I began to get rather nervous. I had given up the notion of capturing some big business by the sheer brilliance of my ideas. I had no business training and no familiarity with the ways of it. I was unproved, and firms would not let me begin at the top to prove me. Perhaps it was not unnatural, though I still feel sure that some of the ideas had lots of money in them, if only I could have found any backing. I did not make anything like enough by story-writing to pay my expenses, and in consequence I was eating up my capital. “Wilhelmina Castel,” I said to myself severely, “this cannot go on.” I could not hope for a continual supply of windfalls. My hatred of the usual feminine professions, with thirty shillings a week as the top-note and a gradual diminuendo into the workhouse, was as strong as ever. Yet I questioned whether it would not be better for me to spend capital in learning shorthand and typewriting, worm my way into a good business house as a clerk, and then trust to my intelligence to find or make the opportunities that would ultimately lead to a partnership. I wished I had someone with whom I could talk it over. But what Minnie Saxe said was perfectly true.
“You ain’t got no friends seemingly,” said Minnie Saxe.
“Yes, I have, Minnie, but not here. In London I’m playing a lone hand, as they say.”
“Well, it ain’t right. And I shan’t be lookin’ in We’n’sday night, ’cos I’ve promised to do up Mrs. Saunders.” She always spoke of her employers as if they were parcels.
It is easy enough for a girl who is alone in London to make friends, but in nine cases out of ten they are not friends. The friend is not made but arrives in the usual formal channels. And when these usual channels are closed it is perhaps better to do without friends. Yet I had made one or two acquaintances.
One of them was a neat little woman in a brown coat and skirt. We had come across one another while shopping in the North End Road. One day when we were both in the grocer’s shop her string-bag collapsed and I assisted at a rescue of the parcels. She thanked me; she had a musical voice and spoke well—with a slight American accent. After that, we always spoke when we met; it was mostly about the weather, but gradually she told me one or two things about herself. She was married and had no children and wanted none. She liked old houses, and lived in one. “There are plenty of them in Fulham, if you know where to look,” she added.
On the night that Minnie was “doing up” Mrs. Saunders, I dined at a little confectioner’s near Walham Green. That is to say, I had a mutton chop, a jam tartlet, and a glass of lemonade there. One took this weird meal in a little place at the back of the shop, just big enough to hold two small tables and the chairs thereof, and decently veiled by a bead curtain from the eye of the curious. I sat waiting for my chop and reading the evening paper when a rattle of the curtain made me look up. In came the little woman in brown. She seemed rather bewildered at seeing me, said “Good evening,” and modestly took her place at the other table. But she had clearly hesitated about it, and I could not seem too unsociable.
“Won’t you come and sit here?” I said. “Unless, of course, you are expecting anybody.”
“Thanks so much, I’m quite alone. I didn’t know—I thought you might be waiting for a friend.”
I laughed. “No, I have no friends—in London at any rate.”
“I am sure you have no enemies,” she said with conviction.
“I don’t think I have. I’m all alone, you see. Do you often come here? It’s a quaint little place.”
“Not very often. But to-night my husband is out—professionally engaged—he is a spiritualist, you know. So I let my maid go out too, and locked up the house and came here.”
“So your husband is a spiritualist. That sounds interesting. Does he see visions and make tables jump, and do automatic writing, and all those things?”
“Oh, no! He has been for years a student of spiritualism. And, of course, he is, as I am, a profound believer in it. He understands the best ways to conduct aséance, and mediums like to work with him for that reason, but he is not a medium himself. I am a medium—at least, I was.” She fiddled with a little pepper-pot on the table, turning it round and round. “Oh, I wish I were you!” she said suddenly.
I was astonished. “But why?” I asked.
“Well, the story is no secret if it won’t bore you. It’s known to many people already. Have you ever heard of Mr. Wentworth Holding?”
“Of course. You mean the financier and millionaire.”
“Yes. Well, he heard of my husband and of his medium, Una. I was always known as Una. I have heard it said that these hard men of business are often superstitious. I should put it that they are shrewd enough to see that there is something beyond them. Mr. Holding wrote to my husband to ask him to find out the future of a certain stock. Now that money-making kind of question is one which the spirits always dislike. As a rule they refuse to answer, or answer ambiguously. My husband did not expect much, but he gave me the question, and as soon as it was controlled my hand wrote, ‘Heavy fall in three days.’ My husband telegraphed this at once to Holding. The financier could not quite believe or quite disbelieve. He did not bear the stock, but also he did not buy it—as in his own judgment he had intended to do. The fall took place, and he sent my husband the biggest fee we have ever received, and said we should hear from him again.”
