Danger Calling Read online

  CHAPTER III

  THE LETTER CAME NEXT day.

  Lindsay woke up to the sound of Poole drawing up the blind. He must have been sleeping more soundly than usual, for, as a rule, if the knock at the door did not rouse him, the firm manner in which Poole put down the tray with his early cup of tea did. The tray was already by his side, and, propped against the edge of it, a letter from Marian Rayne. He hated reading letters in bed, but it was Poole’s habit to pick out Miss Rayne’s letters and bring them in with the tea. He could, of course, have told Poole not to do this; but he was aware that if he did so, he would drop tremendously in his estimation. Sometimes he felt as if living up to Poole was rather a strain. He ran the flat and all that was in it, and there were times when Lindsay suspected that he ran Lindsay Trevor, and times when he wondered how Poole and Marian were going to get on together.

  Poole was the perfect servant, but like all perfect servants he had very strong views as to how this perfection should be maintained. He had saved Lindsay’s life twice in the last year of the war, and had looked upon him, respectfully but quite firmly, as his own property ever since.

  When he had pulled up the blind, he turned from the window, displaying a pale clean-shaven face, sandy hair rather thin on the top, short sandy lashes, grey eyes, and a rather wooden cast of countenance. He told Lindsay the time and withdrew. In exactly a quarter of an hour Lindsay would hear him turning on the bath water.

  Meanwhile Lindsay took a look at the weather, and thought what a beastly day it was—one of those unconvinced sort of fogs that are havering about whether they will turn to rain or settle down into a real peasouper. He thought December was a pretty good month to be getting out of England, and wondered where they would fetch up for Christmas. They hadn’t been able to make up their minds about that.

  Then he yawned, stretched, sat up, and reached for Marian Rayne’s letter. It was very light and thin. She usually wrote as she talked, just running on and on. This envelope couldn’t possibly hold more than a single sheet. He felt a little cheated as he switched on his reading-lamp and opened the letter. There was only one sheet, and on that sheet there were only a few blotted lines:

  “Lin, I can’t marry you. It’s no use—I can’t. If you love me the least little bit, don’t try and make me change my mind. I can’t do it.

  “Marian.”

  He read the words, and then he read them again. He read them very slowly. He read them for the third time. Everything seemed to have come to a full stop.

  He went on reading the letter, but he couldn’t make himself feel that it had anything to do with Lindsay Trevor. It was like something read in a book. Afterwards it reminded him of trying to read Dutch—if you know English and German, the words all look perfectly clear and plain, and yet you can’t make a page of it mean anything. He couldn’t make Marian’s letter mean anything.

  He put it down and drank his tea. Then he took the letter up and began to read it all over again. Marian wasn’t going to marry him; he had hold of the words. But she didn’t say why. She only said, “Lin, I can’t marry you.” Why? She didn’t say why; she just said, “I can’t marry you—I can’t.”

  He found that the hand in which he was holding the letter had started to shake a good deal. He tried holding it with the other hand, but it wasn’t any better, so he put the letter down. There is nothing that makes you feel more of a fool than to see your own hand shaking like a bit of rag in the wind.

  Then all at once the thing got through to where he could feel it. Marian—Marian wasn’t going to marry him. It had got right through like fire that has been smouldering in a garment and suddenly reaches the

  Lindsay sat there with the letter in his hand and the words of it burning themselves slowly into his consciousness—slowly, deeply, surely. The moments slid into minutes, very long minutes. And then, when realization was full, he forced himself to face it.

  It was a relief to find that he could think quite clearly. The feeling of shock and pain seemed to be quite separate from his thinking. He looked again at the letter. Marian was not going to marry him. She gave no reason, and he knew of none—he knew of none. Something surged up in him at the word. There are words that touch the springs of agony. No reason—none—none. Other words pressed in through the breach made by this surging something—No more—never. He beat them back, closed down the breach, and turned ordered thought upon the catastrophe.

