Blindfold (27 page)

Her face sharpened. After a moment she looked away.

“You'll have to prove who she is.”

“Rhoda's letters will do that. They're all together in that old desk of hers.”

“Where is it?”

He nodded towards the wardrobe.

“Next door. Well—now are you on?”

He watched the struggle in her averted face. After a minute she said sulkily,

“I suppose so.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

Kay woke up. She had been dreaming that she and Miles were walking in the Square just as they had really walked there. Only in her dream there were no lamp-posts, and no pavements, but soft green grass under foot and trees shining with blossom and very sweet to smell. Some of the blossom was pink like almond, and some of it was white like plum, and some of it was green like lime. They walked in a bright dusk, and there was a great happiness and content between them. And then all at once she heard the kitten mew. She couldn't see it, but she could hear it crying with a tiny insistent cry which troubled her and broke in upon her dream. She began to wake, and the dream began to recede. The colour and the brightness faded from the blossoming trees. She couldn't see Miles any more. All her comfort went. But the cry of the kitten still sounded in her ears. She woke to the dark loneliness of the cellar, and as she woke, she heard it still.

It took her a moment to find herself. The mattress low on the floor, the heavy stuffy air, the cold weight upon her thought—it took her a moment to remember why these things were as they were. Then when she was fully awake and herself, there came again that faint insistent mew. She sat up and listened with all her ears, but this time the sound that filled them was one of those deep and dreadful groans. And then it flashed over Kay that the groan and the kitten's mew both came from the same cellar, the cellar that was next to hers.

In a moment she knew what had happened just as well as if she had seen it happening. Mrs Green had shut the kitten into the cellar for the night. It wouldn't matter how much it mewed or clung to her hand, she would push it down the steps and bang the door, and go into the warm lighted kitchen and have her supper just as if it wasn't a frightfully cruel thing to shut a poor baby of a kitten into a horrid cold cellar where there might be rats.

The kitten was a very brave little thing—Kay had seen that from the first. It really was an Example. It didn't let itself be frightened. It started looking for adventures. She could just see it dancing up to a bit of straw and patting at it, and dancing away again all sideways like a crab. Kay didn't feel herself to be nearly as brave—but of course the kitten could see in the dark, and that did make a difference. Well after it was shut up it would play little pouncing games and pretend there were mice in the straw. And then it would get bored with that—kittens never played any game for more than a minute or two on end—and that was when it would remember the hole in the end cellar where it had got through before. Perhaps it had a game about catching something that lived in the hole. Perhaps it knew that there was someone in the cellar through the party wall. Perhaps it was lonely. Perhaps it was only curious. Whichever it was, one thing was certain—the kitten was in the next cellar.

Kay jumped up, pulled the packing-case away from the wall, and crouched down by the ventilator with her head almost at floor level. She put her lips to the hole and called, “Kitty—Kitty—Kitty—” Then she remembered that the kitten couldn't come to her because the hole didn't go all the way through. She had felt the grating which blocked it. It was a very wobbly grating. It had wobbled when she touched it. If she could get it out of the way, the kitten would be able to come to her. It would be very, very comforting to have the kitten for company.

She put her hand into the hole, which was just the size of a single brick, and pulled sharply at the grating. It was quite loose, and the brick to which it was fastened had crumbled away on the right-hand side. She kept on pulling and working it to and fro until the crumbly brick broke away and left one end free. Then she found that the whole grating was loose in her hand and could be bent back like an opening door. She called “Kitty—Kitty—Kitty—” again, but the answer she got was a groan that frightened her. It must have frightened the kitten too, for it shot through the hole she had made and came clawing and scrambling to her shoulder, where it mewed, and purred, and nuzzled against her cheek as if it was as glad of company as she was.

