The Grey Woman E-Book

Fred M. White

• Herausgeber: Ktoczyta.pl
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Often in the stories written by Fred M. White the main character is mysterious. The model of such a hero is George Verily, Ex-Company Sergeant-Major. He was madly in love with his maid. However, he could not even decide on the first step. Some of the events that occurred recently in front of George Verili made him believe that an unforeseen circumstance could happen...

Leseprobe

Contents

I. THE GOLD SNUFF-BOX.

II. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.

III. THE APHRODITE CLUB.

IV. PAMELA SEES IT THROUGH.

V. SINISTER HOUSE.

VI. INSIDE.

VII. INTRODUCING PRINCE SERGIUS PHASY.

VIII. THE STORY OF A SIN.

IX. A SPIDER’S WEB.

X. STOLEN!

XI. ROGUES IN COUNCIL.

XII. A SURPRISE FOR MUSGRAVE.

XIII. IN THE STUDIO.

XIV. PAMELA WAKES UP.

XV. A MATTER OF FINANCE.

XVI. THE WOMAN IN WHITE.

XVII. RATTY DUTTON OBLIGES.

XVIII. THE EMBOSSED ENVELOPE.

XIX. NO THOROUGHFARE.

XX. GLENTOWER.

XXI. THE OLD MILL.

XXII. S.O.S.

XXIII. HERONSPEY AT BAY.

XXIV. JULIE CORTI.

XXV. HERONSPEY MOVES.

XXVI. HARTLEY HORNE BREAKS SILENCE.

XXVII. THE OTHER WOMAN.

XXVIII. STILL ANOTHER WOMAN.

XXIX. THE YALE LATCHKEY.

XXX. THE RUINED MILL.

XXXI. THE MILL LOFT.

XXXII. MARY’S LITTLE WAY.

XXXIII. PAMELA HEARS SOMETHING.

XXXIV. AFTER MANY YEARS.

XXXV. GATHERING THREADS.

XXXVI. THE SNUFF-BOX AGAIN.

XXXVII. MARY COTTON’S TRUMP CARD.

XXXVIII. GAS!

XXXIX. ELINOR HERONSPEY.

XL. ELINOR’S STORY.

I. THE GOLD SNUFF-BOX

Ex-Company Sergeant-Major George Verily, V.C., took the early morning tea tray, with its orange pekoe and the thin toast, from the pretty parlourmaid, and proceeded to the Captain’s room. It was almost part of George’s ritual to speak of his employer, Mr. Joseph Musgrave, as the Captain. In point of fact, Musgrave had been no more than a mere private in the Great War, and the man who now served him as a valet and factotum had been his superior officer. And when the strife was over, Joe Musgrave had come back to something a little better than mere civilisation, and had taken George Verily with him, and the latter had remained more or less in command of Number 4 Mayfair Mansions ever since. Some of these days George would probably marry Mary Cotton, the parlourmaid, and start an establishment of his own. Meanwhile, he was perfectly content to serve a kind-hearted and generous master, who was wise enough in his day and generation to appreciate a really good servant when he had one.

Verily had started life in a small tailor’s shop somewhere off Holborn. There he had learnt the art of repairing and pressing clothes, and the general care of wardrobes belonging to the minor aristocracy, who had to be careful in such things. There had been a time when George had cherished certain vague ambitions, but, four years of Armageddon had knocked all that out of him, and he was only too glad when the time came to avail himself of the offer that Musgrave had made him.

Between the two there was a kind of half-intimacy that was not displeasing to George Verily. He had a fine appreciation of the lighter side of inconsequent humour, in which Musgrave was a past master–not an unusual flair in a man who enjoys perfect health and an income which is more than his needs, despite the stern demands of the super-tax collector. So, for five years or more, this queer, lopsided friendship had gone on, much to Verily’s benefit, and was likely to continue until Musgrave abandoned his bachelor habits and settled down to what he himself called fettered responsibility. And certain events which had recently come under the eye of George Verily, led him to believe that such a contingency was not so remote as he and the pretty parlourmaid, Mary Cotton, had imagined.

Verily stole on respectful tip-toe into his master’s bedroom and drew back the blinds, letting in the sunlight of what promised to be a beautiful morning. He approached the bed with its luxurious hangings as Musgrave opened a pair of sleepy blue eyes and came back to the consciousness of his splendid young manhood. He sat up, a towsled figure in orange silk pyjamas.

“Morning, George,” he said. “The tea. Ah, yes. Nice morning. What am I going to do to-day?”

“Well, sir,” Verily murmured. “Your birthday, I think, sir.”

Musgrave took a gulp of his tea and those fine white teeth of his bit into the crisp toast.

