Hue and Cry (12 page)

“Ah,” said Mr. Alfred Dawson. “And what did you say the young person was like that took your seat?”

Mr. Dawson displayed a good deal of energy and resource in tracking Mally's bus. Having tracked it, he interviewed the whipper-snapper of a conductor and induced him to remember where Mally had got down. He himself reached this spot at precisely the moment when Mally had put six gingerbread biscuits into her pocket and was staring at the seventh.

He looked up the road and down the road, tossed for which way he should take, and began to walk in the direction which Mally had taken. The odds against his coming across anything that would be of the least use to him were considerable; but he was a conscientious young man and meant to do his best.

Mally ran down the six flights of stone stairs even more quickly than she had run up them. She knew now what criminals felt like; at every turn of the stair she expected to meet Mr. Castleby with a warrant for her arrest. The fact that she had just eaten a pound and a half of his ginger biscuits added poignancy to the situation.

In the little hall she stood for a moment, then slipped cautiously to the doorway, peeped round the corner, and emerged breathless upon the wet and empty pavement. Thank goodness, the slimy horror who had followed her was gone.

Mally's spirits rose, though with little enough reason. The rain had turned to sleet, and would certainly be snow before morning. She had nowhere to go. She did not know a soul in London except Roger and the Petersons. She had only three and ninepence farthing. She had no umbrella. On the other hand, she had just had something to eat, she had dodged Mr. Castleby, and she had broken off her engagement to Roger Mooring.

Mally had just reached this point, when she and Mr. Dawson met and passed each other. Once more Mr. Dawson's luck was in. A street lamp shone full on Mally as he passed her. He saw a girl in a dark-blue coat and a black felt hat and ran rapidly over the official description with which he had been furnished: “Five foot four; very slight; small features inclined to be pale; eyes greenish hazel with black lashes; hair dark; probably wearing navy-blue jumper and skirt, dark navy coat without fur, close black felt hat turned up in front, with a small paste ornament representing basket of flowers.”

These faithful details were due to Jones. Every one of them, with the exception, perhaps, of the little basket of flowers, would have applied not only to Mally Lee, but to an indefinite number of other young women. London is full of small, slight girls in navy-blue coats and black felt hats. Most of the coats, it is true, have fur upon them, and very few of the black felt hats would be likely to carry a paste ornament in the shape of a basket of flowers.

Alfred Dawson allowed Mally to reach the corner before he turned and began to follow her. When she passed him, he had only seen the right-hand side of her hat. He had to see the other side. And if it was fastened back by a brooch or pin in the form of a basket of flowers, he would make pretty sure that he had had the inconceivable luck to come up with Miss Mally Lee.

Mally went straight on across the road and up the long, wet street. She wished that she had thought of asking Wilfrid Witherby where she was. She walked on with the intention of stopping the first respectable looking woman she met and asking to be directed to the nearest railway station.

Waterloo—her fancy played fondly about Waterloo. She had an idea that trains would be coming and going all night. She could take a ticket for a quite near station, and then the people at Waterloo would let her stay in a waiting-room. The waiting-room would be warm. She thought it was a lovely plan, and the only difficulty about putting it into instant execution was the fact that she hadn't the remotest idea of how to get to Waterloo.

She tramped on until her shoes began to squelch. It was whilst she was noticing what a horrid noise they made that she noticed Mr. Alfred Dawson's footsteps. She frowned and walked a little more quickly. He might be perfectly harmless, or he might not.

After she had walked at varying paces for nearly half a mile she became quite, quite certain that the footsteps had a purpose, and that that purpose was to follow her. She thought the road would never end. And then, quite suddenly, it ended, coming out into a flaring highway, where buses ran and crowds of people jostled one another. A big cinema just opposite the corner was emptying itself. In a flash Mally saw her chance and slipped into the crowd.

Hopeless to try for a seat in the bus. The crowd was not a very gentle one, and there was some rough pushing going on. Mally turned, twisted, and wriggled her way to the outskirts. Then she asked a girl about her own age the way to Waterloo. The girl stared at her, and Mally asked again.

