Red Shadow (25 page)

She spoke quickly.

“Did Vassili give you his piece?”

He laughed again.

“What do you think?”

“That you are running a great risk,” said Catherine gravely.

“Yes—a great risk—for a great prize. Listen! Vassili is making a mess of this. He's a fool really. He'd never have got the job if it hadn't been for his engineer's degree—and after all what does that matter? I'd have made old Hallingdon a better secretary than he did—yes, and got more of his confidence—but they wouldn't give me the chance—they
would
have Vassili. And you know, and I know, the mess he's got himself into. And when Moscow knows—” he snapped his finger and thumb—“exit Vassili!”

She said, “I suppose so,” in an absent voice.

“He might save himself if he could hand over the Sanquhar invention. Well, he can't. And if I can—if—I—can——”

“Can you?” said Catherine in a cool, dispassionate voice.

“I believe so—if you will help me.” He picked up the pieces of the torn five-pound note and put them carefully away. “Help me to pull it off, and——”

“And what?” said Catherine.

“Wait and see,
liebchen
. Now come round here—I don't want to shout.” He put an arm about her and drew her close, so that she stood at his knee looking down on him with a curious twist of the lips.

“Well?” she said.

“The middle of the five-pound note is missing. I believe it was torn in three, and I'm sure—I say I'm sure—that the third piece came to Laura the day I was fool enough to let her see old Rimington alone. If I had known..… Well, Vassili kept us in the dark, and he'll deserve whatever he gets, for that alone. Laura had her bit of the torn note, and she managed to hide it. And we haven't managed to find it—and we've
got
to find it.”

His arm dropped from Catherine's waist, but she did not move.

“How did you get the other pieces?”

He threw back his head and laughed up at her.

“Good work,
liebchen!
I listened in to Mackenzie's talk about Twenty Years of Invention. Well, when he came to the place where he might have said something interesting about the loss of the Sanquhar invention, he just checked for a moment, like you do when you come to a place where there's a mistake or an alteration in the paper you're reading from. It gave me the feeling that I'd like to have a look at that paper. So off I went to his flat—and there I had a first class piece of luck, for I picked up a key on the stair, and it fitted his lock.”

“Picked it up?”

She saw a look of admiration come into his face.

“
Liebchen
, you have a brain! Perhaps you are right—perhaps I had already provided myself with the key. Anyhow, I walked in—and there was his talk, all neatly typed. And when I came to the place I was looking for, there was a good fat paragraph crossed out, but not so much crossed out that I couldn't read most of it.”

“And?” said Catherine.

He nodded.

“It was about the Sanquhar invention. Well, that made me think. He'd written it, and he'd crossed it out. Why? Something had happened to make him cross it out. I began to look for the something, and presently I found a torn piece of a five-pound note put away very carefully. Then I remembered that Vassili also had a piece of a five-pound note, and that you had heard him talk in his sleep of the Sanquhar invention—also he looked as if he would murder you when you spoke to him about it. I thought that I would collect his piece and add it to mine. It was quite easy. So here I have two pieces—and when I have Laura's piece, I shall have the note complete.”

“
When,
” said Catherine.

“Laura shall tell us where it is,” said Alec Stevens.

Catherine's faint scornful smile deepened.

“You are very foolish if you think that.”

“I am sure of it.”

“Laura will not tell you anything. You don't know her. She has the air of being fragile, but there is something in her that will not break. She is vulnerable because she
feels
. But you will not be able to make her do what she thinks wrong. If she suffers too much, she may die, but she will not tell you what you want to know.”

“She will tell me,” said Alec Stevens. There was a cheerful note of certainty in his voice.

Catherine looked at him.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that she shall tell Jim Mackenzie, and I mean that I shall listen while she tells him.”

CHAPTER XXXI

Laura came out of her room on the following day and passed down the shallow steps which led into a square hall. The steps were of bare dark oak polished by the feet of many generations. The hall was narrow and low, with a huge fireplace on one side of it.

She opened the door which faced the stairs and came out into a little square garden. It had a path edged with scallop-shells, and on either side a heart-shaped bed where rose bushes were sprouting. The path ended at a low wicket gate, and beyond the gate a steep flight of steps climbed the cliff. The house was set on a rocky ledge not more than a dozen feet above high water mark.

Laura went round the house and saw bare sand and shell-drift where yesterday morning she had seen only a stretch of grey water. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and the tide was out. The cliffs enclosed a little bay, with a rocky pool here and there and a shelving bank of pebbles that had dried in the wind and the sun.

On the left a wooden ladder led down to the beach. Laura climbed down it, skirted a pool, and picked her way to the far side of the ridge. Here the sun shone and the wind did not come. The cliff rose steeply at first then shelved, and rose again by easier degrees. She looked up, and thought that a man might climb it if he had a good head. Then she sat down on the rug that Catherine had spread, set a cushion between her and the rock, and leaned against it savouring the sun. It was so warm here that the month might have been June instead of January—or had they slipped into February while she was ill? She reflected that she knew neither the date, nor where she was. Officially she was in France, but actually she felt fairly certain that these were English cliffs, and this an English sea. It was grey no longer. The sun shone down on it and showed it as blue as a drift of bluebells. It reflected a cloudless sky.

She watched the clear, soft colour, and felt comforted. She had a sense of respite, even of release. To be alone, to watch the sun upon the water, to see the gulls flash and turn and take the light with their shining wings, gave her a feeling of freedom. She had left an empty house behind her—empty, that is, of Sasha and Catherine. The tow-headed girl was probably in the kitchen, but she didn't count. Sasha had been gone since twelve o'clock, and half an hour ago Catherine had asked her whether she would mind being left alone for an hour—“You can sit in the sun and dream any dream you like. Are we not clever to provide you with a sun to sit in? Only you had better not dream about running away, because you would certainly lose yourself on the moor, and then I should have to nurse you again.”

