Run! (16 page)

“I see. What made you go to Rere Place that afternoon?”

Sally threw out her hands in an odd little gesture.

“It was a beastly afternoon. I was at a loose end. It seemed a good plan. So I took Gladys's bicycle and went.”

“Gladys?”

“The housemaid. She had flu. I told you.”

“You told me a lot of things,” said James grimly. “Most of them weren't true.”

“That one was.”

“Where did you go from? Where were you? You didn't ride the housemaid's bicycle down from town?”

Sally made a face at him.

“Of course I didn't! I went over from Cray's End—Ambrose's house. It's about three miles away.”

“Oh, Ambrose Sylvester's got a house three miles away from Rere Place, has he? And where was he that afternoon—and Mrs. Ambrose, and Niemeyer? Were they at a loose end too?”

Sally looked down into her lap. She said in an expressionless tone,

“Not at Cray's End. Ambrose and Hildegarde were lunching in town. I don't know where Henri was.”

“How do you know they were lunching in town?”

“They said so.”

James laughed.

“Did they say who they were lunching with?”

She shook her head.

All this time he had been kneeling beside her. Now he got up.

“In fact you don't know where any of them were. So you took Gladys's bicycle and went over to Rere Place and let yourself in. How did you get that key?”

She looked up at him, he thought with relief. Questions about keys were easier to answer than questions about Ambrose, and Hildegarde, and Henri.

“Aunt Clementa gave it to me.”

“When?”

“Just when I kissed her goodbye. She pushed it into my hand and put her finger on her lips for me not to say anything, so I didn't, but of course I guessed that she wanted me to have it so that I could get in to look for whatever it was she had hidden. You know, I didn't think she had really hidden anything, poor old pet, so I didn't bother—not then. I just put the key in my purse and forgot about it.” She caught her cloak round her and jumped up. “I must go. I didn't mean to stay more than a minute.”

“Yes, you must go.”

They stood looking at each other. Sally's eyes dazzled.

“Oh, why can't we just be happy?” she cried.

James put his arms round her, and they kissed.

“We're going to be,” he said.

XXI

Sally had no sooner gone, really and irretrievably gone in a taxi, than James remembered at least half a dozen things which he ought to have asked her. He had meant to press home a number of points and to enquire searchingly into the composition of Lady Clementa's household. Hadn't Sally said that all the servants were new? Things like that. And he ought to have got the address of Lady Clementa's old maid. Her name was Annie, and she lived at Ealing. He didn't even know her surname. They had gone off about what Lady Clementa had really hidden, and they had never got back to Annie, because when Sally said, “Why can't we just be happy?” a great drenching wave of emotion seemed to break over them both and they forgot everything except that they loved each other and never wanted to say goodbye.

James frowned and rebuked himself. He ought to have got that address. He wanted very much to interview Annie and find out more about the letters she had forwarded to Jocko. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask her. He couldn't ask any of them until he got her address, and if he wasn't to write to Sally, or see her, or ring her up, how on earth was he going to get it? And now was he going to get along without seeing Sally anyhow? He already wanted to see her again so badly that it hurt.

It was at this moment that he had the bright thought of following her to the Luxe. Ostensibly he would not, of course, be following Sally. He would merely be dropping in at the Luxe for a drink, or a spot of supper, or what not. The place is open to the public, advertizes itself to the public, solicits the presence of the public—or at least of that portion of the public which at this hour of the night is correctly attired in evening dress. James proceeded to get himself into evening dress.

Encountering him in a casual manner at the Luxe, his cousin Daphne could hardly be so oblivious to family feeling as to omit the very natural suggestion that he should join her party. It seemed to James a good idea. It even seemed a very good idea, because if he turned up like that, casually, quite a while after Sally, nobody could possibly suppose that her late arrival had anything to do with him. This may not appear to be a very convincing line of reasoning, but it was good enough for James who wished to join Daphne Strickland's party at the Luxe.