“But why does all this make you wish you were I?”
“That’s soon told. Holding has written again and wishes to engage the services of my husband and his medium exclusively. My husband has warned him that the spirits will not continue to interest themselves in his business, but he says that he does not mind that and that there are other things that interest him as much as business. The terms he offers are princely. The work would delight us both. And here comes the trouble: from the moment that I answered that question about the stock—perhaps because I answered it—I have lost power. My husband has searched London for a medium to take my place and can find none. Some of them drink, and very many of them cheat, and those who are decent and honest very often fail to get the results. And that is why I wish I were you; for I feel just as sure that you are an excellent medium as I am that you are good and above any kind of trickery. You won’t think me impertinent? I’ve always studied faces, you know.”
“But how can I be a medium? I have never done anything of the kind in my life.”
“But that does not matter—not in the very least. I am quite sure of what I say. I only wish you had some spare evenings, and wanted to make money, and could help us.”
“All my evenings are spare evenings, and I do want to make money. But I fear my help would be worth nothing.”
“Come and see at least.” She glanced at her watch. “My husband will be back in a few minutes. We live at 32 Hanford Gardens—quite near here.” Perhaps she noticed the look of cautious hesitation on my face. “Or would you rather come later? You might prefer to——”
“No,” I said, “I’ll come now.” I confess that I felt rather curious. I was not in the least a believer in spiritualism, but I did believe—and do still believe—that things happen for which no known law supplies the explanation.
No. 32 Hanford Gardens was a little box of a place with a small walled garden. It was an old house, and the tiny room into which my new friend brought me was panelled. The panels had been painted a dark green, and the thick noiseless carpet was of the same colour. It struck me, I remember, that they must have given a good price for that carpet. It was scantily furnished with a square table, a few solid mahogany chairs, and a couch in the recess by the fireplace. A man sat by the table, and in front of him was what looked like a glass ball, the size of a cricket-ball, resting on a strip of black velvet. He rose as we came in. The light was dim—for the room was lit only by one small shaded lamp in a sconce on the wall—but I could see that he was a gaunt man of forty, hollow-eyed, with a strong blue chin, looking like a tired actor.
I had already given my new acquaintance my name and learned that she was Mrs. Dentry. She presented her husband, and in a few words explained the situation. He had a pleasant voice and rather a dreamy, abstracted manner.
“It is very kind of you,” he said hesitatingly. “I do not know, of course, if you have a spiritual power, and one meets with many disappointments—as I have already done this evening. Still, one can try.”
“My husband,” said Mrs. Dentry, in explanation, “has been to-night to see a medium who professed to get most wonderful results. So he was no good, Hector?”
“Worse than that. Conjuring tricks—and not even new conjuring tricks.”
Then he turned to me with a host of rapid questions, and seemed satisfied with my answers. “We may have no results, but at any rate there will be no trickery.” He glanced at his watch. “Unfortunately, I have to go out for half an hour to see a client of mine. But my wife knows what to do—you will be able to make your first experiments without me.”
He went out and presently I heard the front door bang. Mrs. Dentry made me sit at the table and place my hands on it. “Wait,” she said, “until you are sure that the spirits are present, and then ask them aloud to raise the table from the floor.”
She went over to the other end of the room and turned out the lamp; then she lit a lamp that gave a little blue flicker, by which I could distinguish nothing except the face of Mrs. Dentry standing beside it.
For a few moments nothing happened; then loud raps came from all parts of the room, and the pictures rattled on the walls, and a cold wind blew sharply across my face and hands. I was astounded. Mrs. Dentry had not moved from her position at the other end of the room, and I could just see that she was smiling.
“I knew it would be all right,” she said softly. “Go on, please.”
“If there are spirits here,” I said—and somehow the voice hardly sounded like my own—“I ask them to raise this table from the ground.”
Very gradually I felt the table—which was fairly solid and heavy—begin to rise. It rose about two feet in the air and remained suspended. I pressed on it with my hands and could not force it down. After a moment or two it fell to the ground with a bang, and I removed my hands.
“That will do,” I said faintly, and Mrs. Dentry struck a match and re-lit the lamp. Then she and I sat on the sofa and talked. She said that I was wonderful and must certainly come and help them. If she might mention terms, she knew that her husband would pay a guinea for each sitting; at any rate I must come while the Wentworth Holding business was on. She urged that I owed it to myself to develop my marvellous powers. As she was talking I heard the click of a key in the front door and Mr. Dentry entered, his hat and gloves still in his hands.
