Hue and Cry (10 page)

“Open it!” said Mally, a little more imperiously than before.

Herbert came slowly forward. He liked Mally, but that would not have moved him from the path of duty. Mr. Craddock had been most particular. Herbert did not like Mr. Craddock. Mr. Craddock had tried to kiss Alice, the second housemaid, not a week ago; and Alice had boxed his ears and told Herbert, with whom she was walking out.

“Open it!” said Mally for the third time. She stamped her foot a little.

Her hair was the same color as Alice's hair.

Herbert stepped to the front door and opened it in a beautifully silent manner. As it swung towards her and the cold night air rushed in, Mally's heart beat hard and fast. She had not really thought that he would let her go.

She put her hand to her throat and turned shining eyes on Herbert. Then, with a decorous “Thank you, Herbert,” she slipped into the dark street and was gone.

CHAPTER XII

The late Lady Catherine Cray's collection of china and Bristol glass is quite well known to connoisseurs. Mr. Roger Mooring, her nephew by marriage, was engaged in cataloguing it. Himself something of a collector, he naturally found this a sufficiently absorbing occupation, and having dined in the drawing-room of the flat, he had drifted back into the dining-room, where the collection occupied every available inch of space.

The light, glitteringly enshrined in a magnificent cut-glass chandelier, flashed down upon a medley of goblets, bottles, dishes, and epergnes. The lustrous apple-green Bristol, the turquoise blue, the translucent white, and the very rare pink gave color to the display. Roger's eye dwelt upon it lovingly. He picked up a large azure jug flecked with silver and held it to the light. Only two had ever been made, and Lady Catherine had always hoped to secure the pair. The light came softly through the blue. Roger was just going to set it down, when the door was opened with a rush and shut again with a bang.

Mally Lee stood with her back to it and said “Roger!” in an odd, breathless voice; and Roger very nearly dropped the precious jug on the top of an even more precious cup and saucer, where a pheasant flaunted among pæonies on a ground of silver lustre.

He frowned at Mally reproachfully, put the jug in a safe place, and said, “What is it?”

Mally looked at him without speaking. There was something odd about her appearance, he thought; she had a bright color, and she looked rather untidy—hair ruffled, hat crooked, and coat unbuttoned. Untidiness did not appeal to him.

“Roger!”

“My dear Mally, what on earth's the matter? You oughtn't to come here, you know. You really——” He stopped because Mally gave a queer little dry sob.

“If I can't come here, I can't come anywhere. I've—I've run away.”

Roger stared.

“My dear girl, what on earth do you mean?”

Mally came forward. When she reached the end of the table, she stopped.

“I've run away. I want you to take me to Curston.”

“To Curston?”

“Roger, I shall scream if you go on repeating what I say. If I say Curston, I mean Curston. And I mean
now.”

Roger instantly offended again.

“Now?” he said, and stared with all his eyes.

Mally picked up a turquoise bottle with a filagree gilt top and banged on the table with it.

“Yes, now,
now,
NOW! And when I say now, I mean now! You've got to get that old car of yours and drive me down to Curston—
now, at once,
or you'll have the police bursting in and arresting me—and you won't like that a bit.”

Every time that Mally said, “Now,” she rapped the table hard with the little bright blue bottle. Its peril distracted Roger. Catching her hand in an impassioned clasp, he said hoarsely:

“You'll break it!”

“I don't care if I do. Roger, you're not attending. I said the
police
would burst in and arrest me.”

“Why on earth——? Oh, I say, do be careful of that bottle—you
will
break it!”

Mally lost her temper.

“I shall want to break it if you go on being so maddening. I want you to help me, and you talk about a miserable bit of blue glass. Roger, I'm in a hole. I've run away. And I should think the police would be here any moment. But if you'll get me down to Curston, I don't believe they'll do anything. No,
I don't,
for I'm sure there's something behind it all—something horrid and wicked and disgraceful. They think I'm nobody, and they think they can try it on me. But you, and Lady Mooring, and the whole country solid behind you—no, they won't risk it. I'm sure they won't risk it. I'm
sure
they won't.”

