"Oh yes, she is," said the detective, "so far as I"m concerned. Every wife is, so far as her husband is concerned. Sure, you ought to know that!" In his Irish way he doubled the "r" of the word "sure," and somehow this trick made Audrey like him still more. "My wife believes," he concluded, "that woman"s sphere is the home."
("His wife is stout," Audrey decided within herself, on no grounds whatever. "If she wasn"t, she couldn"t be a vast majority.")
Aloud she said:
"Well, then, why can"t you leave them alone in their sphere, instead of worrying them and spying on them down areas?"
"D"ye mean at Paget Gardens?"
"Of course."
"Oh!" he laughed. "That wasn"t professional--if you"ll excuse me being so frank. That was just due to human admiration. It"s not illegal to admire a young woman, I suppose, even if she is a suffragette."
"What young woman are you talking about?"
"Miss Susan Foley, of course. I won"t tell you what I think of her, in spite of all she did, because I"ve learnt that it"s a mistake to praise one woman to another. But I don"t mind admitting that her going off to the north has made me life a blank. If I"d thought she"d go, I should never have reported the affair at the Yard. But I was annoyed, and I"m rather hasty." He paused, and ended reflectively: "I committed follies to get a word with the young lady, and I didn"t get it, but I"d do the same again."
"And you a married man!" Audrey burst out, startled, and diverted, at the explanation, but at the same time outraged by a confession so cynical.
The detective pulled a silky moustache.
"When a wife is very strongly convinced that her sphere is the home," he retorted slowly and seriously, "you"re tempted at times to let her have the sphere all to herself. That"s the universal experience of married men, and ye may believe me, miss--madam."
Audrey said:
"And now Miss Foley"s gone north, you"ve decided to come and admire _me_ in _my_ home!"
"So it is your home!" murmured the detective with an uncontrolled quickness which wakened Audrey"s old suspicions afresh--and which created a new suspicion, the suspicion that the fellow was simply playing with her. "I a.s.sure you I came here to recover; I"d heard it was the finest climate in England."
"Recover?"
"Yes, from fire-extinguishers. D"ye know I coughed for twenty-four hours after that reception?... And you should have seen my clothes! The doctor says my lungs may never get over it.... That"s what comes of admiration."
"It"s what comes of behaving as no married man ought to behave."
"Did I say I was married?" asked the detective with an ingenuous air.
"Well, I may be. But I dare say I"m only married just about as much as you are yourself, madam."
Upon this remark he raised his hat and departed along the gra.s.sy summit of the sea-wall.
Audrey flushed for the second time that morning, and more strikingly than before. She was extremely discontented with, and ashamed of, herself, for she had meant to be the equal of the detective, and she had not been. It was blazingly clear that he had indeed played with her--or, as she put it in her own mind: "He just stuffed me up all through."
She tried to think logically. Had he been pursuing the motor-car all the way from Birmingham? Obviously he had not, since according to Aguilar he had been in the vicinity of Moze since the previous morning. Hence he did not know that Audrey was involved in the Blue City affair, and he did not know that Jane Foley was at Frinton. How he had learnt that Audrey belonged to Moze, and why and what he had come to investigate at Moze, she could not guess. Nor did these problems appear to her to have an importance at all equal to the importance of hiding from the detective that she had been staying at Frinton. If he followed her to Frinton he would inevitably discover that Jane Foley was at Frinton, and the sequel would be more imprisonment for Jane. Therefore Audrey must not return to Frinton. Having by a masterly process of ratiocination reached this conclusion, she began to think rather better of herself, and ceased blushing.
"Aguilar," she demanded excitedly, having gone back through the plantation.
"Did Miss Ingate happen to say where I was staying last night?"
"No, madam."
"I must run into the house and write a note to her, and you must take it down instantly." In her mind she framed the note, which was to condemn Miss Ingate to the torture of complete and everlasting silence about the episode at the Blue City and the flight eastwards.
CHAPTER XXIX
FLIGHT
"Fast, madam, did you say?" asked the chauffeur, bending his head back from the wheel as the car left the gates of Flank Hall.
"Fast."
"The Colchester road?"
"Yes."
"It"s really just as quick to take the Frinton road for Colchester--it"s so much straighter."
"No, no, no! On no account. Don"t go near Frinton."
Audrey leaned back in the car. And as speed increased the magnificence of the morning again had its effect on her. The adventure pleased her far more than the perils of it, either for herself or for other people, frightened her. She knew that she was doing a very strange thing in thus leaving the Spatts and her luggage without a word of explanation before breakfast; but she did not care. She knew that for some reason which she did not comprehend the police were after her, as they had been after nearly all the great ones of the movement; but she did not care. She was alive in the rushing car amid the magnificence of the morning. Musa sat next to her. She had more or less incompletely explained the situation to him--it was not necessary to tell everything to a boy who depended upon you absolutely for his highest welfare--such boys must accept, thankfully, what they received.
And Musa had indeed done so. He appeared to be quite happy and without anxieties. That was the worst He had wanted to be with her, and he was with her, and he cared for nothing else. He had no interest in what might happen next. He yielded himself utterly to the enjoyment of her presence and of the magnificent morning.
And yet Musa, whom Audrey considered that she understood as profoundly as any mother had ever understood any child--even Musa could surprise.
He said, without any preparation:
"I calculate that I shall have 3,040 francs in hand after the concerts, a.s.suming that I receive only the minimum. That is, after paying the expenses of my living."
"But do you know how much it costs you to live?" Audrey demanded, with careless superiority.
"a.s.suredly. I write all my payments down in a little book. I have done so since some years."
"Every sou?"
"Yes. Every sou."
"But do you save, Musa?"
"Save!" he repeated the word ingenuously. "Till now to save has been impossible for me. But I have always kept in hand one month"s subsistence.
I could not do more. Now I shall save. You reproached me with having spent money in order to come to see you in England. But I regarded the money so spent as part of the finance of the concerts. Without seeing you I could not practise. Without practice I could not play. Without playing I could not earn money. Therefore I spent money in order to get money. Such, Madame, was the commercial side. What a beautiful lawn for tennis you have in your garden!"
Audrey was more than surprised, she was staggered by the revelation of the att.i.tude of genius towards money. She had not suspected it. Then she remembered the simple natural tome in which Musa had once told her that both Tommy and Nick contributed to his income. She ought to have comprehended from that avowal more than she, in fact, had comprehended. And now the first hopes of worldly success were strongly developing that unsuspected trait in the young man"s character. Audrey was aware of a great fear. Could he be a genius, after all? Was it conceivable that an authentic musical genius should enter up daily in a little book every sou he spent?
A rapid, spitting, explosive sound, close behind the car and a little to the right, took her mind away from Musa and back to the adventure. She looked round, half expecting what she should see--and she saw it, namely, the detective on a motor-cycle. It was an "Indian" machine and painted red.
And as she looked, the car, after taking a corner, got into a straight bit of the splendid road and the motor-bicycle dropped away from it.
"Can"t you shake off that motor-bicycle thing?" Audrey rather superciliously asked the chauffeur.