“By Jove, so it is,” he exclaimed. “Another of those dashed things, George. Why, I think I remember having one just a year ago. Am I thirty-three or thirty-four? Dashed if I don’t forget which. Milestones, George, milestones on the road of life. It’s a solemn thought. According to all the philosophers and writers who devote themselves to showing us the path of progress, I have reached a time when youth must be served. At least, so they say, though they take dashed good care to keep youth in the background as much as possible. But let’s get back to more serious things. What did I tell you I was going to do to-day? I expect you to remember these things, George.”

“I do my best, sir,” Verily said, with a solemnity fitting the question. “You were going out this morning to buy a wedding present for the Honourable Lionel Desmond.”

“Ah, yes, so I was. Extraordinary thing, George, how the spirit of adventure lures us on. Here is Desmond, with everything he wants, plunging headlong into matrimony, much in the same spirit as a man trying a new brand of champagne. It might be my own fate one of these days, George.”

“I should think that it is extremely likely, sir,” Verily said. “You always were venturesome.”

“Venturesome!” Musgrave laughed. “That is rather good, George. But these modern girls, eh, what?”

George was under the impression that there was not very much wrong with the modern girl, if you regarded her from the proper angle. He might have said a good deal more had he been inclined, but, after his modest opinion remained silent.

“And what else was I going to do?” Musgrave asked.

“Take a lady out to lunch, sir. Then spend the afternoon on the new ice rink. And then, unless I am wrong, sir, you are dining at the Cosmopolis with Miss Pamela Dacre and Miss Daphne Lyne, together with Mr. James Primrose. And I think you said something about going on to a dance-club afterwards.”

“Perfectly right George,” Musgrave agreed. “I remember it all now. Turn on my bath water and get the boxing gloves out. We’ll just have ten minutes with them before I bath and breakfast. That will do.”

So Musgrave and his man set to heartily, after which followed a hearty breakfast, and then, beautifully turned out, Musgrave sauntered into the sunshine with the intention of making a purchase or two and spending an hour or so at the club.

He found himself presently in a by-street off Soho. He was going to buy a wedding present for a friend without having the least idea as to what shape the present would take, which is a frame of mind common to most people in search of wedding offerings. Cigarette cases and cuff links and waistcoat buttons wandered through his mind. For a little time he stood outside an old curiosity shop studying the various treasures in the window. Presently an object there attracted his attention. He turned resolutely into the shop and asked to see the platinum watch chain in the window. A little man behind the counter with a huge hooked nose and a curious accent laid the chain before his prospective purchaser. He knew his business, did the Jew dealer, so that, in a minute or two there were other tempting objects displayed before Musgrave’s eyes. There were not many of these, but Musgrave could see that they were choice. He had an eye for that sort of thing, so he was not a little interested.

“I’ll take the chain,” he said. “How much did you say it was? Seventeen pounds. Yes. Here, what’s this?”

As he spoke, Musgrave’s manner changed. He bent eagerly over what appeared to be a shallow gold snuff-box. It was some five inches in length and the same in width, with a thin base and, by comparison, a thick, heavy lid. On the top was some fine filigree work, and, in the centre of it a medallion of a woman’s head painted on ivory, and protected by an oval sheet of crystal let into a narrow claw-like frame.

“By Jove,” Musgrave murmured. “By Jove!”

“Is there anything wrong, sir?” the little man behind the counter asked anxiously. “You haf seen that case before, yes? It is to you von memory.”

“Well, in a sense,” Musgrave said. “But I can assure you I have never seen that box before.”

“Ve never know,” the shopkeeper said. “Ve do our best, but zometime ve get things offered for zale by der thieves. And den the police make trouble. I get him from a zailorman, and because he is valuable, I ask the zailorman his name and address. I give him for that case ten pound.”

“And jolly cheap, too,” Musgrave laughed. “A very nice piece of work, Old French, I should say. If you will accept a fiver on your bargain, I will take it off your hands.”

The man behind the counter hastily agreed, and Musgrave walked out of the shop with the two purchases in his pocket. He seemed very thoughtful as he strolled towards his club.

“It’s a wonderful likeness,” he murmured to himself. “Making an allowance for the difference in the age and the dress, and the way the hair is arranged, it might be one and the same. There could hardly be a chance likeness like that.”

