Ainslee's Magazine/The Duchess in Pursuit/'Wanted'
II.—“Wanted”
The elderly Duchess of Ashminster, one fine spring day, wakes up to the fact that she is bored with life in her narrow, conventional circle, and is yearning for a taste of freedom and adventure. That very night, her chance comes. One of her tenants, who feels that he has been unjustly treated, climbs in at her window to present his case to her personally. As he is leaving by the same way, his wrongs having been righted, he slips and falls with a cry. The duchess hurries down into the garden to see if he has been hurt, and not finding him there, continues her search out into the street. When she returns, she finds the garden gate locked. Acting upon a sudden impulse, she seizes the opportunity to set forth on a ramble through London unattended.
MOST sensations are commonplace. No matter how serious or how ludicrous they may be, nearly everybody has had them or will have them at some time or other. Though at first sight it seems unlikely, there are few among us who do not know what it feels like to fall down a cliff, to be pursued by a runaway locomotive, or to find oneself walking insouciantly in some highly populous and fashionable district clad in a bath towel. Where reality fails, dreams step in to supply the deficiency.
But even in dreamland the sensations of a perfectly respectable bona-fide duchess, with a fat rent roll, goodness knows how many ducal residences, and an easy conscience, wandering the streets of London in the early hours of a spring morning, are probably unique.
The duchess thrilled to it all. The night air tasted like wine. She felt like an elderly fairy princess in an enchanted land. Quite by accident, she wandered into Berkeley Square and looked up at Sir John O'Neill's lightless windows and thought tenderly of bygone days and of things that might so well have happened and didn't. She thought of Colonel Magree and his hopeless devotion for that inconsolable widow, Mary Cochrane. It was all beautifully sad. The duchess sighed and glowed with romance.
And then presently she grew tired, and with fatigue came the knowledge that she was hopelessly lost. Neither circumstance was surprising. The duchess had never walked anywhere in her life. Her secretary knew her appointments and told the butler, and the butler told James, and James told Charles, the head coachman; and between them all they produced her at her destination with the punctuality of princes. But the duchess herself was entirely passive and only woke up when it was incumbent upon her to say something pleasant and interested.
And now she was lost.
She looked about her helplessly. The glamour of her adventure had already begun to fade, and when a policeman loomed up under the lamplight, the duchess hailed him as an ally. She had always liked policemen. From the featureless mass of the lower orders, they stood out as a peculiarly agreeable race, to be classed with gamekeepers, butlers, and other pillars of the aristocracy. The way they held up the traffic for her victoria had often aroused her appreciation. It occurred to her now that this particular specimen might be intrusted with the unusual situation. He might even devise some unostentatious, plausible return to civilization. For the duchess, to put it briefly, had had enough.
But it was the policeman who spoke first.
“Look 'ere,” he said. “I've 'ad my eye on you. Wotcher up to, eh?”
The duchess smiled. She would have been more amused if she had been less tired.
“It's a little difficult to explain,” she began pleasantly. “You see, officer, it's like this”
“No gas, now. We don't want loafin' about 'ere. You move on.”
“But, my dear, good man” began the duchess.
“An' I don' want no cheek, neither. You'll be gettin' yourself into trouble, you will. If you ain't in trouble already,” he added darkly.
The duchess restrained her natural annoyance with an effort.
“You're making an absurd mistake,” she began. “If you knew who I am”
“Seems to me I do know.” He peered under her shawl. The light was dim, and though the duchess did now know it, she was not looking her best. The wind had blown her hair into ungraceful wisps and the aristocratic nose was red with cold. “Seen your face somewhere, I 'ave,” the constable reflected.
“Of course you have,” said the duchess, somewhat mollified.
The constable appeared to be overcome with heavy official mirth.
“Of course I 'ave! Thames Police Court, it was. Drunk an' disorderly. A disgrace to your sex—that's wot Sir John called you. A month without the option. 'Iggins was the name. Not much I forgets.”
“So it seems,” said the duchess, with bitter sarcasm. “Only, as it happens, I have never been before a magistrate in my life. Nor am I given to loafing, as you call it. Nor is my name Higgins. My name is Elizabeth”
“Mary Jane, for all I care,” was the rude interruption. “All I knows is a respectable woman don't wander about the streets at one in the morning, that's wot I knows.”
The duchess felt the accusation acutely and faltered under the constable's grim disapproval.
“Maybe you've been up to mischief already,” he continued. “Shouldn't wonder if you're wanted already.”
This also being painfully near the truth, the duchess remained speechless. The constable hunched his shoulders. “You take my advice,” he said. “You move on.”
The duchess moved on. She felt instinctively that further conversation with such a ridiculous individual could serve no good purpose, and the prospect of explanations at a police court and the subsequent headlines in the morning papers lent her tired feet wings. She did not stop, in fact, till chance brought her to the Thames Embankment, where, having ascertained that there was no policeman in sight, she leaned exhaustedly against the parapet and contemplated the gaunt outlines of the wharves opposite and the chill blackness of the water at her feet. She had never seen the river from that point of view before, and it completed her depression. She saw her folly in all its completeness. She was an elderly duchess and there was no escaping the fact. Nor did she want to escape; the impulse toward freedom and youth had evaporated. She felt like a canary that has begun to realize the very bitter sweetness of its emancipation and the delights of the cage it has so rashly forsaken.
Only, the duchess had one advantage over the canary—she could call a taxi and drive back. She made up her mind that she would call the very first one that passed. She was going home—back to the pompous house and the seven-course dinner—if any of it could be procured at such an ungodly hour—back to James and his ten satellites, back to the Louis XVI. bed, with its twentieth-century spring mattress, back to the shelf where reposed other elderly folk, that faithful knight Sir John O'Neill among them.
The thought of Sir John somehow settled the matter.
And just as she had come to her decision and was framing explanations to offer James and the world generally, she heard a strange sound quite close to her. It was a very pitiful sound—very unusual to the duchess' ears—the sound of some one sobbing.
At first it seemed to come from nowhere in particular. Then the duchess, peering about her, discovered that she stood at the head of a flight of steps leading down to the river, and that on these steps, perilously near the water, was the figure of a woman. She stood so motionless that she seemed part of the shadow, but the long-drawn, monotonous sobs were undoubtedly hers.
