[1] The names of the driver, Ferdinand, and the car, the Modena, have been subst.i.tuted by the Editor for those in Mr. Britten"s own narrative. The reasons for this will be obvious to the reader.
V
THE BASKET IN THE BOUNDARY ROAD
The doctors will tell you sometimes that motoring is good for the nerves; and since so many of them now buy cars, and there"s no man like a doctor for looking after his own flesh and blood, I suppose they mean what they say. All the same, I wish I"d had a doctor with me the night I picked up Mabel Bellamy; for if his nerves had stood that and he hadn"t given himself quinine and iron for the next two months, why, I"d have paid his fee myself.
You see, it was a rum job from the very beginning of it. I was working for Hook-Nosed Moss at the time, and, being Lent, and half the theatrical ladies of position doing penance down at Monte Carlo, we weren"t exactly knocking a hole in the Bank of England--nor, for that matter, even earning our fares to Jerusalem. Moss came down to the garage in the West End gloomier and gloomier every day; and one morning when I saw that he"d p.a.w.ned his diamond shirt-stud (the same that we called "The Bleriot"), why then, says I, Lal Britten, keep off the Stock Exchange and don"t put your last thirty bob in Consols, wherever else you place it.
Now this was the state of things when one morning, early in the month of March last year, we were rung up from a public telephone call in Bayswater, and the covered Napier was ordered for a house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater--a locality with which I was unfamiliar, but which Moss declared must be all right, since the gentleman who lived there knew that we had a Napier car and therefore was in a manner introduced to us. Half an hour later he discovered that Richmond Road was nothing better than a mean street of lodging-houses, and, my word, didn"t he reel off his instructions to me like texts out of a copy-book.
"Dot"s a shame, Britten," he said, coming round by the bonnet of the car, which I was tuning up for the trip--"I was deceived by the dabe of the street. We must have our modey before they have the goods. Mind that now, you dote drive a mile unless they pay the shinies. Three guideas id your pocket and then you drive "em. Are you listening, Britten?"
I managed to give him a squirt of oil out of my can--for we do love Moss, and then I told him that Nelson on the quarter-deck of the _Victory_ wasn"t more alive to his duties.
"Three guineas cash down and then I drive "em. Is this a round trip to see the beauties of Surrey, Mr. Moss, or do I return to my little cot after the ball is over? I"d like to know on account of taking my Court suit, if you don"t mind."
"Oh," says he, "you"re ordered for ded o"clock, so I suppose id"s the light fadastic toe, Britten. But mide you get your modey--or I"ll stop your salary, sure. Three guideas and what you cad hook for yourself--I shan"t touch that, Britten--I dow how to treat my servants well."
I laughed at this, but didn"t say too much for fear he should find out that he"d got a patch of oil as big as a football on the back of his beautiful new spring suit, and when he had told me that the party"s name was Faulkland Jones and had given me the number of the house, I got on with my work again and soon had the three-year-old Napier running as well as ever she did in all her life. Nor did anything else happen until ten o"clock that night, at which hour precisely I drove her up to the house in the Richmond Road, Bayswater, and sent a small boy to knock at the door.
It was a twopenny-ha"penny shop, and no doubt about it; a two-storied day-before-yesterday lodging-house, with a bow window like a Metallurgique bonnet and a door about as big as the top of your gear-box.
So far as I could see from the road there was only one lamp showing in the place, and that was on the off-side, so to speak, in a little window of a bedroom--but the boy said afterwards that there was a glim in the hall, and he was old enough to have known. Taken altogether, you wouldn"t have offered them thirty pounds a year for the lot unless you had been a Rothschild with a cook to pension off--and what such people wanted with a Napier limousine at three guineas the job I really could not have said. This, however, was no business of mine; so I just gave the lad a penny and settled myself down in my seat until the d.u.c.h.ess in the ap.r.o.n should appear.
It wasn"t a long time I had to wait, perhaps five minutes, perhaps ten.
I told the police, when they questioned me afterwards, to split the difference, for none but a policeman could have told you what it had got to do with my story. When the door did open at last, a couple of men carrying a basket came down the bit of a garden, and the first of them wished me "Good evening" very civilly. Then they let the basket down softly on to the pavement and began to talk to me about it.