The long day of ease and luxury wore on until Musgrave lounged back to his flat and dressed leisurely for his birthday dinner. He was inviting no more than an old friend and Pamela Dacre, the girl he intended to marry, together with Daphne Lyne. Pamela he had known ever since she was a child. She was one of those peculiar products of modern Society, concerning which so much has been written in the public Press during the last ten years. The typical modern Society Girl who affords so many stray guineas to writers who affect to see in her the coming decay of the British Empire. The bachelor girl, who lives entirely for herself and who has no ideas beyond sport and dancing and the wearing of clothes. The cocktail girl, turning night into day and burning up her physical energy what time she ought to be thinking about the future of the race. There was a certain grain of truth in this, so far as Pamela was concerned, because, so far, she had pursued her ruthless, selfish way along the perilous path without need for the feelings of others. And there was an air of mystery, too, about Pamela Dacre. Nobody quite knew who she was. She had been educated in England and Paris, she was seen everywhere and known to everybody; but who her people were and where she came from nobody cared to ask. She appeared to have the command of considerable money which she derived directly from an elderly lawyer of the Tulkinghorn type who lived in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. And because this Hartley Horne was attorney to a score of great country families, and seeing that he tacitly vouched for Pamela’s unimpeachable respectability, nobody asked any questions and everybody took Pamela for granted. It is one of the characteristics of the age.

As to Pamela’s beauty and charm, there were no two opinions. And as to her birth and breeding the mere sight of her was a satisfactory answer. It was her pose at the mature age of twenty-three to be bored and weary of the world, and as one who had sucked life’s orange and found it dry. There were few people who knew what lay under this shallow crust of painted artificiality, but Musgrave was one of them and, though he carefully disguised his sentiments, he had watched over her and cared for her more than a brother during the last three years.

It would be absurd to believe that a girl like Pamela, with her cleverness and her knowledge of the world, was ignorant of Joe’s feelings. But whether she was or not, she made no sign, though, sooner or later, she knew that she would have to come to a decision. There was no suggestion that she was lonely or desolate, or that there were times when she bared her soul to herself and asked that self certain searching questions. But these thoughts Pamela kept entirely to herself. And so the pose went on.

It was characteristic of Pamela that she lived in a tiny flat where she was looked after by a mysterious elderly female, and that she came and went just as she pleased. Nobody asked any questions and there was no scandal, simply because Pamela Dacre was just Pamela Dacre and no man could ever boast that she had thrown him a flower or showed him a favour.

But it was not altogether a happy Pamela who came back to the flat, tired out after a day’s motor racing on a private track in Sussex and changed into one of her most striking costumes to go out to dine when she would far rather have gone to bed.

II. THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

It was an hour later that Pamela drifted into the palm lounge of the Cosmopolis with a weary air of one who has been surfeited on Dead Sea fruit. She wanted a watching world to know that she had been everywhere and done everything, that she had shed all her illusions at the early age of twenty-three. There are lots of Pamelas like that in these times, but very few carry it off in the finished way peculiar to our particular Pamela.

She looked so exceedingly pretty and alluring, with her slim boyish figure, the liquid grey eyes, and the rebellious brown-bronze hair clustering round her shapely head. With it all, she had that semi-insolent, semi-patronising air which proclaims breeding all the world over. She seemed to carry all the insolence and courage which go with a score of sheltered generations and the subsconsciousness of race, with it all a sense of power and knowledge, because there were few things that Pamela could not do, and do well. She rode like Diana of the Chase, she could handle a gun with the best of them, and at tennis and golf she was to be taken almost religiously. Small wonder, then, that this spoilt child of the gods should carry herself before the eyes of men and women as if she were the heiress of the ages.

But, to put it quite plainly, she was an exceedingly spoilt young woman, allowed to go entirely her own way since her school days, with more money to spend than was good for her, and only casually looked after by that snuffy old guardian of hers, who sat in Lincoln’s Inn Fields amongst the dusty cobwebs, like some bloated old spider whose whole life is devoted to the guardianship of family secrets. Thus, Pamela, as she drifted into the lounge, conscious, as always, of the sensation she was creating.

As a matter of fact she did not want to be there at all. At the last moment she had dragged herself to the hotel, more out of loyalty to Joe Musgrave than anything else, because she had been out in the open all day and had driven herself back to town in her two-seater at a speed which more than once had threatened to land her in serious trouble. Then, tired as she was, she flung herself into the flimsy sketchiness which modern fashion calls an evening frock and had come round to the Cosmopolis, feeling rather more dead than alive.

She dropped wearily into a seat and nodded to her companions who had been patiently awaiting her coming. She was half asleep and made no effort to conceal the fact.

“Cheerio, people,” she drawled. “Cheerio. But, tell me, why this atmosphere of gentle melancholy?”

“You are jolly late,” Musgrave ventured almost timidly.

“Is that all? I call half an hour’s grace a miracle of punctuality. I motored back from Haddon without any tea and when I got home I was almost too exhausted to change. What an ungrateful beast you are, Joe. Daphne, you look topping. Wearing the family pearls, and all.”

Daphne Lyne expanded under the compliment. She was much of the same type as Pamela on a less rapid scale. Pretty and rather clinging, the stamp that settles down eventually in some country home to a life of placid domesticity. But she was not insensible to the compliment Pamela paid her.