“Well?” he said eagerly. “Did you get anything?”
“Anything?” said his wife. “Everything. Miss Castel is a really wonderful medium.”
We talked on for some time. I would promise them nothing definitely. But I gave them my address, and said that I would probably come once again at any rate. They were in despair that I would not give them any further assurance, but I was obstinate. I regarded the whole thing with a curious mixture of curiosity and repulsion.
* * * * * *
Next morning Mrs. Dentry called to see me. Wentworth Holding was sending a man of science that night to examine into the whole thing; it was essential that I should be there.
“If I go,” I said, “I do not want my name given.”
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Dentry. “You will be addressed as Una.”
“Then,” I said, “Mr. Holding’s tame investigator would be made to believe that I was the same medium that foretold the fall of the stock. I don’t like that.”
“True,” said Mrs. Dentry. “I hadn’t thought of that. It doesn’t really much matter. But you’d better be called Una all the same; there’s no cheating about it, because you’re ever so much better than the original Una.”
“I don’t think so. This morning, for instance, I tried the automatic writing and got nothing.”
“That’s because you don’t know how to set about it. My husband will show you. I myself failed scores of times at first. But as for the name, that must be just as you wish. You may be quite nameless if you like.”
“I should prefer it.”
“And please don’t make any more experiments without us. If the conditions are not right you will get no results, and in any case you will be tiring yourself. We want you to-night to be as fresh and full of vitality as possible. If you could get an hour’s sleep this afternoon it would be all the better.”
But I could not sleep that afternoon although I made the attempt. There were things in my interview with Mrs. Dentry that I did not quite like. I began to wish that I had never gone into the business at all.
* * * * * *
I kept my appointment at nine that night, and the Dentrys’ rather frowsy maid showed me into the room where I had been on the previous evening. Two men in evening dress stood by the fireplace. One was Dentry; the other was a short, solid-looking man with a closely clipped grey beard. At the table sat an elderly lady in black, with tight lips and a proud, disapproving face. Dentry thanked me for coming, and explained that his wife could not be present. “She is, in fact, taking some of my regular work in order that I may be free.” The grey-bearded man was introduced to me as Dr. Morning. The elderly lady, to whom I was not presented, was his wife.
“The doctor and Mrs. Morning are acting for Mr. Wentworth Holding,” said Dentry. “They are here to find out whether we cheat. I admit the unfortunate necessity of such an examination, and I may add that I welcome it. How will you begin, Dr. Morning?”
“With the walls.”
“Certainly,” said Dentry. He changed his position and leaned against one of the panels. The doctor began with that panel, but neither there nor in the rest of his thorough examination of the room did he seem to come across anything of a suspicious character. This part of the business rather bored me. I wanted to get on and see what would happen.
The doctor produced several straps with bells attached to them, and Mrs. Morning fastened a couple of these on my hands and wrists. She did this without speaking a word to me, and as she tightened the strap on my wrists she looked as if she wished they had been handcuffs. The doctor secured Dentry in a similar manner. If either he or I moved hand or foot the sound of the bells would betray us. The doctor, Dentry and myself took our seats at the table in the usual way. Mrs. Morning sat at a little distance. All the lights were put out, but there was an unlit candle on a little table beside Mrs. Morning, and she held a box of matches ready in her hand.
Almost immediately Dentry asked, in a clear, loud voice, “Is there any spirit here present? From a far corner of the room came a low snarl as of some wild beast.
“The spirit present,” said Dentry, “is an evil spirit. It will be safer not to go on with the sitting.”
“We will go on, please,” said Dr. Morning.
“Very well,” said Dentry. “I disclaim all responsibility.”
“Of course,” said the doctor. There was distinctly a note of contempt in his voice.
For a few slow minutes we went on sitting in silence, and then I heard a crash. Mrs. Morning struck a match and lit the candle at her side. I could see that the doctor had been thrown violently to the ground. “All right, all right,” he said to his wife. “I’m not hurt. Let me have a little more light, please.”
He remained seated on the carpet while his wife lit the lamp and Dentry stood over him expressing his regret for what had happened. The doctor took no notice of Dentry. He put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, and as soon as the lamp was lit put his head down so that his eyes were nearly level with the carpet. Then he got up briskly, brushing the dust from his clothes. “That will do,” he said. “We will be going now, and I will call on you, Mr. Dentry, to-morrow morning at ten o’clock, if that suits you.”