The duchess considered her uneasily over the edge of the parapet. She had never seen anything like it before. She knew, of course, that people cried, but she had always imagined their doing so against an expensive background. She knew, too, that there were poor people—nice, tidy, respectful creatures created by Providence in order to exercise the virtue of charity among the elect. She had never visualized anything so raw, so unpleasantly crude, as this.
“Dear me, it's no business of mine,” said the duchess mentally.
A taxi came gliding temptingly along the embankment. The duchess half raised her hand and the taxi swerved, Then, to her own disgust, the duchess turned her back on it, and with a hoot of disapproval, the jilted vehicle sailed past. The duchess stood and watched it disappear round a curve in the roadway.
“This is the beginning of senile decay,” she told herself despairingly.
Then, very cautiously, for the stones were slippery, she crept down the steps and touched the heaving shoulders.
“My good creature,” she began, “you mustn't—you really mustn't, you know”
The woman started violently and jerked her shoulder free.
“Drat you! Leave me alone, cawn't yer?”
“But you might fall in,” the duchess objected.
“Well, that's wot I'm tryin' to do, ain't it? Only I 'aven't got the bloomin' nerve.”
“Dear me—how wicked to talk like that! Why, you've got a little baby, too! Don't you know you oughtn't to keep it out so late?”
The woman laughed, and the laugh had the odd effect of jarring the duchess' spine.
“Go on! It ain't no business of yours. I don't want no savin'. You 'ook it, Mrs. Soul Snatcher.”
“I know it's no business of mine,” said the duchess plaintively, “and I have no desire to snatch any one's soul. Only I do wish you wouldn't cry like that. It—it upsets me. What is the matter?”
Her question was almost irate. It is very difficult for a duchess to understand that anything can be the matter with anybody not of a certain social position, and the process of understanding was painful. Then suddenly the woman turned her head. Her face was so white that it shone through the darkness, and its expression caused the duchess another disagreeable pang.
“My good creature” she began, and then, not liking the phrase, hastily changed it. “My dear, what has upset you? Won't you tell me? Can't I help?”
“You? Ye're a lidy, aren't yer? Lidies don't understand nothink.”
“But I'm not a lady,” the duchess assured her earnestly. “I'm certain I'm not. No lady would behave in the way I have done. And as to understanding—I'm positive no one could be more tired and hungry and miserable than I am. And no one,” she added with increased feeling, “could be in such a predicament.”
“Well, yer let me alone, anyhow.”
The woman took a sudden plunge forward. The duchess stretched out an involuntary hand and clutched her. The effect was startlingly instantaneous. The woman stopped short and stared on at the hand on her arm.
“My!” she whispered. “Where'd yer get them from?”
The duchess followed her companion's gaze. Then, too late, she caught the glitter of the three half-hoop diamond rings on her third finger. She wrenched her hand free and hid it under her cloak. Her heart seemed to stand still. Her knees shook. She had played at being robbed and murdered, and now this might be bitter reality. She was alone, helpless, at the water's edge. An inspiration, born of her deadly peril, flashed across her.
“Paste,” she fluttered, “only paste, of course.”
The woman laughed her short, angry laugh and crouched down on the steps with her back to the damp wall.
“Don't yer try kiddin' me,” she said. “I knows the goods when I sees 'em. Lawks!” She peered up curiously into the duchess' face. “Lawks! I'd never have thought yer was that sort!”
“Really not?” said the duchess, a little hurt. She did not want to be recognized, but still she had always flattered herself that she looked what she was. “Well, I am,” she added good-naturedly.
'An' yer looks as honest as a biby!” The woman had ceased crying. She seemed overwhelmed—almost awe-struck. “Honest as a biby!” she repeated, and then, in a hoarse whisper, “Where'd yer pinch 'em from?”
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“Garn! I won't give yer away! Honor bright! Who'd they belong to? Some swell, I bet.”
“Yes—I suppose so—I mean—they belong to a—a sort of duchess.”
“Well, I never!” Light seemed to break. “Lidy's maid—that's wot makes yer speak refined like. Now I knows where I am.”
It was a statement, not a question, and the duchess felt incapable of controversy. She sat down helplessly on the dank step and defied rheumatism. She had a curious, baffled feeling, as if she were being tied up into inextricable knots or smothered in a nightmare tangle of worsted. There was evidently some horrible mistake, but not one she could deal with effectively. So she said nothing, and the woman continued to nurse her sleeping child and stare with unabated interest.
“Never done much of this sort of thing before, 'ave yer, now?” she asked.
“Never,” said the duchess very earnestly. “Never in my life.”
“Thought not. Any one could see that. Got a hanky.”
“I have a handkerchief—certainly I have.”
“'And it over. Lor', you want lookin' after, you do!” Swiftly, so skillfully that the duchess had no time to protest, the three rings were removed, tied up in the delicate cambric handkerchief, and handed back. “'Ide 'em somewhere in yer dress. Why, if any one was to see 'em, they'd cop yer before yer could say Jack Robinson.”
“Dear me, I suppose they would,” the duchess agreed.
“Of course. They'll be 'ot on yer track by now, won't they?”
“I—I don't know—I dare say—now I come to think of it.”
“Well, don't yer let 'em catch yer 'ere.”
The duchess positively jumped. The thought of being discovered seated on the steps of the Thames Embankment was like the touch of a red-hot needle.
“It would never, never do,” she said feverishly. “There would be a terrible scandal. It would be in all the morning papers”
“Large as life,” her companion agreed. She was silent a moment, hushing the child, which had begun to whimper. “Look 'ere,” she said suddenly. “I'll 'elp yer.”
“You—help me?”
“Yus.” She jerked her head toward the gray water sliding past into the darkness. “I meant to chuck myself in there, I did, but I'll see yer clear fust, s'help me I will. Don't yer worrit.”
“But why,” said the duchess slowly, “why should you want to help me?”
“'Cause ye're bein' chivvied.” She said it simply, without pathos, just as a matter of fact. “I know wot that means,” she added quietly. “I'm chivvied, too.”
“Chivvied?” said the duchess.
She pondered on the word, considering her companion with new eyes, just as the words “hunger” and “cold” had come to have a new significance since she had been sitting, dinnerless, on the damp steps. The child was crying fretfully by now, and the duchess took off her shawl. The mother accepted the offering without comment. Since the discovery of the rings, they had fallen into an odd comradeship.
