Grey Mask (10 page)

Whilst Charles was interviewing Miss Silver, Miss Greta Wilson was writing to Stephanie Poison.

Oh, Stephanie, I’ve had the most thrilling adventures. I’m really having them still. It’s frightfully exciting, and you’ll be frightfully angry with me, because I can’t tell you about them—at least I can only tell you bits, because I promised Charles and Margaret I wouldn’t tell anyone the other bits—at least not till they said I could. So you’ll just have to be frightfully angry. I’m staying with Margaret, and I can’t even tell you her name or give you my address, because that’s one of the bits I promised not to. Margaret is a dear, and so is Charles. Margaret has known him for years and years and years, but I do believe he really likes me best, because he took me out for the whole day yesterday which was Sunday, and he didn’t take Margaret, though it’s her day at home. She works in a hat-shop every day, and she doesn’t get home till half past six—so it would be very dull for me, only Charles says he will come and cheer me up. Archie would come too if he could. Archie is another friend of Margaret’s. He and Charles are friends too. It’s frightfully jolly everyone being friends, after having such a dreadfully dull time. Archie can’t come and take me out like Charles can, because he has to go to his office. He says he is an oddment in a publishing firm. He says they only took him because his uncle was in it. He says he is rotten at it. But I think he is frightfully clever—he knows lots of quotations out of Shakespeare and other people like that. I don’t know whether I like him best or Charles. Charles is an explorer, but he isn’t exploring just now. He is the handsomest. He has grey eyes and a most frightfully romantic frown, but he isn’t quite as tall as Archie is. Archie is five feet eleven and three-quarters, and he says if he hadn’t been brought up frightfully strictly and simply made to tell the truth, he would call it six foot. He has got blue eyes, but not many eyelashes—just ordinary, you know. But Charles has a lot of black eyelashes and frightfully black eyebrows. They go all twisty when he is cross. I shouldn’t like them to go all twisty at me.

Saturday was the first day I was with Margaret, and Charles and Archie came to tea, and we all went to the cinema and saw a most frightfully thrilling drama—only I can’t tell you about it now. Archie came home with us, but Charles rushed off in a frightfully sudden sort of way as soon as we came out. On Sunday morning he came quite early with a car, and he said would I like to go down to Bognor, and I said I would, and we went. He didn’t ask Margaret.

In the evening he and Archie came to supper. They brought their supper with them because Margaret said she hadn’t any. Archie brought sardines and bananas, and Charles brought all sorts of exciting things—lots more than we could eat, so Margaret and I are eating them up—they are frightfully good. He brought chocolates too—really thrilling ones. I think I really do like Charles best. But I like Archie too. After supper Mr. Pelham came in. He is Margaret’s stepfather, and I’m not sure whether I ought to have said what his name was, so don’t tell anyone and tear my letter up, because I sort of promised Margaret I wouldn’t say anyone’s name. But I think she’s a bit of a fuss, don’t you? It isn’t as if you’d be seeing Egbert—is it? Margaret’s stepfather is frightfully nice. They all call him Freddy. He said I could too. I’ve never called such an old person by their Christian name before, so I didn’t do it at first—not till he seemed quite hurt and said didn’t I like him. So of course I said I did, and then I called him Freddy, only I got most frightfully red when I did it, and they all laughed, and Freddy said he felt most frightfully flattered, and he said might he have the pleasure of taking me to a matinee, and what would I like to see, and could I come on Wednesday? But I said couldn’t it be Saturday so Margaret could come too? And he said “All right,” and he asked Charles to come, and Charles said he would. He didn’t like it when Freddy asked me, nor did Margaret. I don’t know why they didn’t. Archie couldn’t come because he was playing a football match. Charles says he is very good at it.

I mustn’t write any more, because I shall use all Margaret’s paper, and I’ve only got a shilling to buy any more. When you’ve only got a shilling, there are hundreds of things you want to buy.

MARGOT

Charles went back to Miss Silver next day.

“Do you know anything of one Ambrose Kimberley?” he inquired.

Miss Silver dropped a stitch and picked it up again before she answered.

“I know the name.” Then, before Charles could say anything more, she spoke briskly: “There are some things I want to tell you, Mr. Moray. I should have telephoned to you if you hadn’t come in.”

“Go on,” said Charles.

She took up the brown exercise-book.

“We’ll take Jaffray first. He came back on Sunday. I haven’t been able to trace the car yet.”

“Or the owner?”

“Or the owner.” She tapped the page with a knitting-needle. “So much for Jaffray. I really wanted to see you about William Cole. I have found out who he is.”

“Is he someone?”

“He is Leonard Morrison.”

Charles looked blank.

“I’m afraid that conveys nothing to me.”