“Dunno, I'm sure,” said the girl.

Mally tried again with an older woman, and received bewilderingly fluent directions, which ran all together in her mind and made confusion there:

“First to the left, second to the right, third to the left, and tike the tube.”

That was what it sounded like. But she wasn't at all sure that she hadn't got the number of the turnings mixed. She was just going to ask again, when, creepy-crawly all over her, went the feeling that she was in danger. The man who was following—perhaps it was Mr. Castleby, perhaps—Mally didn't wait to think of any other explanation. She began to run.

Mr. Alfred Dawson was, as a matter of fact, only a dozen yards away. He had seen Mally, and he had seen, perched up on the left-hand brim of her hat, a little basket of sparkling flowers. Triumph flooded his mind. And in the very moment of his triumph came disappointment. He saw Mally look frightened, and he saw her begin to run. Then, as a bus drew up beyond him, he was caught in a surging rush and carried backwards towards it.

It may be said that he did his best. He shoved three stout ladies in succession, and was told with three degrees of rudeness that he was no gentleman. He trod on a messenger boy, and was called a nasty barging brute by another lady. In spite of all his efforts, the stream carried him away, and when its violence abated and the bus had gone, Mally had disappeared.

He ran down the road as a man will run to catch a train; there were three hundred yards of it without a turning. What in the world, or out of it, had happened to the girl? She wasn't in the road, and when he reached a corner, he looked round it into a little empty cul-de-sac. It was a very angry as well as a very puzzled young man who presently gave up the search and went home.

Mally had certainly had a narrow escape. When Mr. Alfred Dawson looked at her, she saw him as one of the crowd. She had actually begun to run before she realized that she was running because this tall young man had looked at her, and that this look was one of triumphant recognition. She left the crowd behind, and found herself with the long stretch of pavement clear before her; not a turning, not an archway, not a bit of cover anywhere; houses, very tall and dark; shuttered shop fronts; more houses; more shops. And then a row of petrol pumps and the front of a large garage flaring scarlet under the arc light overhead. It was so bright that it almost hurt, coming up suddenly out of the wet and the dark—such a wash of scarlet. And as Mally looked at it, a sliding door moved and a lad came out whistling. He stood for a moment looking down the road, and behind him, between him and Mally, there was a foot-wide gap in the scarlet.

Mally slipped through the gap and was inside, in a place that seemed pitch-dark for the moment. She must get away from the door. She couldn't wait for her eyes to get accustomed to the sudden change from dazzle to dusk. She must get away quick before the boy came back. She kept her hand on the inside of the sliding door and moved to the right; and by the time she had taken half a dozen steps she was able to see her way.

The place was full of cars parked in rows—the most splendid hiding-place in the world. She reached the side wall, slipped between a Rolls Royce limousine and a Lanchester landaulette and heard the boy come whistling back and shut the door with a bang.

Mally leaned against the Rolls, quite still, holding her breath. Suppose he came this way. Suppose he
did.
But the boy passed down the middle of the long garage, and the strains of
Tea for Two
faded away.

Mally was filled with thankfulness for her garage. If an enchanted palace had suddenly started up to shelter her, she couldn't have felt more grateful about it. It was dry; and she became aware of how very wet she was. It was warm; and she discovered that she was shaking with cold. Above all, it was beautifully, beautifully safe. The boy had shut the door. The unbroken scarlet wall flared to the street again and told nothing. No one,
no one
would dream of her being here. Shelter, warmth, dryness, and safety—who could possibly ask for more? Yet more was to be had. Any of these cars would provide her with a luxurious bed for the night.

When this brilliant thought flashed into her mind, she almost laughed aloud, and then set about choosing her quarters with a good deal of discretion. Not the Rolls Royce, and not the Lanchester. Limousines and landaulettes were more likely to be London owned than a touring car. Dimly at the back of her thought there lurked the beautiful vision of sliding rhythmically out of London into the darkness of country lanes.