"How strong"s your roof?" asked the first, speaking with a nasal tw.a.n.g I couldn"t quite place. "Will it take this bit of a basket all right?"
"Why," says I, "it might depend on what you"ve got inside that same.
Have I come for the washing, or do I drive your plate to the Bank of England?"
The second, the taller man of the two, laughed at this; but the first seemed very uneasy, and it was not lost upon me that he glanced to the right and the left of him as though afraid that someone would come up and hear what his friend had to say next.
"I guess it"s neither one nor the other," the first speaker went on.
"We"re playing theatricals at the Hampstead Town Hall to-morrow night, and these are the dresses. We want you to take them up to the Boundary Road, St. John"s Wood--I"ll show you the house when we get there; but it"s called Bredfield, and you"ll know it by a square-toed lamp up against the side-track. Perhaps you can give us a hand with the baggage--and say, have you any objection to gold when you can"t get silver?"
He pa.s.sed up a sovereign and I put it inside my glove. Moss had told me to collect the shekels before I drove them a mile, and so I told the pair of them as I was getting down the luggage ladder, which fortunately I had brought, not knowing the job. A bit to my surprise they paid up immediately, but I made no remark about that; and when I had signed the receipt by the light of my near-side lamp, I helped them up with the basket and soon had it strapped to the rails in a way that satisfied even the nervous little man with the saucer eyes.
Many have asked me if I had no suspicions about that basket, was not curious as to its contents, and remarked nothing as we hoisted it up.
To these I say that the men themselves were the chief actors in the business; that they lifted the baggage from the pavement, and that my task was chiefly to guide it to the rails and to make it fast when I had got it there. Otherwise, this basket was no different from any dress-basket you may see upon half a dozen four-wheelers the first time you look in at a railway station; and I should be telling an untruth if I said that I thought about it at all. Indeed, it was not until we got to the Boundary Road, and I stopped at the house called Bredfield, that so much as a notion of anything wrong entered my head. There, however, I did get a shock, and no mistake; for no sooner had I pulled up than I discovered that I had come on alone, and that neither the big man with the Yankee accent nor the little man with the saucer eyes had deigned to accompany me.
Well, I got down from the driver"s seat, opened and shut the door as though to be sure that neither the one nor the other was hiding under the seat, and then I rang loudly at the front door bell and waited to see what fortune had got in her lucky-bag.
Had the men told me plainly that I was to go alone, I should never have given the matter a second thought; but I could have sworn that the pair of them were inside the limousine when I started away from the Richmond Road, and how or where they got down I knew no more than the Lord Chancellor. It remained to be seen if the people in the house were any wiser; and you may be sure that I was curious enough by this time, and, if the truth must be told, not a little frightened.
Boundary Road, as many will know, is a quiet thoroughfare in St. John"s Wood, most of the houses being detached, and many of them having twenty feet of garden back and front. This particular house was larger than ordinary, and owned an odd iron lamp fixed above the garden gate and conspicuous a hundred yards away. Unlike the shanty in the Richmond Road, nearly every window showed a bright light; and I don"t suppose I had waited twenty seconds, though they seemed like a quarter of an hour, when the front door flew open and one of the prettiest parlourmaids I have ever clapped eyes upon came running down the path, and asked, even before she had opened the gate, if the lady had arrived.
"Why," says I, quickly enough, "that she certainly has not, being took to dine with the Grand Duke Isaac at the Metropolitan Music Hall. But her dresses are here, miss, and if you like to try on any of "em before she arrives, why, you"re welcome so far as I am concerned."
She laughed at this and came out on to the pavement. I have said she was pretty, but that"s hardly the word for it. If she went on the Gaiety stage to-morrow, she"d be the talk of the town in a fortnight--and as for her manners, well, it isn"t my place to remark on those. Affability appeals to me wherever I find it, and if Betsy Chambers isn"t affable, then I don"t know the meaning of the term.
"Where have you come from?" she asked me as we stood there; "have you come from Scotland?"
"More like from Scotland Yard in these times," says I; "why should you ask me that?"
"Because the gentleman said that his wife would be arriving from Scotland to-night, but that he would not be here until to-morrow. I wouldn"t have stopped in the house for anything if he had not said she was coming!"