“Certainly,” said Dentry. “Any time you like, Dr. Morning.” He seemed to me to be trying to cover with an attempt at swagger some real uneasiness. He kept on pointing out to the doctor how severe the test conditions had been.
I was left alone when they had passed out into the hall, but the doctor came back almost immediately on the plea that he had left his spectacles. He turned to me at once. “Know these people well?” he said.
“No; my acquaintance with Mrs. Dentry was a chance one.”
“Done this kind of thing often before?”
“Only once, on the one occasion when I was here before. Mrs. Dentry told me I was a medium.”
“She would,” said the doctor grimly. “Well, you’re not. You’d better leave it.”
“I will.”
“I believe,” he said meditatively, “you are all right. Good night.” And he held out his hand to me. I followed him into the hall, and I noticed that he did not shake hands with Dentry.
After the doctor and his wife had gone Dentry pressed me to wait for a few minutes to see his wife. She would be certain to return in a few minutes.
I refused, and I also refused to let him escort me home. But, as it chanced, I had an escort all the same. For just outside in the street I happened to meet Minnie Saxe.
“I didn’t know you went to that place, miss,” said Minnie Saxe severely.
“What’s the matter with it?” I asked. And Minnie Saxe told me what was the matter with it.
* * * * * *
After breakfast next morning I sat and thought it over. Minnie Saxe and her father had been employed as caretakers at 32 Hanford Gardens. Her father had been also employed to repaint some of the rooms. Thus Minnie Saxe knew that the wainscot in the recess on the left of the fireplace in the front room was removable. It was impossible for anyone in the front room to detect this. On that side it appeared to be tightly nailed and solid. But anyone in the back room could slide a couple of bolts and find a way open into the front room. Also, nobody knew how Mr. and Mrs. Dentry made their money. Also, Mr. Dentry drank. And it was Minnie Saxe’s belief that they were engaged in the manufacture of false coin.
It was all quite clear to me now. The Dentrys had required an accomplice. And an accomplice is a very dangerous person. If they could get some simple, honest fool, like myself, to believe she was a medium and that she was in reality responsible for the manifestations, all would be safe. The accomplice would not even know that there was any trickery. On the first occasion when I was at Hanford Gardens, Mr. Dentry had not left the house. A front door may shut heavily though no one goes in or out. And I could see that Dentry had brought his hat and gloves into the room instead of leaving them in the hall, with a view to impressing me with the idea that he had not been in the house. Of course he had been in the back room and had entered by the wainscot. There was a reason doubtless for that thick and noiseless carpet. At the next sitting Mrs. Dentry had simply taken the place of her husband.
I knew that Dr. Morning had discovered the trick, but I could not make out how he had discovered it. He had removed a couch and examined that particular piece of wainscot with the utmost care, and I am sure that he had been perfectly satisfied with it.
In the meantime, what was I to do? Ought I to inform the police, or to write to Mr. Wentworth Holding, or to call on Dr. Morning? Great though my disgust with the Dentrys was, I had a stupid woman’s reluctance to get them into serious trouble. As I was thinking over these things there came a tap at my outer door. Minnie Saxe had gone and I opened the door myself. Mrs. Dentry stood there, looking very nice and fresh and neat.
“Have you just a few minutes to spare?” she said.
I asked her to come in.
“It’s such a disappointment,” she began. “Dr. Morning was quite satisfied—indeed, under his conditions any trickery would have been impossible. But Mr. Holding has developed religious scruples. He won’t go on. So I fear I have no more work of the kind to offer you. In fact, we are leaving for Liverpool to-morrow ourselves. We have heard of an opening there. But I have brought your fee.” She began fumbling with her purse.
“I shall not take your money, Mrs. Dentry,” I said. “I know exactly how the swindle is worked. Minnie Saxe, who was once employed by you as caretaker, is at present my servant. And she is a very observant and intelligent child. But there are two things I don’t understand, and I should like you to explain them.”
Beyond the fact that she breathed a little quicker, Mrs. Dentry seemed quite unput out. “What are your questions?” she asked.
“I have never given you my address. How did you know it?”
“My husband followed you home last night. He was afraid of any communication between you and the doctor. He did not recognise Minnie Saxe, nor do I think he knows how much she has found out. And the other question?”
