Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories (18 page)

“She left me,” he said jerkily. “A fellow on the boat had more money. I was glad. I knew I’d made a mistake even then. After that I changed my route and went up-country. I’ve been there ever since. I thought I’d get over it at first. I didn’t want to come sneaking back to tell you I’d made a fool of myself. I soon got over that, though. I love you, Jenny. I can’t live without you.”

He glanced at her and saw that she was hanging on his words, a passionate sympathy in her eyes. He went on talking. It made it easier if he talked.

“I was up there alone for two months. I didn’t even see a newspaper. Finally I made up my mind to come back. I felt I’d have more chance with you if I just turned up like this. Jenny, I ought to have married you. For my own sake I ought to have married you. I’d never have left you if we’d been married. It was only that irritating sense of freedom and yet the half-restraint with it. We were young, both of us; I want to marry you now. Will you let me?”

The girl shook her head. There were tears in her eyes and her whole body drooped as though she were overcome by some dreadful, secret tragedy.

“No,” she said. “You can’t do that. Not now. Never… never. Don’t talk of it. Talk of usual things. How did you get in?”

“With my key. I’ve had it all this time. But I don’t want to talk about usual things. I want you to marry me. I want to begin all over again.”

He had risen and came towards her, his arms outstretched.

“Jenny, don’t look at me like that. What’s the matter? Let me comfort you as I used. Do you remember?”

She started back from him.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered. “Whatever you do, don’t touch me. You mustn’t love me, Geoff. You must go away.”

The couch was between them now and he knelt on it, pleading with her.

“I can’t go. You still love me, Jenny. You never loved anyone but me. Do you remember how I found you down on the marshes? And that sunny day I came down to meet your people. And your father wanted to talk about politics but you took me out to show me the garden. And I kissed you down on the long green path behind the delphinium bank, where no one could see. Don’t look at me like that, Jenny. What’s the matter?”

She was staring at him, a tear trickling down her cheek.

“It’s nothing,” she said and picked up the thread of his story.

“And then you brought me here that Sunday night. Do you remember? And there weren’t any blankets, and I had your great-coat and a rug. It was the beginning of a new life for me.”

He closed his eyes. “Oh don’t, Jenny, please! Don’t rub it in. You didn’t see your people after… after I went?

“No,” she said.

“Did you try to see them?”

“No.”

He turned away from her in an agony of self-reproach.

“Oh poor little Jenny! I didn’t mean to behave like that. It was only that
she
just swept down on me and altered the whole world for the moment. It couldn’t have lasted. I ought to have known that. I didn’t think what it would be like for you. Oh my dear, you must come back to me. We’ll be married as soon as we can arrange it, and then we’ll go off on that trip we used to plan so often… pick up a car in Calais and go to Paris by road, and then strike south, just you and me.”

The girl shook her head. “No. We can’t go together. You mustn’t want me to. Oh, my darling, you mustn’t want me to.”

She spoke with such curious intensity that the realisation that something was seriously wrong forced itself upon his mind, something new, something for which he had not legislated.

“Why not?” he said.

She stood within a foot of him, her eyes fixed compellingly upon his face.

“Geoff,” she said, “you must go away from here alone. I can’t come with you. You must forget me, let your mind shut me out. It will be so much less hard for you, my dear.”

“No!” he said wildly. “No. I love you. Don’t send me away… please… please don’t send me away.”

“Go away,” she repeated. “Go away quickly. Don’t think of me. Don’t want me. When my name comes into your mind drive it out. Don’t think of me. I can never come.”

“You’ve said that before,” he said slowly. “What is there to stop you?”

“I can’t tell you,” she said, drawing back from him, still speaking in the same subdued, anxious tone. “Don’t try to find out.”

“There’s some reason why you can’t come? Some secret?”

She nodded, and the feeling of apprehension in the cold little room struck into his heart.

“But my dear,” he said, “if we love each other there’s nothing strong enough to hold us apart. Tell me about it.”

She had retreated to the centre of the room and was looking at him wistfully and with infinite pathos in her face.

