“Yes, you can see it,” she said dully, turned to the door. “If — if you’ll wait, I’ll fetch it.”
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you, ma’am, but it would be helpful,” James said, sudden doubt in his eyes. If this young woman’s name was really Julie Brewer and if Crane returned suddenly, the situation might turn awkward.
Grace went from the room, closed the door behind her. For a moment she nearly gave way to blind panic. She wanted to run out of the house, to escape before it was too late, but she remembered Ellis, lying helpless in bed, and she fought down her fear.
She stood hesitating, wondering what she was going to do, then decided to consult Ellis. He might be able to think of a way out, but as she moved down the passage, the front door opened silently and Crane came in.
Grace gave a gasp of relief and ran to him. He saw at once that something was wrong, and took her swiftly into the kitchen.
“What is it?” he asked, his green eyes alight with excitement.
“There’s a policeman here,” she gasped out. “I — I told him I was Julie Brewer and he now wants to see my identity card.”
A thin smile lit Crane’s face.
“Inspector James?”
She nodded, clung to him.
“It’s all right,” he said, pushing her gently away. “Don’t be frightened. I’ll fix him.” He took out his wallet and produced an identity card. In spite of his apparent confidence, his hand shook. “Here, take this. It’s Julie’s. I forgot to hand it in. Study it and come in with it. Give me a minute or so to talk to him and then come in. It’s going to be all right.”
For several seconds Grace stared at the identity card, vaguely aware that Crane had left her and had gone into the sitting- room. She read the particulars on the card:
Brewer, Julia. 47c Hay’s Mews, Berkeley Square, Mayfair.
She waited in the hall, wishing she could hear what was going on in the sitting-room. Richard had said it would be all right. She had implicit faith in him, and when she did enter the sitting-room she was no longer afraid.
Inspector James was standing in the middle of the room. He didn’t look at ease and his eyes were embarrassed. Crane was talking to him in his quiet, dry way. His usual humorous expression was missing, and there was a hard look of anger in his eyes.
“Well, we’ll say no more about it, Inspector. I think you have exceeded your duty,” he was saying, “but I won’t take the matter further. Here is Mrs Brewer’s identity card. You’d better look at it or else you’ll be conceiving other absurd theories.” He turned to Grace. “Show the inspector your identity card, Julie,” he said. “Even in this little village there seems to be red tape.”
Silently Grace handed the card over and James took it, scarcely appeared to glance at it, handed it back.
“Thank you, ma’am, and please accept my apologies,” he said with a rueful smile. “Mr Crane is annoyed with me and it does appear I’ve exceeded my duty. But you must forgive an old man, ma’am. Perhaps I am over-curious.” He pulled out an enormous gold watch, consulted it, moved to the door. “I’d best be running along,” he went on. “My apologies again, sir,” he said to Crane, who nodded curtly.
James again looked at the watch, hesitated, looked at Grace. “No ill feelings, ma’am, I hope?” he said.
“Oh, no,” Grace whispered, longing for him to go.
“That’s very nice of you. Perhaps you’d like to see my watch? It’s a collector’s piece, so I understand. It not only tells the time but also the date and it has a very beautiful chime. It belonged to my great-grandfather,” James laid the heavy watch in Grace’s unwilling hand. “Many people have commented on it. I think you’ll agree it’s something worth having.”
The gold case felt cold and smooth under Grace’s touch. She looked at Crane, who had made a slight, warning gesture. She hurriedly handed the watch back to James.
“It’s very nice,” she said, feeling something was wrong, and puzzled to see how carefully James was holding the watch, gripping it lightly by the ring at its head.
“Very, very nice,” he agreed, slipping the watch back into its washleather bag. “Well, I must get along. Please don’t bother to see me out. Good-day to you both,” and he was gone before either of them could make a move.
As the front door shut behind him, Crane took a quick step forward.
“I hope you haven’t a prison record,” he said quietly. “He’s just taken your fingerprints on that watch.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The hands of the little French clock on the mantelpiece crept on towards a quarter to ten. Ellis, his ears pricked, a sick sensation in his stomach, waited with agonised impatience.