She pulled her hand away and put the bottle down with a push that set the pendant lustres swinging and tinkling on an apple-green candlestick. Then she caught at Roger's arm and pinched it hard.

“Oh, Roger,
say
something,
do
something. There isn't any time to lose—there isn't, really.”

“I don't understand—I say, don't pinch like that!”

He stepped back. Mally stamped her foot, and the telephone bell went off beside them with the suddenness of an alarm clock.

“Bother!” said Mally. “Say you're out—say you've gone to Brighton—say you've eloped.”

“S'sh!” This was to Mally. To the telephone Mr. Mooring remarked courteously, “Hallo!”

Mally darted to his side, covered the mouthpiece with her hand, and whispered fiercely.

“You haven't seen me—you don't know where I am! Do you hear?”

Roger glared.

“You're tickling. And I don't know what you're talking about.”

Mally still clutched the mouthpiece.

“
You haven't seen me since last night!”

The whisper tickled again. Then she let go of the telephone and clutched Roger's arm instead. Faintly she heard what he was hearing—faintly but quite distinctly.

“Is Mr. Mooring——”

“Speaking.” Roger's voice still sounded annoyed.

“Oh, Mooring, it's Sir George Peterson. We—we are concerned about Miss Lee. Do you happen to have seen her?”

Mally's fingers sank into Roger's arm in one of the hardest pinches he had ever felt. He threw her a raging glance and said stiffly:

“She dined with me last night.”

Again the thread of sound that was yet so unmistakably Sir George's voice, suavely pleasant:

“My dear Mooring, it's a very delicate matter. We're all deeply concerned. Er—have you seen Miss Lee to-day?”

Roger jerked the arm that Mally was pinching.

“Why do you ask?”

“Well”—hesitation—“Well, Mooring——”

“What is it?” Roger was becoming exasperated.

“Well, the fact is that something very unpleasant has happened. Miss Lee is a very charming girl, and we all took a great fancy to her—my sister especially. And now, I'm sorry to say, we have all received a shock, a very severe shock.”

Mally's little nose wrinkled. Her lips formed the word “Beast,” but it remained unspoken.

“What has happened?” It seemed to Roger that it was about time that some one told him. He put the question with a good deal of force.

“Er”—hesitation again—“Really, Mooring, it's extremely painful to me to have to tell you.”

“
What has happened?”

“I will ask you to believe that I'm very hard hit about it all. I could have sworn—but there, one doesn't know what the temptation may have been.”

“I don't know what you're driving at.”

“Well, the fact is I haven't liked coming to the point. But I've got to. Here it is, Mooring. My sister yesterday missed a very valuable ornament containing a jewel known as the Mogul” Diamond. Naturally, no one would have dreamed of connecting Miss Lee with its disappearance, but——” The voice stopped.

“What do you mean by ‘but'?” said Roger Mooring slowly. Mally's fingers still gripped his arm; he thought they shook as he asked the question.

The voice took up its thread of speech again:

“No one would have suspected Miss Lee if a valuable paper had not disappeared this morning in circumstances which made it impossible that any one else could have taken it. She was searched by my sister's maid in my sister's presence, and I regret to say that the Mogul Diamond was found in her possession.”

“What?”

“The diamond was found in Miss Lee's possession. Believe me, I would rather it had never been found at all.”

There was a silence. Roger lifted his head and looked at Mally, and Mally let go his arm and went a step backwards. If Roger could look at her like that, he could say what he liked. He could——

Faint, very faint, Sir George's voice:

“Have you seen Miss Lee? We thought she might go to you. Have you seen her?”

“No!” Roger said the word sharply; and as he said it, he thrust the receiver violently back upon its hook.

Mally put her hand out as if she were pushing something away. She said “Roger!” in an angry, shaking voice. Then she stamped her foot and burst into tears.

Roger went on looking at her in a dazed, horrified way. He did not say anything, because for the life of him he could not think of anything to say; besides, Mally was speaking, and sobbing, and blowing her nose, all at the same time and with the utmost vigor.

