Ladies’ Bane E-Book

Patricia Wentworth

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Ladies' Bane - it was a curious name for a house. But visiting it for the first time Lone found it a curious house. Curious, and rather frightening. They said in the village that anyone who was its mistress would lose the thing she cared for most. And its present mistress was Allegra - Lone's sister. They had not met for two years. Appointments had been made but not kept. Visits had been postponed time and time again. There had been excuse after excuse. And then, suddenly Lone found herself not only invited but positively urged to come. To begin with she had been puzzled. But soon she was not only worried, but badly, deeply scared... Thank heavens Miss Silver was in town.

Leseprobe

Ladies' Bane

by Patricia Wentworth

First published in 1952

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Ladies’ Bane

by

CHAPTER 1

Looking back, Ione Muir was to wonder what would have happened if she had chosen any other day to go up to town. With all the days of the week to choose from, she had picked a Tuesday, and that particular Tuesday. Suppose she had chosen some other day. Suppose she had gone a week earlier or a week later. Suppose she had not gone at all. Just how much difference would it have made? Would she have met Jim Severn in some other way? Would it all have been the same in the end? Or would it have been different—perhaps dreadfully different? Did certain people, certain events, certain crimes, produce as it were a vortex into which you must inevitably have been drawn? Or did it all just turn on the choice of a day or a train? She was never to be quite sure.

She took the 9.45 to town. Any other train, and she would not have run into Fenella Caldecott as she emerged from the Knightsbridge Tube.

“Ione! I haven’t seen you since—when was it—Celia’s wedding? What a lovely bride she made! Fortunately one didn’t have to look at the bridegroom—one never does at a wedding—but Celia was going to have to live with him, and honestly, I don’t know how she could! One oughtn’t to say things like that, but it’s only to you, and I’m sure I hope they are very happy indeed. Curious how some girls just seem to disappear after they are married. Cornwall, wasn’t it? Too remote! And that reminds me—what about Allegra? She’s another of the vanished ones. Why on earth do girls marry the sort of people who carry them off to the ends of the earth?” She bent a long, slim neck to glance at her wristwatch and gave a faint scream. “Darling, I’m going to be late for my fitting! And André just crosses you off if you’re even half a minute behind your time, though he doesn’t mind how many hours he keeps you waiting himself!” She waved a hand, called over her shoulder, “Meet me for lunch at the club,” and was gone.

Ione watched her go. Fenella hadn’t changed in the least, and she probably never would. Even at school she had possessed a long, slim elegance which triumphed over such garments as a gym tunic and the quite hideous St. Griselda uniform. Now, clothed by the great André, she was a most decorative creature. Not really her friend, but Allegra’s.

She had not said she would meet Fenella for lunch, but she supposed that she would. What really decided her was that there hadn’t been time to ask whether she had heard from Allegra. They had been such very close friends.

She went about her shopping with rather an abstracted mind. Allegra had always been a bad correspondent. Anyone may be a bad correspondent without there being anything wrong. It is when people are busy and happy that they don’t bother to write. If there is anything wrong you hear. Or do you? Perhaps Fenella had heard—

Taking one o’clock as the starting-point, she had to wait three-quarters of an hour for Fenella at the club, and then she had to hear all about the fitting, and why Fenella had left Mirabelle whom she had always previously declared to be the only really imaginative dressmaker on this side of the Channel.

“But, darling, a complete devil! You won’t believe it, but she sent me to the Crayshaw wedding in an absolute duplicate of Pippa Casabianca’s going-away dress! In Paris, you know, and a whole month before! I might never have known, only Yvonne de Crassac sent me the photographs! Well, that really was the end! And I’m terribly lucky to get in with André, because he has a waiting-list about a mile long!”

There was a good deal more of this before Ione had a chance to mention Allegra.

“Have I heard from her lately? Darling, we don’t correspond! The old school tie rather fades out after a year or two, don’t you think? But I did like your charming brother-in-law—quite sinfully goodlooking, as Elizabeth Tremayne said! I said no one ever looked at the bridegroom, but when Allegra was married we all did! Funny how those very handsome men don’t seem to care so much about looks in a girl, and you know, I did think that dead white was a mistake for Allegra. So cold, if you know what I mean!”

There was no unkindness in Fenella. Dress was her one real interest in life, and she took it seriously. When her mind turned to Allegra Muir’s wedding she could not only pass over the two-year gap and visualize every detail, but she could no more help re-dressing and re-grouping the bride and her attendants than she could stop the even flow of her breath. And the worst of it was that she was right. Nothing could have been less becoming to Allegra than all that icy white which had made her look pinched and grey, like something lost in a snowstorm. Ione was ruefully aware that she hadn’t looked any too good in it herself. And that awful lumpy girl Margot—could anything have been worse! She laughed and said,

“It’s the last time I’m going to be a bridesmaid anyhow. You have to when it’s your sister, but never again! The idea of herding a lot of girls together and putting them into something which is bound to be the last thing on earth that most of them ought to wear—well, it’s simply barbaric!”

