Will O’ the Wisp (7 page)

“My good girl, you can't go up to town in those shoes!”

“I don't think I'm anybody's good girl. Am I?”

She did a dance step to display the shoes, kicked up the little red heels with a flourish, and announced that they were dinky.

David turned away and picked up the paper. His conviction that Folly wanted slapping passed into a strong desire to administer some of the arrears which he considered were a good deal overdue.

“Of course, if you don't mind being followed in the street,” he observed coldly. He shook out the paper. “You will be, to a dead cert.”

“I get followed anyhow,” said Folly in a little whispering voice.

David was not at all surprised to hear it. What did surprise him was his own furious anger. If the door had not opened, he might have spoken. A moment later he was blessing Carter's timely entrance with haddock and coffee.

Folly pounced on the coffee-pot and began to pour out. David, erecting
The Times
between them, replied as shortly as possible to inquiries about milk, sugar, toast, butter, and marmalade.

They had finished breakfast, and Folly was slipping into a dark fur coat, when David, folding the paper over, found his eye caught and held. He had just said to Folly: “I suppose you know I'm staying the night with Frank and Julie. You'll have to come down by train.” But he did not hear her answer; he had not, in fact, the very slightest idea whether she answered or not. He stared at the Agony Column, and then, rising with a jerk, he walked across to the window and stood there with his back to the room, looking at his own initials.

It was the third advertisement in the column; if it had been a little lower down, he might easily have missed it. “D. A. St. K. F.”—David Alderey St. Kern Fordyce. The letters seemed blacker than the surrounding print; the whole message seemed to detach itself and to float a little above the paper upon which it was printed:

“D. A. St. K. F.—Your wife is alive.”

CHAPTER VIII

David dropped Folly in Knightsbridge. She had sat by his side for thirty miles like the little image he had called her, and neither of them had said a word. Folly could see David's face in the glass screen; its expression certainly did not invite conversation. She could see her own face too powdered and whitened as if yesterday had never been; the vermilion-red lips matched the hat that hid every vestige of hair.

When the car drew up, she jumped nimbly out, fished out a suitcase which David did not remember to have seen before, nodded quite gravely, and was gone. He saw the twinkle of the scarlet heels, and he saw one or two people look at them. Then Miss Folly dived into a shop, and he forgot her and her suitcase for eight or nine hours.

It was in the middle of the Aldereys' dinner that Eleanor rang him up. Frank answered the telephone and spoke over his shoulder:

“It's Eleanor—she wants you.”

David got up, wondering if the house were on fire. He wondered still more when he realized that Eleanor was trying to steady her voice and not succeeding very well.

“David—can you hear me?”

“Yes. What's the matter?”

“Folly hasn't come back.”

“Is that all?”

“David, you don't understand.”

David remembered the suitcase.

Eleanor went on speaking.

“I rang up my flat, and she was there.”

“Then that's all right.”

“No, it
isn't
—it's frightfully wrong. Do you know a man called St. Inigo?”

David whistled.

“I don't know him. As a matter of fact I wouldn't touch him with a barge pole. I know
of
him.”

“David, that little idiot's gone up to meet him. She's been having a silly flirtation with him just out of sheer contradictoriness and because George for once in his life said ‘No.' That's why I was so anxious to get her down here.”

“Well, I don't quite see what we can do about it,” said David. “I expect she's pretty well able to look after herself, you know.”

“She
isn't
. Girls aren't—they think they know everything, and they don't—Yes, another three minutes, please.”

“All the same, my dear girl—”

“No, David—
listen
. I want to tell you. I got on to the little wretch. And she's dining with him, and then they're going to a revue, and then on to a night-club to dance. That's all bad enough; but she's proposing to sleep at my flat.”

“Well?”

“She
mustn't
.”

“Why not?”

“There's nobody there. That's what I wanted to tell you. The cook's mother's ill, and I said she could sleep at home; and the other girl's having a holiday. She simply mustn't come home with that man to an empty flat.”

