The lift gate clanged, and Jane realised that the real adventure had begun.
The man by the window threw the end of his cigarette into the fireplace and came towards her.
“Parental devotion is a beautiful thing, isn’t it, Miss Renata? Suppose we have some breakfast.”
A meal, a proper meal, enough to eat! As she passed into the dining-room and beheld a ham, coffee, and boiled eggs, Jane felt as if she could confront any one or anything. Besides, the first trick was hers.
In the full light of day, and under those cold, pale eyes, she had passed as Renata.
She allowed herself to sigh and dab her eyes, and then—oh, how good was the rather stale bread, the London egg, and the indifferent ham.
The man watched her quizzically.
As she finished her second cup of coffee, he remarked that she had a good appetite, and there was something in his tone that cast a chill upon the proceedings.
Jane pushed back her chair.
“I’ve finished,” she said.
“Well, then,” said the man, “I think we must talk. Yes, sit down again, please. I won’t keep you very long.”
Jane did as she was told.
“Well, Molloy’s gone,” he said. “You know what that means? He’s washed his hands of you. Just in case—just in case, you’ve been relying on Molloy, I would like to point out to you that his own position is none too secure. The firm he works for has not been entirely satisfied with him for some time. It is, therefore, quite out of the question that he should influence any decision that may be come to with regard to yourself. His going off like this shows that he realises the position and accepts it. Self-preservation is Molloy’s trump suit, first, last, and all the time. I shouldn’t advise you to count upon trifles like parental devotion, or anything of that sort. In a word—he can’t help you,but I can.”
The man leaned forward as he spoke, and a sudden smile changed his features.
“Just be frank,” he went on. “Tell me what you really heard, and I’ll see you through.”
Jane let her eyes meet his. That smile had puzzled her; it was so spontaneous and charming, but it did not reach his eyes.
She looked and found them cold and opaque, and as she looked, she saw the pupils narrow, expand, and then narrow again.
He got up from his chair, walked to the mantelpiece, stopped for a light to his cigarette, and came back again with a thin blue haze of smoke about him.
“Perhaps I haven’t been altogether frank with you,” he said. “That little romance of mine about a firm of chemists who employ your father—you didn’t really believe it? No, I thought not. The fact is, that first night I took you for just a schoolgirl, and one can’t tell schoolgirls everything. But now, now I’m talking to you as a woman. I can’t tell you everything, even so, but I can tell you this. It’s a Government matter, a most important one, and it is vital that I should know just what you overheard.”
Jane looked down.
“I don’t understand,” she said in a low voice. “I was dreaming and I waked up suddenly. There was a screen in front of me, and some one on the other side of the screen called out very loud, ‘The door, the door!’ That’s what I heard.”
She felt the pale eyes upon her face. Then with an abrupt movement the man came over to her.
“Stand up,” he said.
Jane stood up.
“Look at me.”
Jane looked at him.
After what seemed like a very long time, he threw out his hand with an impatient gesture. It struck the table edge with a sharp rap, the spring that held his wrist watch gave, and the watch on its gold curb flew off and fell on the floor behind Jane.
She turned, glad of an excuse to turn, and bent to pick it up. The back of the watch was open; her fingers caught and closed it instantly, but not for nothing had she told Henry that she had gimlet eyes. The back of the watch contained a photograph, and Jane had seen the photograph before. Henry’s voice sounded in her ears. “It was done from Amory’s portrait of her, in 1915—the year of her marriage.”
Number Two, the man in the fur coat, Renata’s “worst of them all,” had in the back of his watch a photograph of Lady Heritage!
Jane laid the watch on the table without giving it a second glance.
As the watch slid back into its place beneath his shirt cuff, the man spoke with an entire change of manner.
“Well, Miss Renata, that was all very stiff and businesslike. You mustn’t hold it up against me, because I hope we’re going to be friends. Don’t you want to know your plans?”
Jane looked at him with a little frown.
“My plans?”