“Tell me,” said the duchess, “why did you want to—to throw yourself in there?”
“Cause of Bert,” was the husky answer.
“Is Bert your husband?”
“Yus.”
The duchess pondered over this, also, She remembered—vaguely—that in the lower classes husbands are not always all they should be. She approached the subject with tactful caution.
“Perhaps he isn't kind to you, is that?”
“'E's a hangel,” was the fervent answer. The woman lifted her head, and the duchess realized for the first time how young she was and how pretty in her anemic, careworn way. “There ain't another like 'im,” she said proudly. “An hangel, that's 'im.”
The duchess suppressed surprise. The idea of an angel called Bert, and doubtless without an aspirate attached to the name, was new to her. Practically, if not theoretically, angels had never been less than middle class in the duchess' conception of heaven. And they were all gentlemen.
“Then I'm afraid I don't understand,” she persisted at length. “If your husband is an angel, why are you unhappy?”
The girl was crying again, but quietly now, with the plaintive gentleness of an exhausted child.
“Bert 'ad lost 'is job,” she said. “We 'adn't 'ad enough to eat an' the kid was dyin', an' Bert, 'e nearly went off 'is dot. An' 'e took somethin'—'arf a crown's worth of somethin' that wasn't 'is—an' they shut 'im up for a month. An' afterward they never gave 'im a chance. Every job 'e got, some one'd come along an' split on 'im. An' then them p'lice!” She tossed her head with angry defiance. “I 'ates the lot of 'em!”
“I dare say,” the duchess agreed feelingly. “I don't care for them myself as much as I did.”
“They wouldn't let 'im be honest,” the girl went on between her teeth. “They chivvied 'im, an' 'e went wrong again. 'E 'ad to.” She laid her thin hand on the duchess' arm, and her voice sank to a whisper. “An' now 'e's gone after a big crib—a place in Berkeley Square, where there's fine silver. 'E wouldn't listen to me, though I went down on my knees to 'im. We'd gone two days without a bite an' 'e was desperate. 'E's got a soft 'eart, 'as Bert, an' 'e couldn't bear to see me an' the kid starve. That's why I was goin'—in there.”
She pointed to the black waters at their feet, and the duchess shuddered. But she was thinking fast. Sir John O'Neill's house was in Berkeley Square. Sir John's silver was famous. The duchess' elderly heart beat with an almost youthful passion of adventure.
“Still, I don't quite understand,” she said gently. “How would that help—your going in there?”
The girl's head sank.
“Then 'e'd be free,” she muttered. “'E wouldn't ave us two tied round 'is neck. 'E'd be able to go right away an' start fresh. That's wot 'e wants. It's killin' 'im—this life—it is. 'E ain't made for it.”
“I shouldn't think any one was made for it,” the duchess declared grimly.
They were both silent for a minute. Then the girl turned to her with an awkward, questioning movement.
“You're right,” she said. “Nobody wants to go wrong. Wot yer do it for? Yer don't ook 'ungry.”
“Don't I?” said the duchess.
“Well, not chronic like. You 'ad a soft place. Wot made yer bolt?”
The duchess smiled dreamily to herself.
“My dear,” she said, “I was tired of my soft place. It was making me an old, old woman before my time. And before I got too old, I wanted to see what life was like—to really live once and be young again for the last time. Perhaps you won't understand—but it was hunger of a kind.”
The girl bent forward.
“But yer ain't old,” she said slowly. “Yer 'air's white, but yer face is young—young like some one wots never grown up. If yer was to dye yer 'air, nobody wouldn't know yer was old at all.” A sudden inspiration seemed to seize her. “My,” she exclaimed, with a suppressed laugh of excitement, “yer come 'ome with me! I've got a pal who'll dye it for yer. Then no one won't ever know. No one won't recognize yer. Yer'll be able to get clear of 'em all—an'—an' start fresh. Think of that, now!”
They stood up facing each other. It was no use the duchess telling herself that she was mad. The excitement was contagious. She thrilled with it.
“Why shouldn't I?” she demanded of accusing reason. “Why shouldn't we start afresh—all of us.”
“Why not? 'Ere, come along 'fore they catch us.” She started up the steps and then turned. “My name's Sal—Sal Jakes,” she said. “Wot's yer's?”
“Mine? Oh—Elizabeth—just Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth? Lizzy—a werry nice name, too. Well, come along, Lizzy.”
They went up the steps—arm in arm.
II.
Doctor Barclay folded up his stethoscope and placed it neatly in its case. Considering his youth, his bedside manner was quite wonderful—at once authoritative and soothing, a model for all Harley Street.
His present patient, however, was not in bed, but ensconced comfortably in a library chair before a rather unnecessarily blazing fire. He was an elderly gentleman with a bald head and a fierce military mustache and a brick-red complexion, the latter accentuated by a port-wine-colored dressing gown of severe character. He looked depressed, and Doctor Barclay tapped him on the shoulder with that familiar air of professional optimism which is calculated to give even the journey across the Styx the aspect of a pleasure outing.
“There's nothing seriously wrong, colonel. All you have to-do is to go easy. Remember your years. Don't try and do things you can't do. In horsy metaphor, your hunting days are over. No more hedges and ditches and long cross-country runs. But in the park, now—a nice, easy canter, eh? Why, that old heart of yours'll last years.”
“Thanks,” said the colonel sourly.
“Not at all. But go easy. No excitements. When you are on the point of losing your temper—such things do happen to retired military men, I believe—or feel yourself getting out of hand—just count up to four. It'll save you no end of wear and tear. Try it.”
“No good at arithmetic,” said the colonel, with grim humor.
Barclay laughed heartily—appreciation of his patients' jokes was one of his professional secrets—and presently took himself and his soothing geniality to his next appointment. As the street door banged, Colonel Magree lifted himself with prodigious care out of his chair and stretched himself cautiously, as if not quite certain that all his limbs were in their proper place.
“Never knew it was as bad as all that,” he muttered, “never.”
He went over to a drawer in an antique Japanese cupboard and took out a leather case, with which he returned to his place by the fireside. The case contained two photographs—one of a young and charmingly dressed girl in the fashion of forty years ago, the other of a widow, tall and slender and poignantly sad in her graceful weeds. The colonel shook his head.