Laura had laughed a little sadly.

“Where should I run to?”

“That is what I call practical,” said Catherine. “English people are very practical. I can leave you without the slightest uneasiness, because there really is nowhere for you to run to. I am taking the car, and this house is about seven miles from anywhere at all. I am sure you are too practical to try and walk seven miles.

“Why should I?” said Laura.

Her words came back to her as she sat and looked at the sea. Where the blue of the water met the blue of the sky there was a faint haze. Why should she run away? Even if there were no seven miles, where would she go and what would she do? She had no money. Besides, she had set her hand to a bargain, and she meant to stick to it. Only the Sanquhar invention was not in the bargain. She had to try and save the Sanquhar invention.

Suddenly it came over her that she had left her third of Bertram Hallingdon's torn five-pound note in the house from which she had come two days ago, and that she had not the slightest idea of where this house might be. She had been brought to it unconscious, and she had left it in a drugged sleep. A feeling of panic swept over her. She had already betrayed Bertram Hallingdon's trust if she had lost her precious fragment. She ought to have been able to think of a better hiding place. She ought to have contrived to bring it with her. She ought——

She heard a sound, and turned her head. Jim Mackenzie was coming towards her across the wet sand.

Her heart knocked hard against her side just once, and joy came in. Laura had never felt such joy in all her life before. It was a purely irrational, purely instinctive joy. It was like warmth after the dead cold which freezes to the bone. It was like water after desert drought. It was like the sun and the moon and the stars after an eternity of formless night. You do not think of joy like that, you feel it. It broke upon Laura and took her off her feet. She did not make any physical movement, but the colour came up into her face and the light into her eyes.

She saw Jim come nearer and then stop. She heard him say, “Laura!” And then the enchanted moment was past. The joy ebbed so quickly that it was gone before she could speak his name. It left her cold and bewildered. She leaned against the rock at her back and looked up at him with wide, piteous eyes.

Jim Mackenzie did not come any nearer. He would have had to take two steps to touch her hand. He stayed where he was and looked past her at a trickle of water that darkened the face of the cliff and fell drop by drop to a little pool of clear sea water. He had come here to see her, and now that he was here he did not know what to say. That gave the knife a twist—he did not know what to say to her. The days hadn't ever been long enough for all that they had to say, and when they did not speak the silence brought them closer; but now they had not anything to say, and the silence was like a chain that dragged between them. He laid desperate hands on it and broke it.

“You will wonder why I have come.”

Laura said, “No.” It had not been a thing to wonder about; it was the only natural thing that had happened to her for a long, long time. It was all the other things that were strange—the wedding ring on her finger; the bargain she had made with Vassili Stefanoff; the fact that she wasn't Laura Cameron any more. These were the unnatural things—not Jim. It could never be anything except natural that Jim should come to her. Warmth, and light, and water for one's thirst—these were natural things. She felt as if she had waked up from a dream.

He spoke again with an effort.

“Laura—I've come because of what you said when you telephoned. I had to know—that you were all right.”

Laura said, “Yes,” in a gentle absent voice. It seemed a long time since she had crept down in the night to try and warn him. Then she remembered why she had tried to warn him; and with that she remembered the Sanquhar invention. She got up and stood against the cliff, her colour coming and going, her hair lifted by the wind.

“Jim—I tried to warn you. Did you understand? Did you put it away safely?” Then, as he stood silent, she went on, “Won't you tell me—won't you please tell me? You see, I
know
that you are one of the trustees of the Sanquhar invention. Mr Hallingdon told me.”

Jim Mackenzie stared at her.

“How?” he said almost roughly.

“He wrote. I got it after I was ill.”

“Why were you ill?”

“It doesn't matter—I am all right now.” She oughtn't to have said that about being ill. She went on quickly. “Mr Hallingdon told me who had the three pieces of the five-pound note which he had torn. You had one—and I had one—and Vassili——”

“
Vassili?
”

“Basil Stevens is Vassili Stefanoff.”

“Did you know that when you married him?”

“Yes, I knew,” said Laura.

“You knew—
Laura
——”

She put out her hand to stop him.

“Don't—Jim—
please
! I've got to tell you about the Sanquhar invention. It's got to be saved, and I can't do anything. Will you just listen?”

He nodded without speaking. Yes, he would listen. But he would do something more than listen before he left her. Now that they were face to face, she was going to tell him why she had smashed their lives. The blood drummed in his ears so that he could hardly hear what she was saying. He mustn't look at her. He must watch the drops that raced one another down the overhanging point of rock, to fall into the pool below. They were like beads sliding from a broken string—like bright, clear beads—glass beads..…

Laura was speaking.

“I destroyed his letter. He told me to. I wetted it and made it into a ball and threw it out of the window. I don't think any of it could be read. My piece of the five-pound note was in the letter. They don't know whether I've had it or not. At first they thought I had, but when they had looked for it everywhere they began to think that I'd never had it. I hid it, and they couldn't find it.”

“They haven't found it?”

“No. But I don't know where it is.”

“
You don't know?
”

“I hid it in the house we have just come from. But they took me there when I was ill, and I don't know where it is, or the address, or anything.”

He came a step nearer.

“Well, I know that. It's The Walled House, Leeming Lane, Putney. I went there to look for you, but you were gone.”

A cold lonely feeling touched Laura's heart, not for herself but for him. The empty house—and Jim looking for her..… And then all of a sudden the cold and the loneliness were unbearable. She saw the whole world as an empty house in which he must look for her in vain. She turned very pale.

He spoke quickly.