“What is going to happen to you. Oh, please, don’t look so grave! It’s nothing very dreadful. You have heard of Sir William Carr-Magnus?”
“Yes, of course,” said Jane. She hoped that she looked innocent and surprised.
“Well,” said the man in the fur coat, “I happen to be his secretary, and that reminds me, I don’t believe you know my name. Your father and his friends use a ridiculous nickname which sticks to me like a burr ... but let me introduce myself—Jeffrey Ember, and your friend, if you will have me.”
The charming smile just touched his face, and then he said in a quiet, serious way:
“Sir William’s daughter, Lady Heritage, has commissioned me to find her an amanuensis—companion—no, that’s not quite right either. She doesn’t want a trained stenographer, or a young person with a business training, but she wants a girl in the house—some one who’ll do what she’s told, write notes, arrange the flowers.... I dare say you can guess the sort of thing. She is willing to give you a trial, and your father has agreed. As a matter of fact, I’m taking you down there to-day.”
“Oh!” said Jane, because she seemed expected to say something, and for the life of her she could not think of anything else to say.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to submit to certain restrictions at Luttrell Marches. You see, Sir William is engaged upon some very important experiments for the Government, and all the members of his household have to conform to certain regulations. Their letters must be censored, and they must not leave the grounds, which are, however, extremely delightful and extensive. It isn’t much of a hardship, really.”
“Oh no,” said Jane in her best schoolgirl manner.
And there the interview ended.
They made the journey to Luttrell Marches by car, but, after the manner of Mrs. Gilpin’s post-chaise, it did not pick them up at the door. An ordinary taxi conveyed them to Victoria Station, and it was in the station yard that they and their luggage were picked up by the Rolls-Royce with the Carr-Magnus crest upon the door.
The mist was thinner, and as they came clear of London, the sun came out. The day warmed into beauty, and the green growth of the countryside seemed to be expanding before their eyes. So many long hedges running into a blur, so many miles of road all slipping past. Jane fell fast asleep, and did not know how long she slept.
It was in the late afternoon that they came into the Marsh country—great flat stretches of it, set with boggy tussocks and intersected by straight lanes of water. Purple-brown and green it stretched for miles. To the right a humped line of upland, but to the left, and as far as the eye could see in front, nothing but marsh. Then the road rose a little; the ground was firmer and carried a black pine or two.
They came to a three-cross way and turned sharply to the right. The ground rose more and more. They climbed a steep hill, zigzagging between banked-up hedges to make the rise, and came out upon a bare upland. Ahead of them one saw a high stone wall pierced by iron gates. The car stopped. Mr. Ember leaned out, and after a pause the gates swung inwards.
For a mile the drive lay through a flat waste of springing bracken, with here and there a group of wind-driven trees, then a second gate through a high fencing topped with wire. An avenue of trees led up to the house, a huge grey pile set against a sky full of little racing clouds.
Jane felt stiff and bewildered with the long drive. She followed Mr. Ember up a flight of granite steps and came into the great hall of Luttrell Marches with its panelled walls and dark old portraits of half-forgotten Luttrells.
Exactly opposite the entrance rose the stairway which was the pride of the house. Its beautiful proportions, the grapes and vine leaves of its famous carvings, were lighted from beneath by the red glow of a huge open fire, and from above by the last word in electric lighting.
Ember walked straight across the hall and up the stair, and Jane followed him.
She thought she knew exactly how a puppy must feel when, blinking from the warmth and straw of his basket, he comes for the first time into the ordered solemnity of his new master’s house.
And then she looked up and saw The Portrait.
It hung on the panelling at the top of the stair where the long corridors ran off to right and left, and it took Jane’s breath away—the portrait of Lady Heritage.
Amory had painted more than a beautiful woman standing on a marble terrace: he had painted a woman Mercury. The hands held an ivory rod—diamond wings rose from the cloudy hair. Under the bright wings the eyes looked out, looked far—dark, splendid, hungry eyes.
“The earth belongs to her, and she despises it,” was Jane’s thought.