Fenella did not laugh—she hardly ever did. She said earnestly,

“You’re too right, darling. Let me see—there was you—and Elizabeth Tremayne—and the Miller twins with all that red hair—and that frightful lumpy schoolgirl—what was her name?”

“Margot Trent. She’s a relation of Geoffrey’s, and he is her guardian. We had to have her. She looked terrible.”

Fenella shook her head sadly.

“Schoolgirls always do in white. They’re either much too fat like this Margot girl, or else they’ve got sharp red elbows and bones sticking out all over them. She still lives with them, doesn’t she? I don’t know how Allegra could! Has she fined down at all?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you’ve seen her, haven’t you?”

“Well, not very lately.”

“But you’ve seen Allegra. I’m simply counting on your giving me all her news. You must have seen Allegra!”

Ione felt that her colour was rising. She said,

“Well, I was in America.”

“America! What on earth were you doing there?”

“We have relations in New Jersey. I went to visit them, and stayed on longer than I meant to. As a matter of fact, I tumbled into a job.”

Fenella had a remembering look.

“Yes—now don’t tell me! I did hear about it—it was Sylvia Scott! She sent me an American magazine with a picture of you doing one of those monologues you used to be dragged in for at school concerts. It said you were having quite a success.”

Ione laughed.

“They seemed to like them. A friend of my cousins got me to do one or two at a big party, and then other people asked me, and in the end I had a very good professional offer, so I thought I had better take it and bring some dollars home.”

“Well, I don’t know how you do it!” Fenella’s attention wavered. She came back to Allegra. “What is her house like? Are they able to get any staff?”

“I expect so—I don’t know.”

“You haven’t been there? Ione!”

“I had to go and look after my old cousin who was ill.”

“Do you mean to say you haven’t seen Allegra since the wedding?”

“No, of course not. I saw her when she came back from her honeymoon.”

“You’ve never been to stay with her?”

“I couldn’t leave Cousin Eleanor.”

Fenella shook her head.

“It’s quite fatal to go and look after an old lady. They never die, and you never get away.”

Ione laughed.

“I’m going to stay with Allegra next week,” she said.

In her mind something said insistently, “If they don’t put you off again.”

CHAPTER 2

The dining-room at Fenella’s club was one of those rooms where you don’t notice very much what the weather is like outside. At lunchtime in the middle of January the light would be on anyhow, so it was not until they had lingered over their coffee and Fenella remembered that she had an appointment to try an absolutely new hair-do that either of them noticed the fog.

“And if I really can’t drop you, darling, I’d better fly, or goodness knows if I’ll get there!”

Ione’s “No—quite the wrong direction” was gathered up in the rush of departure. She stood for a moment on the pavement outside the club before deciding that it was no use trying to do any more shopping, and that she had better just walk round to the nearest Tube station and go home. At the time it seemed not only a sensible thing to do, but a perfectly easy one. She knew this part of London like the back of her hand, and the station was not more than five minutes’ walk. Yet before the five minutes were up she was lost.

She had somehow missed a turning which she ought to have taken. Well, that was quite simple—she must go back and find it. She turned, walked for another five minutes, and knew that she had got right off the track. And what was worse, she had walked into a much denser patch of fog. If it had been like this in front of the club, she would never have started out. As it was, she had no idea of how far she had come, or in what direction. She found that she had no ideas about anything. No amount of darkness is so bewildering as fog, since it not only baffles, but confuses every sense. The eye still sees, but what it sees bears no relation to reality. The ear still hears, but it can no longer decide what is near and what is far. Everything is unnatural, distorted.

Well, she must keep on walking. These London fogs vary very much in density. She might at any time emerge from the worst of it, or at the very least come out upon some thoroughfare where she could ask her way. If it was as thick as this, it would be too much to hope that the buses would be running, or that there would be a taxi, but someone would be able to tell her the way to the Tube. Someone? It came over her that it was a good many minutes now since she had so much as heard a passing footstep.

She began to walk again without the least idea of where she was going. She found it extremely difficult to keep a straight line. Her left foot would slip from the kerb with a jerk, and a minute or two later her right, groping, would bruise itself against the wall in front of a house. The street-lamps really made everything worse. They showed only as dim orange cocoons which lighted nothing except the fog.