“An old, old man, Mary!” he said under his breath. “A decrepit old man fit for the scrap heap. No more hedges and ditches, dear, no more cross-country rides—only sedate canters in the park. An old, old man!”
He sighed deeply and shook his head, and presently passed on from his melancholy reflections into a pleasant after-breakfast doze.
In the midst of it, the telephone raised its brazen, unmodulated voice in a shriek that jerked the colonel violently back to wakefulness. He clenched his fist and was about to shake it, but remembered and counted four with great solemnity, by which time the offending instrument had become dementedly insistent. The colonel snatched off the receiver.
“Hello! Hello! What the devil's the matter? Why can't you ring quietly? One—two—three—four No, that's not my number. A call from a call office? Yes—you've got it. Hello—speak up, can't you? Mary—my dear girl—yes—of course I'm here, You know I am whenever you want me. I wasn't angry. I thought it was the telephone girl wanting to tell me I was the wrong number. In trouble? Why, come round at once. On your way? Of course I'm up—been up hours. Right!”
Colonel Magree hung up the receiver and rang the bell. The startled man-servant, also of elderly, martial aspect, who answered the summons with commendable promptitude, found his master crimson with sternly controlled passion.
“Didn't you hear? Griffins, you're getting old and useless like the rest of us. My coat—my morning coat—the one just back from the tailor's. And get flowers—fill the place with flowers. There aren't any? Well, get them at once! For pity's sake, show some gumption, Griffins!”
“If you please, sir, there's a lady to see you—Mrs. Cochrane.”
“Confound it! How the devil did she get here in that time?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“Of course you don't! My coat—my coat, man!”
But it was too late. Behind the perturbed Griffins, a tall black-clad figure had already made its appearance, and Colonel Magree writhed back hastily into the claret dressing gown. Griffins, murmuring incoherencies, discreetly withdrew.
The colonel gulped down his discomfiture.
“Mrs. Cochrane—my dear Mary—you must have taken wings. I wasn't expecting you so soon. My man's an ass. If you'd given me another minute”
“I was at the call office just round the corner,” Mrs. Cochrane interrupted. “As soon as I heard you were up, I came round. I couldn't wait. It's a most terrible business.”
She sank into the colonel's chair and pushed back the becoming veil which had added an additional melancholy charm to her delicate features. Altogether—though to be sure she did not know it—widow's weeds as made in Bond Street became her mightily. The colonel, having given a last anxious glance at the coat lying on the back of her chair, where its immaculate folds were undergoing a rapid process of destruction, regarded his visitor with a kind of religious awe.
“If only you'd have given me another minute!” he repeated dolefully. “Then I'd have had things decent for you. A careless, lonely old bachelor's rooms”
“Oh, my dear colonel!” Mrs. Cochrane lifted her beautiful hand in a gesture of nervous impatience. “What does it matter? Do you think I've defied convention in order to be fêted? Haven't you heard—don't you know what's happened?”
“No, I don't. What has happened?”
“The duchess—the duchess has disappeared.”
Colonel Magree counted to four and then sat down on the nearest chair. He tried to keep his mind fixed on something else, but without conspicuous success.
“Disappeared?” he echoed stupidly.
Mrs. Cochrane nodded.
“It's awful. Angela rang me up this morning. It's in all the papers—though we're trying to keep the thing quiet. The police have been at it all night—with their usual result—nothing. We—we daren't think what has happened. Angela has just gone round to see some swell detective or other, and then she is coming on here. We felt you might help.”
“When, in Heaven's name, was she seen last? What happened?”
Mrs. Cochrane shook her head helplessly.
“We don't know what happened. Angela saw her last—just as she came back from the wedding. It seems that Angela annoyed her—some remark about her age, I think it was—and she went and shut herself up in her boudoir. When her maids came to dress her for dinner, they heard a man's voice and then a crash and a smothered scream. The door was locked. They had to get a manservant to break the lock. Then it was too late. The window stood open—the duchess had vanished.”
“Good heavens!”
“They searched the garden,” Mrs. Cochrane went on feverishly. “There was blood on the pavement beneath the window and the side door was unlocked. Nothing else was found and—and nothing else has been found.”
“Good heavens!” the colonel repeated. He half rose and then firmly sat down again, and the space of four slowly counted seconds elapsed before he questioned huskily: “I suppose—Lady Angela Frightful state of mind, eh?”
Mrs. Cochrane stiffened with uncontrollable disapproval.
“I don't know. I confess she puzzles—and—and rather shocks me. She insists that her mother was 'up to something.' Those are her very words. And you know, Douglas, I cannot conceive Elizabeth being—being 'up to something.' Can you?”
“Certainly not! A disgraceful idea!”
Mrs. Cochrane nodded in despairing agreement.
“That's what I think. But Angela is so painfully modern. No seriousness, and no respect for anything or anybody. A rough, unsensitive generation!”
Magree nodded.
“The world has changed,” he growled. “Not for the better, I fear, not for the better.”
They were both silent for a moment, then simultaneously they looked up and their eyes met.
“O'Neill—does he know?”
“We haven't told him—we didn't dare. He—he isn't young any more. We were afraid of the shock. Poor Sir John—he was so devoted—so unselfishly devoted! I always think of Cyrano de Bergerac and Don Quixote and Sir Philip Sydney and other dear, romantic people like that when I see him.”
“And why?” demanded the colonel unreasonably incensed. “Because he's as thin as a maypole, because he will wear old-fashioned clothes, because his hair curls and he has brown melancholy eyes! It's sickening! Other people,” he went on, with gloomy significance, “are every bit as chock-full of romance and all that stuff, every bit as devoted, but because they're stout and bald, they are passed over, forgotten, slighted. Women can't see below the surface, and—and it's a damned shame!”
“Colonel!”
“Well, it is,” he insisted sullenly.
The conversation languished. The colonel smoldered over his grievance, and Mrs. Cochrane sighed and stared at the carpet. It was evident that the tragic disappearance of the duchess had faded into the background, at any rate for the time being. Presently Mrs. Cochrane's eyes fell on a leather photograph case lying on the floor and she picked it up. The silence deepened—grew heavy with impending catastrophe. The colonel's face was a shade redder when his visitor turned her indignant attention to him.