She stood staring at the portrait. Nineteen-fifteen, Henry had said—the year when other women posed with folded linen hiding their hair and the red cross worn like a blazon. She could think of several famous beauties who had been painted thus. But this woman wore her diamond wings, though, even as she wore them, Fate had done its worst to her, for Anthony Luttrell was a name with other names in a list of missing, and no man knew his grave.
A sharp clang of metal upon metal startled Jane. She looked quickly to her right, and saw that a steel gate completely barred the entrance to the corridor on that side. It had just closed behind a curious white-draped figure.
“Ah, Jeffrey,” said a voice—a deep, rather husky voice—and the figure came forward.
Jane saw that it was a woman wearing a long white linen overall, and a curious linen head-dress, which she was undoing and pushing back as she walked. She pulled it off as she came up to them, saying, “It’s so hot in there I can hardly breathe, but too fascinating to leave. You’re early. Is this Miss Molloy?”
She put out her hand to Jane, and Jane, with her mind full of the portrait, looked open-eyed at its original.
Afterwards she tried to formulate her sensations, but, at the time, she received just that emotional shock which most people experienced when they first met Raymond Heritage.
Beautiful—but there are so many beautiful women. Charming? No, there was rather something that repelled, antagonised. In her presence Jane felt untidy, shabby, gauche.
Lady Heritage unbuttoned her overall and slipped it off. She wore a plain white knitted skirt and jersey. Her fingers were bare even of the wedding ring which Jane looked for and missed. Her black hair was a little ruffled, and above the temples, where Amory had painted diamond wings, there were streaks of grey.
Bewilderment came down on Jane like a thick mist, which clung about her during the brief interchange of sentences which followed, and went with her to her room.
It was a queer room with a rounded wall set with three windows and to right and left irregular of line, with a jutting corner here and a blunted angle there. It faced west, for the sun shone level in her eyes.
Crossing to the window, as most people do when they come into a strange room, she looked out and caught her breath with amazement.
The sea—why, it seemed to lie just beneath the windows!
They had driven up from the landward side, and this was her first hint that the sea was so near.
There was a wide gravel terrace, a stone wall set with formal urns full of blue hyacinths, the sharp fall of the cliff, and then the sea.
The tide was in, the sun low, and a wide golden path seemed to stretch almost from Jane’s feet to the far horizon. Overhead the little racing clouds that told of a wind high up were golden too.
The humped ridge of upland, which Jane had seen as they drove, ran out to sea on the right hand. It ended in low, broken cliff, and a line of jagged rocks of which only the points stood clear.
Jane turned from all the beauty outside to the ordered comfort within. Hot water in a brass can that she could see her face in, a towel of such fine linen that it was a joy to touch it, this pretty white-panelled room, the chintzes where bright butterflies hovered over roses and sweet-peas—she stood and looked at it all, and she heard Renata’s words, “At Luttrell Marches they will decide whether I am to be eliminated.”
This curious dual sense remained with her during the days that followed. Life at Luttrell Marches was simple and regular. She wrote letters, gathered flowers, unpacked the library books, and kept out of Sir William’s way.
Sir William, she decided, was exactly like his photograph, only a good deal more so; his eyebrows more tufted, his chin more jutting, and his eyes harder. For a philanthropist he had a singularly bad temper, and for so eminent a scientist a very frivolous taste in literature. One of Jane’s duties was to provide him with novels. She ransacked library lists and trembled over the results of her labours.
Sir William did not always join the ladies after dinner, but when he did so he would read a novel at a sitting and ask for more.
Mr. Ember was never absent, and when Lady Heritage talked, it was to him that her words were addressed. Sometimes she would disappear inside the steel gate for hours.
Jane soon learnt that the whole of the north wing was given up to Sir William’s experiments. On each floor a steel gate shut it off from the rest of the house. All the windows were barred from top to bottom.
She also discovered that the high paling where the avenue began had, on its inner side, an apron of barbed wire, and it was the upper strand of this apron which she had seen as they approached from outside.
