Hue and Cry Page 10

  “I don’t see Peterson,” said Sir Julian Le Mesurier, looking up from his soup. The little eyes that saw everything looked down the table and up again.

  “Do you want to see Peterson?” inquired Julian Forsham.

  Piggy said, “’M,” and went on eating soup.

  His other neighbor, a small, bright-eyed man with a pointed beard, Manisty, the artist, answered for the absent Sir George.

  “Peterson’s coming on afterwards. He rang up. Couldn’t get away in time to feed. Important business engagement. Board meeting. Always wonder they don’t spell it B-O-R-E-D. Bores to the board. Glad I’m not in business. It’s all bulls and bears and bores and bankruptcy. Especially bankruptcy. ‘Hang on the line and stay solvent,’ is my slogan.”

  Piggy put down his spoon, picked up the menu, produced a pencil from somewhere, and began to draw a frieze of cats rampant.

  “Peterson,” he said vaguely, “—er—Peterson is, I imagine, rather more than solvent.”

  Manisty dropped Peterson and began to be amusing about the Official Receiver. Piggy let him go on whilst he drew three more cats, and then brought him back to Sir George again.

  Julian Forsham laughed inwardly. “Piggy on the trail!” was his inward comment. “Virgins of the Sun indeed! I wonder how long he could talk to Marrington without being caught out. What an old humbug he is! And why did he want to come here to see the wretched Peterson?”

  His eyes and his thoughts strayed to Lawrence Marrington. And then in a minute Manisty was leaning forward with a “Well, what do you make of him? D’you know him at all?”

  Julian shook his head.

  “Now I do,” said Manisty. “That’s to say, I did. Came across him two years ago when he was ranging London like a hungry lion seeking for a financier to devour. He’d got this expedition planned, and he hadn’t got a bean. I tell you he was raging.”

  “Well, he brought it off all right.”

  Manisty nodded.

  “Odd how things come off—isn’t it? Two years ago nobody’d ever heard of him. Two months ago nobody’d ever heard of him. And now”—he made a gesture and a grimace—“I’m going to paint his portrait.”

  “Quite a good subject.”

  Manisty nodded again.

  “I’d like to call it Breaking up the Type, but I suppose I can’t.”

  The three men looked at Lawrence Marrington.

  “See what I mean?” said Manisty. “He started as the typical aristocrat—long, well-bred, well-featured, rather high in the nose, rather narrow between the eyes. That’s the type before it was starved and burned to the bone and scared to breaking point. The type has a calm and ruminative eye; this fellow looks round the corner to see who’s coming for him next.”

  Julian Forsham burst out laughing.

  “I hope you’ll never want to paint me, Manisty.”

  Piggy went on drawing cats. Manisty went on talking.

  “He’s had a good press—hasn’t he? Ignorance is the mother of adulation. I know nothing of Peru. You know nothing of Peru.” His bright, restless eyes challenged Piggy, challenged Julian. “From the depths of our abysmal ignorance we behold the man who knows an Inca from an Iguana—a Being who can pronounce words like Quetzalcoatl, and the things that end in ’hualtepec. Naturally we fall on our knees before him. We lionize. We adulate. We entertain him. We spare him a column or two from politics and the police court. Ha, Forsham? We were doing it to you last year. Chaldea, wasn’t it? If it’s possible to know less about anything than I know about Peru, Chaldea has it. Names are easier to spell though—nice and short like Ur. Ha, ha, nose out of joint? What’s it feel like? Oh, Lord! Do you know, I’ve got to make a speech in about a minute. That’s why I’m so silent and depressed.”

  He got up presently and made his speech, looking very much at his ease. The only head that did not turn in his direction was that of Mr. Marrington, who sat well back in his chair in a lounging attitude and looked bored. When he looked bored he reverted completely to his type, and was the handsome indolent aristocrat to the life.