It was when she was passing one of them that she made her first contact with another human being. A step sounded—somewhere beside her, behind her, she didn’t know which—and a hand came out of the fog to snatch at her bag. It missed, because she stepped sideways into the road and ran for it, her heart thudding against her side. When she pulled up, there was no other sound but her own labouring breath. Stupid to have been so startled. It was only some petty thief who wanted her bag, and would have had it, his eyes being probably better at this kind of thing than hers, if she hadn’t swerved almost before the snatching hand shot out.

She came after this to a more frequented place. People went by, singly for the most part and at fairly long intervals. It must be about four o’clock, and of course no one who could help it would be out. After the attempt to snatch her bag she no longer thought of asking the way. You hear a footstep, and it tells you hardly anything at all. Or does it? She found herself getting interested in the footsteps. The slow, heavy one which might belong to an elderly tradesman full of solid worth or to the mother of six. Or perhaps to a prosperous burglar out to do a little quiet housebreaking in the fog. The light hurrying step of someone who would probably scream if you spoke to her. The hesitating step of someone who was probably as lost as herself, but who could be by chance another lurking thief.

She thought afterwards that she must have turned a corner without knowing it, because there were no more footsteps. The street seemed narrow, and the lamps a good deal farther apart. She pictured it as one of those quiet backwaters set with neat narrow-fronted houses all alike. She knew that the fronts were narrow, because there was a balustrade—so many dumpy stone pillars and three or four steps up to the front door. That the balustrade was there to guard an area upon which the basement windows looked out, she was to learn in rather a painful manner. Under the pressure of that odd disposition to bear either to one side or to the other a right-hand swerve brought her up against an area gate. She hit it hard with her knee, and it gave and let her through. Half stumbling, half falling, she came down quite a lot of steps and finished up on her hands and knees upon damp stone.

It was painful enough, but she was all in one piece. Her hat hung over an ear, her stockings were certainly laddered, and her gloves were slimy. She took them off, straightened her hat, and groped about for the bag which had flown out of her hand. She had just found it, when there was a sound. It came from over her head. A key had been turned in a lock and a bolt drawn back. The front door of the house was opening.

Her first thought was that someone had heard her fall down the area steps. Anyone in one of the front rooms could hardly have helped doing so. She was just thinking that it would look better if she were on her feet, when a voice said,

“I’m a dependable man—I can’t put it any stronger than that. My worrd is my bond. There’s not a man living that can say I ever let him down. A sure friend in trouble and a dependable man—that’s me.”

Three things were borne in upon Ione. The gentleman who was speaking hailed at one time or another from the far side of the Scottish border. He had fortified himself against the fog by recourse to his native beverage. And neither he nor the person whom he was addressing had the slightest idea that anyone had just made a crash landing in the area.

The steps that ran up from the street to the front door were almost over her head. If she stayed where she was she would neither be seen nor heard. There was no reason at all why she should not disclose herself, find out where she was, and ask to be set upon her way. The dependable gentleman might even prove to be a dependable guide.

There was no reason—but there was an instinct. If she had told her tongue to speak, it would not have obeyed her. But she did not tell it to speak. She stayed as still as a hare stays in its form, and for the same reason. Over her head someone was whispering. She could not tell whether it was man or woman. Then the Scot again:

“Oh, I’m on my way, I’m on my way, and I’ll take my foot from the door when I’m ready. And a nice sort of an afternoon to go out in—as black as the Earl o’ Hell’s waistcoat! If ye’d a heart in ye, ye’d not be sending me out in it.”

The whispering voice said something, and the Scot laughed.

“Oh, ye’re a prudent pairson, and I’ve nothing against prudence—in reason. And if ye think it’s reasonable to turn a man out in a fog like this, ye can just consider, if I’m run over, who’ll do your dirty work for ye then? Ye can just think about that.... All right, all right, I’m going! And I haven’t said I’ll do it yet, but I’ll give it my careful consideration and let ye know. But mind, ye’ll have to think again—about the remuneration. I’ll not do it for any less than two thousand, and I’m of the opinion that I’d be a fool to do it for that. It’s my neck I’ll be risking, and I’ll not risk it for a penny less than two thousand.”

He came rolling down the steps, and the door banged to above him. She heard the key turn and the bolt go home. The rolling steps went past her and down the street to the lilt of a tune. The gentleman who was considering if he would risk his neck was whistling as he went.

“For ye’ll tak the high road,

 And I’ll tak the low road,

 And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye—”

The words sprang up in Ione’s mind to meet the tune, and with them the impulse to get out of this place into which she had fallen and away from the house where someone whispered, and someone haggled about the price of his neck. It was one of those impulses which take hold of you. She didn’t think about it, she didn’t even know that she was going to obey it. She just found herself running up the area steps and out into the road. It was the sheer blank wall of the fog that stopped her. The moment that she was away from the area and the steps, her sense of direction was gone. She couldn’t see the street-lamp. So far as she was concerned, it was just blotted out. All that remained in the blind world of fog was the failing strains of “Loch Lomond.” When they were gone she would be all alone.