“I can’t come,” she said brokenly. “Oh my darling, I can’t come. You’ll know soon, but not now… not now, please. Don’t make it happen now.”

“But I must know,” he persisted. “Don’t you see, it means all our life. Oh God, I can’t let you go again!”

His voice broke helplessly on the last word and she swayed a little towards him, her face twisted with pain.

“I love you,” she said. “I have always loved you. For me you
were
love. Believe that. But oh, my dear, I can’t come with you now. I can’t.”

“Why? Why the mystery?” He was frightened now. “Tell me. I can bear it, whatever it is. Tell me.”

“Not now,” she implored. “Not now. Oh, please, not now!”

The man glanced round the room and a faint enlightenment came into his eyes.

“All this stuff is new, of course,” he said. “I hardly recognised our lacquer room. You’re living with someone?”

“No,” she said faintly. “No. Don’t ask. Don’t try to find out.”

He stared at her. The chill in the room was eating into his bones.

“I don’t understand. My lawyer sent you an allowance, didn’t he? You haven’t been poor, have you? I remember that frock you’re wearing. It’s old-fashioned now. Are you married?”

“No.”

“You’re free, then?”

She nodded wearily. “Free. Oh terribly, terribly free.”

“You can marry me, then?”

“No, never, Geoff.” She backed away from him. “It’s too late. We can never be married now. And remember, oh remember—afterwards, you mustn’t think of me.”

She had retreated across the room now and was standing with her back to the heavy curtains which hung across the window. He followed her.

“I can’t stand any more of this,” he said. “I love you, you love me. I’m coming to kiss you. My dear, we belong to one another. There’s nothing that can separate us.”

She stretched out her hand as though to ward him off, and her quiet voice was soft and breathless.

“Don’t… don’t. There is something between us, something enormous. I can’t come. Oh Geoff, don’t you see? I can’t come.”

He stared at her and a fraction of the truth broke upon him.

“Jenny!” he said hoarsely, “whose flat is this now?”

She was standing back against the curtains, and her whisper, although so soft, seemed to fill the room.

“Strangers.”

“Jenny!” The man was hysterical. “What is the secret?”

A breath parted the curtains and she stepped back into their folds. Her voice was very sorrowful and had utter tragedy in its tone.

“Don’t you understand… my dear… I killed myself.”

The curtains slipped over her and he leapt forward and swept them wide.

Beyond was the high white window with the dark rain lashing against the panes.

From outside the door came the sound of laughing voices as the owner of the flat set a key in the latch.

Detective Sergeant Richardson’s keen eye took in every detail of the man’s appearance.

‘There he is. Funny looking chap, isn’t he? You wouldn’t think a man with a face like that could get away with half a million.” He spoke softly and without turning his head, and the inconspicuous figure at his side grinned.

“You wouldn’t think he could count to half a million, by the look of him,” Sergeant Murdoch observed.

“Probably can’t,” said Richardson drily, and the two Yard detectives remained standing where they were on the quay, watching the stream of passengers hurrying down the gangway from the Channel steamer.

The man they were looking towards moved slowly away from the boat, almost as though he were loath to set foot on English ground. He was a strange-looking man, approaching sixty, heavily built and small-eyed. He was well dressed but his clothes sagged upon him, indicating suddenly lost weight. There was a stoop about his shoulders also, and a certain furtiveness in his glance.

This was Joseph Thurtle, the man who three months before had been at the head of a large American cotton combine. The spectacular crash of the company and the subsequent revelation of its affairs had turned Mr. Thurtle from a millionaire to a hunted fugitive.

The sensational story of his escape from the States with at least half a million sterling in negotiable securities had made front page news. Extradition warrants had followed him from country to country. He had fled from France to Italy, from Italy to Greece to North Africa, and now, as he set foot in England, he did so with the knowledge that the police must have prepared a suitable reception for him.

As he stepped off the boat he had looked behind him sharply. It was quite evident to the two men who watched that he expected a hand on his shoulder at any moment.