“How did Dr. Morning find out? I am sure his examination of the walls of the room told him nothing.”
“You are quite right,” she said. “It was only at the last moment that he discovered anything.”
“You mean that he saw you under the sofa, or that you had not time to replace the wainscot?”
Mrs. Dentry smiled sadly. “Oh, I’m not quite so clumsy as that,” she said. “I was out in the other room and the wainscot was in its place even before the match was struck.”
“You had left something behind you, perhaps? A handkerchief?”
“No, I don’t leave things behind me. I wear a dress the colour of the carpet and specially suited for quick, athletic movement. It has no pockets in it. I’m not sure if you’d call it a dress at all. The thing was simplicity itself. I had warned my husband against it before. The carpet has a long thick pile. When anybody crawls across a carpet of that kind they leave a trail that it does not take an Indian to discover. Dr. Morning chanced to think of that, and saw that the trail led directly under the sofa. He began this morning by saying to me, ‘If you will not let me see the room on the other side of this wall, the whole thing is a swindle, and I shall give Mr. Holding my reasons for thinking so.’ I tried to bluster it out. The game was lost, but I might at any rate have managed to put a good face on it. Unfortunately, my husband came in. He’d been drinking. It was too awful, and——”
Here Mrs. Dentry collapsed suddenly and burst into tears.
It is not very easy to be severe with a woman who is crying because her husband is a blackguard and she is a failure. I, at any rate, am not clever enough for it. Before she went she gave me some curious scraps of her personal history. She and her husband had always been, and still were, firm believers in spiritualism. When she wrote down the fall of the stock about which Mr. Holding was inquiring, she was convinced that her hand was really controlled. In order to make a living though, and to attract the public, more was required than could legitimately be obtained. It was necessary to supplement. This struck me as a nice euphemism.
I gave a sigh of relief when she had gone. I was glad to be quit of that business.
As I have already explained, my adventures with the spiritualists were more interesting than remunerative. I contrasted rather bitterly my light-hearted start upon my career in London and my present condition. It had seemed so simple to forsake the usual futile and ill-paid lines of women’s work and to find a new and better way for myself. I had found nothing. It was due more to my luck than my judgment that I was not already at the end of my resources. As it was they were fast dwindling.
Every day I made a point of going out into the stimulating life of crowded London streets. Somewhere in them I felt that I should find my chance. Amid so much that was happening there would be some circumstance that I could use to my profit. I trained myself to observe. Whether it was by day or by night that I had taken my walk I always sat down on my return and reviewed in my mind what I had seen and wondered whether there were anything that I could turn to account.
One morning after breakfast, as I picked up my newspaper, my eye fell on an announcement that a lady had lost a pug-dog and would pay one guinea for his restoration. It seemed to me queer that I had never thought of this before. Why should I not find things and get rewards? Pug-dogs at a guinea a time did not represent wealth, but there were more serious losses that brought higher rewards. The same paper provided me with an instance. On the evening of the 20th inst., in or near Erciston Square, West, Lady Meskell had lost a pearl necklace. A description of it was appended and a reward of four hundred pounds was offered.
I knew Erciston Square very well. It had been rather a favourite place with me in my wanderings. I liked to see the arrivals and departures at dinners, dances and receptions. Sometimes great people were pointed out to me.
“That’s the Spanish Ambassador,” I heard one ragged boy say to another. I have not the least conception how he knew, but I am quite certain he was right. That was at No. 14, and it was to No. 14 that the pearl necklace, if found, was to be restored. It struck me that the reward offered was unusually large. I had seen pearl necklaces in shop windows which could be bought for less. Still, undoubtedly their value might mount to almost any figure.
A paragraph in the paper threw a little more light on the subject. Lady Meskell was a fashionable woman, and was always taking stalls at bazaars, or acting in amateur theatricals on behalf of different charities. She affected to treat her loss lightly. “The necklace was not really very valuable,” she said, “but I prized it for its associations. It was given me by my husband. On Wednesday night I was walking in the garden of the Square, as I often do on fine summer evenings. I believe,” she added, “that I am the only resident who makes any use of the garden at all, except perhaps a few children in the afternoon. My necklace must have dropped either in the garden or the street. As soon as I discovered my loss I had the garden, which of course is not accessible to the public, thoroughly searched from end to end, and nothing was found. I’m afraid it must have dropped in the street, where, of course, it would have been snapped up at once.” She had communicated with the police and was quite hopeful that the necklace would be recovered. “You see,” she added, “I am offering a reward which is really more than a thief would be able to get for it.”