She began to run, but almost at once she checked herself. If she was to follow him, he mustn’t hear her. She mustn’t run. As long as he went on whistling, she thought she could follow the sound. But she mustn’t let him get far ahead. The fog muffled everything. It would be dreadfully easy to lose the sound, and once it was lost, there would be nothing to guide her.

When she thought about it afterwards she found it extremely difficult to understand why she should have had any desire to follow the rolling Scot. He had certainly had too much to drink, and she had heard him discussing the remuneration he would require for what sounded uncommonly like one of the major crimes. Against this there was nothing reasonable to advance. He seemed to know where he was going—and it might quite easily be the last place on earth in which she would wish to find herself. He sounded confident, and he whistled melodiously. It was, of course, his confidence which was the lure. He had a stick in his hand, and he went along at a cheerful pace, now tapping with it on the pavement, now rattling it with noisy gusto along the line of a stone balustrade. And all the time he whistled. When he had finished with “Loch Lomond” he did tricky things with “The Bluebells of Scotland,” and then rather let himself go on “The Road to the Isles.” If he hadn’t made so much noise he might have heard her. Bye and bye she became more confident and came up as close as she dared. He seemed to know where he was going, for he turned twice—once to the left, and once, after crossing the road, to the right.

After a little while she began to make a plan. He mustn’t know that she had been following him. He mustn’t connect her in any way with the house or with the street, which were now at quite a safe distance behind them. But if she could pass him in the fog, get a little way ahead, and then turn and come back, it would look like a perfectly chance encounter, and she could ask him whether he knew where they were. The more she thought about this plan, the more she liked it. Curiously enough, she had no fear of speaking to him. He might be going to engage in high-ranking crime, but she felt perfectly sure that he wouldn’t snatch her bag or hit her over the head in the street. She passed him, running lightly, whilst he was giving a spirited rendering of “Bonnie Dundee,” and was just going to slow up and turn, when she ran slap into someone else. Her outstretched hands touched a rough coat, and a moment later her face was hard against it and her mouth full of muffler. By the time she had gasped and spat it out a man’s voice was saying over the top of her head, “I say, I am awfully sorry! Are you hurt?” and “Bonnie Dundee” was breaking off. The voice was a nice one. She gave the arm which was holding her a frantic pinch, stood on tiptoe to get as near as possible to where she thought there might be an ear, and whispered,

“Say I ran into you—a little way back.”

He said, “All right.”

Her whispered “Thank you” reached him, and then a clear and charming voice, “Oh, here’s someone! Perhaps he knows where we are! Do ask him!”

The fog became permeated with an aroma of whisky. The voice that had rolled out its demand for two thousand pounds now enquired in a genial manner,

“And where would ye be wanting to be?” There seemed to be at least three r’s in the “where.”

Ione had turned. She was still holding the arm which she had pinched. There was a sharp pain in her ankle. She said just a little breathlessly,

“I’m afraid I am quite lost. I don’t know if you can help us at all.”

There was the sound of a laugh.

“If ye had asked me that same thing just about ten minutes ago, I’d have told ye, but I’m beginning to think that I might have been mistaken. It’s a bad fog that would baffle me, but I’ll admit that I’m not just so sure of my surroundings as I’d like to be. I have an idea where I went wrong, but I’m far from saying I could find my way back to it. No, no—it’s ‘Keep right on to the end of the road, keep right on to the end—’ ” He passed easily into song, but pulled up before the end of the verse. “Ye take my meaning? If ye keep right on ye’ll aye get somewhere. If ye stay where ye are ye might just as well be dead and buried, and a grand saving of trouble to all concerned.”

The voice which belonged to the arm that Ione was holding said quietly,

“I can tell you where we are, for what it is worth. Not very much, I’m afraid, because I can’t see the slightest chance of getting anywhere else until the fog lifts.”

Ione pinched again hard.

“Oh, why didn’t you say so before?”

There was a trace of laughter in his voice as he said,

“You didn’t give me time.” Then, in an explanatory manner in the direction of the aroma of whisky, “This lady and I collided a little way back. I think she must have been coming out of a side road.”

“And who’s to tell which is which?” demanded the Scot very reasonably. “But if ye find yourself in a position to tell us where we are, I’ll be obliged for the information.”

“We’re in Bicklesbury Road, if that means anything to you. My name is Severn. I’m an architect, and I came here to look at some houses which a client has bought and wants to have turned into flats. By the time I got here the fog was coming down fast, and I was a perfect fool not to go home. I thought I’d just take a quick look round, but when I got in it was really too dark to do anything. I pottered a bit, using a torch and hoping the fog would lift. Then my battery failed, and I came out into this. I’m afraid it’s not too good.”