David whistled again.

“Perhaps the cook will have stayed.”

“No—she'd just gone. Folly told me so and rang off before I could say anything. I couldn't get on again. If the last train hadn't gone, I'd come up myself. Of course I could get a car and come. Only then Betty would have to know, and I don't want her to. She'd tell one of the Aunts, and they'd tell Grandmamma, and the Family'd go on talking about it for the next hundred years or so.”

“No,” said David. “You can't come up. What do you want me to do?”

“Well, if you could be there when they get back. The little wretch has got my key. It was in my bag, and she simply helped herself to it. What did you say?”

“Never mind.”

“No, don't cut us off—I want three minutes more. David, are you there?”

“Yes—go on. What am I to do with her?”

“I thought perhaps Julie—she's such a little dear, she won't talk—I don't want the Family to know.”

“Good Lord—no! Look here, Eleanor, don't worry. And don't dream of coming up. I'll fix something. Julie's only got one spare room; but I can sleep at the office—I do sometimes. Now, is that all?”

“Yes. David—don't be very angry with her.”

David fairly snorted.

“She wants a good leathering!”

He hung up the receiver and came back to the table.

“Who are we taking in instead of you?” said Frank with a laugh. “Is it Eleanor?”

“No—Folly March. She's got herself stuck in town, and Eleanor's fussed.”

“I like Folly,” said Julie.

David was surprised to find himself liking Julie the better for it. He couldn't imagine why. He finished a rather tepid helping of beef-steak pie, and as soon as the maid had left the room, he told Julie pretty nearly everything that Eleanor had told him.

Julie was deeply interested.

“Of course I'll have her. But how are you going to get hold of her? Oh! I've got a
lovely
plan! Let's go to all the night-clubs.”

“Us!” said Frank with vehemence.

“You and me and David, Franko. I think it would be tremendous fun.”

“Nothing doing,” said Frank. “Look here, David, Julie's not on in this. We'll take Folly in, though, if you can collect her. What did you say the man's name was?”

“I didn't say—but it's St. Inigo.”

Frank's eyebrows went up, and he exclaimed sharply:

“St. Inigo! She's rather going the limit, isn't she?”

“She's a little fool.”

“St. Inigo's a member of The Soupçon. You'll probably find them there—if the committee hasn't kicked him out yet. I happen to know they're going to, because Mordaunt told me so—can't hold his tongue to save his life, and he said St. Inigo had been making the place too hot to hold him. What on earth's George March about to let the girl pick up with a fellow like that?”

“I gather that she picked up with him because George said she wasn't to.”

“George is a damned fool,” said Frank Alderey with contempt.

Julie sat with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. She wore a pale blue velvet wrap with fur on it. Her cheeks were pink, and her eyes bright with excitement as she looked from Frank to David.

“Look here,” said Frank. “I'll get on to Mordaunt and say you want to look in at The Soupçon. That'll make it all right for you. When you get there—”

David laughed a little harshly.

“When I get there! Well, what do I do then? As a matter of fact I can't do anything.”

“Oh, but you'll
go?
” said Julie eagerly.

David laughed again.

“Oh yes, I'll go.”

CHAPTER IX

When David came into the room with the crowded dancing-floor and the little tables set close to the wall all round it, the first person that he saw was Tommy Wingate, plump and rosy. His large round eyeglass—Tommy's monocle always looked larger and shinier than anyone else's—winked joyously at the many lights. His hair had gone a trifle farther back in the three years since David had seen him last. Otherwise the same Tommy.

David was very glad to see him now. He smote him on the shoulder, hauled him to a table, and ordered drinks.

“You with anyone?”

“Meeting a man. He's late, or I'm early. Man called Devlin. Said he'd introduce me. I'm a pilgrim, I'm a stranger. Oh, David, it's good to get home! Anyone”—he leaned forward and struck David painfully on the knee—”
anyone
—”

“Tommy, I'll break your head if you do that again!”