Sir William’s experiments employed a considerable number of men. These, she learned, were lodged in the stables, and neither they nor any of the domestic staff were permitted to pass beyond the inner paling.
On the coast side there was a high wire entanglement—electrified.
There were moments when Jane was cold with fear, and moments when she told herself that Renata was a little fool who had had nightmare.
When Jane stood at her window and looked across the sea, she saw what might have been a picture of life at Luttrell Marches during those first few days. Such a smooth stretch of water, pleasant to the eye, where blue and green, amethyst, grey and silver came and went, and under the play of colour and the shifting light and shade of day and evening, the unchanging black of rocks which showed for an instant and then left one guessing whether anything had really broken the beauty and the peace.
Over the surface all was pleasant enough, but incidents, some of them almost negligible in themselves, kept recurring to remind Jane that there were rocks beneath the sea.
The first incident came up suddenly whilst she was writing Lady Heritage’s letters on the second day.
She had beside her a little pile of correspondence, mostly about trifles. Upon each letter there was scrawled, “Yes”—“No”—“Tell them I’ll think it over,” or some such direction.
Presently Jane arrived at a letter in French, upon which Lady Heritage had written, “Make an English translation and enclose to Mrs. Blunt.” Mrs. Blunt’s own letter lay immediately underneath. It contained inquiries about some conditions of factory labour amongst women in France.
The French letter was an excellent exposition of the said conditions.
Jane sat looking at it, and wondering whether Renata could have translated a single line of it, and how much ignorance it would behove her to display.
After a moment’s thought she turned round and said timidly, “May I have a dictionary, please?”
Lady Heritage looked up from the papers before her. She frowned and said:
“A dictionary?”
“Yes, for the French letter.”
“You don’t know French, then?”
Jane met the half-sarcastic look with protest.
“Oh yes, Ido. But, if I might have a dictionary——”
Lady Heritage pointed to the bookcase and went back to her papers.
An imp of mischief entered into Jane.
She took the dictionary and spent the next half-hour in producing a translation with just the right amount of faults in it. She put it down in front of her employer with a feeling of triumph.
“Please, will this do?”
Lady Heritage looked, frowned, and tore the paper across.
“I thought you said you knew French?”
Jane fidgeted with her pen:
“Of course I know I’m notreallygood at it, but I looked out all the words I didn’t know.”
“There must have been a good many,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and the imp made Jane raise innocent eyes and say:
“Oh, therewere!”
She went back to her table, and Lady Heritage spoke over her shoulder to Mr. Ember, who appeared to be searching for a book at the far end of the room. She spoke in French—the low, rapid French of the woman to whom one language is the same as another.
“What do they teach at English schools, can you tell me, Jeffrey? This girl says she knows French, and if she can follow one word I am saying now——” She broke off and shrugged. “Yet I dare say she went to an expensive school. Now, I had a Bavarian maid, educated in the ordinary village school, and she spoke English with ease, and French better than any English schoolgirl I’ve come across. Wait whilst I try her in something else.”
She turned back to Jane.
“Just send the original to Mrs. Blunt—I haven’t time to bother with it—and make a note for me. I want it inserted after para three on the second page of that typewritten article that came back this morning.”
Jane supposed she might be allowed to know what a “para” was. She turned over the leaves of the typescript and waited for the dictation. The last sentence read, “Woman through all the ages is at the disposal and under the autocratic rule of man, but it is not of her own volition.”
She wondered what was to come next, and waited, keenly on the alert.
Lady Heritage began to speak:
“Write it in as neatly as possible, please; it’s only one sentence: ‘It is Man who has forced “das ewig Weibliche” upon us.’”
Jane wrote, “It is man——” and then stopped. She repeated the words aloud and looked expectant.
“‘Das ewig Weibliche’”—there was a slight grimness in Lady Heritage’s tone.
“I’m afraid—” faltered Jane.
“Never heard the quotation?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t know any German, then?”
“I’msosorry,” said Jane.