It was all in the middle of the Scot endeavoring to place the exact whereabouts of Bicklesbury Road and introducing himself as Professor MacPhail that Ione became aware that whatever happened to the two men, she wasn’t going to be able to walk any farther. The ankle was becoming very insistent. She might have twisted it when she fell down all those steps. She might have given it a wrench just now when she bumped into Mr. Severn—she didn’t really know, and it didn’t really matter. All she did know was that it wouldn’t take her any farther. She said so, breaking in upon an itinerary proposed by the Professor.

“I’m afraid it’s no good to me even if we could find the way, and I’m quite sure we couldn’t. I’m afraid I’ve sprained my ankle.”

It might have been the whole weight of the day, or it might have been the way things have of invading you and suddenly taking over, but as she spoke she felt the fog begin to flicker. Her weight came on Jim Severn’s arm, and if he hadn’t been quick she would have gone down. After that everything was pretty hazy, and she just let go. There were voices, and she was being carried. It was rather like a slow motion picture. That was the fog of course. Nothing could really move in a fog like this. The buses would be stopped—and the cars—and the people who were abroad would crawl like beetles and wish to be at home again—and the watches and clocks would all slow down until Time too—

She came to herself with the feeling that she had been a long way off. She was lying on something very hard, and there was at least one thing that had not stopped. Professor MacPhail was still talking.

“And we could be very comfortable here till the fog lifts if there was so much as a chair to sit on, or a candle-end to give us a glint of light. It’s wonderful how little ye can be doing with. There was my old grandfather, and well I remember him, brought up on a small farm, and the only light they had was the tallow dips they made themselves, and they had to be saving of those, so for the most part he would just study his lessons by the light of the kitchen fire. And his eyesight perrfect at eighty-seven years of age!”

Ione struggled up on her elbow. The place was dark enough, but not so thick with fog. It was a horrid yellowish darkness, but it was easier to breathe than it had been out in the street. The floor under her was wood. The palm of her hand as she leaned on it was aware of dust and grit. She said in the best tradition of the fainting heroine,

“Where are we?”

“Are you better?”

“Oh, yes—I’m all right. I don’t know what happened—everything just slipped. Where have we got to?”

“One of the houses I was looking over. I really don’t think there’s a chance of getting anywhere until the fog lifts, and it’s better here than outside. I’m afraid everything’s been cut off, and there isn’t a stick of furniture in the place. But you can’t walk on a sprained ankle, and we shouldn’t get anywhere if you could. Look here, I laid you down flat because you had gone off, but now you have come round I think the best way would be to sit on the stairs. After all, one does it at a dance.”

They sat on the stairs, and time went slowly by. Ione had a step to herself to begin with, but after an interval when she must have drifted into an uneasy sleep she found that there was a shoulder under her head and an arm that steadied her. It wasn’t the Professor’s arm, because the whisky seemed to be some way off.... She slid back into sleep again....

It was the kind of sleep in which you keep on coming to the surface and drifting off. Whenever she did come back, the Professor seemed to be talking, the sound of his rolling r’s like the drum-beat in a dance rhythm. Presently he was saying,

“There’s that old chestnut about the mandarin in China. Ye’ll have heard it ad nauseam, but it raises a very interesting moral problem. If by pressing a button which would cause the death of this totally unknown person, ye could benefit three-quarters of the human race, would ye, or would ye not, be justified in pressing the button?”

Mr. Severn’s voice was much nearer as he said,

“How do you know that it’s going to benefit three-quarters of the human race?” The tone had a touch of boredom, a touch of amusement.

“That,” said the Professor, “ye will just have to hypothesize.”

The word rolled grandly off his tongue. Ione considered it with awe. She could not believe that it really existed, but at a more convenient time, when she was able to have recourse to a dictionary, she discovered that it did. At the moment it just floated away and became part of a general state of mind in which dream and reality kept on changing place. The floor was hard, but her ankle had stopped hurting. She heard Mr. Severn say,

“Well, three-quarters of the human race is a fairly large order, and if you get down to brass tacks, I feel pretty sure that the button-pusher is really only interested in one member of it—himself. Is he going to do himself a bit of good, or isn’t he? And if he does his button-pushing, is he going to get away with it? That’s a really very much better problem than the other, you know.”

Professor MacPhail was understood to dissent from this. He used the word sordid with more r’s than the dictionary provides. He was saying that in order to arrive at a philosophic conclusion it was necessary to “impairsonalize” the problem, when Ione drifted away again. There was something about the rise and fall of his periods and the drumming of those Scottish r’s that was very soporific.

When she really woke up there was a feeling of time having passed. She sat up, and was aware of stiffness, and of an arm about her. When she moved it had tightened, but now it relaxed. The voice that had talked with the Professor said,

“Are you awake?”