“Nonsense!” said Miss Silver. “Six years ago—the Thale-Morrison case—you must remember it.”

Charles began to remember.

“You don’t mean to say that William—”

“Is Morrison? Yes, I do. He’d have got a life sentence if it had not been for his youth. He was, I think, only just eighteen, and the Court took it into account.”

Charles began to remember the case—a horrible one.

“Yes,” said Miss Silver. She nodded, as if in answer to something which he had not said. “Yes, a most coldblooded, dangerous young man and an astonishingly good actor. All through the trial he was acting, and the Court pronounced sentence on a dull backward lout of a lad. They never had a glimpse of the real Leonard Morrison.”

Miss Silver fixed a direct look upon Charles Moray.

“Mr. Moray, I want to ask you very seriously what you’re going to do.”

“I don’t know,” said Charles.

“How long are you going to wait before you call in the police?”

“I don’t propose to call in the police.”

Miss Silver sighed gently.

“You will have to call them in in the end. How far are you going to let things go before you take a step which you ought to have taken at the very beginning?”

Charles set his jaw.

“Do you think they would have believed me if I had gone to them?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. They would have said I was drunk, and I should have been told in quite polite officialese to go home and boil my head. Come, Miss Silver! Did you believe my story yourself?”

Miss Silver closed the exercise-book and sat back in her chair.

“Since you ask me, Mr. Moray, I was inclined to think you had been dining a little too well. You did not appear to me to be suffering from hallucinations. No, I must confess I thought you had been—shall I say—celebrating your return.”

“And you still think so?”

“No,” said Miss Silver.

“Well?”

“I believe that you stumbled upon a very dangerous set of people engaged in a criminal conspiracy. I believe Miss Standing to be in serious danger, and I ask you again—how far are you going to let matters go?” She coughed very gently and added, “You will not be able to screen Miss Langton indefinitely.”

Charles was stabbed by a most acute and poignant fear. He mastered his voice and said coolly,

“What do you mean?”

Miss Silver shook her head.

“Now, Mr. Moray, what is the use of our pretending any longer? I am going to lay my cards on the table, and you would be very well advised to do the same. I know perfectly well that Miss Standing has been staying with Miss Langton since Friday night. She left home at about six o’clock on Friday, and Miss Langton brought her back to her flat in a taxi at a quarter to eleven. I don’t know what happened in the interval. Naturally, you do.”

“Do I?”

“Oh, I think so. You helped Miss Langton to get Miss Standing upstairs—she was exhausted and hysterical.”

“She had had a fright,” said Charles, “nothing serious.”

“I’m glad to know that. I don’t ask you why you were not frank with me about Miss Standing’s whereabouts.” She coughed again. “I don’t ask you, because I know.”

“Well,” said Charles pleasantly, “what do you know? Or shall I say, what do you think you know?”

Miss Silver took up her knitting. She had arrived at the toe of the little white bootee.

“I will tell you what I think. You stumbled upon a conspiracy. You saw a number of people whom you did not recognize. They were men. Well, I think, Mr. Moray, that you saw another person whom you did recognize. I think this person was a woman—I think it was Miss Langton.”

“What a remarkably vivid imagination you have, Miss Silver!” said Charles.

Miss Silver counted her stitches—three—four—five—six— seven. After a moment’s pause she spoke again:

“I think so because I cannot account otherwise for your allowing Miss Standing to run so many risks. She should be under police protection. You know that, I think.”

“She’s under Miss Langton’s protection, and mine.”

Miss Silver looked at him sorrowfully.

“You have confidence in Miss Langton’s protection?”

“Complete confidence. Besides, they don’t know where she is.”

“I’m afraid they do.”

Charles was really startled.

“What makes you think so?”

“You mentioned a name when you came in, Mr. Moray— you asked me if I knew anything about Ambrose Kimberley. Why did you ask me that?”

There was a silence. Miss Silver broke it.

“Pray, Mr. Moray, be frank with me,” she said. “In a matter as serious as this, I must warn you that concealment is a very dangerous policy for yourself, for Miss Standing, and, in the long run, for Miss Langton too.” She coughed in her gentle ineffective way. “I will tell you about Ambrose Kimberley. I spoke of him yesterday; but not, I think, by name.”

“Yesterday?”

“I told you that William Cole had been for three months with Mrs. James Barnard, and when you asked me whether there had been any trouble in the family during that time, I mentioned that a nephew of Mr. Barnard’s had left the country in disgrace.”

“What about it?”

“The nephew’s name was Ambrose Kimberley.”

There was a long pause. Charles stared at the bare wall in front of him, which was not bare to him; he saw pictures on it. He turned from the pictures to Miss Silver.