“My dear girl, what did they teach you at that school of yours? By the way, where was it?”
“At Ilfracombe.”
“English education is a disgrace,” said Lady Heritage, and went back to her papers.
It was next day that she turned suddenly to Jane:
“By the way, you were at school at Ilfracombe—can you give me the name of a china shop there? I want some of that blue Devonshire pottery for a girls’ club I’m interested in.”
Jane had a moment of panic. Renata’s shoes had fitted her too easily. She had felt secure, and then to have her security shattered by a trifle like this!
“A china shop?” she said meditatively; then, after a pause, “It’s awfully stupid of me—I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name.”
Lady Heritage stared.
“A shop that you must have passed hundreds of times?”
“It’s very stupid of me.”
Lady Heritage smiled with a sudden brilliance. “Well, it is rather,” she said.
It was on the fourth day that Jane really caught her first glimpse of the black rocks.
She was writing in the library, dealing with an apparently endless stream of begging letters, requests for interviews, invitations to speak at meetings or to join committees.
In four days Jane had discovered that Lady Heritage was up to her eyes in a dozen movements relating to feminist activities, women’s labour, and social reform.
Newspapers, pamphlets, and reports littered a table which ran the whole length of the room. Jane was required to open all these as they came, and separate those which dealt with social reform and the innumerable scientific treatises and reviews. These latter arrived in every European language.
Jane sat writing. The day was clear and lovely, the air sun-warmed and yet fresh as if it had passed over snow. April has days like this, and they fill every healthy person with a longing to be out, to stop working, and take holiday.
The windows of the library looked out upon the gravel terrace above the sea. The sun was on the blue water.
Jane put down her pen and looked at the hyacinths in the grey stone urns. They were blue too. A yellow butterfly played round them. She sat up and went to the window.
Lady Heritage and Mr. Ember were walking up and down the terrace, Lady Heritage bareheaded, all in white with not even a scarf, and Jeffrey Ember with a muffler round his neck, and the inevitable fur coat. They were coming towards her, and Jane stood back so that the curtains made a screen. She watched Raymond Heritage as she had watched the sea and the flowers, for sheer joy in her beauty.
Raymond’s face was towards her, and she was speaking.
Not a word reached Jane’s ears, but as she looked at those beautiful lips, their movements spelt words to her—words and sentences. She would have drawn back or looked away, but the first sentence that she read riveted her attention too closely.
“Are you satisfied about her Jeffrey?”
Embermusthave spoken, but his head was turned away. Then Raymond spoke again.
“Nor am I—not entirely. She seems intelligent and unintelligent by turns, unbelievably stupid in one direction and quick in another.” They passed level with the window, and so on to the end of the terrace. Jane went round the table to the other side of the window and waited for them to come back.
Ember’s face was towards her when they turned, too far away for her to see anything. But, as they came nearer, she saw that he was speaking. Not easy to read from, however, with those straight, thin lips that moved so little. There was only one word she was sure of—“overheard.”
It was too tantalising. If she had to wait until they reached the far end of the terrace and turned again, what might she not miss?
As the thought passed through her mind Lady Heritage stopped, walked slowly to the grey stone wall, and sat down on it, motioning to Ember to do the same.
Jane could see both faces now, and Raymond was saying, “If she overheard anything, would she have the intelligence to be dangerous?—that is what I ask myself.”
Ember’s lips just moved, but the movements made no sense.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Lady Heritage; “despise not thine enemy.”
She changed her position, leaned forward, displaying a statuesque profile, and appeared to be speaking fast and earnestly. Then Jane saw her lips again, and they were saying, “Anything but Formula ‘A.’”
Jane gripped the curtain which she held until the gold galon which bordered it marked her hand with its acorn pattern.
“Formula ‘A’!” everything swam round her while she heard Renata’s gasping voice:
“He said ‘With Formula “A” you have the key. When Formula “B” is also complete, you will have the lock for that key to fit; then the treasures of the world are yours.’”
The mist cleared from her eyes; she looked again.