  He had spent the week-end with the Raynes—the house very full, and so not much time alone with Marian; but no quarrel, no coldness—or none of which he had been aware. Marian was pale. He saw her for a moment like that, looking in, as it were, upon the havoc she had made—watching it; a little pale, a little pensive; black hair just pushed from her forehead, black lashes just drooping over grey-green eyes. The impression was startlingly distinct. He went resolutely back to the week-end. She was pale. Mr Rayne had joked about it—“Too many dressmakers!” he said. “Why does a girl want ten times as many dresses as usual just because she’s going to get married? She can’t wear more than one of them at a time—can she?”

  It shocked him horribly to realize that he was looking back to the week-end of only two days ago as if it were something far away in the past. He was separated from it by a dim gulf. It was far—it was endlessly far away. It was like a country which one has left behind one long ago.

  He got out of bed and put Marian’s letter away in a dispatch-box. As he turned the key, the worst of the stunned feeling went. The fighting thing in him got up, raging. If she thought she could just chuck him over like that without a word—well, he would show her she couldn’t. Half a dozen lines on a blotted sheet. … He would show her. If she’d got a reason, she was damned well going to give him the reason. And, if she hadn’t got a reason—if she hadn’t got a reason. … His thoughts seemed to run slower. If she hadn’t got a reason, wasn’t he well rid of a woman who would break a man’s life for a whim?

  He said it, and tried to mean it; but he couldn’t—not at once—not quite at once. This was Tuesday. They were going to have been married on Saturday. … “I can’t marry you, Lin—I can’t.”

  He heard the bath water running.

  CHAPTER IV

  IN A PLAY THE curtain comes down on a situation. In real life there is no curtain to come down; everything goes on; there is no darkened stage, no retreat to the dressing-room where one may refit for another part. Marian Rayne was not going to marry Lindsay Trevor—but the bath water was running.

  It was as much a part of the scheme of things that he should have his bath, shave, dress, and go through the routine of an endless, empty day, as it was that the earth should turn upon its axis. The earth turned because of some compelling force.

  It turned in fact because it had to. Lindsay would go on for the same reason. He thought with a kind of bitter resentment that he was not the first man who would have given almost anything to be able to blot out the immediate future, and by many millions he would not be the last. People talk and write about blotting out the past; but after some shattering blow it is the next intolerable minutes—hours—days—weeks which one would give the world and all to blot out.

  Lindsay went through his accustomed routine. He bathed, shaved, dressed, and went into his sitting-room, where he put up The Times between himself and Poole and did what he could to make an inordinate amount of bacon look as if some of it had been eaten.

  With a perfectly wooden face, Poole presently removed the mangled remains, returning immediately with two boiled eggs. He did not say anything. He put the eggs down and stood there with his eyes fixed on the back sheet of The Times. Lindsay could feel Poole’s determination that he should eat those eggs positively burning a hole in the paper. It was very difficult to deceive Poole. In this case it really was not worth while to try.

  He pushed back his chair and got up, speaking abruptly, his voice a little louder than usual because it was an
effort to speak at all.

  “I’ve had bad news, Poole. I’ll tell you about it presently. Take all this away and clear out. I want to telephone.”

  Poole asked no questions. When he was gone, Lindsay went to the telephone and gave the Raynes’ number, turning a singularly obstinate profile to the room as he did so. Everything in him was now bent upon the determination to see Marian. Anger, resentment, and outraged pride clamoured for a hearing. He told himself that he had not any idea of asking her to change her mind. No, he put it more strongly—he had no desire to make her change her mind. A change of mind, a swing of the pendulum—no, thank you! She had smashed their affair, and that was all there was to it. It was smashed, and neither of them could put it together again. The old jingle of Humpty Dumpty ran in his head: “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again;” and on top of that, quite irrelevantly: “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” The words flickered on the surface of his mind, as such things do when the thoughts below cannot be faced. Lindsay was not ready for those thoughts yet.