She drew a long breath.

“Yes—I am. You’ve been holding me—how very kind. I don’t know when I’ve slept like that—I might have been drugged—”

She became aware of several things simultaneously. The air was clearer to breathe, there was light coming in through the fanlight over the door, and there was enough of it to show that there was no longer a third occupant of the stair.

“Where is the Professor?”

“He went when the fog lifted—about half an hour ago.”

“But why didn’t you wake me? We ought to have gone too.”

“Well, I think on the whole he preferred to fade away on his own.”

The light which lay in a yellow oblong across the treads of the stairs was not daylight. It came from a street-lamp which couldn’t be very far away. The fog had lifted, but it was still dark.

She said, “What time is it?”

“It must be nearly three o’clock. If you won’t mind being left, I think the best plan will be for me to go and get my car. It’s in a lock-up garage about a quarter of a mile from here. Is there anywhere I can take you?”

Well, was there? After that fall down the area steps she didn’t feel so sure about an hotel. Three o’clock in the morning is a bit tricky anyway, and if her clothes were in a mess and there was green slime on her face—no, it didn’t really seem to be a very good plan. She said frankly,

“I was thinking about an hotel, but I don’t know that it would do. You see, I had a fall down some area steps—that was when I must have twisted my ankle. I don’t really feel that I can confront a respectable night porter.”

“You don’t live in town?”

“No—just up for the day. My name is Ione Muir.”

“I think I said mine was Jim Severn.”

“Yes. Well, about where I’m to go—I suppose I could knock up Elizabeth Tremayne or Jessica Thorne, but I’d much rather not. Elizabeth would make a good story out of it, and Jessica would go round saying how dreadful it was for weeks. They don’t keep the waiting-rooms open at a railway station, do they? No, I’m practically sure they don’t. I’m afraid it will just have to be an hotel.”

He said in rather a hesitating manner,

“I’ve got a flat, and my old nurse keeps house for me. She’s the most respectable person I ever met.”

Ione broke into laughter.

“And just what, do you suppose, she’ll say when you come home with a strange female at three o’clock in the morning!”

CHAPTER 3

There is something strange about being alone in an empty house. Ione sat on the second step from the bottom of the stair and did what she could to her face and her hair. She had a pocket-comb in her bag, and a compact, and some cleansing-tissue, but what the face really wanted was hot water and soap, and the fact that there was green slime on her hands didn’t make things any easier. She used all the cleansing-tissue, but the result as viewed in a three-inch mirror by the light which was coming through the transom was discouraging. The smudges under her eyes were because of being lost in the fog and falling down steps, but the general greenish tinge was probably due to the fact that the tissue had merely spread the slime instead of removing it. She combed her hair, and thought she looked like one of the plainer ghosts.

She put on her hat, and took it off again. She couldn’t have believed that anything could have made her look worse, but it did. She had rather fancied herself in it, but it was one of those bits of nonsense which depend on everything else being just so—a tilt here, a twist there, and exactly the right hair-do and make-up. Rather snappy when she started out, but now all it did was to make her look like a ghost the worst for drink. She crammed it into the pocket of her coat and sat back to wait for Jim Severn.

The empty silence of the house began to close in upon her. The little sounds which she had been making were at an end. They had gone into the silence and the emptiness and been swallowed up. She began to think of all the times she had been alone in a house without minding it in the least. Why on earth should she mind now? The fact that the house was empty was neither here nor there. Sofas and tables and chairs, and a carpet on the floor—there is really nothing about these to make you feel safe. If there were a carpet on this stair, it would be a little less hard to sit on, but that was all. If she knew that she had only to cross the hall, open a door, and come into a comfortable furnished room, she would not be any more secure than she was at this moment. She was, of course, perfectly secure. The door was locked, and no one could get in without the key which was on Jim Severn’s ring. There was no one but herself in the house.

There was silence, and emptiness, and cold. And now the silence began fantastically to quiver, as if there was a pressure upon it and it might be going to break. Ione pulled her thought up sharply. This, at least, she knew for what it was, a thing out of nursery days when she would lie awake at the top of a tall old house and wait for the everydayness about her to splinter and let through all the terrors of a child’s imagination—thin sliding shadows and broad rolling ones—things that bounced and were suddenly not there any more—things that lurked and made faces at you just out of sight.

The imagination was still a very lively one, but she had it under much better control. She could tell it now quite firmly that it was playing tricks and switch it over to devising a new monologue. Not one about an empty house! That was the sort you could do more comfortably in a lighted room in front of a nice warm fire. This one might be about a girl who got into the wrong house and stumbled on something she wasn’t meant to know. Quite effective if she could hit on just the right vein.... When Jim Severn’s key turned in the lock she was a long way off.