There were one or two points about her statements which seemed to me rather curious. I turned up a very rough and abbreviated diary that I was in the habit of keeping, and found, as I had expected, that on the evening of Wednesday the 20th I had walked through Erciston Square. The time must have been between six and seven. I lay back in my chair and closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Erciston Square garden as seen by the public from outside. It was much like any other of the square gardens. Masses of sooty evergreens gave it a decent privacy. Geraniums and blue lobelias struggled for life in a prim bed that skirted a formal and shaven lawn. There were a few big plane trees, and in the middle of the garden there was a kind of summer-house or shelter. What had I seen in Erciston Square on Wednesday evening which would throw any light on the matter? I had seen something; I had seen somebody leave the garden, and that somebody was most certainly not Lady Meskell. A faint idea came to me—it was hardly a theory as yet.
I went to the public reading-room next day and looked over those papers which purvey fashionable intelligence and personal paragraphs, and as Lady Meskell had been brought into the public eye by the loss of her pearls I found a good deal about her. Her present age was not given, but she was spoken of as being young. And there were the usual rhapsodies about her beauty. She was of mixed parentage, her mother having been Spanish and her father English. She had inherited fortunes both from her father and her husband. The latter had been dead about three years, and she had not re-married. She had one daughter, a girl of nine. She was generous, particularly to her favourite charities, and her dramatic abilities were spoken of in terms that the Press do not often spare for amateurs. Well, there was nothing here to contradict the idea that I had already formed. Indeed, there was one detail that confirmed it.
For a week I hesitated. Every day I saw in the paper Lady Meskell’s announcement of the reward of four hundred pounds. I wanted those four hundred pounds rather badly. Suppose I called at No. 14 Erciston Square? If my guess was wrong as it might very easily be, I should make Lady Meskell exceedingly angry. Need that concern me very much? If I were right, then the possibilities were great.
That afternoon I bought a new hat, which suited me. That always gives me courage. And I took a hansom. Nothing keeps one’s nerves steadier and raises one’s self-respect more than a little extravagance, and I could not afford either the hat or the hansom. I drove to No. 14, and demanded in a clear and unfaltering voice if I could see Lady Meskell.
“Her ladyship is not at home,” said the butler. And I own that it was some relief to me to hear it.
“Will you tell her ladyship,” I said, as I handed him my card, “that I called with reference to her pearl necklace?”
The man hesitated. “It is just possible that I may be mistaken,” he said. “If you will wait for one minute I will inquire.”
He showed me into a big, over-furnished and over-decorated drawing-room. As I was looking at rather a nice copy of a well-known Rubens, the door opened and Lady Meskell came towards me.
Lady Meskell was anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five. She was still distinctly beautiful. Her eyes and hair were very dark. Her complexion was perhaps a little too pale, but I liked it. Rouge would not have suited her. Her general appearance seemed to suggest a curious association of poetry and commonness. The commonness was not in her dress, which was very quiet, very expensive, and in the fashion of the day after to-morrow. I think it lay in her mouth (she had a brute of a mouth) and in her rather podgy white hands. Her smile of welcome showed perfect teeth—perhaps it was intended to show them. The fat fingers of one hand twisted up my card.
“This is very good of you, Miss Castel,” she said at once. “Do sit down and tell me all about it. And first of all, have you got my pearls?”
“No, Lady Meskell,” I said, “I have not got them.”
Her expression did not change at this. She still listened with an air of polite attention.
“But,” I continued, “I have thought over the case and I have formed a theory. If the theory is correct I can tell you where your pearls are.”
“How interesting! The police, you know, have been no good at all. I shall be so glad to have some fresh light on the subject, even if it does not actually lead to anything.”
I felt convinced that she did not expect me to be able to tell her anything at all, and that, as a kind-hearted woman, she meant to let me babble for a few minutes and then get rid of me.
“On the other hand,” I said, “if my theory should happen to be wrong, you will be exceedingly angry with me.”
Lady Meskell laughed. “Oh, I hope not,” she said. “I am very seldom angry, but when I am I become rather awful.”
“The Spanish are privileged to have passions,” I said, “and you, I think, are partly Spanish. You begin to frighten me.”
Again she laughed. “You needn’t be afraid really. How did you know I was partly Spanish? Oh, yes, it was in the papers, of course. Whatever your theory is, I want to hear it. And I will take all the responsibility of making you tell me it.”
