Chapter 9

[Admin]

"WHAT do you mean---mud?"

She had to force herself to ask the question, and her voice was husky. Perhaps he would tell her the truth and ask her help. She knew he loved her; was more sure of him at that moment than ever she had been. The realisation brought her to the edge of tears. Eagerly, yet dreading, she waited, holding her breath.

"Mud---well, ugliness. I can't explain."

He was vague, unwilling, she guessed, to go any farther along the path of self-revelation. The breakfast gong put a prosaic period to his mood.

At breakfast he relapsed into silence. Once she saw him staring fixedly at the picture on the panelled wall, and, in spite of her self-control, shuddered. Fortunately he did not notice this.

She tried to make conversation. Very daringly she referred to the eccentric Mrs. Untersohn---a subject that had by tacit agreement been taboo---and only then did she arouse him to interest.

"A queer woman---she lives at Hampstead---no, that isn't why she is queer. Lots of nice, normal people live at Hampstead. She ought to be well off, but I suspect her son is a drain. I've helped her many times---I suppose I've given her ten thousand pounds in the past four years."

He was very diffident and apologetic about his plan to have Cheyne Wells down for the night.

"As a matter of fact, it was his suggestion; he thought I was looking run down---are you sure you don't mind?"

If he had asked her on the previous night she would have been whole-hearted in her endorsement of the plan. But now----? She did not want outsiders. With Peter alone she might get nearer to his confidence.

"When is he coming?"

"To-night---if you'd rather he didn't I could put him off?"

But she shook her head.

That morning, after Peter had gone to the village to send some telegrams (he said), she made a discovery. It came about in a most commonplace way. Anna had unpacked her trunk and deposited its contents in various drawers of the ancient wardrobe. Jane could not find her handkerchiefs and rang for the ancient maid.

"Now where did I put 'em, ma'am?"

Anna added a new homeliness to her face by a deep frown.

"I remember---I put all the handkerchiefs together in Mr. Clifton's dressing-table drawer. I'll get 'em."

"Don't trouble---I can find them myself."

Jane was in no great hurry. It was half an hour later that she went into Peter's room. The one drawer in his dressing-table was locked, but the key was on the table top. She turned the lock, opened the drawer, and the first thing she saw was a neat pile of small copper plates. She lifted the top plate out and instantly recognised it as one of the collection which Peter said her father had lost. There was no doubt about it. So they hadn't been lost after all! Peter, in his absent-minded way, had them here all the time and had forgotten. When had they been mislaid? She concentrated in an effort of memory. On April 1st! She remembered that her father had made a jest about the date, denying that he had ever had the plates and claiming that Peter was making an April fool of him.

The servant came up soon after and Jane asked carelessly:

"When was Mr. Blonberg here last?"

Anna thought.

"At the beginning of April, ma'am."

So that was it! Jane recalled the fact that at the beginning of April Peter had a mysterious call to Paris.

"He didn't always sleep here---Mr. Blonberg. He comes down for the day in his car and goes back the same night as often as not. He always drives himself in a little closed car."

Jane sighed.

"How interesting!" she said.

With an effort she drove her mind to a more mundane subject.

"Dr. Wells is staying the night---I suppose there is a spare bedroom?"

"Three, ma'am. Is he coming by himself?"

It was a startling possibility that Donald Wells should bring his wife, the one woman in the world whom Jane actively disliked.

"I suppose so---yes, I'm sure."

The possibility of being called upon to entertain Marjorie Cheyne Wells was more than she dared contemplate.

Donald came after lunch---and came alone.

"There is nothing to be alarmed about," he told her when, at the first opportunity, she sought him out and asked point-blank if there was any special reason for his visit. "Peter is run down---I don't exactly know why. He was as fit as a fiddle when he left London---I hope that woman Untersohn hasn't rattled him. Marjorie? Oh, she's fine," he answered shortly.

He gave her the impression that he was not anxious to discuss his wife. Jane had guessed that the relationships between Donald and his wife were not of the best, and Basil Hale had suggested that Mrs. Cheyne Wells was a difficult woman to live with. But then, Basil's gossip was frankly malicious.

For some reason Jane began to resent the presence of the doctor before he had been in the house an hour. He represented a barrier to the smooth progression of her new understanding with Peter---an understanding which must remain one-sided until the opportunity came for her to tell him all that she knew and feared. Towards the close of the day, however, she had an experience which shattered much of her confidence that the understanding could be anything more than one-sided.

She was alone with him for a few minutes before tea, and remembered the incident of the morning. Perhaps he himself was unaware that the lost plates had been found.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you, Peter---do you know that your plates are in the drawer---the plates you thought daddy had lost----"

So far she got, and stopped. His face had gone the colour of chalk.

"How do you know---why did you go to my drawer?"

His voice was sharp, almost angry, and momentarily she was staggered by his tone.

"I went for some handkerchiefs---but, Peter, why are you cross? I thought you valued those etchings." . . .

He was making a supreme effort to recover his equilibrium.

"Yes---sorry I'm so jumpy. In the drawer, are they? What a careless fool I am! And I suppose I left the key on the table? I really need a nurse!"

The colour was back in his face, but he was obviously distressed by her discovery. She knew, when he suggested that he did not know the plates were there, he was lying, and lying clumsily.

"Very awkward---I mean, after accusing your father of losing them. Jane, I'd be greatly obliged if you would keep this matter to yourself. I mean, I shouldn't like your father to know that I'd made such an ass of myself."

"But he'd understand----"

"I'd rather you didn't tell him---honestly. I'm rather keen on his not knowing."

It seemed such a stupid little thing to make such a fuss about, but she promised smilingly: the smile was wholly forced.