It was the faint echo of the plan she had made about a hundred years ago, when she was still engaged to Roger and she had thought that he would drive her to Curston and keep her against the world. So she looked for a touring car, and found a large four-seater Wolseley, well splashed with mud. The hood was up, and all the side screens closed. She opened the rear door and got in, feeling before her gingerly.

There was a large rug lying in a heap, and she nearly tripped over it. The seat was alluringly comfortable. But Mally was not to be lured from the stricter path of safety. If she sat on the floor with a bit of the rug under her and all the rest of it snuggled up round and over her, no one could possibly guess she was there unless they actually wanted some of the back seat for themselves. In that case, of course, all would be over.

Mally was not inclined to look for trouble. The rug was most beautifully soft and warm. She ate three more of Mr. Castleby's ginger biscuits, and had some idea of embarking on a fourth; but just then drowsiness came down on her like a thick, blank fog, and she went fast asleep instead, very fast asleep, on the floor of a Wolseley touring car with her head against the seat and the warm rug pulled all over her.

CHAPTER XV

About the same time that the excellent Jones was engaged in searching Mally Lee, Sir Julian Le Mesurier was reading a detailed and confidential report which he had that day received. It was concerned with the affairs of Peterson & Co., the shipping firm of which Sir George Peterson was the only surviving partner.

The report disclosed a state of affairs extremely difficult to reconcile with the style in which Sir George lived and the extremely comfortable balance at his bank. When a man has more money—and a very great deal more money—than his profession can account for, there may very easily be good reason for the Criminal Investigation Department to keep an eye on his affairs.

Piggy finished the report, and sat looking at it. When he was thinking deeply, it was his practice to draw cats. He began to draw them now—two cats with arched backs and bottle-brush tails spitting at one another. He drew neatly and with an excellent attention to detail. Each cat showed three sharp claws unsheathed, and each had four whiskers on one side and three on the other; their eyes bulged with malice.

When he had sketched a garden fence for them to fight on, he pushed the report on one side, took up the receiver of the telephone on his desk, and asked for his cousin Julian Forsham's number. Mr. Forsham's voice, a little bored, said, “Hallo!”

“Hallo, Ju-Ju!”

The boredom vanished.

“That you, Piggy? I was coming to see you to-morrow. Only arrived to-day.”

“So
The Times
informed me.”

Mr. Julian Forsham, it may be remembered, was of some note both as an explorer and a literary man. He groaned.

“My first twenty-four hours in town is spent at the telephone! It's a beneficent invention.”

Piggy laughed.

“All right, I won't keep you. You're up for the Wolves' dinner to Lawrence Marrington, I take it. I'd really almost forgotten you were a Wolf.”

Julian groaned again.

“If I hadn't come, every one would have said it was a case of two of a trade. Anyway that's what Amabel said they'd say. So she packed my bag and shoved me into the train. She said I'd enjoy it—which is what I call insult piled on injury.”

“You don't know when you're well off. Now, I'd give anything to be in your shoes. Seriously, I'd like to meet the fellow.”

“Why on earth?”

“A passion for Aztec pyramids, and sun-worship, and—er—Virgins of the Sun, and things like that.” Piggy's voice was perfectly expressionless.

It was Julian Forsham's turn to laugh.

“What a colossal fraud you are! I'm quite positive you've never thought of Peru since you got ‘Prescott' as a prize away back in the dark ages. What
do
you want?”

“I want to come to the dinner to-night. Or if that's impossible I'd like to drop in afterwards.”

The sound of Mr. Julian Forsham whistling came faithfully along the wire. The tune that he whistled had a ribald intention; it was, in fact, the well-known air from
The Pirates of Penzance
—“With catlike tread upon our prey we steal.” Then he broke off to say:

“All right, I invite you. You can dine. And mark you, Piggy my lad, your luck's in. Carstairs was my guest” (Carstairs was a Cabinet Minister) “and he rang up only ten minutes ago to say the Prime Minister had sent for him to go down to Chequers. If he hadn't failed, I don't see what I could have done. Every one in London wants to meet Marrington. He's made some amazing discoveries and brought some marvellous stuff over with him.”