“Ambrose Kimberley called at Miss Langton’s flat yesterday. He found Miss Standing alone there. By the way, as you know everything, you probably know that we thought it wise to change her name.”

“To Greta Wilson—yes, I know that.”

“Kimberley introduced himself as a friend of Miss Langton’s. As a matter of fact, she met him twice last winter at dances. When was he supposed to have left the country?”

“I think it was in June. The affair was kept very secret, you understand. There were no proceedings. Mr. Barnard pocketed his loss, and only about half a dozen people knew anything had happened. Now, Mr. Moray, I asked you just now whether you thought Miss Langton was to be trusted. Do you still think so after hearing what I have just told you?”

“Why not?”

“Who gave away Miss Standing’s whereabouts?”

“Someone saw her, I suppose,” said Charles.

“Someone? You have to remember how very few people know her by sight. She had not been in England for a year. She had not been photographed. She only came to Miss Langton late on Friday night.”

“She was at a cinema on Saturday.”

“In a hat that practically hid her face. I saw her, you know; and I should be hard put to it to remember her. Between that hat and her big fur collar there was very little to recognise.”

Charles moved impatiently. Miss Silver went on:

“Ambrose Kimberley turned up on Monday. Do you believe that he came to see Miss Langton? Mr. Moray, you are playing a very dangerous game.”

Charles Moray’s face was cold and hard.

“You had better speak plainly,” he said.

“I am speaking plainly—I am warning you that Miss Langton is not to be trusted—I am warning you that Margot Standing is in serious danger.”

“Not unless one of those certificates turns up,” said Charles quickly. “They won’t bother with her if she’s illegitimate—why should they? Egbert Standing gets the money. That’s all they want, isn’t it?”

“They wanted him to marry her, didn’t they? And she refused. Why don’t you tell me what you know about that?”

Charles got up.

“Miss Silver—”

“You had much better tell me everything.”

A bitter gleam of humour crossed his face.

“If I don’t tell you, you find out. Is that what you mean?”

“It saves trouble.”

“If I tell you—” He burst into hard laughter.

“Sit down, Mr. Moray.”

Charles walked up and down.

“I’ll tell you what she told us. You’re right—you’d better know—I don’t want to keep you in the dark. You’re wrong about Miss Langton—utterly wrong. I’ve known her for years. She is incapable—”

“Of letting anyone down?”

The colour rushed violently into Charles Moray’s face.

“Sit down, Mr. Moray,” said Miss Silver.

Charles sat down, and told her Margot’s story as Margot had told it to Margaret.

When he had finished, Miss Silver laid her knitting in her lap.

“Just a moment, Mr. Moray. I think we want to get things clear. We have a conspiracy, and there are a number of persons whom we suspect of being involved in it. You have the advantage of having seen some of these people. I would like to go back to the night of October 3rd and just see whether any of these people can be identified. You looked into the room where the man in the grey mask was transacting his business. You saw him—”

Charles shrugged his shoulders.

“I saw nothing that anyone could recognise. I can think of no one whom I suspect of being Grey Mask.”

“I have come across him before,” said Miss Silver

“—not as Grey Mask of course; but in the last five or six years I have constantly come across small bits of evidence which have led me to suspect that there is one man behind a number of coordinated criminal enterprises. He pulls a great many strings, and every now and then I have come across one of them. Well—there was a second man sitting with his back to you.”

“In an overcoat and a felt hat,” said Charles.

“You didn’t see his face?”

“Not a glimpse.”

“You heard his voice?”

“A very ordinary one,” said Charles, “no accent.”

“What make of man?”

“Fairly broad in the shoulders. Not tall, from the way he was sitting.”

“It might have been Pullen,” said Miss Silver meditatively.

“It might have been ten thousand other people,” said Charles with impatience.

Miss Silver went on in a placid voice:

“Then there was another man keeping the door. They alluded to him as Forty. Well, we know that Forty is Jaffray, who was Mr. Standing’s valet and on board the yacht when Mr. Standing was drowned. You did not actually hear Mr. Standing’s name mentioned; but you picked up a piece of paper with the last syllable of his name, and you heard one of the men speak of Margot. Grey Mask spoke of Forty having been at sea, and made a number of allusions to his connection with an unnamed man afterwards drowned. It is clear that the late Mr. Standing was meant. Now we pass to the fourth man—Twenty-seven. He came in to report. I think he was William Cole. And I think the man with no number was Pullen. A fifth man, who was described as a jellyfish and as being unwilling to marry the girl, is certainly Egbert Standing.”

Charles nodded.

