taken a letter out of it. The letter would be in your drawer. It was
wicked,
I dreamt about it over and over. One day I woke up early, and there was a key in my hand. I dreamt I came here and showed you the letter and locked the safe. Did I do that?”

“Yes, my dear.”

She looked up at him for a moment. The hand that had held the key lay open on the crimson silk of her shawl.

“I thought I had. It's dreadful to listen, but I did listen again. They didn't know who had locked the safe. It frightened them. They couldn't understand how it had happened. I had put the key back, you see. They wouldn't try that way again. They made another plan. You were to be alone, waiting for a telephone call. The keys would be in your pocket and papers out of the safe would be hidden in your room.”

“What?”
said Jeremy.