He made a very successful business of his white tie, and the night being dry, set out on foot, (a) to save taxi fare, and (b) to allow of a longer interval between Sally's arrival and his own.

Sally arrived at the Luxe, to be pounced upon by an indignant Daphne.

“Darling, I've simply lied my head off! And of course no one believes a word I've said, and Henri—”

“Is Henri here?” said Sally quickly. “You told me—”

“Darling, I didn't ask him—he simply gate-crashed. And I told him to go away, and he simply wouldn't. You'd better deal with him yourself.”

Sally looked over her shoulder and found Henri there. She hadn't heard him come, but then you never did hear Henri come—he was there, or he wasn't there. Now he was there, close at her elbow, with his charming malicious smile.

“Oh, Sally—how late! But perhaps better late than never—
hein
? Do we dance?”

She slipped her arm into his and they moved out on to the floor. Henri danced like a dream, and it was much easier to dance than to talk. But it seemed that Henri meant to talk too. His dark eyes sparkled teasingly as he said,

“And where have you been, my dear?”

Sally met the look with an answering one.

“Wouldn't you like to know?”

“Yes, very much.”

She laughed.

“Then want must be your master, as my old nurse used to say.”

“Well, if you do not tell me, I shall make a guess. You have been meeting your wrong number—very imprudently, my dear. Wrong numbers should be rung off, and as quickly as possible—forgotten.”

Sally laughed again.

“How French you are, Henri!”

“Who—I? I am not French at all—I am Belgian. And when I speak English, I am so English that no one would know that I am not a born John Bull.”

Sally's laugh was quite unforced this time. Henri, with his slim height, his irregular
gamin
features, his dark eyes, and his black hair cut
en brosse—
and John Bull!

“And what have I said that is funny? No, it is not that I am so amusing. It is a little red herring that you drag in front of me, is it not? And red herrings are no use with me, Sally my dear. This James—who is he?”

“My dear Henri, do you expect me to give you a full list of all my friends?”

His smile flashed out, and was gone again.

“That would be—a little premature, shall we say? I am not yet in so fortunate a position. Shall we put it like that?”

Sally's colour rose brightly.

“You can put it any way you like, but I do wish you wouldn't spoil a perfectly good dance by talking nonsense!”

Henri laughed—a little cool sketch of a laugh.

“Ah! It is nonsense then? Well, my dear, we shall see. But I think if I were you, I should be discreet. I should not go out of the road to tell Ambrose that it is all nonsense.”

“Or Hildegarde?” said Sally, looking straight up at him.

“Or Hildegarde,” he agreed. “I should, in fact, keep very quiet, my dear. I should avoid assignations, and mysterious telephone calls, and the writing of letters which are so difficult to write that you tear up three, four, five sheets before you can complete one for the post.”

Sally felt the colour going from her face. She knew with terror how pale she was as she said,

“What are you talking about, Henri?”

“I think you know very well, dear Sally.”

Sally made a tremendous effort. If anyone had pieced those torn scraps together.… But they hadn't. She rallied to the thought. They hadn't. Nobody could have pieced them together, because she had burned them all, kneeling on the, hearth in her bedroom and dropping the little torn shreds upon the coals. Henri had frightened her for nothing. Her colour came back, and she said,

“I didn't know reading other people's letters was one of your accomplishments. It isn't done in England, you know.”

He smiled caressingly.

“Or in Belgium, my dear. Don't be frightened—I have not read your letters. I am the great detective from the crime novel. I have deduced it all from a little black ash at the bottom of your grate. I pass your door, and I hear the girl who is called Gladys say to the girl who is called Lizzie, ‘Miss Sally hasn't half been burning paper—the fire's fair choked with it.' And then she says, ‘If you ask me, she was up half the night writing letters and burning them, poor thing. I've done it myself.' And Lizzie asks, ‘How do you know it was letters?' And Gladys says, ‘Ah, it was her blue paper all right, and there was darling on a bit that wasn't quite burnt—so what do you think?'”

Sally flashed into scarlet rage.

“I think I don't want to dance with you any more,” she said, and pulled away from him just as the music stopped.

