Now, the likeness of the name, and the boy"s babblings, made me suspect the plot of an old-fashioned melodrama.
"Oh, I guessed about her hair and eyes, because you said she was so pretty; and dark eyes and auburn hair are the prettiest of all," I a.s.sured him gaily. "I"m great at guessing things; I can guess like magic! Now, I guess the presents she brought you were from Australia."
"So they were!" laughed Bertie. "That"s what she said. And she told me stories about things out there, before she got so weak."
"Poor Cecil! What"s the matter with her?" I ventured.
"I don"t know," mumbled the boy, interested in an eclair. "She cries a lot. Mother says she"s in a decline."
"Oughtn"t she to see a doctor?" I wondered.
"Mother thinks a doctor"d be no good. Besides, I don"t "spect she"d let one see Cecil, anyhow. I told you she won"t allow any one in."
"Why does your mother give Cecil a room whose window looks over the moat, if it"s so important she should hide?" I persisted.
"All the rooms in that wing where we live are like that," Bertie explained. "They"ve windows on the little court inside, and windows outside, on the moat. But the outside window in Cecil"s room is nailed shut now, so she couldn"t open it if she tried. And those little old panes set in lead are thick as _thick_! I don"t believe you could smash one unless you had a hammer. Father says you couldn"t. I mean, he says _Cecil_ couldn"t. And since the day Mother scolded Cecil for looking out, the curtain"s nailed down. It doesn"t matter, though. Plenty of light comes from the garden side."
"Where was Cecil before you went to live in the wing?" I asked. "Was she in the house?"
"Oh, she"d been in that wing for weeks before Father and I moved in,"
said the boy. "Mother slept there at night. And Cecil could look out as much as she liked, because there was no one about except us, and Krammie. Krammie doesn"t count! She"s the same as the family, because she"s so old--she nursed Mother when Mother was a baby. Seems funny she _could_ have been a baby, doesn"t it? But Krammie loves her better than any one, except me. She never splits on me to them if I do anything. But now I"ve eaten all the cakes, so we"d better go and find Krammie. If we don"t, she may go into the wing first. There"d be the _devil_ to pay then!"
It seemed to me that there was the devil to pay already--a devil in woman"s form--unless my imagination had made a fool of me. I shivered with disgust at the thought of those two witches--the middle-aged one and the hag. I hope I didn"t take their wickedness for granted because they were both _Germans_, though we have got into that habit in the last five years, with all we"ve gone through, and with the villains who used to be Russian in novels now being German!
If I did hand over my prize to the elder witch, the boy was lost to me.
I should never get a second chance to catch my fox with cake! And even were I sure that he wouldn"t blab, or that Kramm wouldn"t, the secret of our meeting was certain to leak out. In that case, the red baize door would never again open to my knock. So what was I to do?
"Come along," urged the boy. Having got all he could get out of me, he began to sulk. "I don"t want to stay with you any more."
"Wait a minute," I pleaded. "I"m thinking of something--something to do for _you_."
Though I wasn"t a German, the most diabolical plot had just jumped into my head!
CHAPTER VIII
"WHEN IN DOUBT, PLAY A TRUMP"
It was a case of now or never!
"Look here, Bertie," I said, "what I"ve been thinking of is this: you"d better hide, and let me go alone to find Krammie. _Suppose_ your mother has looked in your room! She"ll know from Kramm that the ladies are motoring, so she may come out to speak with Kramm and ask for you.
Squeeze into this clump of lilac bushes at the end of the terrace! Trust me to make everything right, and be back soon."
The picture of his mother on the warpath transformed Bertie to a jelly.
He was in the lilac bushes almost before I"d finished; and I hurried off, ostensibly to seek Kramm. I did not, however, seek far, or in any direction where she was likely to be. Presently I came back and in my turn plunged into the bushes. I broke the news that I hadn"t seen Kramm.
It looked as if the worst had happened. But Bertie must buck up. I"d thought of a splendid plan! "How would you like to stay with me," I wheedled, "until your mother is ready to crawl to get you back, cry and sob, and swear not to punish you?"
The boy looked doubtful. "I"ve heard my mother _swear_," he said, "but never cry or sob. Do you think she would?"
"I"m sure," I urged. "And you"ll have the time of your life with me! All the money you want for toys and chocolates. And you needn"t go to bed till you choose."
"What kind of toys?" he bargained. "Tanks and motor cars that go?"
"Rath_er_! And marching soldiers, and a gramophone."
"Righto, I"ll come! And I don"t care a darn if I never see Mother or Father again!" decided the cherub.
I would have given as much for a taxi as Richard the Third for a horse; but I"d walked from the village, and must return in the same way. We started at once, hand in hand, stepping out as Bertie Scarlett the second had never, perhaps, stepped before. It was only a mile to Dawley St. Ann, and in twenty minutes I had smuggled my treasure into the inn by a little-used side door. This led straight to my rooms, and I whisked the boy in without being seen. So far, so good. But what to do with him next was the question!