“Colonel—who gave you these?”
He was a soldier and had fought in many a desperate battle without a tremor, and now he returned her glance with reckless defiance.
“You did.”
“I did nothing of the sort
He laughed bitterly.
“One you did, anyhow. Years ago. I dare say you have forgotten. Women do forget, it seems.”
Mary Cochrane flushed faintly.
“And the other?”
“I stole,” he admitted brazenly.
“That was very wrong.” The colonel muttered to the effect that he didn't care a damn, and she went on with sad disapproval: “And very unkind. It was unkind to confront youth with old age—the has-been with the what-is.”
“You are lovelier than you ever were,” the colonel declared passionately. “The what-is is a hundred times more beautiful than the has-been.”
Mrs. Cochrane avoided his eyes.
“I didn't ask for flattery. Won't you understand once and for all that I am an old woman, not so much in years as in feeling? All that makes for youth—all that I cared for—is dead, has been in the grave these many years. Surely I don't need to tell you that.”
“No, you don't,” the colonel retorted rudely. "“I haven't had much chance to forget it.”
He stalked about the room, counting under his breath, and finally came back and stood beside her chair. His tone was now beautifully gentle and resigned.
“Mary, don't be angry with me. And let me keep these photographs. It may not be for so very long now.”
“What do you mean?” she demanded hurriedly.
He sighed.
“I didn't mean to tell you. It's another of those beastly attacks. I had young Barclay round this morning. It's the heart again—might stop any moment. A shock—any unusual exertion might”
“Douglas!”
“There's nothing to fret about,” he went on uncomplainingly. “I've had my day. I'm an old man. It's not as if any one would miss me. No wife—no child”
“Douglas—is that all our friendship means to you?”
“Friendship!” he exclaimed, with tragic contempt. “Friendship! Haven't you just said that all you cared for was in the grave?”
“Oh, but—I didn't mean” she began tremulously.
But what she did or did not mean was fated not to be elucidated. The door opened suddenly, admitting a young lady whose appearance was heroically prepossessing in the face of ostentatiously slapdash and artistic apparel. She entered unannounced, having left the panting Griffins well behind in the race up the stairs.
“I just ran for all I was worth,” she explained breathlessly. 'They've got a clew—I don't know what yet—but they're going to phone us up here. And I passed O'Neill on the way. He's coming straight here and he must have heard, because he looks as if he were going to have ten fits. Poor old josser!”
“Really, my dear child” Mrs. Cochrane began.
The Lady Angela flopped exhaustedly into the nearest chair. It must be admitted that, as a duchess' daughter, she was not a conspicuous success.
“You old fogies take things so seriously,” she said. “I know mother's only been up to a lark.”
“Can you imagine your mother being up to a lark?” the colonel asked coldly.
“Oh, I don't know. I have moods, you know, that make me prepared for anything in mother.”
Mrs. Cochrane wrung her hands.
“And, anyhow, we've got to help Sir John. We must encourage him to hope for the best. His state of mind must be terrible. At least, he cares”
“Always was keen on mother,” the Lady Angela agreed composedly. “I didn't know one could be so keen at that age.
The two regarded her with a stony disapproval, but further conversation was cut short by the appearance of the flustered Griffins, followed immediately by Sir John O'Neill himself. The latter stopped short on the threshold, evidently taken aback by the assembly. Though very pale and obviously perturbed, he was clad as immaculately as ever in his somewhat old-fashioned garments and looked quite romantically handsome, as Mrs. Cochrane realized. She shook her head at him with compassionate understanding.
“We've all heard,” she said gently. “We're here in the hope of being of some use. We must just hope for the best.”
He took her outstretched hand and pressed it.
“It's very good of you all to take such interest,” he said. “I dare say it sounds exaggerated, but really it is one of the most unpleasant things that has ever happened to me.”
It was not quite what they had expected. Mrs. Cochrane was conscious of a slight chill.
“Angela takes a hopeful view,” she began. “She seems to think it's a kind of practical joke”
“Very practical, I admit,” Sir John interrupted grimly. “The fellow who played it has got the laugh over me, at any rate.”
He sat down and smoothed his gray hair with an aristocratic hand and stared into the fire. The three regarded him uncertainly. He was not living up to the situation. Even the Lady Angela was disappointed in him.
“The police are going to ring us up here,” she remarked, by way of filling up the rather awkward silence.
Sir John laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“Much good they'll do! Why, they didn't catch the miscreant last night, I can't think. It's not as if one could carry a great, fat bundle like that through the streets without being noticed.”
“Really” Mrs. Cochrane began. The vision of Cyrano de Bergerac and Don Quixote faded. She felt incensed—almost aggrieved. “You know, I don't think you ought to talk like that.”
Sir John gave her a quaint, old-fashioned bow.
“I apologize. I know I must seem quite absurdly upset. A loss like that can always be made good. Still, there were old associations attached” He sighed deeply. “They might have gone off with anything else,” he declared, “with the family jewels if they had liked, but they took the one thing I cared for. Mercifully, there is the insurance”
“Look here, O'Neill,” Magree broke in suddenly, “I don't like your tone. It's not respectful—it's heartless,”
“Why should I be respectful? I can't really break my heart over a loss of that kind, annoying and expensive though it is.”
“You've no business to speak of an—an old friend like that.”
Sir John smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, come, colonel, one mustn't be sentimental. Spilled milk is spilled milk, and there it is.”
“Brute!” said Mrs. Cochrane under her breath.
Colonel Magree counted four at a great pace and then exploded.
“I thought you were a gentleman, O'Neill,” he stuttered, “and you're a cad—a—a stony-hearted scoundrel!”
“Sir!”
Sir John O'Neill bounded to his feet, but before the conversation could proceed, the telephone rang frantically and Magree snatched off the receiver.
“Hello—hello—who's there? Sergeant Powell. Yes—yes. What's that? Good heavens—you don't mean Yes, wait a minute” He turned his blanched face to the three, who watched him with various expressions of bewilderment, dread, and placid interest. “The duchess' shawl has been found on the steps of the Thames Embankment,” he said hoarsely.
Mrs. Cochrane collapsed. Sir John staggered.