“Then you'll get chucked out. They were raided a month ago, and we don't break heads any more. What I was going to say when you interrupted me was that any blooming fellow can have the whole blooming East as far as I'm concerned.”

He began to warble:

“I ain't going back no more, no more,

Oh, I ain't going back no more,

Tarara!
”

The last word was so startlingly loud that it achieved an audience. Tommy was in admirable form.

“What are you doing? Leave?”

“Just a spot. I'm for the Staff College and the midnight oil—not this sort, worse luck. I failed till they got tired of failing me and gave me a nomination. Er—” Tommy's voice dropped from its loud and cheerful note. “Er—how's everything?”

“Oh, all right.”

Tommy let his eyeglass fall, picked it up, squinted through it with his other eye, and remarked absently:

“Er—Eleanor's home.”

“Yes, she's home.”

“She all right?”

“Going strong. She's down at Ford staying with Betty. Better come and look us up.”

Tommy dropped his eyeglass again.

“Well,” he said, “I'll come—but I don't suppose it's any earthly.” He screwed up his jolly face and looked deprecatingly at David. “I've always been an ass about her, and I always shall be, and it's never been any earthly. There you are—I don't think she minds me when I don't make too big an ass of myself.” He brightened a little. “When shall I come along?”

“What about to-morrow? I'm driving down.”

The prospect of the
tête-à-tête
drive with Folly was one of the things which was making David monosyllabic. He positively grabbed at Tommy Wingate. But Tommy shook his head.

“To-morrow I lunch with an aunt and take three flapper cousins to the Zoo, or a cinema, or some other low haunt. And when that's over I dine with a great-uncle who has the worst cook in London. He lives on nuts—give you my word he does—weighs 'em out on a little thingummy-jig that sits on the table in front of him. Last time I went there he ate half a walnut too much and was dreadfully fussed. It'll be a roaring sort of evening, my lad, and no mistake. I'll totter down to you next day—what? Hullo, there's Devlin!”

Tommy precipitated himself into a crowd which had just stopped dancing and was now moving in every direction at once. David saw him accost a tall, thin red-haired man and a party which included no less than three extremely personable young things, with one of whom Tommy presently took the floor.

David cast his eyes about the room in search of Folly March. The place was crowded with an odd medley of people—young men and old in dinner jackets and long coats; girls in hats, and girls in evening frocks; women with the minimum of clothing and the maximum number of pearls that it is possible to crowd upon the human frame. At the table on his right there sat a woman huddled in cloth of gold to the ears. She had a dead face and pale, square-cut hair as lank as tow. She held a cigarette in a very long amber holder, but never put it to her mouth, and during all the time that David was in the room she neither moved nor spoke to her companion. Just opposite, by a table near the door, a very tall woman was talking to half a dozen men at once. She wore a little black cap that hid her hair, and long emerald earrings that fell below her shoulder; her dress was a glittering black sheath that ended above the knee. She might have been Pierrot from the zeal with which she had whitened her face. The magenta lips appeared to emit a steady flow of bad language.

David glanced at his wrist-watch. All the theatres must be out by now. If Folly did not turn up in five minutes, he would just have to go to the flat and wait for her there.

As he looked up again he saw her coming into the room with St. Inigo. She was looking all round her like a pleased child, and she wore the new little black curls tied on with a pale blue ribbon which ended in an artless bow over one ear. Her frock might very properly have appeared at a breaking-up party of the most decorous of schools—little white frills and a pale blue girdle. She wore a coral necklace—not coral beads, but a necklace of the real old-fashioned spiky red coral which all little girls possess and break.

Something pricked David sharply at the sight of the coral necklace. He was being got at. And knowing that he was being got at, he said to himself, “Little devil!” and then was pulled up sharply by the very patent fact that St. Inigo was drunk.

Folly slipped her hand into St. Inigo's arm and they made a half circuit of the room. They came to a standstill a yard or two from David.