“I give you Egbert. But as to the rest, it’s the very purest conjecture.” He laughed. “You ask me when I’m going to the police. What do you suppose they would make of those surmises of yours? Pullen is secretary of a criminal conspiracy because Lady Perringham didn’t lose her pearls whilst he buttled for her. You see? William Cole has been in prison; therefore he is Number Twenty-seven, with a roving commission to murder inconvenient heiresses. Good Lord! You ask why I don’t go to the police! What sort of fool should I look if I did? I saw hats, overcoats, a muffler, a mask, and a shirt-front. I should be making a prize ass of myself, and you know it.”

He laughed again. He was fighting desperately for Margaret, and fighting in the dark. They were lovers no more, and friends no more; but the instinct to fight for her survived both love and friendship; it rose up in him hard and stark. He plunged on:

“What beats me is why they should have pitched on my house as a rendezvous.”

“Oh——” said Miss Silver mildly, “I think I can explain that. It is a point I was about to mention. You have a caretaker called Lattery. He is a married man. Do you happen to know Mrs. Lattery’s maiden name?”

“No, I don’t.”

“It was Pullen,” said Miss Silver,—“Eliza Pullen.”

Charles exclaimed.

“Pullen!”

“Pullen the butler is her brother. It would be easy for him to find out just when the house would be empty; and a big empty house would make a very good meeting place. Your house offers peculiar advantages. Thorney Lane is not much frequented, and the alley-way by which access may be had to the garden is very dark and lonely.”

Charles whistled.

Miss Silver waited a moment. Then she said,

“Yes, Mr. Moray. To continue—On the night of October 3rd Miss Langton was in your house, and it would help me very much if you would be frank about this. I know that you were once engaged, and if Miss Langton’s visit was, if I may say so, a personal one, it would of course alter the whole situation—No, Mr. Moray—a moment. I will say nothing that is not necessary; but if Miss Langton had come there to meet you, it would account for a good deal—it would account for your reticence and for your desire to keep the matter out of the hands of the police. It is even possible that Miss Langton was seen by Pullen or one of the others, and that this increases your apprehension on her account—it would be very natural, and, if I may say so, very pardonable.”

She smiled a little deprecating smile. Charles met it with a blank expression.

“And if Miss Langton had come to see me, would there have been anything very strange or compromising in that? She has been free of the house since she was a child. I have known her since she was ten years old, Miss Silver. Will you say there was any reason why we should not have met? Wouldn’t it be perfectly natural in the circumstances?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss Silver. Then she coughed. “You really tell lies very badly, Mr. Moray.”

“Do I?”

“Oh, very badly indeed. It would have been better if you had been frank with me—much better. You see, you have told me what I wanted to know. I was not quite sure about Miss Langton.”

Charles pushed back his chair.

“I think we won’t discuss Miss Langton.”

Miss Silver sighed.

“That is foolish of you. You see, I know now that you saw her with Grey Mask, because if you had not done so, you would certainly have denied my suggestion that she came to the house to meet you.”

“Miss Silver!”

Miss Silver shook her head mournfully.

“You would have been very angry indeed if you had not thought I was offering you a way of escape. You know that.”

“Miss Silver!”

“Mr. Moray, have you ever asked Miss Langton for an explanation of what you saw?”

Charles was silent. He felt a sort of horrified fear of this gentle nondescript person.

“Mr. Moray, I am most earnestly anxious to help you. Have you asked Miss Langton for an explanation?”

“Yes,” said Charles, “I have.”

“Did she give you one?”

“No.”

“None at all?”

“No.”

“Will you now tell me where you saw Miss Langton, and in what circumstances?”

“She came into the room, walked up to the table, and put down a package. She said something, and Grey Mask said something. I couldn’t hear what they said. She only stayed a moment. I didn’t see her face.”

“But you were in no doubt as to her identity?”

“No.”

“I see,” said Miss Silver. “Just one more question. Was she announced in any way?”

Charles did not answer. He heard Jaffray’s voice, a little husky, pitched in a Cockney whisper: “Number Twenty-six is ’ere, guvnor.”

Miss Silver asked another question:

“The men had numbers. Was Miss Langton designated by a number?”

Charles was silent.

Miss Silver was silent for a moment too. Then she said very gently,

“I see that she was, Mr. Moray. It must have been a great shock to you. I think it is probable that these people have been blackmailing her. I have come across indications of this sort of thing before. The man you call Grey Mask works by means of blackmail—only instead of money he demands service. That is his method. You see, it gives him a hold over his tools—they are bound to obey.”

Charles lifted his head.

“In Miss Langton’s case there could be no question of blackmail. There could be nothing—”

“There is often something that no one dreams of. Think, Mr. Moray! Go back four years. She broke her engagement a week before her wedding day. Does a girl do that for nothing? Did she ever tell you why she did it?”

Charles Moray turned abruptly and walked out of the room. The door shut behind him. The outer door shut behind him.

Mis Silver put away the brown exercise-book and took up her knitting.