What were they doing? Why didn’t they come? he asked himself. He had heard the rumbling voice of Inspector James as he entered the bungalow say, “It’s most kind of you to let me in, ma’am,” and Ellis cursed Grace for being a rash fool. (What was she thinking of, letting this fellow in?) He had heard the sitting-room door close, and then long minutes dragged by in silence, more nerve-racking than sound.
Ellis tried to drag himself upright, but he found he was too weak to do more than raise his head. Never had he felt so helpless and trapped, and sweat ran down his face with the exertion of his fear. Later, he heard the sitting-room door open and then close, and he thought the policeman was now certain to come into his room. He pressed himself down in the bed, his lips snarling, his fists clenched, but still nothing happened. A moment later he caught the sound of someone coming up the gravel path outside and heard the front door open. He recognised the step. Crane! he thought feverishly. Now what was going to happen?
Again a long silence, then confused voices in the hall made his heart pound in his throat. He could scarcely believe his ears when he heard James say, “Well, I must be getting along. Please don’t bother to see me out. Good-day to you both.” He wanted to rush to the window to make sure the inspector had really gone, and he cursed his helplessness. Then he heard Crane say to Grace, “I hope you haven’t a prison record. He’s just taken your fingerprints on that watch.”
So that was it! Ellis raised his clenched fists above his head, his face congested with fury. The stupid little fool had fallen for one of the oldest police tricks in the world. She’d swallowed it hook, line and sinker, and now they were finished —
kaput!
as Hirsch would have said. It would only be a matter of hours before they came back in force, all because that little fool — He struggled up in bed, the room heaving before his eyes.
“Come in here!” he shouted. “Don’t stand out there whispering. Come in here, damn you both!”
There was a pause, then the bedroom door opened and Crane came in. Grace, white and terrified, followed him.
“My dear chap, you mustn’t excite yourself,” Crane said reprovingly. “You’re pretty ill, you know.”
Ellis snarled at him. “I heard what you said out there,” he shouted. “He has her fingerprints, hasn’t he?”
The green eyes darkened. “There’s no need to get excited about that. They haven’t a record of them.” Crane glanced at Grace and a note of doubt crept into his voice. “You said they haven’t, didn’t you?”
Grace looked beseechingly at Ellis, imploring him to keep silent. “They haven’t,” she said, her hands unconsciously going to her breasts as if they pained her. “No — they — no, nothing like that.”
Ellis studied her, his mind tortured by jealousy. He scarcely recognised the drab, dirty, down-at-the-heel girl who had shared the trench with him, who had sat on the floor crying while she crammed into her mouth the cheap food he had thrown at her. The gingham dress set off her figure, her freshly shampooed hair had golden tints in it. He felt a sickening desire for her, a physical urge he thought he had finished with for good. He was certain now that she had fallen for this rich, well-dressed fop. He had given her clothes, food and shelter, and she was ready to make a prostitute of herself. She was determined that Crane shouldn’t know she was a jailbird; so determined that she was prepared to risk the police coming, even if it did mean being caught.
“She’s lying,” he said. It was a delicious moment for him to be able to explode this ridiculous bubble, to see her change colour, to cringe away from him. He’d teach her to dress up and pose as a great lady. She’d come down again to his level fast enough when Crane knew she was a common thief. “She’s just out of prison. She’s a pickpocket.”
Crane stood still, his head slightly on one side, his eyes dark.
There was a long pause, then he said to Grace, “Is that true?”
She began to cry helplessly, her hands covering her face.
“Of course it’s true,” Ellis said, “the police are looking for her now.”
Crane ignored him. He took Grace’s hands in his.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said when she looked up at him. “I’ll help you, only I must know if it’s true. Have they anything against you?”
“Go on — lie,” Ellis sneered. “Try to make out you’re a plaster saint.”
Neither of them took any notice of him. The warm, firm flesh of Crane’s hands about hers comforted Grace. She nodded dumbly, caught her breath in a rasping sob. “Yes.”
Crane made a slight movement, controlled himself. He released Grace’s hands, ran his fingers through his straw-coloured hair.
“This is very awkward,” he said, and Ellis, who was watching him closely, could see he was frightened.
“Get her out of here,” Ellis said. “I want to talk to you.”
Grace turned on Ellis.
“No! You’ll only tell him lies. You’re cruel and hateful. You don’t care what happens so long as you’re safe. You’ll tell him anything to save your skin.”