The air outside was cold. She could see all the street-lamps. Even at the end of the road there was only a little mist to blur them. As long as she was careful with her ankle it felt all right. In fact everything in the garden was lovely. She looked at Jim Severn, and he looked at her. She had known that he was tall because of where his voice came from when she ran into him. She saw now that he held himself well, and that he was goodlooking in a pleasant, unobtrusive sort of way. It seemed a pity that she couldn’t have done a better job on her face. First impressions—

What Jim Severn saw was a girl in a torn fur coat with dark hair falling rather straight on either side of a very pale face. He knew already that she had a voice that was not like any other. When it spoke to him out of the fog his ear had been charmed and his imagination captured. It was that kind of voice. Now that he looked at her, he could only think how pale she was and hope that she wasn’t going to faint again. Then he noticed that she had rather amusing eyebrows like little slanting wings. In the lamplight her eyes looked dark.

After that blind groping through the fog the smooth motion of the car was like a beautiful dream. To be able to see across the street and away to the end of it, to be carried along without having to force reluctant feet to carry her, not to have to bother about what was going to happen next—all this was part of the dream. There was also the thought that there might be hot coffee and a bath.

It wasn’t until they were out of the car and half way to the second floor in an automatic lift that she remembered Jim Severn’s old nurse. She ought to have been relying firmly on her, but she had just let her drift into the background of her mind. She couldn’t—no she couldn’t really pretend that anybody’s old nurse was going to be pleased when her Mr. Jim turned up in the middle of the night with a strange girl.

His key turned in the lock and they came into a small pleasant hall with a light burning. She found herself hoping passionately that Nannie was one of those people who could sleep through anything.

The hope failed before she had time to nourish it. From a door on the left there emerged a figure in a quilted dressing-gown of navy blue silk with a good deal of white hair disposed for the night under a strong brown net. There were firm rosy cheeks, and the sort of bright blue eyes that give you the impression that you are being gone over with a magnifying-glass.

Jim Severn hastened to say his piece.

“Nannie, this is Miss Muir. We’ve been held up in the fog, and I’m afraid she has hurt herself. Barbara’s room is ready, isn’t it?”

The blue eyes transferred their gaze to him.

“It’s never been otherwise since we come here.” They returned to Ione. “Good-evening, Miss Muir.” The air fairly crisped with frost.

Ione said in a lovely piteous voice,

“Oh, Nannie, I know it looks dreadful, but I fell down some area steps—and Mr. Severn has been so kind. Do you think—oh, do you think I could possibly have a wash?”

It might have been one thing, or it might have been another. It might have been the quality of the voice or the quiver in it, or just the drawn fatigue of the face out of which two candid eyes looked into hers, but the temperature underwent a marked improvement. Nannie knew a lady when she saw and heard one, green slime or no green slime, and she knew when what was wanted was a hot bath, and a hot drink, and a nice warm bed.

It was while she was laying down the law on these lines that Jim Severn was understood to say that he must go and put away the car.

Nannie threw open the bathroom door.

“Constant hot water is what we have, and it’s not everyone can say that. Now, miss, here’s your towel, and I’ll just go and get you one of Miss Barbara’s nightgowns, and the dressing-gown she keeps here, and some slippers. Eh, dear, but you’ve laddered your stockings—past doing anything to by the look of them! And a tear in your coat—but that will mend. Fur tears easy, and it mends easy too.”

She bustled away, and came back again with an amusing flowered dressing-gown, scarlet slippers, and an extremely decorative nightdress.

“Now, my dear, you just have a nice hot bath. And you needn’t spare the water—it does two easy. But you’d better not be too long, for Mr. Jim will be wanting his. There’s some of Miss Barbara’s bath-salts in that jar.”

It was a heavenly bath, and when it was over there was a heavenly hot drink and a soft, delicious bed. By the time Nannie had tucked her in, opened the window, and put out the light she might have been ordering her about since she was three years old. She didn’t go to sleep. She plunged into it. Dreamless depths closed over her.

CHAPTER 4

The ice never formed again. Nannie brought her a cup of tea at eight, and told her all about Barbara whilst she was drinking it. It appeared that she had ceased to be Miss Barbara to anyone except Nannie for the last ten years or so. She was Lady Carradyne.

“And Sir Humphrey is a very nice gentleman. Wonderful interested in everything to do with the land like a gentleman ought to be, and does very well at it too, so Miss Barbara says. They’ve got a boy of eight and a half, and a little girl of five—a real little love. But of course I couldn’t leave Mr. Jim, so I recommended my niece. And if Miss Barbara has a mind to come up to town and stay over, well, there’s her room always ready, and no need to let us know. She’s got her key and can just walk in.”

Ione checked the thought that it was just as well that Barbara hadn’t walked in at, say, four o’clock in the morning to find a strange girl in her bed.