The kitten did make all the difference. Kay blocked the hole so that it couldn't get out, because it soon got tired of being on her shoulder and went prancing off into the darkness. They played at hide-and-seek together, and sometimes Kay caught the kitten, and sometimes the kitten pounced with a growl upon the handkerchief which she trailed across the floor as a bait. Once it was so fierce that the handkerchief was torn and Kay's hand scratched.

It was when she was sucking the blood from the scratch that Kay thought of the plan—or rather it seemed to think of itself. The kitten, and her scratched hand, and her torn handkerchief all rushed together in her mind, and the plan was there. If she tore a strip from the handkerchief, and wrote on it with her blood, and tied it round the kitten's neck, someone might see it and come and help her.
Someone
… Mr Harris or Nurse Long? “No, no—please don't let it be them—
please!
”… Mrs Green? It was more likely to be Mrs Green than anyone. But if Mrs Green found it, what would she do? Kay didn't know. She didn't know whether to say “Please don't let Mrs Green find it!” or not. She didn't know about Mrs Green.… Miles? “Oh, please, please,
please
let Miles find it!” He
might
. He would come and look for her. “Oh, Miles, you
will
—won't you? Oh, Miles,
please
come quickly!” And if he came to look for her, he might see the kitten. He
might
. There wasn't anything impossible about that. And if he saw the kitten, he would remember that she was fond of it. And if he saw a bit of her handkerchief tied round its neck …
If
,
if, if, if, if
—she saw those ifs like five barred gates all standing up shut and locked between her and Miles. The tears came hot and stinging to her eyes and ran down over her cheeks, and as they ran, that groaning came again.

Ten minutes later she had cried some of the hopelessness away. Anyhow if you didn't try, you deserved to go down. Only cowards didn't try. Kay was afraid of cellars, and darkness, and Mr Harris, but she was still more afraid of being a coward. If you could keep your courage you could get through anything—only sometimes it was so difficult.

Well, she could do what she had planned. She was going to do it now. She wasn't going to cry any more. She tore a narrow strip from her handkerchief. That was the first thing, and that was easy enough. But how was she going to write in the dark? There was no name on the handkerchief. She could have written in the dark with a pencil upon paper, but to write with a pin dipped in blood upon cambric was something altogether different. The pin was too thin. It wouldn't do. She had thought of a pin because she had one in the band of her apron. She had kept on her apron to take the tray upstairs. The head of the pin would be thicker than the point. She couldn't think of anything else. Her hand was still bleeding. The kitten had scratched deep. She could feel the blood trickling down.

She found the pin, and holding it by the point, she did her best to scrawl a capital K on the strip she had torn from her handkerchief. She couldn't do any more than that—it was no use trying without a light—but if Miles saw that K scrawled in blood, he would know that something had happened to her in this house. “Oh, please, please,
please
let him find it!”

She tied the strip round the kitten's neck. It had to be seen, but it mustn't look like a message. At least it must look like a message to Miles, but not to Mr Harris or Nurse Long. She tied the ends in a little bow—you often saw a kitten with a bow round its neck—and then she pulled the packing-case away again and kissed the kitten, and told it to be careful, and put it through the hole, shutting the ventilator after it and pushing the packing-case back against the wall.

CHAPTER XXXV

At about half past seven Miles managed to get on to Ian Gilmore. Ian, as usual, was dining out. He listened to what Miles had to say, and was extremely discouraging.

“My dear man, if you go to the police, they'll think you're batty. You'll probably hear from her in the morning. You say yourself that you've been urging her to leave. Now she's done it, and you've got the wind up. It sounds a bit unreasonable to me.”

It sounded unreasonable to Miles himself, but that didn't make any difference. The hot, stuffy telephone-box in the hotel was full of his unreasoning, unreasonable fear. He said in a hard, strained voice,

“She knew I was coming to fetch her away.”

Ian at the other end of the line sounded rather impatient. “You've just told me you went at half past two, and you were sent away because she was with the old lady. Well, after that she wouldn't know whether you were coming back or not. She probably flared up, had words with them, and walked out of the house.”