Henri let her go with a laugh, and she danced the next with Bonzo Strickland. Sally liked Bonzo, but she never could quite make out why Daphne had married him. He was still under forty, but he seemed a great deal more than twelve years older than Daphne—one of those smallish, dryish, greyish men. His dancing was like his conversation, correct and on the dry side. Sally and he talked about Jocko, and motor racing, and rock gardening, because oddly enough Bonzo was a passionate rock gardener, and it pleased him a good deal to know much more about it than Sally did, and to reel off the polysyllabic names of the minute rock plants which he loved. It was the great grief of his married life that Daphne adored town and could only be induced to remain at Goldacre by the presence of a large house party.

He was in the middle of telling Sally the life history of the smallest known primula, when she looked across his shoulder and saw James come in through the door at the far end of the long Gold Room. For a moment all the gold shimmered and broke before her eyes. She lost James, and the dancing couples, and Bonzo, and she almost lost herself, but when everything steadied down again, there was Daphne stopping her partner to wave to James, and James coming over to talk to her and being introduced to Gerald Crane.

Sally bit the inside of her lip very hard indeed. It was really quite impossible that James should be here, yet however hard she bit, he remained obstinately in evidence whilst she and Bonzo continued to approach the little group which consisted of Daphne, Gerald, and this impossible appearance of James.

Daphne hailed them as they came up.

“Bonzo, here's James. He never comes when I do ask him, so I didn't. He's been dining with someone who had to catch a train. Sally, you met him at my party, didn't you? James, you've met Sally.”

The group had swelled. A pretty girl called Elspeth Reid and Jocko, Lucia Crane and Henri Niemeyer, had joined it. Sally looked across at James whom she had kissed despairingly an hour ago, and said in a little cool voice,

“Oh, yes, I think we did. But we didn't dance—or did we?”

“No—you had hurt your foot,” said James. “I hope it's better.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Sally. How much longer were they going to stand here and make polite conversation under all these eyes? Why had he come? Oh, James, did you want to see me so much—has anything happened since I left—oh, James, take care—

Daphne was introducing him to Henri, to Elspeth, to the Cranes, and then he was asking Lucia to dance. Daphne was pairing off with Henri, and Sally herself with Gerald Crane.

James prided himself on his extreme discretion. He danced with everyone else before he danced with Sally, wresting the hot too willing Elspeth from a most reluctant Jocko, and having quite a success with Lucia, who had a passionate desire to own a racing car and a Flying Flea—“Only Gerald says he'll divorce me if I do, and it's much too expensive to have a divorce the same year as the wedding, so I'll have to wait.”

He asked Sally in the end, and felt her shiver as his arm went round her. He talked loudly and cheerfully about Daphne and the exact degree of their cousinhood, and rehearsed the full tale of his cousins, together with their names, ages, and characteristics. And then quite suddenly he asked for Annie's address.

“Is that what you came for?” said Sally. “It's 14 West Victoria Street, Ealing, and her name is Brook—Miss Brook.”

“I wanted to see you too,” said James, looking stolidly practical. “I'm afraid it's growing on me. Sally, if you're going to blush, you'll give the whole show away.”

“I'm not blushing,” said Sally. “Go on talking about your cousins—it's safer. Oh, James, why did you come?”

“To see my cousin Daphne. I'm very fond of her. We were once engaged for about half an hour. I'm very fond of all my cousins. You'll find me very domestic.”

Sally smiled, a sweet, cool, social smile—not for James Elliot, but for Henri Niemeyer who might be watching them.

He most undoubtedly was watching them, for as Sally smiled, he went past them with Daphne, and could certainly have heard her say,

“You have such a lot of cousins. How do you remember them all?”

“I don't forget things,” said James in a casual voice. “I'm very persevering and industrious. Would you like to take up my references?”

Sally would have stamped if she had dared. As it was, she lifted her lashes and sent him a green lightning glance. She dropped her voice to an angry breath and said as inaudibly as possible,