“That’s very kind of you. Your pearl necklace was not lost at all. It was stolen by a man of about forty. He was wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat. He left the Square garden at five-and-twenty minutes to seven by the gate on the other side of the Square. He was a foreigner and is almost certainly employed in some menial capacity. I cannot tell you his name, but I have no doubt that further information could be obtained at the Spanish Embassy. Although I have brought you here the information which may enable you to recover your necklace, it is information that you had in your possession all along. You know more even than I do, for you know both the names of this man.”
“This is really very interesting,” said Lady Meskell. “You saw this man leave the garden, I suppose?”
“I did.”
“And you have remembered it all this time?”
“I have trained myself to remember.”
“You are right in your description of his appearance. He is a foreigner, and he is—or was—a servant. What made you suggest that anything could be heard of him at the Spanish Embassy?”
“Your mother was Spanish. The Spanish Ambassador attends your receptions. His carriage was pointed out to me.”
“A mistake,” said Lady Meskell bluntly. “He has never been here, and I know no Spaniards. Deduction is a dangerous game, and it seems to me that you’ve been playing it rather freely. You deduced, for instance, that what you said would make me extremely angry. Now, nothing that you have said could possibly make anybody angry. Not even your suggestion of complicity. But I can quite imagine that something which you thought might annoy a woman in my position extremely. Now tell me what you thought.”
“I have made a mistake. I am sorry to have troubled you, and I will go now, please.”
“Please don’t. You won’t tell me?”
I shook my head.
“Then I will tell you,” said Lady Meskell. “I will take a hand at this game of deduction and see if I can play it any better than you do. You knew that my mother was a Spaniard, and you supposed, quite wrongly, that I had some connection with the Spanish Embassy. Why should a woman in my position meet a man in his position secretly, and in the Square garden? How could he get into the Square garden unless I lent him a key? There must be a romance here. Romance fits well with the Spanish blood, doesn’t it? Briefly, you scented a love affair. The man had robbed me, and I wanted to get my pearls back. But I did not want the world to hear that story about me.” She looked a malicious devil as she was saying all this. “You are quite right,” she continued. “I do not want the world to hear any such story. Two hundred and fifty pounds would not be too much to pay for your silence.” She took a step or two towards the writing-table. “Shall I write you a cheque?” she said.
By this time I had become rather angry myself. “I don’t know,” I said, “whether you mean to admit in this way that I had thought correctly, but if you suggest that I had come here to blackmail you, or that you can offer me money in that way——”
Here Lady Meskell, somewhat to my surprise, burst into peals of laughter. She sat down and rubbed her fat hands together cheerfully. “You are a very good girl,” she said. “I thought you were from the first. But I was just making sure. No, unromantic though it may seem, there is noliaisonbetween myself and the man—he happens to be a cook—whom you saw leaving the garden. But, amid your mistakes, you made one or two very happy guesses. It is true that he took my pearls, and that I knew all along he had taken them, and that I knew his name. The advertisement will keep on appearing for the rest of this week. I have my own reasons for that. But, as a matter of fact, the pearls were returned to me the day before yesterday. I have got them upstairs, and I will show them to you, if you like, before you go.”
“They were returned to you by this cook man?”
“Oh, dear, no! That wouldn’t have done at all. I can’t compound a felony. At any rate, if I do, there must be no evidence of it. My friend the cook quite understood that. A nice, ruddy-faced cabman brought the pearls back and described how his little girl had found them in the gutter, and had supposed them to be beads and had worn them ever since. He knew it was a lie, and I knew it was a lie, and he knew that I knew. But we went through it all with perfect solemnity. My expert went over the pearls to see that they were all right, and the bank-notes were handed to the cabman. But I think that as you’ve been so clever—a little too clever, perhaps—you ought not to be left in the dark as to the rest of the story. I did not want to prosecute, because I did not want to have everybody laughing at me, and they would certainly have laughed. Tell me, did you find out nothing else about me?”
“Two or three other things. You were connected in different ways with several charities. Then again, you——”
“That’ll do. It began with the charities. I came across this good gentleman in hospital. He is an Italian; he has a bright and sunny imagination, and he told me strange stories of streets at the back of Tottenham Court Road. After demanding a pledge of secrecy he confessed himself to be an Anarchist.”
“Then it was romantic, after all?”