“What is all this about?” he demanded. “Explain—can't you?”
“You don't deserve it,” Magree retorted fiercely, “after the way you have been speaking of her grace.”
“I haven't been speaking of her grace.”
“Then what the devil have you been speaking of?”
“Of my silver—the silver that was stolen last night. What—what did you suppose?”
They stared at each other blankly. Sir John O'Neill steadied himself against the back of a chair.
“For pity's sake,” he pleaded, “what has happened?”
“The duchess,” began Magree very slowly, “the duchess has disappeared.”
“Murdered!” Mrs. Cochrane exclaimed brokenly.
But the Lady Angela merely stretched herself and yawned.
“What mother has been up to,” she said, “goodness only knows.”
III.
It was a very harmless, ordinary-looking bottle, not at all the sort of thing likely to work miracles. Its highly colored label bore a legend to the effect that one application produced youth instantly, followed by the question, “Why look old?” and various pertinent and impertinent observations. In fact, the whole thing did not inspire confidence. Yet the miracle had been performed.
An hour before, Elizabeth, Duchess of Ashminster, had been a white-haired, delightful aristocrat of the ancien régime—the sort of person associated with lavender, soft laces, imperturbable manners, and the guillotine. And now she was a lady—of charm, it is true, but of distinctly doubtful character. It was the black hair that had done it—the glossy, raven-black hair that made the calm, aristocratic eyes vivacious and the delicate, aristocratic nose piquant and the haughtily aristocratic mouth provocative. Not that she was exactly young—that was the whole charm of the thing. The idea of age was simply not applicable. She was an alluring personality—some one you had to look at two or three times and then lose your heart to.
The duchess herself was shocked. The reflection shown her by the piece of broken mirror nailed on the cracked wall of Mrs. Jakes' unsalubrious attic actually frightened her. It was as if she had lost herself in some one else—or found something in herself as unexpected as it was reprehensible. And the unchangeableness of it all was really alarming.
“Do you know,” she began, “do you know, I don't think I look quite nice, somehow? Not—not respectable”
“Nice!” Sally Jakes retorted. “Why, yer fine! 'Ansome, yer are—real 'ansome! That old duchess of yers ain't a patch on yer, I bet.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I should say I do! And as to being respectable—well, yer ain't respectable, an' there ain't no good tryin' t' be what yer ain't.”
The duchess inclined to demur, but just then footsteps sounded on the creaking wooden stairs, and Mrs. Jakes, with her fingers to her lips, crept to the door, which the next minute was flung open. Mrs. Jakes vanished into the gloom, and there was the sound of a sob and a convulsive embrace.
The duchess was both embarrassed and surprised. She had never associated tenderness with the lower classes. Love, for the duchess, was a restrained, gentlemanly person with a Bond Street tailor. Now it appeared that he was not at all particular either as to his company or his neighborhood.
“Dear me, they do seem fond of each other,” the duchess thought. “I do hope they've not forgotten I'm here.”
Quite accidentally, her thoughts drifted to Sir John; an accident which so thoroughly disconcerted her that she hastened to fix her attention sternly on her surroundings. There was so little to fix on, however, a soap box that served as a cradle being the chief item, that the effort was not successful.
“Poor, dear things!” the duchess murmured. “It's not at all a nice place—and a soap box, too! Dear, dear!”
She found herself becoming very indignant. She was probably looking peculiarly vivacious and flighty when the couple on the landing made their appearance. Mr. Jakes proved a tall young man who, like his wife, would have been positively handsome if he had not been so thin—so harassed looking, “chivvied,” as Mrs. Jakes would have expressed it. He carried a large carpenter's bag in one hand; the other arm was flung over his wife's shoulder. As he saw the stranger, he started and blanched visibly.
“Wot's that?” he asked, with a jerk of the head.
The opening was not propitious or flattering. The duchess stared back rather haughtily, and Sally Jakes disengaged herself from her husband's arm and came forward.
“It's a new pal, Bert,” she said. “A real good pal. She saved me an' the kid, she did, an' we're goin' to do 'er a good turn, 'cos she's down on 'er luck, ain't we?”
Mr. Albert Jakes and the duchess measured each other. The former's scrutiny seemed to satisfy him. He held out a big hand.
“I don't rightly know wot yer've done, missus,” he said, “but if yer've 'elped my old girl, why, yer can count on yours trooly to the bitter hend. Shake on it.”
They shook. The duchess found the process painful and was relieved when her hand was released, and Mr. Jakes turned and set his bag cautiously on the table. There was a faint metallic jingle from the interior, and the man glanced back over his shoulder and caught the duchess' startled eyes.
“Look 'ere,” he said. “Ye're straight? Yer ain't goin' to play no tricks—no peachin', d'yer 'ear?”
“Of course she's straight,” Sally Jakes answered. “Why, she's in trouble 'erself—up to 'er neck in it, ain't yer, Liz?”
“Oh, quite up to my neck, I should say,” the duchess agreed sincerely.
Mr. Jakes appeared satisfied. He opened the bag and began slowly to unpack the contents. Mrs. Jakes crept up to him, her thin cheek against his shoulder.
“Bert—ye're safe? No one saw yer?”
“Not that I knows of. But I 'ad an 'ell of a time—all them bloomin' bells ringin' their 'eads off. Thort I'd never get away. But I done it. Look 'ere! Beauty, eh, wot?”
It was a beauty. The duchess tried to suppress a gasp and failed.
“Sir John's Queen Anne teapot,” she said, “and the Georgian teaspoons—and his pet milk jug! Oh, my dear, good man, what have you done?”
“Done?” He replaced the teapot slowly and stared at her. “Cawn't yer see? An' wot d'yer know about Sir John's bloomin' silver, missus? Yer tell me that?”
His wife pressed his arm gently.
“Lidy's maid, Bert dear. Knows all the nobs. Moved in the 'ighest circles, 'aven't yer, Lizzy?”
“Quite the highest,” the unhappy duchess agreed.
She sat down on the one chair and stared helplessly at the silver glitter spread out on the table before her. Mr. Albert Jakes also considered his spoils with a gloomy, meditative eye.