  “Thoroughly accustomed as I am to public speaking,” began Manisty, “it would be quite easy for me to—er—spoof you all. Spoofing is, in fact, the end and object of public speaking. But I am a candid, honest soul first, and a public speaker last. I will therefore make a clean breast of it and confess that all I know about Peru and—er—Aztecs was snatched from a handy encyclopædia as I dressed for dinner this evening. Mr. Lawrence Marrington”—He passed into well-phrased compliment, said the right things in the right way for the right space of time, bowed to the guest of the evening, and sat down with a groan.

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, Lawrence Marrington rose to reply. He was a very tall man, very lean, very brown, with the line of an old scar running like a puckered seam across one cheek. He began to speak in a low, inaudible manner, and for five minutes boredom waited on his halting repetition of platitudes. Then there was a change. He began to tell of actual experiences, hardships, dangers, delays, suspense, achievement. His voice rose and cleared; the long languid back straightened itself. The passion of the enthusiast, the fanatic, mounted in him like a fire. In the end the man was actually eloquent, with the eloquence of pure passion.

  Sir Julian Le Mesurier, watching his cousin, saw the dark face as rapt and as intent as Marrington’s own. He reflected that it wouldn’t be long before old Ju-Ju hit the trail again.

  Sir George Peterson came in just as Marrington finished his speech. Manisty beckoned him, and he came down the table and pulled in a chair between Manisty and Chetwynd Case, the K.C.

  “Well, you’ve missed the best of it,” said Manisty. “I hope your business was worth it?”

  Sir George laughed his genial laugh. He had just seen Sir Julian Le Mesurier.

  “Hullo, Piggy! Evening, Forsham!” Then turning to Manisty, he gave a belated answer to his question: “Worth it? Scarcely. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t business at all, but a domestic contretemps—a nursery governess with kleptomania, and my sister so upset that I couldn’t leave her. Extraordinary thing, kleptomania.”

  “It seems to have come down in the world,” said Manisty dryly. “It used to move in Society with the largest possible S. A duchess might have kleptomania; but a nursery governess—stole. What’s the matter with the plain English of it?”

  Sir George frowned.

  “I don’t know. I felt sorry for the girl. We all liked her. One prefers to think she’s unhinged. Well, I’m sorry I missed Marrington’s speech.”

  “Have you met him at all?” asked Sir Julian.

  “I? No. I don’t suppose many of us have. Why?”

  “I’d like to meet him. Where’s he staying, Manisty?”

  “Oh, he’s not in town—shies off the reporters. He’s staying with the Lennoxes down in Surrey. I believe he’s going back again to-night. Oh, Lord, that bore, Crewthorn, is going to speak!”

  CHAPTER XVI

  When Lawrence Marrington left The Wolves, he declined a taxi, a lift, or company.

  It was an exceedingly unpleasant night, the pavements wet with rain that was half-way to being ice, and the air full of a stinging sleet which was most undoubtedly turning to snow. Lawrence Marrington drew a good breath of this icy air and appeared to find it enjoyable. He took off his opera hat and strode bare-headed along the black and empty streets.

  He walked for a full half-hour, and came to a four-cross-way. A huge new cinema stood at the left-hand corner, its flare of lights all dead, its ugly bulk visible only as a black and formless mass.

  Marrington crossed the road. A few hours earlier he would have had to thread his way warily through cross currents of traffic; now he could walk across without so much as a backward look. He followed the pavement a couple of hundred yards, and stopped where an arc light broke the darkness and lit the long scarlet front of a garage.

  Mally Lee had gone down into the deepest waters of sleep beyond all reach of sound. Dreams do not visit those depths. Sh
e slept without moving. Her head was against the seat, and the rug covered her. If a thunder-storm had roared overhead, it would not have wakened her.

  The whirr of the self-starter, the pulsing of the engine, the sound of the horn as Marrington backed out of the garage, simply did not come near her at all; she continued to sleep, breathing gently, slowly, deeply, with one hand under her cheek and her lips parted in a child’s smile.