“Perhaps I ought not to have worn the pearls, Pam,” she said. “But in honour of Joe’s birthday, don’t you know. I shouldn’t have had them if mother had been at home, but I happen to know where she keeps the key of her safe, and I–well–I sneaked them. Positively for one appearance only.”

“Anyhow, they go jolly well with that coral frock of yours,” Pamela said. “Oh, do wake up, some of you. What are you dreaming about, Joe? A nice host you are. If I don’t have a cocktail I shall never get as far as the dining-room.”

Musgrave summoned the hovering waiter grudgingly. This was the sort of thing in Pamela that he hated. He knew well enough that she possessed a sound mind and a sound body, and that the cocktail business was all part of the pose which she had been assuming for a good many months past. He knew perfectly well that if Pamela never saw another cocktail in her life, it would not cause her so much as a passing pang. And yet–and yet in public places like this she invariably assumed the suggestion that a cocktail to her was as the breath of life.

The discreet waiter stood there non-committally.

“Dry Martini for me,” Pamela drawled.

“Oh, all right,” Musgrave growled. “Waiter, dry Martini for four. Not that I want it–I hate the confounded things myself. However––”

“Not for me, thanks,” Daphne protested.

“Our pure bride to be,” Pamela scoffed. “Carry on, Joe. In my alarming state I can do with two.”

There was a frown on Musgrave’s brow as they drifted in to dinner. As a healthy-minded sportsman, he detested this cocktail habit, especially in the woman he loved and hoped, at long last, to make his wife. It was all very well now and then, as part of Pamela’s pose, but that sort of thing can be so easily overdone, and is a habit that grows, especially with a girl who burns the candle at both ends as Pamela was doing day by day, or rather night by night. If he only had the right to stop it!

But it was not the time or place for moralising. He would take a more favourable opportunity of expostulating with Pamela, and, in the meantime, make the best of the passing hour. The idea, as he explained to his guests, was to dine regally and do some sort of a show afterwards, winding up at a dance club.

“Good egg,” Jimmy Primrose declared. “Give Daphne a chance to see beyond the convent walls once more.”

“Of come, mother isn’t as bad as all that,” Daphne protested. “Of course, if she were at home I shouldn’t be allowed to go to a night club, but she needn’t know anything about that.”

“She’s a regular ogre,” Pamela laughed. “It’s lucky for her that she hasn’t got a daughter like me. Daphne, you are going to shirk the best part of the evening are you?”

“Of course, she isn’t,” Primrose declared stoutly.

“It’s the Puritan blood in her veins holds her back,” Pamela scoffed lightly. “The same complaint you suffer from, Joe. Some ancestor of yours must have been a friend of Oliver Cromwell.”

“Don’t let’s quarrel,” Daphne smiled. “I don’t mind, especially if Joe takes the blame.”

“Oh, I’m quite willing to do that,” Musgrave said. “It isn’t the night club I object to so much as the atmosphere of it. Pamela wanted to go, and, of course––”

“Now, look here, Joe,” Pamela said, “you can drop that parental attitude. If I want to go to a night club, well, I go to a night club. And that’s that. And if I choose to go alone, that’s that again. What’s the harm in it.”

“None,” Joe admitted. “But I hate the idea of you and girls like you rubbing shoulders with the scum of the universe which you find in every night club. I don’t care where it is and which it is. Of course, I don’t mean burglars and that class of criminal, because I am alluding to much more dangerous entities than that. Men who started life with every advantage. Public school and ‘varsity and so forth. The most dangerous scoundrel on earth is the pigeon turned hawk. I know lots of them. Well dressed, beautifully turned out, charming manners and all that sort of thing, but under their feathers they are birds of prey of the most diabolical kind. Swindlers and blackmailers. Oh, I know. And Jimmy Primrose knows too.”

“Pretty hot stuff, some of ‘em,” Jimmy agreed. “Of course, it doesn’t matter so much with us men, because we can be outwardly friendly and keep ‘em at a distance at the same time. But when they get round some of our womankind, as a lot of them have done, then it is a different matter altogether. I hate to say it, Pamela, but if I happened to be your brother I’d stop you going to a night club alone, if I had to lock you in your bedroom.”

Pamela smiled in her most patronising manner.

“Listen to Jimmy,” she said. “The softest innocent in our set. Can’t you see Jimmy as a sort of St. George protecting confiding women from the wolves? Oh, come along; if we’re going to do a show first we must get a move on. And, Joe, look a bit more cheerful. Anybody would think that it was your funeral instead of your birthday. Smile, smile, smile.”