Raymond Heritage had risen to her feet. Ember and she looked out to sea for a moment, then crossed the gravel towards the house. They were talking of the sunshine and the spring air.
“My bulbs have done well,” Lady Heritage said.
They passed out of sight.
Two days later Jane, coming down the corridor to the library, was aware of voices in conversation. She opened the door and saw Jeffrey Ember with his back to her. He had pulled a deep leather chair close to the fire, and was bending forward to warm his hands. Lady Heritage stood a yard or two away. She had a large bunch of violets in one hand; with the other she leaned against the black marble mantel.
She and Ember were talking in German. Both glanced round, and Raymond asked:
“What is it?”
“The letters for the post,” said Jane.
They went on talking whilst she sorted and stamped the letters.
“Which of us is the better judge of character, it comes to that.” Speaking German, Lady Heritage’s deep voice sounded deeper than ever.
“Do we take different sides then?”
“I don’t know. I thought your verdict was inclined to be ‘Guilty, but recommended to mercy,’ whereas mine——” She hesitated—stopped rather—for there was no hesitation in her manner.
Ember made a gesture with the hand that held his cigarette.
“Expound.”
“I doubt the guilt. But if I did not doubt, I should have no mercy at all.”
Jane went out with the letters, and when she was in the corridor again she put out her hand and leaned against the wall. It would be horrible enough, she thought, to be tried in an open court upon some capital count, but how far less horrible than a secret judgment where whispered words made unknown charges, where the trial went on beneath the surface of one’s pleasant daily life, and every word, every look, a turn of the head, an unguarded sigh, a word too little, or a glance too much might tip the scale and send the balance swinging down to—what?
Next day Lady Heritage was deep in her correspondence, when she suddenly flashed into anger. Pushing back her chair, she got up and began to pace the room. There was a letter in her hand, and as she walked she tore it across and across, flung the fragments into the fire, and pushed a blazing log down upon them with her foot.
Jane and Ember watched her—the former with some surprise and a good deal of admiration, the latter with that odd something which her presence always called out. She swung round, met his eyes, and burst into speech.
“It’s Alington—to think that I ever called that man my friend! I wonder if there’s a single man on this earth who would translate professions of devotion to one woman, into bare decent justice to all women.”
“What has Lord Alington done?” asked Mr. Ember, with a slight drawl.
Jane, with a thrill, identified the President of the Board of Trade.
“Nothing that I might not have expected. It is only women that are different, Jeffrey. Men are all the same.”
“And still I don’t know what he has done,” said Jeffrey Ember.
“Oh, it’s a long story! I’ve been pressing for women inspectors in various directions. It seems inconceivable that any one should cavil at a woman inspector wherever women are employed. You have no idea of what some of the conditions are. Stewardesses, for instance; I’ve a letter there from a woman who has been working on one of the largest liners—not a tramp steamer, mind you, but one of the biggest liners afloat. All the passengers’ trays, all the cabin meals had to be carried up a perpendicular iron stair like a fire-escape—not a permanent stair, you understand, but a ladder that is let up and down. Those wretched women had to go up and down it all day with heavy trays. They said they couldn’t do it, and were told they had to. And that’s a little thing compared to some of the other conditions. I want an inspector for them.”
“And Alington?”
Lady Heritage came to a halt by the long, piled-up table. She struck it with her open hand. “Lord Alington is just a man,” she said. “He stands for what men have always stood for, the sacred right of the vested interest. What man ever wants to alter anything? And why should he when the existing order gives him all he wants? It doesn’t matter where you turn, what you do, how hard you try, the vested interest blocks the way; you are up against the Established Order of what has always been. My God, how I’d like to smash it all, the whole thing, the whole smug sham which we call civilisation!”
Jane stared at her open-eyed. She had never dreamed that the statue could wake into such vivid life as this. The colour burned in Raymond’s cheeks, the sombre eyes were sombre still, but they held sparks as if from inward fire.