I saw that, in such an emergency, Terry Burns would hinder more than help. He was cured of the listlessness, the melancholia, which had been the aftermath of sh.e.l.l shock; but he was rather like a male Sleeping Beauty just roused from a hundred years" nap--full of reawakened fire and vigour, though not yet knowing what use to make of his brand-new energy. It was my job to advise _him_, not his to counsel me! And if I flung at his head my version of the "Cecil" story, his one impulse would be to batter down the sported oak of the garden court suite.
He and I had agreed, in calm moments, that it would be vain and worse than vain to appeal to the police. But calm moments were ended, especially for Terry. _He_ might think that the police would act on the story we could now patch together. _I_ didn"t think so, or I wouldn"t have stolen the heir of all the Scarletts.
Well, I _had_ stolen him. Here he was in my small sitting room, stuffing chocolates bestowed on me by Terry. On top of uncounted cakes they would probably make him _sick_; and I couldn"t send for a doctor without endangering the plot.
No! the child must be disposed of, and there wasn"t a minute to waste.
Terry"s lodgings were as unsuited for a hiding-place as my rooms at the inn. Both of us were likely to be suspected when Bertie was missed. I didn"t much care for myself, but I did care for Terry, because my business was to keep him out of trouble, not to get him into it, even for his love"s sake.
Suddenly, as I concentrated on little Fox-face, and how to camouflage him for my purpose, Jim Courtenaye"s description of the child drifted into my head.
_Jim!_ The thought of Jim just then was like picking up a pearl on the way to the poor-house!
_Dear_ Jim! I hadn"t been sure what my feeling for him was, but at this minute I adored him. I adored him because he was a wild-western devil capable of la.s.soing enemies as he would cows. I adored him because the fire of his nature blazed out in his red hair and his black eyes. Jim was an anachronism from some barbaric century of Courtenayes. Jim was a precious heirloom. He had called the Scarlett boy a "venomous little brute!" I could hear again his voice through the telephone "_I"d do more than that for you_."
Idiot that I was, in that I"d _rung him off_! And I hadn"t made a sign of life since, though he was sure to have heard that I was at Dawley St.
Ann, within forty miles of the Abbey and Courtenaye Coombe.
I could have torn my hair, only it"s too pretty to waste. Instead, I ran into the next room, pulled the bell-rope and demanded the village taxi immediately, if not sooner. Then I flew back to Bertie and made him up for a new part.
This was done--to his mingled amus.e.m.e.nt and disgust--by means of a tight-fitting, veiled motor-hood of my own and a scarlet cape, short for a grown-up girl, but long for a small boy. This produced a fair imitation of what the police would call "a female child," should they catch sight of my companion. But as it happened, they did not; nor did any one else at Dawley St. Ann, so far as I was aware. By my instructions the taxi drew up at the side door, and while Timmins, the chauffeur, was starting the engine (he"d stopped it, as I kept him waiting), I rushed Bertie into the car. Once in, I squashed him down on the floor, seated tailor fashion, with a perfectly good, perfectly new box of burnt almonds on his lap.
"Drive as fast as you dare without being held up," I ordered; and Timmins, lately demobbed from the Tank Corps, obeyed with violence. The distance was forty miles; the hour of starting, six; and at seven-thirty we were spinning up the long avenue at Courtenaye Abbey; good going for Devonshire hills!
I took the chance that Jim might be at the Abbey rather than at Courtenaye Coombe, where he lodged. The way was shorter and--there were as many hiding-places in the Abbey as at Dun Moat. Luck was with me! It had been one of the days when Jim opened the Abbey to tourists, and he was late because he"d gone the rounds with the guardian. His small car, which he drove himself, stood before the door, and from that door he flew like a Jack-in-the-box as we dashed up.
"Elizabeth! I mean Princess!" he exclaimed.
"Call me _anything_!" I whispered, recklessly, bending out of the car as we shook hands. "Mum"s the word! But look what I"ve brought; something I want you to _store_ for me."
A jerk of my head introduced him to a red-cloaked, gray-veiled child asleep on the taxi floor.
Most men would have shown some sign of surprise or other emotion. But Jim Courtenaye"s _sang-froid_ is a tribute to the cinema life he must have led even before he burst into the war. Whether he thought that the object in red was my own offspring, concealed from the world till now, I don"t know and probably never shall. All I do know is that, judging from his expression, it might have been a borrowed shoulder of veal.
Deftly he scooped Bertie up without rousing him, and had borne the bundle gently through the open door before it occurred to Timmins to turn his head. "Hurray!" thought I. "Not a soul has seen the little wretch between Dun Moat and here!"
I jumped out of the car and followed Jim into the house, which I"d never entered since it had been let to him. He had not paused in the great hall, but was carrying his burden toward a small room which Grandmother had used for receiving tenants, and such bothersome business. I flashed in after him, and realized that Jim had fitted it up as a private sanctum.