Crane touched her arm. “Please go to your room and wait,” he said. “We haven’t much time if we’re going to get you out of this mess. Please go, and be patient.”
“But you don’t know him as I do,” Grace exclaimed, her voice rising. “He’ll tell you lies about me . . .” She stopped abruptly when she saw his look of embarrassment. “All right,” she went on, lifting her shoulders hopelessly. “If you don’t want to listen to me I’ll go.” She started to cry again. “I don’t care what happens to me! I’m so sick of it all. Nothing ever goes right. I’ve tried and tried . . .”
“Get out, you slobbering little slut!” Ellis screamed at her, beside himself with exasperated rage, and he grabbed hold of the bedside lamp and made to fling at her.
Moving with surprising quickness, Crane snatched the lamp from him and put it down on the table. “Stop that,” he said sharply. “You leave her alone.”
Grace ran from the room.
“She’s in love with you,” Ellis said savagely. “Well, you’re not having her. She’s mine! Do you understand? You keep off. I know what you’re planning. Don’t you think you’re going to do what you like with her — you’re not!”
Crane pulled up a chair and sat down close to Ellis.
“Never mind that,” he said quietly. “If we’re going to help her, we’d better decide at once what to do.”
Ellis choked back his rage. There was something in the green eyes that startled him.
“Help her? She’s sunk, the fool! What can we do to help her? And remember, she’s mine. People don’t make mistakes with me. It doesn’t pay.”
“Who are you, then?” Crane asked, undisguised sarcasm in his voice.
“We’re talking about her, not me,” Ellis said. “She’s a thief. Her name’s Grace Clark. She ran away from the W.A.A.F. and served ten days in Holloway for stealing. She and I hooked up together after I’d saved her from the police. She was stealing from a woman’s purse and I saw her do it. The woman caught her, and if it hadn’t been for me she’d be in jail by now.” He ran his fingers across his sweating face. “She owes me a lot, the ungrateful slut, but I’ll fix her if she tries any nonsense with me.”
“You really think the inspector was after her fingerprints when he gave her the watch?”
“It’s an old trick,” Ellis said, sinking back on the pillow. He was feeling exhausted and his fury drained from him reluctantly, leaving him weak and depressed. “She’s the kind of dope to fall for an old trick like that. She’s fallen for your tricks, too.”
“You can leave me out of it,” Crane said. “He’ll get her fingerprints checked, I suppose. Will that take long?”
Ellis shrugged. “I don’t know. They don’t waste time. He’ll know by tomorrow, that’s certain; maybe today.”
“Unless I get hold of the watch first,” Crane said, half to himself.
Ellis stared at him. “You? Why should you stick your neck out? And how do you think you can get hold of it?”
“Anything’s possible if you try hard enough,” Crane said casually. “It’d be no good getting the watch and wiping off the fingerprints unless I replaced the prints with those of some other girl. If I did that, they’d have to give Grace a clean record.”
Ellis felt a grudging admiration for this big, fleshy young man.
“That’s a smart idea,” he said. “You mean you’d try to pull a trick like that?”
Crane nodded. “It’s the only way if we’re to save her.” He looked up slowly, fixing Ellis with his serene green eyes. “And save you, too.”
Ellis smiled sneeringly. “They’ve nothing on me,” he said. “It’s her they want.”
Crane nodded again. “That’s fortunate for you.” He pulled at his nose, abruptly changed the conversation. “You don’t seem to realise how ill you are. You have a temperature of a hundred and four. I think you have pneumonia.”
Ellis shrugged impatiently. “I’m tough. I’ll get over it.”
“She said you wouldn’t have a doctor,” Crane went on. “All the same I’m calling one whether you like it or not. I don’t want you to die here. It’d be too inconvenient.”
“I don’t want a doctor,” Ellis snarled. “I’ll get well. It’s worry that’s making me bad. You and that girl . . . talk . . . talk . . . talk. You won’t leave me alone. How can you expect me to get well?”
“You needn’t be afraid. This doctor is discreet and he doesn’t live in the district. I’ll drive over and get him. I’ll tell him you’re a friend of mine; and he needn’t know who you are.”
Ellis grunted, watched Crane get to his feet and wander over to the window. Then he stiffened, staring at the broad-shouldered back.
What did he mean?
He needn’t know who you are?
What did he mean by that?