“Aren't you going to
do
anything? Aren't you going to take me away? Aren't you going to get your car? The police may be here at any minute. We ought to have gone ages ago—simply ages. Any one—
any
one would have known I was here from the way you spoke to the
wretch. Roger!”

Still Roger did not speak.

Small causes sometimes produce quite big results. Shakespeare, Bacon, or Another has remarked on this. It is nevertheless true. If a tuft of Mally's hair had not hung down over her left eye; if her hat had been poised at its usual becoming angle; and if she had been less drastic in her treatment of a blue Bristol bottle with a gilt filagree top, Roger Mooring would have been less disposed to believe her guilty in the matter of the Mogul Diamond.

“
Roger!”
said Mally again. There was command, not appeal, in her voice. Perhaps if she had appealed—but she was much too angry to appeal.

She rolled her wet handkerchief into a tight ball, thrust it deep into her coat pocket, winked the last hot tear away, and read Roger's distrust in Roger's face.

Up to this moment she had merely thought him maddeningly, idiotically slow; now she saw quite plainly that this slowness was deliberate. He didn't go and get the car, because he didn't mean to go and get the car. He didn't want to take her to Curston. He didn't want to do anything. He believed Sir George. It had simply never occurred to Mally that Roger would believe Sir George.
Roger
—he ought to be stamping up and down, using up his very best vocabulary on the entire Peterson household. Alternatively, he ought to be sprinting, simply sprinting, for his car. He wasn't doing either of these things; he was standing there looking at her with gloomy suspicion.

The room waved up and down under Mally's feet for a moment. It felt odd, just like being on a ship; all that glitter and sheen of glass ran, and dazzled, and rocked soundlessly. She turned very white, and took three little, careful steps sideways until she came to the table and could catch hold of it. She held the table-edge with one hand and the other, groping, came down on a tall white translucent lustre. The pendants jangled. Mally's hand closed hard on one of them, and the sharp edge of it cut her palm. The room stopped waving up and down. She faced Roger Mooring and said in a whisper:

“How dare you? Oh, how dare you?”

“Mally!”

“Don't speak to me! You believe him—I saw you believing him!”

“Mally, why did you do it?”

At this point it becomes impossible to excuse Mally's actions. She said “Oh!” with a little furious gasp; a wild and whirling rage descended on her like a cyclone. She pulled off her engagement ring and threw it with a remarkably good aim straight at Roger's face. It hit him on the left cheek-bone, and the diamond drew blood. He swore, and Mally picked up the tall white lustre that had cut her hand.

Roger plunged forward with a shout:

“Look out! Look
out
! You'll break something!”

“I'm going to,” said Mally, and flung the lustre with a crash into the midst of the crowded table.

There was an awful shattering sound, the ring and tinkle of falling glass, and hard upon it the slamming bang of the door.

Roger Mooring wiped the blood from his cheek and surveyed the ruins of Lady Catherine Cray's collection.

CHAPTER XIII

Sir George Peterson turned from the telephone and said briskly:

“She's there. He lied about it, of course—but damned badly. She's certainly there.”

“What next? The police?”

“My good Paul! No, get on to Makins and Poole. Tell 'em it's a confidential matter. Tell 'em about the diamond, and say we don't want to prosecute in deference to my sister's feelings, but we've reason to believe she's gone off with important private papers, and we
must
have 'em back. Offer a reward that will ginger 'em up without making 'em suspicious. Tell 'em to put a real good man on to the job. And, above all, no publicity.”

Mally Lee ran all the way down the stairs from Lady Catherine's flat, and when she came out into the dark, wet street, she ran as far as the corner, where she hailed a bus and got the last inside seat. It was only half a seat really, because a very large lady, with a string bag and a beaded mantle trimmed with aged rabbit fur, billowed voluminously over two-thirds of the bench.

Mally sat on the edge and got back her breath. She paid her fare to the conductor, took her ticket, and put it inside her purse. It had for company a half-crown, a shilling, three pence and a bent farthing. Mally shut the purse. She had three and nine-pence farthing in the world.