III. THE APHRODITE CLUB

It was getting late before Joe Musgrave’s little party turned out of the Metrodrome and made their way as far as the dance club which the host had selected as an appropriate spot with which to wind up the evening. It had not been a successful birthday party, and Joe, on his part, would be glad enough to see the end of it. As far as he was concerned, he had not the least desire to go on to the Aphrodite, which had been a concession to Pamela and that pose of hers of which he was getting heartily tired. Again, he knew perfectly well that Daphne’s mother strongly objected to that sort of thing, and that if she ever found out how he had taken advantage of her absence from London, she would most certainly make things unpleasant for him. He glanced from time to time at the pearls round Daphne’s neck and hoped that all might be well with them. Other girls at The Aphrodite were equally equipped with such costly ornaments, but there was always the risk of trouble, even in the very best appointed dance clubs in London. Joe made up his mind that the expiration of another hour would see him and his friends on their way home.

A clock somewhere was striking one as they entered the club. It was the last word in London’s dancing halls, and a fine cosmopolitan crowd had gathered there. A good many of the dancers belonged to the same class as Joe and his party and, on the other hand, a great many of them didn’t. But, for the moment, at any rate, The Aphrodite had a cachet of its own, which was denied to other resorts of the same calibre. A sporting peer with somewhat of a hectic past was supposed to be behind it, and for the moment at least he was mending his broken fortunes there. Anyway Society had smiled on The Aphrodite and was according it a pleasing measure of its golden favours. But exclusive it never could be, and there were many strange fish swimming in those tropical waters. This was a fact that did not waste itself on the argus eyes of the law whose extensive knowledge of the roseate past of the noble owner inclined to carefulness so far as that Haymarket establishment was concerned. Meanwhile the ball rolled merrily and London’s capital gathered there o’ nights with a leavening of the cosmopolitan element, a deal of which had come in contact with justice in her sterner moments.

The dining and supper rooms of The Aphrodite were in the basement, with the dancing room and bar on the first floor. Behind the men’s cloakroom was a mysterious door that seemed to lead to nowhere, though some of those in the know might have thrown some light on the subject. But nobody had ever seen the door open and, with average luck, probably never would.

As Joe led his party into the room where dancing was in full fling, he saw that the floor was crowded. He was still a little quiet and moody, with Daphne rather frightened and Pamela hiding her physical weariness behind a cloak of bored cynicism.

“What a mob,” she drawled, none too quietly. “An engaging mixture of high Society and high crime. And, upon my word, the submerged tenth seem to be better turned out than the caste of Vere de Vere. Oh, look at that man with the curly hair. I should like to have a dance with him.”

“Would you?” Joe asked grumpily. “I happen to know something about him. Sort of man-about-town who is always well turned out and with money to burn. Lives in a luxurious flat and is strongly suspected of having had a hand in the disappearance of Lady Maidenham’s jewels. Educated and all that and very nearly ‘just so,’ but the sort of chap to be avoided.”

“You are right there,” a voice broke in at Joe’s elbow. “Miss Dacre, Joe knows what he is talking about.”

Pamela swung half insolently round to confront a very old man, absolutely bald, but whose clear blue eyes and magnificently false teeth detracted at least 20 years from what must have been his age. A very old man, yet carrying himself jauntily and with a vivacity that was truly astonishing.

“What, you here!” she said. “Well, there is something about modern dancing after all. Who was it said that there is nothing like dancing to keep one young?”

Sir John Goldsworthy, man of the world, diplomat of distinction and, incidentally, an octogenarian, fixed his glass in his eye and regarded Pamela with flattering approval.

“It is, indeed, the secret of perennial youth, my dear young lady,” he smiled. “Look at me. Eighty years of age and footing it with the best of them. But my friend Joe Musgrave was quite right in what he was saying about that young man with the Hyperion locks. I know you modern girls don’t care who you dance with so long as your partner is good, but if you will take my advice you will give Vivian Beaucaire a wide berth. But don’t let me interrupt you.”

With that the aged Adonis slipped away into the crowd and was speedily lost to view.

“Wonderful old boy,” Jimmy Primrose murmured. “There is a man who knows more of English family secrets than anyone alive. Lord, what a biography he could write. Talk about Samuel Pepys, why he wouldn’t be in it with Goldsworthy. Fifty years in the Diplomat’s Service, too. The biggest old gossip in London. He ought to have been dead long ago.”

“Nobody dies nowadays,” Pamela drawled. “They haven’t the time. But really, Joe, is that man with the curly hair as bad as you make him out to be. He looks to me more like an Admirable Crichton than a picturesque villain.”