His anger she might understand; his undisguised fear was inexplicable. Jane was baffled. Just when she thought she was beginning to know him, something happened that threw her back to the place whence she had started. She found a sort of an explanation in the presence of Donald Wells. Peter was a bundle of jangled nerves---for the moment abnormal. How far she had contributed to that state was a matter for uneasy consideration.

She wrote to John Leith that afternoon---a colourless letter about trivialities. She made no mention of the lost plates. Her letter to Basil Hale was equally uninformative. She wondered as she wrote what would be Basil's caustic verdict if he knew that his letter to her had been opened. That was another strange happening at variance with all her preconceptions of Peter.

Dinner was for eight o'clock, and at seven Peter and Donald Wells were still together in the library. She dressed and came down. They were still engaged, and she wandered out into the garden. The world was very quiet and, except for the chattering of the birds, there was no sound. The peacefulness of the evening had a curiously sedative effect upon her---she was getting nervous, too. How nervous, she was to discover as she passed through the opening in the yew hedge that led to the garden.

Somebody called her name in a whisper and she jumped.

"Oh! Who is that?"

She looked round with a wildly beating heart, saw nobody, and was preparing to flee when the voice spoke again, this time more loudly.

"Jane!"

It was Basil Hale, sitting on a low garden seat, scarcely visible under the drooping branches of a willow tree.

"Basil! What on earth are you doing here?"

He came cautiously from cover, a broad grin on his red face.

"Scared you!" he chuckled. "Where is hubby---with Donald?"

There was something in his tone that she did not like---perhaps she had forgotten the old domineering air of proprietorship he had habitually assumed. It jarred on her now a little.

"Yes---they are in the library. Are you staying to dinner?"

He shook his head.

"No---I've got my flivver down the road---I was on my way back to town and thought I'd slip in for a glimpse of the bonny bride."

Her eyes were smiling---it had always been difficult to be annoyed with Basil, though she found it less of an effort than usual.

"Been down to hear the preliminary court proceedings against Worth, a crazy labourer who murdered his wife with a hatchet," he said pleasantly.

Basil had been called to the Bar. He never practised, but he took an academic interest in horrors. Jane took none whatever, but it had so happened that in her ennui of the afternoon she had read the newspaper very thoroughly, and amongst other items had noticed that the police court proceedings against the mad Worth had been postponed. She was on the point of offering ironical condolences that he had had his journey for nothing, when he continued:

"I've been in court all day----"

"But the case was postponed?"

He seemed to regard this as a great joke.

"Fancy your knowing that! Jane, you're becoming quite a murder expert. Yes, it was postponed and my introduction is spoilt! Dam' nuisance---and I rehearsed it so carefully! Do you remember the case of Alexander Welerson?"

She was looking at him, her mouth an O of amazement.

"What are you talking about, Basil? Have you been----"

"Drinking? No. Welerson was a very rich man who killed two perfectly innocent servants in cold blood. He's the text of my argument. He was crazy mad, of course. There was a bad history of insanity in the family. His father died in an asylum and Welerson eventually died in Dartmoor. There hasn't been a member of the family that wasn't queer in some way or other."

"What is all this to do with me?" she demanded, and he smiled up at her slyly.

"Wells is here, isn't he? He's been looking after Peter for years. Why is Wells here now? Because Peter feels another attack is coming on, after Donald had given him a clean bill of health for his marriage."

She stood petrified with horror at the innuendo.

"Peter---what do you mean?"

He saw that she understood, and nodded.

"Peter's crazy. I like you too much to allow you to stay in ignorance of your danger. He's the son of Alexander Welerson---a mad homicide---and it's about time you knew what your fool father has allowed you to marry!"

Jane Clifton looked at the red-faced man, dazed, uncomprehending. The horror of his revelation momentarily paralysed her.

"It's not true." She found her voice. "It was a terrible thing to say---terrible!"

He was grave enough now.

"I'm not blaming your father---Wells said he was cured and they're all gambling on that. But they're gambling with your life, Jane----"

He heard a quick step on the gravel and turned with a grimace of fear that she did not fail to notice.

"What are you doing here?"

It was Peter's voice, hard and authoritative. Basil blinked at him.

"Eh? I happened to be passing and I thought I'd call in to see Jane. I hope you don't mind?"

Peter glanced from one to the other. Jane's face was drawn and haggard; her trembling body told him less than he wished to know, more than he could see without pain.

"What have you been telling her?" he demanded in a low voice.

Basil made a pitiable attempt to appear indifferent.

"All the gossip of town, old boy----" he began, but Peter turned abruptly away to the girl.

"What is wrong, Jane---what has he told you?"

She shook her head.

"Nothing," she muttered, and tried to brush past him.

"What has he told you?" His strong hands held her by the shoulder. He was looking down into her face.

She did not answer, and again he turned to Basil.

"I've two scores against you, Hale," he said slowly, "and I'm going to allow one of them to wait."

"I'm afraid I can't follow you." Basil was smiling, but the uneasiness in his voice was clear even to Jane.

"You broke into my house the second night I was here, and into my wife's room. For that I intended killing you. And if the thing you have told Jane is what I believe it to be, keep out of my way, Hale!"

"Don't threaten me," grated the other, fury overcoming fear.

"I have warned you," said Peter.

What followed was so unexpected, so quick to happen, that Jane thereafter had only a confused memory. She saw Basil Hale crouch, heard the thud of the blow as Peter's fist caught him squarely on the jaw, and in another second he was a sobbing, howling, bestial thing, writhing in a clump of dwarf roses. Lifting her bodily, Peter swung her through the yew opening.

"I think you'd better go to the house," he said, and turned to meet the fury that came leaping towards him with whirlwind arms.