This, of course, was a perfectly reasonable explanation; Miles' brain told him so. But it wasn't his brain which was in charge just now. He was afraid for Kay, and fear had nothing in common with reason.

“Sleep on it,” said Ian Gilmore and rang off.

Miles came out of the telephone-box. He would wait a little longer, and then he would go round to Varley Street again. He might be able to find out where the taxi had come from. Mrs Green would probably know. He was a fool not to have asked her. The prospect of having something to do made him feel better. Waiting for news is of all things in the world the most damnable. Well, he would wait till half past eight, but not a minute longer. Meanwhile he was probably all the sorts of fool that Ian Gilmore was thinking him.

Flossie Palmer slipped out to the post that evening about nine o'clock. It was Gladys' afternoon and evening out, but you could always go round to the post. Ernie
might
be hanging around on the chance of her slipping out. It wasn't very likely because of the row they'd had, but if they hadn't had a row, he'd have been there sure enough, walking up and down and waiting for her to slip out for half an hour. Flossie hoped passionately that he was going to be there, because now that it was all over and she wasn't an heiress, she was going to enjoy herself letting Ernie Bowden know exactly what she thought about him and his trampling ways. She'd got it all mapped out. First she was going to tell him that she wasn't Miss Macintyre, and then when he tried to make it up with her, she'd just show him. Ernie Bowden was going to learn a thing or two about the way a young lady that
was
a young lady expected him to treat her. She looked forward to this a good deal. And then, when Ernie was properly humble and crushed, perhaps she'd think about making it up with him.

She got down to the pillar-box and walked past it round the corner. When she had gone a little way, she heard a footstep following her. Her heart beat a little faster, but she wasn't going to look round. Ernie needn't think she was looking out for him. Oh no—she was going to be ever so surprised when he came up with her.

The footstep came nearer. Insensibly her pace slackened a little. And then, in the darkest place between the lamp at the corner and the lamp at Western Terrace, the step came up beside her and a perfectly strange man's voice spoke her name.

“Miss Palmer—”

Flossie was so startled that she hadn't anything to say. She had made sure that it was Ernie who was following her. She could have cried with disappointment. And then all of a sudden she was afraid. There wasn't a soul about, and it was very dark. She turned round to go back to the corner, and a hand took her by the arm.

Flossie caught her breath.

“Look here, let go, or I shall scream!” And as she said it, she wondered whether anyone would hear her because there were two empty houses just here and then the long blank side of the corner house.

The man said, “I shouldn't do that. I only want a word with you.”

He stopped, and she had to stop too. She couldn't see his face. She couldn't see anything except a dark figure. She thought he had a muffler about his neck, and a hat with a turned-down brim. His voice had no ring in it. It was just a whisper.

She said, “What do you want?” and had so little breath to say it with that she felt quite sure she could never scream loud enough for anyone to hear.

“Listen to me,” said the whispering voice. “You've just missed getting into serious trouble.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“Don't you—Miss Flossie Palmer Ivy Hodge?”

Flossie felt a stab of terror.

“Ooh! It's
Them!”

She must have made some uncontrollable movement, because he laughed a little. There is something horrid about a whispering laugh.

“So now you know what we're talking about,” said the man. “And what I want to know is, why did you do it?”

Flossie was frightened, but she had her wits about her. She thought there was no harm in pretending to be even more frightened than she was.

“Ooh! What do you mean?”

“Why did you call yourself Ivy Hodge?”

“To oblige Ivy.”

“But why did you run away?”

“Oh, I dunno—I come over queer. Must have been a bad dream or something. P'raps it was a ghost.”

Her arm was shaken a little.

“A bad dream, was it? And how many people have you told this dream to?”

Flossie burst into tears.

“Ooh—I
never!
Do you think I want people to think I'm batty. Why, if I was to say I see someone staring at me out of a looking-glass, they'd be bound to think I was batty—wouldn't they?”