“Most of that class do, nowadays,” Joe said grimly. “But he’s a real bad lot. His mother was English but his father was French. Supposed to belong to a fine old family. Anyway, he was at Winchester and Oxford, and didn’t do badly in the war. I suppose his name is really Beaucaire, though I must confess that it has a Claude Duval flavour about it. Oh, yes, he is handsome enough, and fascinating too, and belongs to one or two good clubs, but he is suspect, all the same. Sort of man people are always talking about, without ever being able to lay hands upon any sinister spot. But never mind about him. If we are to make effort to enjoy this sort of thing, the sooner we start the better. Now, come along.”

An hour or so elapsed and Musgrave was beginning to wonder how much longer Pamela could keep it up. That she was utterly worn out in mind and body he could plainly see, and yet, at the same time, he knew that any hint from him as to bed would be resented with scorn and contumely. His moody eye took in the the motley throng dancing on the crowded floor. A queer sort of social leavening which would have been impossible before the war. The dainty aristocrat and Madame Anonyma members of the same house-party, so to speak. A sleek Hebrew slid by with the most beautiful woman in the room on his arm. A tall goddess she, in flaming red, who might have come direct from an imperial palace if she had not happened to be an assistant in a Dover-street modiste’s establishment.

Pamela tapped her foot impatiently on the floor. She had danced once or twice with her own party, but that had not satisfied a natural thirst for adventure. Tired as she was, she had reacted strongly to the exotic atmosphere. Those cocktails, that Joe so loathed and hated, together with two glasses of champagne at dinner, acted as a charm in washing out the deadly tiredness that she had brought with her when first she passed through the front door of The Aphrodite. That high racial courage of hers and calm sense of superiority stood her in good stead now and the spirit of adventure moved her to a certain recklessness.

“Come on, Joe,” she ordered. “On with the dance, let joy be unconfined. Don’t stand there with a moody frown on your brow, like Brunswick’s fated chieftain.”

Daphne and Jimmy Primrose had disappeared somewhere amongst the giddy throng that swayed on the floor. But still Joe Musgrave held back. Troubled in the honest mind of his was Joe–troubled and worried about Pamela. Those cocktails he could not, somehow or other, get out of his mind. He knew only too well the source of excitement which was carrying her on when she was not far off a physical collapse. So easy to begin like this, so difficult to leave off later. And practically no rest day or night. In the country, on the links, in the saddle, on the moorside, there was a different Pamela altogether. No seeking artificial stimulation there. If he could not get her out of this into the open again for good, with, perhaps, a week of two in town occasionally, Pamela of the rosy tinted cheeks would come back again. But for the moment––

“I suppose Achilles prefers to sulk in his tent,” Pamela went on. “Even so, my lord?”

“It isn’t that,” Joe protested. “You are done to the world, and you know it. Why not own up and go to bed? I haven’t had a day to compare with yours, and yet I can hardly keep my eyes open. There is reason in all things, Pam.”

“Very well,” Pamela retorted. “Even so, my lord. Then I will seek solace elsewhere. I see Billy Sefton over there without a partner. He will welcome me with open arms.”

Pamela had vanished before Joe could protest. She was more angry with him, despite her assumed cynical indifference, than she cared to confess. She had always known in the back of her mind that, sooner or later, she and Joe would make a match of it. Everybody looked forward to that consummation as a matter of course. There were all the gifts of the gods on both sides, with youth and beauty as the crowning glory.

And all might have been well but for Pamela’s cynical pose. She liked to assume the detached air of a mature wisdom, regarding with half-closed eyes the empty follies of poor humanity, much as the theatre-goer in the stalls criticises a brilliant comedy in the light of personal experience. Jimmy Primrose always maintained that Pamela had caught the trick from some matinee idol whom she had secretly admired. Still, there it was and, what was more, it had lasted for the better part of twelve months. That and the cocktails and the––

“All alone, Joe,” Jimmy struck in on Joe’s pensive moodiness. “Where have you shed Pamela?”

“Dancing with Bill Sefton,” Joe explained. “Somewhere in the thick of the scrum. I haven’t caught sight of her during the last half hour. Ah, there she is.”

Pamela flashed out of the mob of dancers so close to the table where the others were standing that they could almost have touched her. Came a gasp of astonishment from Daphne, something like a whistle from Jimmy, and a smothered curse from Joe.

For Pamela was dancing with the curly-haired man!

She came back to the table presently with a slow smile dawning on her face. She threw a challenge at Joe.

“A wonderful dancer,” she drawled. “Positively the first time I have really enjoyed the Charleston.”

“How–how did you manage it?” Daphne stammered.

“Oh, I asked Billy Sefton. He seemed to know the man and brought us together. And, of course, Billy Sefton being what he is, would never have introduced Vivian Beaucaire unless he had been all right, whatever Joe may say.”

Joe rose from his chair with a grim expression on his face.

“I have had about enough of this,” he declared. “I am going home, right here and now. Of course, if you others like to remain, you can, it is no concern of mine.”