"Then you"re alone, my dear?"
She tossed her head.
"Yes, I am, and that"s why all the lamps are lighted."
"Why, to be sure," cried I, "there might have been a man under the bed;" but she was too polite to notice this, and I could see she was very much afraid of sleeping alone in that strange house, and I don"t wonder at it.
"I can walk up and down the front garden all night, if you like," said I, "or maybe I could sleep on the drawing-room sofa, if you prefer it.
Is this the first time they have left you alone here?"
She looked at me in surprise.
"I was only engaged yesterday from the registry office in Marylebone.
This is a furnished house, and they have taken it for three months certain. The gentleman comes from Edinburgh and the lady is an American. They haven"t got a cook yet, but hope to have one by to-morrow. Whatever shall I do if they never come at all?"
"Oh," says I, "try on her dresses and see how they suit you. Suppose we get the basket in to begin with. Here"s a chap coming who looks as though he could lay out sixpence if he hadn"t got a shilling; we"ll enlist him and then talk about supper afterwards. Is your name Susan, by the way? The last nice girl I met was called Susan, and so I thought----"
"Oh, don"t be silly," says she; "my name"s Betsy, and if you squeeze my hand like that, some one will see you."
I told her it must have been done in a moment of abstraction, and then I hailed the "cab runner" who was loafing down the road; and, what with him and a messenger boy in a hurry, we got the basket down and lifted it into a big square hall and laid it almost at the foot of the staircase, up which we should have to carry it presently.
Somehow or other it seemed to me over-heavy for a clothes" basket; but I said nothing about it at the time, and, telling Betsy I would return in a minute, I went back to my car to turn off the petrol and see that all was shipshape. When I entered the house again, and almost as soon as I had shut the door, the queerest thing I can remember happened to me. It was nothing less than this--that the girl, Betsy, came toward me with her face as white as a sheet; and, before I could utter a single word or ask her the ghost of a question, she just slipped headlong through my arms and lay like a dead thing.
Now, this was a nice position to be in and no mistake about it. The girl limp and helpless in my arms, not a soul in the house, me not knowing where to lay hands on a drop of brandy, to say nothing of a gla.s.s of water, and, above all, the peculiar feeling that something not over-pleasant must have frightened Betsy, and that it might frighten me before many minutes had pa.s.sed. Listening intently, I could not at first hear a sound in all the house--but just when I was telling myself not to be a fool, I heard, as plainly as ever I heard anything in my life, a sigh as of some one groaning in pain; and at that I do believe I dropped the girl clean on to the floor and made a dash into the nearest room in a state of mind I should have been ashamed to confess even to my own brother.
What did it mean, who was playing tricks with us, and what was the mystery? I looked round the apartment and made it out to be the dining-room, plainly furnished, well lighted, but as empty of people as Westminster Abbey at twelve o"clock of a Sunday night. A smaller room to the right lay in darkness, but I found the switch and satisfied myself in a moment that no one was hidden there; nor did a search in every nook and cranny near by enlighten me further. What was even worse was the fact that I could now hear the groaning very plainly; and when I had stood a minute, with my heart beating like a steam pump and my eyes half blinded with the shadows and the light, I discovered, just in a flash, that whoever groaned was not in any room of the house, neither in the hall nor upon the staircase, but in the very basket I had just laid down and should have carried to the floor above before many minutes had pa.s.sed.
I am not going to state here precisely what I thought or did when I made that astonishing discovery, or just what I felt at the moment when I tried to understand its significance. Perhaps I could not remember half that happened even if I tried to do so. My clearest memory is of a dark, silent street, and of me standing there, bare-headed, with a fainting girl in my arms, and a civil old chap with white whiskers asking again and again, "My good fellow, whatever is the matter and what on earth are you doing here?" When I answered him it was to beg him for G.o.d"s sake to tell me the name of the nearest doctor--and at that I remember he simply pointed to the house opposite and to a bra.s.s plate upon its door.
"I am Mr. Harrison, the surgeon," he said quickly; "I am just buying a motor, and so I crossed the road to look at yours. Tell me what has happened and what is the matter with the woman."
I told him as quietly as I could.
"G.o.d knows what it is--perhaps murder. The girl heard it and fainted.