Nannie went on talking. By the time Ione was dressed, with a pair of Barbara’s stockings to take the place of her ruined ones, she knew what an old and distinguished firm of architects Jim Severn belonged to. There were two uncles in it, and one of them wouldn’t be very long before he retired, and then Mr. Jim would go up a step.

“His father died when the children were still in the nursery—him and Miss Barbara—and their mother married again. But she didn’t live long either, so you may say they never had anyone but each other, Mr. Jim and Miss Barbara.”

Ione listened, but she had to think as well. The first thing to be done was to ring up Wanetree and placate Norris, who would certainly be feeling fierce about her failure either to return or to let them know that she was not coming back last night. She ought to have done it before really—not in the middle of the night, but more or less at crack of dawn, which at this time of year would be getting on for a quarter to eight.

Norris was Cousin Eleanor’s maid, and a domestic tyrant of forty years’ standing. She answered the call in a very bad temper indeed and scolded Ione as if she were five years old.

“Staying out all night, and not so much as troubling to give us a ring! I’m sure I don’t know what things are coming to! And if Miss Eleanor isn’t downright ill, thinking something might have happened—well, it’s no thanks to those that should know better, and that I will say, and nobody is going to get me from it!”

Ione took a deep patient breath. She really had known Norris since she was five, and the only thing you could do with her when she was in a mood was just to go on saying whatever you had to say until some of it got in.

“Listen, Norrie—”

“And don’t you Norrie me, Miss Ione! There’s those that can have dust thrown in their eyes, and those that can’t nor won’t!”

“Norrie, do just listen! There was a fog—F, O, G—fog.”

“Nor I don’t want things spelled at me neither!”

“Look in the morning papers! It was the worst fog ever. I fell down some area steps, and I never got near a telephone till half past three, and then I thought I’d better let it alone.”

“I should think so indeed—waking the whole house in the middle of the night!”

“Norrie—you didn’t tell Cousin Eleanor, did you?... No, I thought you wouldn’t. It’s so bad for her to worry.”

There was a portentous sniff at the other end of the line.

“And whose fault would it be if she did? Only for me she’d be half off her head by now, but I’m not so short of trouble that I’d go telling her what there’s no need for her to fret about! She doesn’t know but what I’m taking you in a cup of tea at this identical moment.”

Ione rang off with relief and got dressed. She put in some good work on the face. Nobody wants to be remembered as a green wraith floating in a fog. Barbara seemed to have brought Nannie very well up to date, before she actually approved the result, commenting favourably on Ione’s choice of lipstick. She had mended the tear in the fur coat and sponged and pressed the skirt of the brown suit. The hat went on nicely. Altogether quite a pleasant transformation scene.

Men hadn’t to bother of course. Jim Severn looked exactly the same at breakfast as he had done the night before under a street-lamp. There was a moment when this breakfast-table meeting seemed stranger than anything that had happened last night. This time yesterday neither of them knew that the other existed. Only six hours ago neither of them had the faintest idea what the other looked like. And now here they were, sitting down to breakfast together in his flat. If only Norrie knew! But even Norrie would be satisfied with Nannie as a chaperon. She began to laugh, and he saw how quick and sensitive her face was, and that her eyes were not really dark, but grey with brown flecks in them.

Well, you can’t just laugh in a man’s face and not tell him why, so she told him about Norris and Cousin Eleanor. And from there they seemed to get on to her American visit, she didn’t quite know how or why, and she told him about the monologues.

“Of course you have just the right voice. I should think you could make it express anything you wanted it to. Are you going on with them over here?”

“I’ve had some offers—but I told you Cousin Eleanor has been ill. And she’s not just an ordinary cousin, she brought us up.”

“Us?”

“I have a sister—Allegra. She is married to a man called Geoffrey Trent. I’m going to stay with them next week, and after that I shall have to make some plans. Cousin Eleanor is much better.”

Jim Severn was frowning.

“Now where did I come across that name?... Of course—how stupid!”

He got up, went out of the room, and came back again with a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.

“I was quite puzzled for the moment. But of course you must have dropped it last night. I picked it up on the stairs in the house we were in.”

Ione took the paper and smoothed it out. It was a bit torn irregularly off the edge of a newspaper. It was rather dirty and very much creased. The words pencilled upon the blank margin were well on their way to being illegible. If they had not been familiar to Ione, she would probably have been unable to read them. As it was, she stared at them in surprise. There was a name, and the name was Geoffrey Trent. And there was an address.

She stared at it. Faint as the words were, she could not mistake them:

The Ladies’ House,

Bleake.

It was Geoffrey Trent’s address, but how in the world could Jim Severn have come by it? Her voice dragged a little as she said,

“I’ve never seen it before.”