  Marian had smashed their marriage, and there was no mending it. But he was going to know the reason why. She owed him that. She had got to face the music—she had got to stand up to him and give him a reason for what she had done.

  He got a servant at the other end of the line, and, after about two minutes, Mr Rayne, rather breathless. Lindsay wondered if he was breathless because he had been hauled in a hurry from the stables, or because he felt embarrassed at having to talk to him.

  He said, “Hullo!” and then, “Is it you, Lindsay?”

  Lindsay said, “Yes—Lindsay Trevor. Can I speak to Marian, please?”

  “I don’t think you can.”

  “I think I must.”

  Lindsay could hear him clearing his throat. It seemed curious to hear Rayne clearing his throat thirty-five miles away and yet not to be able to get hold of

  Marian.

  “This is awkward—very awkward indeed.” Rayne was certainly embarrassed.

  “I’ve got to see her,” said Lindsay.

  Rayne cleared his throat again.

  “It’s very awkward. It’s—it’s damned awkward. Had you any suspicion?”

  “No,” said Lindsay Trevor. “You weren’t prepared in any way?”

  He said, “No,” again.

  “It was an absolute thunderbolt to her aunt and myself—an absolute thunderbolt. It’s—it’s—it’s incredibly awkward.”

  “I want to see Marian.”

  Rayne cleared his throat.

  “She won’t see you.”

  The woman at the exchange intervened. She had one of those bright voices.

  “Thrrree minutes, please.”

  “I’ll have another three,” said Lindsay sharply.

  He was afraid Rayne would jump at any opportunity of getting away from his end of the telephone. He made up his mind what he was going to do. He said,

  “Are you there? Can you give Marian a message? I think she ought to see me. I shall come down this afternoon. Will you tell her that?”

  He rang off quickly. Then he rang up old Hamilton Raeburn and asked him if he need turn up at the office. Raeburn was fatherly and jocose—said they didn’t expect to get any work out of him this week, called him “my boy,” and finished up with, “My respects to Miss Marian.” He was one of the people who would have to be told. He wasn’t going to tell anyone until he had seen Marian, but then they would all have to be told—“The marriage arranged between Mr Lindsay Trevor of the well known publishing firm of Hamilton Raeburn, and Miss Marian Rayne, niece and adopted daughter of Mr William Rayne of Rayneford, Surrey, will not take place.”

  Lindsay hung up the receiver. He had spoken on an impulse when he had told Rayne that he would come I down that afternoon. He was wondering why he had put off to the afternoon what he might do now. It came to him that if he waited till the afternoon, h: might find that he had waited too long. If Marian didn’t want to see him, he had given her plenty of time to pack up and go away. At the thought of arriving at Rayneford only to be told that he had had his journey for nothing, a sort of cold rage took hold of him.

  He called Poole, told him he was going out of town for the day, and took a taxi to Waterloo. All the way down to Guildford he was going over things in his mind, going over the last three months with a determination to find some reason for what Marian had done. There must be a reason, and if there was a reason, he meant to know what it was.

  He went back to the beginning. Three months before Bertie Raeburn had dragged him to a dance at the Raynes’. He could remember himself asking, “Who are the Raynes?” And Bertie: “Rolling, my dear chap—absolutely. One of the kings of commerce—throne just vacated—rural retreat running to about a thousand acres—pretty niece—chance for you—go in and win!” Lindsay had laughed and retorted, “Go in and win yourself!” It seemed a long time ago. He looked back with some curiosity and some amazement. Three months ago he would have said that he was the last person in the world to take an unconsidered plunge into matrimony; yet within a month of his first meeting with Marian he had proposed to her, and she had accepted him. During that month they had met perhaps half a dozen times. They had danced together in town, and he had spent a week-end at Rayneford. How much does any man really know of a girl whom he has met six times? Nothing—less than nothing. Yet he had asked Marian to marry him. She had clear eyes and a pretty smile. Her voice was sweet—and sweeter when she spoke to him. He discovered that he had been lonely all his life.