“Going to leave me here,” Pamela gibed.

“That is for you to say. You heard what Goldsworthy had to say about Beaucaire, and yet in the face of that you deliberately choose to dance with the man. Have you no sort of regard for your reputation?”

“I think I can take care of that,” Pamela said icily.

“Oh, be a sport, Joe,” Jimmy pleaded. “Don’t spoil the evening because Pamela likes to cut a caper. Hang it all, we are your guests here, don’t you know.”

“I haven’t forgotten it,” Joe growled. “But even a host is entitled to some sort of consideration. I am going home and you others can stay or not, as you like.”

“Here I am and here I stay,” Pamela quoted. “Besides, this cave-man stuff doesn’t appeal to me.”

“Just a little longer, Joe,” Daphne implored.

“Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” Jimmy suggested. “I mean Daphne might. I’ll see her home.”

“Very well,” Joe said grimly. “You others can do as you like. I am going home to bed.”

With his head high in the air, Joe stalked out and the place knew him no more. Pamela smiled languidly.

“What a masculine act,” she exclaimed. “Where do these Victorian survivals come from. And what ought we to feed them on? Dear old Methuselah.”

“Think he really has gone home?” Jimmy asked.

“Beyond the shadow of a doubt,” Pamela laughed. “It was ever Joe’s habit, when peeved, to go straight to bed. He will probably lie awake the rest of the night worrying about us and wondering if he did the right thing. When I get back home I will ring him up on the telephone. He has an extension to his bedside, and, it might soothe his anxious mind to know that I have not been abducted by a sort of West End sheik. And now let’s get on with it. I am fed up with Joe.”

But somehow Pamela did not get on with it. A wave of tiredness swept over her, a tiredness which was not altogether without a touch of remorse. She would pick up a partner presently, she told the others; meanwhile she would sit and look on. There were several men in the room who were known to her and one of them would come up and ask her for a dance.

So she sat there alone, in that fine calm pose of hers, feeling a little dejected and unhappy. Not that she was worrying about Joe–oh dear, no, Joe would be all right when they met on the morrow, as he always was after a tiff. It was part of the ritual. Still, she wished now––

Some sort of a disturbance at the far end of the floor distracted her introspective philosophy. An erratic performer, probably the worse for a glass or two of the club’s vile champagne, charged into a passing couple and brought them down. Just for a moment the suggestion of a football scrimmage was there. Then the tangle of silk and black and white resolved itself, and from it emerged Daphne and Jimmy, hot and indignant.

“Drunken swine,” Jimmy fumed. “Barged right into us. And if some chap hadn’t given Daphne a hand she might have been hurt. Took a toss as it was, poor girl.”

“So you were in the melee?” Pamela asked. “In my more penitent moments, I wonder why we come to these places. But, Daphne, old thing, what has become of your pearl necklace?”

Daphne put a trembling hand to her throat and gasped. The precious family pearls were no longer there.

“Pinched for a million,” Jimmy groaned. “Let’s raise the cry. Have the door locked and everybody searched.”

Pamela laid a restraining hand on his arm. It was in moments like this that her natural courage and coolness stood her in such good stead.

“Be quiet,” she whispered. “Sit down. Don’t let anybody see that we are disturbed. If we pretend not to notice the loss the thieves, who are probably watching us, will stay where they are. Once we start a hue and cry, then they will go hand to hand and Daphne will never see her family treasures again. Probably even the waiters are in league with the thieves. No, our only chance is to keep quiet and watch. We don’t want a scandal, or to give the papers anything to talk about. Now, Daphne, try and look natural. Smile at me, smile as if you had nothing on your mind. That’s better. Did you notice any sort of snatch, Daphne? I mean, when that man picked you up?”

“I believe I did, now I come to think of it,” Daphne declared. “The man who caught me as I was falling was probably the cause of all the trouble.”

“Could you pick him out?” Pamela asked.

“Of course, I could,” Daphne said. “He is the man you were dancing with. The man called Beaucaire.”

“By Jove, you are right,” Jimmy exclaimed. “Let me go and speak to him. Take him on the side and punch the stones out of him. That’s the idea, Pamela.”

“Really,” Pamela smiled pityingly. “And get punched for your pains. You would have half a dozen confederates on you at once. For goodness’ sake let us keep our heads. Daphne, pretend to ignore your loss. Act as if you were ignorant of the robbery. The man won’t leave the club yet, he is too cool a hand at the game for that. There! You see, he is dancing again with that lovely Dover-street girl just as if nothing had happened. What a splendid nerve.”

“And meanwhile I sneak out for the police?” Jimmy queried.