Ember touched the hand that was clenched at the table’s edge. A sort of tremor passed over her from head to foot. The colour died, the fire was gone. With a complete change of manner she said:
“Alington was hardly worth all that, was he?” Then without a change of key, but in German:
“Thank you, Jeffrey, the child’s eyes were nearly falling out of her head. It was stupid of me; I forgot. These things carry me away.”
The door opened on her last words, and Sir William came in. He was frowning, and appeared to be in a great hurry.
“Ridiculous business, ridiculous waste of time. These damned departments appear to think I’ve nothing to do with my time except to answer their infernal inquiries, and entertain any interfering jackanapes that they choose to let loose on me.”
“What is it Father?” said Lady Heritage—“Government inspection?”
“Nonsense,” said Sir William slowly. “Henry March wants to come down for the night.”
Jane bent forward over her papers. No one was looking at her, no one was thinking of her, but she had felt her cheeks grow hot, and was glad of an excuse to hide them.
She did not know whether she was very much afraid or very glad. A feeling unfamiliar but overwhelming seemed to shake her to the depths. She was quite unconscious of what was passing behind her.
At Henry’s name, Raymond Heritage uttered a sharp, “Oh no!” She came quickly forward as she spoke and caught the letter from Sir William’s hand.
“He can’t come—I can’t have him here—put him off, Father; you can make some excuse!”
“Nonsense!” said Sir William again. “It’s a nuisance, of course—it’s an infernal nuisance—but he’ll have to come, confound him!”
Then, as she made a half-articulate protest, he went on with increasing loss of temper:
“Good heavens! I can’t very well tell the man I won’t have him in what is practically his own house.”
It was Ember, not her father, who saw how frightfully pale Raymond became. In a very low voice she said:
“No, I suppose not.”
Sir William was fidgeting. He looked at Jane’s back.
“Of course, he’s coming down on business.”
Then he broke off and stared at Jane again.
Lady Heritage nodded.
“Miss Molloy,” she said. “You can take half an hour off.”
Henry arrived on the following day and was shown straight into Sir William’s study.
Half an hour later Sir William rang the bell and sent for Lady Heritage. He hardly gave her time to shake hands before he burst out:
“I said you must be told. I take all responsibility for your being told. After all, if I am conducting these experiments, something is due to me, though the Government appear to think otherwise. But I take all responsibility; I insist on your being told.”
He sat at his littered table, and all the time that he was speaking his hands were lifting and shuffling the papers on it. At his elbow stood a tray with tantalus and glasses and a syphon. Only one glass had been used.
“What is it?” said Raymond.
Her eyes went from her father to Henry.
Sir William’s hand was shaking. Henry wore a look of grave concern.
“What is it?” she repeated.
“It’s Formula ‘A’”—Sir William’s voice was just a deep growl. “He comes here, and he tells me that Formula ‘A’ has been stolen. I’ve told him to his face, and I tell him again, that it’s a damned impossibility.”
The shaking hand fell heavily upon the table and made the glasses ring.
“Formula ‘A’?” said Raymond—“stolen? Henry, you can’t mean it?”
“I’m afraid I do,” said Henry, at his quietest. “I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. We have the most indisputable evidence that Formula ‘A’ has been offered to—well, to a foreign power.”
The flush upon Sir William’s face deepened alarmingly. Under the bristling grey brows his eyes were hard with anger. He began to speak, broke off, swept his papers to one side, and, taking up the tantalus and the used glass, poured out a third of a glass of whisky. He let a small quantity of soda into it with a vicious jerk, and then sat with the glass between his hands, alternately sipping from it and interjecting sounds of angry protest.
“The information is, I’m afraid, correct.”
Henry’s tone, though studiously moderate, was extremely firm. “There is undoubtedly a leak, and, in view of Formula ‘B,’ it is vital that the leak should be found and stopped.”
He addressed himself to Lady Heritage:
“Sir William tells me that all employés correspond with the list in my possession, that none of them leave the enclosure, and that all letters are censored. By the way, who censors them?”