  It was perhaps half an hour later that she began to come back from those deep places, to rise again towards the surface of consciousness. She began to dream that she was in an aeroplane, flying high beneath a blazing moon. She was being pursued by Paul Craddock, who was flying after her in a bright green omnibus that made a noise like all the traffic in the world. Mally knew that if she could only reach the Milky Way, she would be quite safe. But the omnibus gained on her terribly, and the noise was so loud that she could neither think, nor scream for help. The bus came roaring up, and just as Paul made a grab at her, she jumped and fell down, down, down with a sickening plunge. And then, all at once, she had wings that bore her up again. They were queer, flabby wings, very hard to fly with, because they were made out of the limp, honeycombed stuff which is used for cheap counterpanes.

  Mally began to sink again slowly, slowly, slowly until her feet touched the ground and suddenly the moon went out and it was dark. It was to this sense of darkness that she awoke. The moon had been so bright, and now she couldn’t see anything at all. She moved, felt the impeding rug, and was aware of stiffness; the hand under her cheek was cold; her feet were cold. She pushed the rug away, sat up, and felt the movement of the car.

  It was running smoothly, rhythmically, swiftly; and as she raised herself a little she could see black hedges slipping by. It was just as she had pictured her flight; only it was to have been she and Roger on their way to Curston and safety. She stared at a head silhouetted against the glow of the headlights. There was no Roger any more—and thank goodness for that. She was driving with a stranger to some unknown destination.

  An extreme and violent curiosity took possession of Mally. The situation was exhilarating in the extreme. She had got out of London. She had got out of London without parting with a single one of her few and precious coins. It was exhilarating beyond words. But she was simply flooded with curiosity. She could see no more of the man who was driving than the shape of his head with an ear on either side. The ears didn’t stick out; they only jutted a little. Mally felt that she would have hated to be rescued by a man whose ears stuck out.

  She went on considering the back of his head, but it told her nothing. She wished that she dared get up on to the seat; now that she was awake, the floor felt dreadfully hard. She wondered if she could manage it, but decided that it was too risky. And then, just as she reached this conclusion, the car turned in at a gate and ran between trees for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and so to a paved yard and a garage standing open.

  The man got down from the driver’s seat, came round to the back of the car, and before Mally guessed what he would be at, he had the door open and a hand on her rug. The hand caught at the rug, began to pull, and stopped.

  It took Marrington just a second to stop himself. The rug, which should have been cold, was warm.

  “Who’s there?” he said without raising his voice at all.

  Mally moved away from his hand, sat bolt upright, and said, a shade defiantly.

  “I am. If you’ll get out of the way, I’ll come out.”

  Marrington did not move; but he laughed.

  “I want to get out.”

  He laughed again.

  “You’re pretty cool for a stowaway. Of course I’m delighted to be of service to a lady and all that. But may I ask why you chose my car?”

  “I didn’t. I went to sleep. I didn’t choose it. It was just a car, and—and I got into it.”

  As Marrington turned to feel in one of the front pockets, she flung away the rug and jumped out. Next moment his hand went up with an electric torch in it.

  Lawrence Marrington saw a small, crumpled girl in navy blue; she had hazel eyes and brown hair under a black felt hat. Unlike Mally, he had read the evening papers. He laughed once again rather dryly and remarked:

  “Miss Ellen Marshman, I imagine?”

  “Who on earth is Ellen Marshman?” Mally’s tone was tart; she didn’t like having torches flashed on to her when she knew she must be looking like nothing on earth.

  As she spoke, she stepped back out of the ray.

  “Oh, come! I’ve read the papers, you know. You got a paragraph next to the one announcing my arrival. It was a bit longer than mine. But then, of course, crime has first call—hasn’t it?”

  A well-known tingling sensation informed Mally that she was going to lose her temper. It is a regrettable fact that, on this occasion at least, she lost it with a good deal of pleasurable anticipation. As a preliminary, she wrinkled her nose haughtily at Lawrence Marrington, who had turned his torch on her again, and said, in what she herself would have described as a snorky tone of voice, “Don’t keep doing that! I don’t like it. Turn it off!”

  Instead of turning it off, he made the ray play up and down her.

  “What in the world am I going to do with you?” he said.

  Mally’s foot tapped the concrete floor.