“Meanwhile you do nothing of the sort,” Pamela said scornfully. “We stay here and watch–at least, I stay and watch while you two go on dancing. When that man leaves, we follow him. Track him to his flat in a taxi. Then perhaps Jimmy can bring off his famous right hook, or whatever they call it in pugilistic circles. Man to man, you are worth two of him. That is, when you are alone together. And it’s any money that he has got the pearls, or will have before he leaves the club, because he is not the type to trust anybody else. Buck up, don’t look so scared. Off you both go.”

For the best part of an hour Daphne kept a narrowed eye on the fair-haired man. She could see him weaving in and out of the kaleidoscope of dazzling froth of colour on the floor. Then suddenly a whisper ran through the throng which shaped itself presently into one word, and that “Police.”

Followed a sort of frightened silence, like that of scared rabbits when a dog approaches the staccato scream of a woman and the hurried hiding of glasses under tables. There were countless vessels of contraband there, at that hour of the young morning. Then, in the main doorway, the gleam of a couple of police helmets and the voice of a man speaking with authority.

Pamela’s pose of bored detachment fell from her like a garment. She had nothing to fear, neither had her party, for nothing in the way of refreshment had passed their lips since they entered the club. There might be talk and a little scandal, but nothing worse than that. And there were the pearls to consider. Nothing mattered so long as they were recovered.

The feeling of tiredness left her, the thirst for adventure ran through her veins. A mob of dancers drifted by her, like smoke driven by the wind, in the direction of the cloakroom at the back of the dancing floor, which was up a flight of stairs. And Pamela noticed the fact that these did not return. There were not many of them and their class was as the writing on the wall. In a flash it came to Pamela that these habitues were in the secret of a surreptitious way out. At the end of the queue came the man with the curly hair, who passed her with a languid bored air. She turned eagerly to her companions.

“Look after Daphne, Jimmy,” she commanded. “There is no reason why you should get into trouble, because none of us has done any wrong. Get Daphne home and wait till you here from me on the telephone. I shall be all right.”

Before Jimmy could expostulate Pamela had vanished in the direction of the steps leading to the floor above. She followed close behind the curly-haired man and reached him just as he slid into the gentlemen’s cloakroom at the end of which Pamela noticed that a door stood open.

The secret exit, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Without the slightest hesitation Pamela snatched up a fur coat and threw it over her shoulders. She stepped through the black opening and laid her hand on the shoulder of the man in front.

“Adam,” she said, “won’t you give unhappy Eve the latchkey to this paradise before the angel represented by policemen requests her company–in other words, be my squire of dames?”

IV. PAMELA SEES IT THROUGH

The man in front turned round and saw Pamela framed in the doorway with the light behind her. For an instant or two he could not make out her features, though it seemed to him that he had heard that drawling voice before. And then it flashed upon him who it was that spoke so calmly and collectedly in the midst of all that confusion down below on the dancing floor.

“You,” he exclaimed with a sort of insolent admiration. “Beauty in distress and all that sort of thing. Rank imposes obligation. When class calls to class, there is only one response. Will you give me your hand, fair lady?”

Pamela looked out into what seemed to her nothing but darkness and desolation. She could hear the faint echo of traffic from afar off and the occasional hoot of a passing taxi. But exit, so far as she could see, there was none. It seemed as if one step forward would pitch her headlong downwards into some bottomless pit. Nevertheless, there must have been some path to safety, or the man in front of her, standing, apparently, on space, would not have been cool and collected.

So, without the slightest hesitation, Pamela extended her hand, which was clasped all too warmly and familiarly by the fair-haired man. He was carrying it off very well, though Pamela’s sensitive ear did not fail to detect the theatrical suggestion that lay beyond the speaker’s request. Still, she felt that she could afford to ignore that, and, at the moment of high adventure, the blood of the Dacres was singing in her veins and the spirit of her ancestors was backing her on.

She was no longer tired and weary. The fresh air and the tonic of danger acted on her like a charm. What was to be the end of this exploit she neither knew nor cared for the time being. Nor had she lost sight of the fact that this man had Daphne’s necklace in his pocket, and that the gods of happy chance might show her a way to get it back again. She was going to risk it, anyway. Her pulses were beating evenly, and there was no suggestion of pounding at her heart. She smiled as her hand rested in that of the stranger.

“Thank you so much,” she murmured sweetly. “But I can see no way out. Do we climb down a rope?”

“Not quite as bad as that,” the man called Vivian Beaucaire laughed. “Our exit is by means of an old fire escape, very rusty, and with worn steps, but I think that if you let me hold your hand and guide your feet we shall emerge in safety. Not that you had anything to fear.”

“Perhaps not,” Pamela murmured. “But I have no particular desire to see my name in the papers as one of those arrested in the police raid on the club. Nothing romantic about it, and a little sordid, don’t you think?”