“Fine, ain't it?” he said. “Nuf there to get us clean out of 'ere an' give us a fresh start where they won't chivvy us. But I 'ates it. I 'ates the 'ole bloomin' thing. It's like bein' a dirty tyke—stealin' wot ain't 'is. Wot's we t'do? Just tell me that! We ain't 'ad so much as a tyke's chawnce. A tyke gets scraps chucked at 'im or 'e gets pushed into a lethal chamber an' turned off easy. But 'oo gives us scraps? We've got to live, we 'ave—that's the law. 'Ow we live don't matter to nobody.”
He seemed to have forgotten his companions, to be addressing some invisible court of justice in which judge and jury were other than those which he had already faced to his cost. His young face was grim and old with bitterness, and there were tears on his wife's pinched white cheeks. The duchess looked from one to the other. The silver had ceased to be important.
Her pity for Sir John had been ousted by another pity—the strongest, most impetuous emotion she had ever felt in all her life.
“Mr. Jakes,” she said, “if you hate it—send that silver back. You shall start afresh. From now onward, I'm going to care how you live. I promise you.”
“You!” He stared at her with dazed incredulity. “'Ow are yer goin' to do that, missus? Yer in trouble yerself, ain't yer?”
“Yes, I am—incredible trouble. But I can help you. I can give you enough to start afresh. Look here!” She drew out the cambric handkerchief and unknotted it with trembling fingers. “There, I give you those. They're worth hundreds.”
Even in the somber twilight, the three diamond rings sparkled with an alluring promise. There was a moment's silence, which grew tense as Albert Jakes took the handkerchief and its contents to the dirty window. When he returned, a startling change had come over him. He was trembling from head to foot. He leaned across the table, the rings in his outstretched hand.
“Want to give me those, do yer?” he asked thickly.
The duchess smiled and nodded. She saw that he was strangled with natural emotion, and she was still too much a duchess not to be pleasantly aware of her own magnanimity.
“'Oo'd they belong to?” he shot at her.
She was too taken aback, too shocked, to answer, and it was Sally Jakes who came to the rescue. She nudged her husband playfully with her elbow.
“'Old yer tongue, Bert. Supposin' some one was to arsk us, '’Oo does that silver stuff belong to?' Yer wouldn't like it, now would yer?”
“She's owned to it, then?” he growled out.
“On course she 'as. Don't be a fool, Bert.”
He pushed her roughly to one side. With shaking hands, he spread out the cambric handkerchief and pointed an accusing finger at the embroidered corner.
“I know 'oo yer are!” he said, with slow and deadly significance. “I know 'oo yer are!” he repeated between his teeth.
The duchess caught her breath. That telltale embroidered coronet settled the matter. She had forgotten it, and its unexpected betrayal was both painful and confusing. The duchess crimsoned to the roots of her raven-black hair.
“Mr. Jakes,” she said, “if you do know me, then I can only say that it is the most distressing, awkward predicament I could possibly be in. I do hope, Mr. Jakes,” she continued with dignity, “that I can rely on your discreet silence with regard to the whole foolish escapade.”
“Escapade!” he echoed. “Got to 'old my tongue, 'ave I?”
“I should be very much obliged if it could be managed. In the meantime, pray accept these stones as a token of my”
Mr. Jakes interrupted her with a violent blow on the table.
“Trying to pass 'em off on to us, are yer?” he thundered. “Tryin' to get us into trouble”
“I'm not. I have not the slightest desire
“Ho, no, on course not!” He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Let me tell yer 'oo those rings belong to—I knows. They belong to the Duchess of Ashminster.”
“Obviously,” the duchess agreed, with some coldness.
“Ah, so yer owns to it! P'r'aps yer know wots 'appened to 'er?”
“Most certainly I do.”
“So do I.” He drew himself to his full height and pointed his finger in the duchess' face. “So does every one wot reads the mornin' papers. 'Er grace, the Duchess of Ashminster”—he ennunciated his words with terrific significance—“'er grace disappeared last night. Her shawl was found on the Thames Embankment. They're draggin' the river for 'er corpse. She was done in.”
Sally Jakes screamed. The duchess was silent, partly because she did not understand, partly because, for once in her life, she found it difficult to say the right thing.
Mr. Albert Jakes pushed the rings across the table.
“Yer thought, 'cos I stole, I'd stick at nothin'. But I do stick. I wouldn't touch them things with the end of a barge pole. An' wot's more, I ain't goin' to shield yer. I'm goin' to the police”
His wife clung to him in an agony of terror.
“Bert—yer can't! They'll 'ave you, too. It'll mean years o' quod”
“I don't care. I won't 'ave no traffic with no murd'ress. I've 'ad to steal, but I'll 'ave no blood on me 'ands. You come out o' this, Sal.”
The duchess rose to her feet.
“My good man,” she began with gracious authority, “this is a ridiculous mistake. The duchess has not been murdered. I can assure you on that point.” She smiled with the consciousness of creating a real effect on these simple, quite delightfully honest people. “You see, I am the Duchess of Ashminster,” she said.
Mr. Albert Jakes, with his resisting wife, had reached the door. He turned and stared back.
“Duchess!” he said. “Yer looks like one, don't yer?”
The door slammed. The key turned in the lock. There was the sound of voices arguing heatedly and the fading thud of feet on the stairs. The duchess was alone with Sir John's silver and the Jakes' baby. She caught a glimpse of herself in the piece of broken mirror, She saw the wonderful black hair. In a prophetic vision, she saw the blacker headlines in the morning papers.
Whereupon Elizabeth, Duchess of Ashminster, quietly fainted.
IV.
“If yer pléase, sir, the p'lice is 'ere with a man who says he's got himportant hinformation.” .
The four occupants of Colonel Magree's library started violently from their various meditations. Sir John O'Neill turned his white, drawn face in the direction of the stoical Griffins.
“Show them up at once.”
In the interval of waiting, they endeavored to compose themselves, with but faint success. The colonel paced restlessly backward and forward, muttering and counting under his breath. The Lady Angela looked faintly uneasy, though skeptical. Mrs. Cochrane divided her distressed attention between the two men.
“Douglas, do try to be calm. You know how bad it is for your heart. Sir John, I know how terribly you must feel it all, but we must be brave—we must hope for the best—we must”
At that moment, Albert Jakes, with another person in those peculiarly noticeable civilian garments which are supposed to disguise gentlemen of the C.I.D., made his appearance. The four braced themselves. Detective James introduced his companion briefly and without enthusiasm.