  “I asked you to turn that off. I don’t like it.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with it.”

  Mally’s temper went. She snatched the torch. The light dazzled on Marrington’s face. Who was he? And why did he have paragraphs in the paper?

  And then he caught her wrist and had the torch again. She pulled away from him furiously and heard him say in a voice of exaggerated boredom: “Of course, what I ought to do is to hand you over to the police.”

  The color ran up into Mally’s cheeks.

  “How dare you?”

  “Oh, easily enough, my dear. But it would be a bit of a bore.” He yawned. “I believe I’m too sleepy to be bothered with you.”

  He lowered the torch, took a couple of steps forward, and dropped a sudden hand on Mally’s shoulder.

  “Like to kiss me good-night?” he said.

  An uncontrollable panic took hold of Mally. Afterwards she had a good deal to say to herself on the subject. There were things she might have said to him, and things she might have done; but at the moment all that she wanted was to get away. With a little gasp of rage and fright she wrenched free and ran away into the darkness.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Mally ran blindly into the dark. First there were cobblestones underfoot, then she was out of the yard and on gravel. She ran full tilt into a large bush or shrub that sent out an aromatic smell and scratched her outstretched hands with its sharp twigs and hard foliage. With a little gasping cry she stopped, and then pushed her way in between the branches until she felt the trunk and could hold on to it. She wanted something to hold on to because, now that she had stopped running, she was trembling very much.

  She stood there in the dark and called herself names:

  “Idiot! What are you afraid of?”

  She really had not the slightest idea. The panic fear had come pouring down on her like a douche of ice-cold water. She felt drenched with it to the very marrow; but she did not know why. She heard the garage door shut with a bang. And then, whistling to himself and flashing an idle torch here and there, Lawrence Marrington went by.

  The white light danced like a malicious Jack-o’-lanthorn. She saw snow-sprinkled gravel just for a second, and then scarlet holly berries amongst prickly leaves. The light went by. Lawrence Marrington went by. The sound of his footsteps died away. He turned a corner and the last dancing spark went too. Mally felt the black dark close round her with a comforting sense of safety. Her bush smelled strong and sweet. She leaned back against its resilient branches, and stopped shaking.

  What on earth was she going to do? It must be somewhere about two o’clock she thought—two, or perhaps three in the mornin
g; and it was really frightfully cold. The sprinkled snow on the gravel had been white and crisp; the earth under her foot was as hard as stone; and all the trees in the garden moved restlessly under a steady wind from the north.

  Mally came out of her bush and made her way back to the yard. The garage door was locked of course—that went without saying. But there might be some outhouse, empty loose box, or loft.

  Mally was certainly not going to freeze in the open if there was shelter to be had. She began to feel her way about the yard. Now that Marrington was gone, a sense of adventure buoyed her up. After all, she had done pretty well; she had got out of London, and she still had three and ninepence farthing in cash and four ginger biscuits in kind.

  She felt a gate with an iron hasp, and narrowly escaped coming down over a staple driven into the ground. Then there was a length of fence which ran down to a corner and met a brick wall. Mally felt along the bricks and collided with a ladder. From the fact that it did not move when she hit it rather hard with her shoulder, she deduced that the upper end of it was fixed. A fixed upper end meant a loft door or hatch. She began to climb hopefully, and found what she had hoped for.

  At the top of the ladder was a loft with an open hatch, and—joys of joys—the loft was half full of hay. It was only when the hay closed round her and she felt its warmth that she realized how cold she was. Hay was beautifully warm, if rather tickly. She snuggled down into it and went to sleep.

  It was broad daylight when she woke to a clattering, swishing noise. The sound of men’s voices came in through the open hatch.

  The chauffeur was washing the car, and another man came and went. Mally could not hear what they said; but she thought it was a good thing that motors didn’t eat hay. As it was, she hoped that she was safe. She sat up, ate her four ginger biscuits, and wondered what next.

  She could stay where she was for a bit. But in the long run what in the world was she going to do? Mally looked at the question, tossed her head at it, and looked away. And just at that moment she heard a voice upraised in song.