“Ember,” growled Sir William.
Lady Heritage elaborated the remark.
“Mr. Ember—Father’s secretary.”
She and Henry were both standing, with the corner of the writing-table between them. She saw inquiry in Henry’s face. He said:
“Who does leave the premises?”
“Father, once in a blue moon, I when I have any shopping to do, and, of course, Mr. Ember.”
“And when you go you drive, of course? What I mean is—a chauffeur goes too?”
Sir William made a sound between a snort and a laugh; Lady Heritage smiled. Both had the air of being pleased to catch Henry out.
“The chauffeur is Lewis, who was your uncle’s coachman here for twenty-five years. Are you going to suggest that he has been selling Formula ‘A’ to a foreign power? I’m afraid you must think again.”
“Who is Mr. Ember?”
Sir William exploded.
“Ember’s my secretary. He’s been my right hand for ten years, and if you’re going to make insinuations about him, you can leave my house and make them elsewhere. Why, damn it all, March!—why not accuse Raymond, or me?”
“I don’t accuse any one, sir.”
There was a pause, whilst the two men looked at one another. It was Sir William who looked away at last. He drained his glass and got up, pushing his chair so hard that it overturned.
“You want to see all the men to check ’em by that infernal list of yours, do you? The sooner the better then; let’s get it over.”
Later, as the men answered to their names in the long, bare room which had once been the Blue Parlour, Henry was struck with the strangeness of the scene. Here his aunt had loved to sit doing an interminable embroidery of fruits and flowers upon canvas. Here he and Anthony had lain prone before the fire, each with his head in a book and his heels waving aloft. Memories of Fenimore Cooper and Henty filled the place when for a moment he closed his eyes. Then, as they opened, there was the room all bare, the windows barred and uncurtained, the long stretcher tables with their paraphernalia of glass retorts, queer, twisted apparatus, powerful electric appliances, and this row of men answering to their names whilst he checked each from his list.
“James Mallaby.” He called the name and glanced from the man who answered it to the paper in his hand. A small photograph was followed by a description: “5 feet 7 inches, grey eyes, mole on chin, fair complexion, sandy hair.” All correct. He passed to the next.
“Jacob Moss—5 feet 5 inches, dark complexion, black hair and eyes, no marks....”
“George Patterson—5 feet 10 inches, sallow complexion, brown hair and beard, grey on temples, grey eyes, scar....”
The man who answered to the name of George Patterson stepped forward. He had the air of being taller than his scheduled height. His beard and hair were unkempt, and the scar set down against him was a red seam that ran from the left temple to the chin, where it lost itself in grizzled hair. He stooped, and walked with a dragging step.
Henry, who for the moment was speaking to Sir William, looked at him casually enough. He opened his list, and in turning the page, the papers slipped from his hand and fell. George Patterson picked them up. Henry went on to the next name.
Jane had keyed herself up to meeting him at teatime, but neither Henry nor Sir William appeared.
“Captain March is an extremely conscientious person,” said Lady Heritage. It was not a trait which appeared to commend itself to her. “I should think he must have interviewed the very black-beetles by now. Have you been passed, Jeffrey?”
“I don’t know,” said Mr. Ember, “but it hasn’t taken away my appetite for tea.”
In fact it had not. It was Raymond who ate nothing.
Jane and Henry did not meet until dinner-time. As she dressed, Jane kept looking at herself in the glass. She was pale, and she must not look pale. She took a towel and rubbed her cheeks—that was better. Then a little later, when she looked again, her eyes were far too bright, her face unnaturally flushed.
“As if any one was going to look at you at all—idiot!” she said.
After this she kept her back to the mirror.
In all the books that she had ever read the secretary or companion invariably wore a dinner dress of black silk made, preferably, out of one which had belonged to a grandmother or some even more remote relative. In this garb she outshone all the other women and annexed the affections of at least two of the most eligible men.
Renata did not possess a black silk gown.
“Thank goodness, for I should look perfectly awful in it,” was Jane’s thought.