“Come on. We’ll follow him through Customs.”

Richardson spoke quietly. A flicker of disgust passed across his red face.

“I don’t like this method of Parker’s,” he added. “Why not arrest the man right away and put him out of his misery? This waiting for him at Victoria, so that he can have a snappy arrest with the Press standing round admiring is a bit cheap, to my mind.”

“Detective Inspector Parker is a bit cheap,” said Murdoch. “You and I have been on this job for ten years, and I was thinking, have you ever before heard of or known a fellow with Parker’s reputation at the Yard? He’s an unpopular publicity hound. Come on! We’ll keep an eye on this poor devil until he gets out of the train at Victoria feeling perfectly safe and walks straight into the arms of the unpleasant Parker and a battery of cameras.”

They sauntered into the crowd and, with the ease of long practice, edged their way through the jostling groups of passengers until they walked directly behind the man they shadowed.

There were many friends and relations awaiting passengers on the Folkestone Harbour station, but there was one young man among the throng who served in neither capacity. He was a shortish, round-faced, fair-haired individual with a foolish expression and rather blank, trusting blue eyes.

He observed Joseph Thurtle and sauntered forward casually as the man came hurrying down the platform. When he was within a few feet of Thurtle, however, he caught sight of the officials walking behind the financier. He hurried past the man and climbed into another compartment. To all outward appearances there had been nothing odd in his behaviour, and yet in that brief instant quite an important person had abandoned one plan and embarked upon another.

The fair young man sat himself in a corner, turned up the collar of his great coat, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and prepared to go to sleep.

Mr. Joseph Thurtle, with his attendant spirits, settled himself in another compartment farther down the train. It was cold. The station looked damp and unattractive and as the train slid through the chalky tunnels on the upward run, some of the dank hopelessness of the day seemed to permeate the consciousness of every traveller.

Thurtle was afraid. He was also puzzled. He had felt that his landing in England was tantamount to handing himself over to the police, and coming over in the boat he had steeled himself to face an arrest upon the quay.

It had not come. He could not understand it. He leaned farther back into the cushions and peered out at the sodden landscape with weary, anxious eyes. He had played a dangerous game and he had lost. He wondered idly if life in prison was as bad or worse than current reports would have it.

The innocent old lady sitting opposite him thought he looked very tired, and wondered if he had found the crossing as trying as she herself had done.

Meanwhile, on Victoria station, Inspector Parker strode up and down the platform, his fingers caressing the handcuffs in his coat pocket. This situation he enjoyed. He was like that. His career had been one long line of rather unsavoury little triumphs which had forced him slowly to his present position.

There were camera men outside the station, and he was looking forward to a photograph of himself in the evening papers handcuffed to the celebrated absconding financier. It was against the rules, he knew. The superintendent would comment upon it unfavourably; but Inspector Parker privately considered that the publicity would be worth it. As he waited for the train he amused himself by imagining suitable captions beneath the picture.

Parker was pleased with himself. Soon after he had received Richardson’s phone message from Folkestone saying that Thurtle had boarded the train, he had hurried down to the station, and incurred the totally unnecessary expense of keeping a taxi waiting outside so that he might walk straight into it with his charge.

As soon as the train was signalled, he retired to the ticket barrier and stood waiting for his man. The train came in, and immediately the partially deserted platform sprang to life, as carriage doors swung open and weary and excited travellers swarmed out, clamoured for their luggage, lost their children and rushed to and fro after the manner of their kind.

Richardson reached the barrier first. “He’s just coming, sir,” he said. “You can’t miss him. Black overcoat, check muffler, soft travelling hat.”

“All right, all right. You leave this to me, Richardson.”

Parker spoke testily, as though the man had been hindering him rather than giving him information.

Richardson surrendered his ticket and wandered over to the bookstall to wait for Murdoch. The faintly contemptuous expression which always came into his face after dealings with his chief was very apparent.

Thurtle came heavily down the platform towards the barrier. Most of the fire which had once made him such a dangerous force in the business world had long since died down. He was old, tired, and at the end of his tether.