“He says he knows what's happened to her grace. He's got some story about having the culprit locked up in his garret. Whether it's true or not, goodness knows, but I thought I'd better bring him along before we make a public case of it.”
“Quite right, officer.” Sir John threw back his shoulders. His fine mouth was hard set in the brave effort to hide his emotion. He came up to Mr. Jakes and looked that personage full in the eyes.
“The duchess if extremely dear to us all,” he said. “I beg of you, therefore, say nothing that could mislead us. On the other hand, if you help, I shall do everything in my power to show my appreciation.”
Albert Jakes smiled a very bitter smile.
“I knows 'oo you are,” he said. “Yer're Sir John O'Neill. An' when yer knows 'oo I am, I knows 'ow appreciative yer'll be. But I ain't 'ere countin' the cost. I've got to do my dooty. I knows wot's 'appened to 'er grace an' I knows 'oo done it.”
“In Heaven's name, man—done what?”
“Done 'er in.” There was a moment's stricken silence. Even the colonel stood still. Albert Jakes looked gloomily from one to the other. “It was a woman done it,” he went on; “a black-haired, black-eyed hussy wot might be up to anythink—murderin' my kid now, for all I knows. She's got 'er grace's rings an' 'er 'ankerchief. Brazen, she was—fairly owned up to it. Wanted to push the goods on to me.”
Sir John mastered himself.
“We must go at once,” he said. “Griffin—a taxi, instantly.”
He pushed the ex-orderly to one side and ran down the stairs with the agility of a boy. Colonel Magree started to run, but remembered in time.
“One—two—three Oh, damn it all! Give me my coat—my hat Griffins—you idiot—my hat”
He was gone, like suddenly released tornado. The C.I.D. gentleman and Mr. Jake followed at leisure, and the two women were left alone in the bewildered, distraught silence that follows on a violent storm. Mrs. Cochrane clasped and unclasped her hands in an agony of distress.
“He shouldn't do it,” she said brokenly. “His heart's bad. He might drop down dead any moment.”
“Well, I don't see what it matters to you,” the Lady Angela retorted, white-faced and bitter. “You don't care.”
“You're heartless, Angela.”
“I'm not heartless. You've never cared for any one except Captain Cochrane—you're always saying so. If Colonel Magree does drop down dead, I don't see why you need make a fuss.” Her voice shook. “And, anyhow—he isn't your mother lying in the Thames,” she added hoarsely.
Mrs. Cochrane rose with tragic dignity and rang the bell.
“I'm going after him” she said. “If this is the end, I must be there. I know poor Douglas would wish it. Griffins—a taxi!”
They arrived almost simultaneously. If such a description is permissible in connection with such aristocratic personages, their progress up the narrow wooden stairs might be called a scuffle. But at the top they halted—startled to a standstill by the glaringly obvious face that the door of the garret had been sprung open and hung on a broken hinge. Mr. Albert Jakes groaned.
“She's 'ooked it!” he gasped, “'Ooked it!”
They entered the miserable apartment in close formation, as the war correspondents have it, but except for the incongruous display of silver on the table and Mrs. Jakes nursing her baby, there was nothing and nobody there. The detective showed signs of seizing upon Mrs. Jakes, but her husband thrust him back.
“You keep yer 'ands off 'er.” He advanced sternly. “Sal, wot 'ave yer gone an' been an' done?”
She faced him, pale, but fearless.
“I let 'er go,” she said. “I 'ad to. I 'eard 'er fall an' when I found 'er all faintlike—well, I just 'adn't the 'eart to keep 'er. I couldn't 'a' done it, Bert.”
“You've done for me, anyhow,” he said bitterly.
She looked about her wistfully. Sir John, who had gone over to the table, picked up a dirty envelope, and she nodded.
“She wrote that just before she went,” she said.
“It's addressed to me,” Sir John began huskily.
“I dare say, sir,” Sally Jakes agreed listlessly.
She began to cry, and her husband put his arm protectingly about her. Amidst a dead silence, Sir John tore open the envelope.
- Dear Sir John: I am not murdered—“done in,” I think is the local expression—and I have not been robbed. I have just escaped.
- I am out on a great adventure. I am out in pursuit of something I have lost—or perhaps never had. Already I have found out some amazing facts. For instance, there are some beautiful things outside Park Lane. And I have discovered the great difference between me and most people. It's a banking account.
- On the other hand, the difference between me and very doubtful characters seems to be slight—almost negligible.
- It has been quite a revelation.
- I know I ought to have waited and explained everything, but I fancy my appearance would have been a terrible shock to you. Besides, I might not have been able to escape again—and I don't want to come back just yet.
- Please be very, very good to the Jakes, and don't let any one “chivvy” them again. Also, take care of Angela and see that she does not do anything foolish. She is inclined to be headstrong and unconventional. And don't worry about your affectionate old friend,
Elizabeth.
- P. S—Try and keep all this out of the papers. I shall want to come back some day,
- P. S. S—John dear, I wonder if we are really as old as we thought we were?
Sir John said nothing. He handed the letter to Colonel Magree, who read it with the Lady Angela and Mrs. Cochrane peering over on either side.
The C.I.D. gentleman touched the dreaming Sir John on the elbow.
“Your silver, I think, sir.”
Sir John smiled vaguely.
“Is it? Yes, I dare say”
“There's no doubt, sir. I'd better arrest this fellow”
Sir John started and glanced at Mr. and Mrs. Jakes. They stood together, the man's arm about the woman's shoulder, defying the worst.
“No, certainly not—a friend of the duchess He can keep the stuff, for all I care. I—we owe Mr. Jakes a debt of gratitude. What do you say, colonel?”
But Colonel Magree shook his head gloomily.
“It's beyond me,” he said. “I ought to be dead. I ought to have dropped down hours ago. I can't think what's wrong. That fellow Barclay must be an ass.”
He looked about him with an air of grievance.
There was a tear on Mrs. Cochrane's cheek—a tear of obvious thankfulness, no doubt connected with the duchess' safety.
But the colonel felt suddenly and wonder fully consoled.
[The third episode in this sprightly series will .be printed in December.]