  During the two months of their engagement they had met continually. Marian was a good deal in town with convenient cousins who were always pleased to put her up—kind, dull, elderly people whom Lindsay hardly knew. Actually he knew very little of either her relations or her friends. Those whom he met at Rayne-ford were not very much in his line. He knew the Raynes as little as any of them. Rayne bored him. He had made his money in steel, and since his retirement had gone crazy over racing. He had an idea that he was going to win the Derby in 1931, and he talked of very little else. Mrs Rayne was the most colourless woman he had ever met—an amiable, drab woman, with a Pekinese. He had wondered often how Marian came to be Marian. She stood out from her surroundings like bright water in a dull place. It didn’t do to think about that.

  He came down to the last week. Marian had been up in town. They had dined and danced together. Everything had been all right. She seemed happy. It felt like a very long time ago.

  He came to the week-end. A biggish house-party. Wedding presents pouring in, and endless letters to write. They had had very little time alone. She was pale, but when they said good-bye …

  Lindsay steadied himself. She had come down late. He had had his train to catch. They had a moment in the library, a bare moment. He had kissed her, and she had kissed him back. … He found that he could not think dispassionately of that moment. It came into his mind to wonder whether she had known that she was kissing him good-bye. It came into his mind and stayed there.

  The train ran into Guildford station. The fat old man who had shared the compartment with Lindsay began to fidget with his suit-case and fumble at the carriage door. Lindsay let him get out first. There was no hurry. He had the blank feeling that there was no hurry about this errand of his. He had not now to count the lagging minutes until he could see Marian.

  It was at that moment that he saw her. He had not quite reached the door. He looked sideways through the window and saw her walking down the platform. She walked as if she were walking in her sleep, her head high, her eyes wide open. She was pale. She wore a fur coat and a small black hat like a cap with wings. A porter walked behind her carrying a couple of suitcases.

  Lindsay drew back quickly and shut the door.

  His first feeling was one of bitter anger. She was trying to cheat him. An equally bitter triumph
followed the anger. She was going to discover that he was not so very easy to cheat.

  The train was a corridor train to Portsmouth. She was doubtless on her way to the Isle of Wight. He knew that the Raynes had relations on the island. He sat back in his corner and waited for the train to move. As they ran out of the tunnel, he got up and walked along the corridor. He had no plan. He had no idea what he should do if he found Marian in a carriage full of people. Travelling first class, the chances were that she would be alone.

  She was in the third compartment he came to. It was labelled “Ladies only,” and she was the only lady in it. He opened the door, stepped in, and shut it behind him.

  She did not look round. She was sitting by the window looking out. Her hat and the high collar of her coat hid all her face. She did not turn her head.

  Lindsay sat down in the opposite corner. He had meant to speak at once, but he could not; something took him by the throat. It was only a little over forty-eight hours since they had said good-bye. He sat there almost touching her, and she was as far away as the other side of the world.

  He did not know how long it was before either of them moved. It seemed like a long time. He wondered why she did not turn. He wondered if it was because she had been crying. He felt that he ought to speak, to let her know that he was there, but for the life of him he could not do it. He just sat there.

  Then, with a whirr and a rush, a train met and began to pass them. The noise and the impact of the driven air startled Marian Rayne. She drew back from the window, and saw Lindsay Trevor.

  It must have been a shock. She had been very far away, and then when she turned, there was Lindsay so close to her that if she had moved her hand in a foolish seeking gesture, it must have touched his. She looked at him, and could not take her eyes away.

  If she was shocked, so was he. It was plain that she had not slept; but it was not fatigue that had marked her face like that. The clear creamy skin with its light powdering of golden freckles looked like parchment, The freckles seemed to have darkened on it. Her eyes had wept until they could weep no more. The colour had gone out of them, and the starry look. There were marks under them like bruises. She must have been weeping all through the hours of a long night.