“Oh, no, it wasn’t. I am sometimes inclined to think that nothing ever is. But I thought it was romantic. I was as bad in that respect as you are. He had something on his mind, which he wished to tell me. He was to leave the hospital next day—I could not go to see him, nor would it be safe for him to call at my house. I had servants who knew him. He gave me the name of one of them, and quite correctly too. I have no idea how he got hold of it. Would I give him a meeting one evening in the Square garden? What he had to tell me was a matter of life and death. It was a matter, in fact, that concerned the life of the greatest in the land. He was most urgent and most serious. If it were found out that he had betrayed the plot his own life would be forfeited. I told him that luckily I was in the habit of walking in the Square garden on fine summer evenings. I am inclined to think that he knew this already. I would go to the summer-house in the middle of the garden, and half an hour later he might join me there, coming in from the other side of the Square. Well, he came.”
“Wasn’t it very rash of you?”
“Very likely. I may be a lot of other things, but I am not a funk. I carried a useful weapon—it was not a dagger or revolver, but merely a police whistle. I was not in the least afraid of him. He kept it up splendidly to the very end. He told me a long and beautiful story, illustrated by plans of Buckingham Palace. The plans looked quite all right, but no woman can understand plans, and my knowledge of the interior of Buckingham Palace is very limited. He accepted ten sovereigns, under protest, to enable him to get out of the country. As I left the summer-house he helped me on with my cloak. That was his opportunity. I did not discover the loss until I got back to my own house. Even then, when I felt certain that he had stolen my necklace, I could not quite bring myself to disbelieve his story. It was so circumstantial, so full of details, so correct in every point in which I was able to check it. I drove at once to Scotland Yard, and it was not till I was actually there that I made up my mind to say nothing about my Italian friend and his story. I dreaded the courteous smile of an inspector who could put his hand at any time on any Anarchist in London. I merely notified them that I had lost the pearl necklace and gave a description of it. I wished to recover it and to let my cook friend go scot-free—not on his own account, but because I could not bear that my friends should know what an idiot I had made of myself.”
“And what about that servant who knew the Italian?”
“Simplicity itself. He did not know the Italian, nor did the Italian know him. The Italian merely knew that I employed a man of that name. Naturally, one of the first things I did was to satisfy myself on that point. Really, do you know, when I remember how my advertisement was worded, it seems to me that you have earned the reward. Won’t you let me write that cheque?”
“Thanks, very much,” I said, “but I’m afraid I don’t feel as if I’ve earned it myself. And so I can’t take it. I am sorry to have wasted your time with my mistakes.” I held out my hand to say good-bye.
She glanced at the clock nervously. “But you mustn’t go yet—not until you have seen the pearls.” She rang and had the necklace brought to her. It was just an ordinary necklace, and I could not imagine why she had bothered about it. I admired it and again said good-bye.
“But you must stay and have some tea with me. I am quite alone, and it would be so kind of you. I want you to tell me all about this marvellous memory of yours. I would give anything if I could cultivate it in myself.” Once more she glanced at the clock.
It was quite obvious, for some reason which I could not discover, that she was trying to keep me. I was determined to go. She implored me to wait at any rate until her carriage could be brought round to drive me back. She could not bear to think of the amount of trouble I had taken for her, an entire stranger to me. I might at least let her carriage take me home. But I immediately determined to walk. She still tried one or two frantic excuses for keeping me, but I was firm, and a minute or two later I was outside in the Square. I walked round to the other side of it, and there, in the Square garden, pacing up and down, was a man of about forty, of a foreign appearance, wearing a dark suit, a dark blue overcoat with a velvet collar, and a hard felt hat.
And then I knew what a remarkably clever woman, and, at the same time, what an absolute fool Lady Meskell was.
I was one of the few people in London who were not surprised some few weeks later when her marriage with an Italian cook made paragraphs in the papers. She had met him, it was said, in a hospital, where she was visiting, and the two had fallen violently in love with one another.
As for the necklace, I have not the least doubt that it was really dropped in the street, and really found by the cabman’s child, and that the fortunate chef had nothing whatever to do with it. It is very wrong, of course, but I own that when I thought of the rapidity, the brilliance, and the convincing character of Lady Meskell’s lies to me, I had some feeling of envy. It was only the chance that I decided to go at the time when he was waiting for her in the Square garden that gave her away to me. I could not have done as well for myself in so tight a place.
For a time things went very badly. My luck was right out. A point was reached when I doubted if I could continue to afford four shillings a week for the quite invaluable services of Minnie Saxe. I was determined that this should be almost the last of my economies. I was quite willing to economise on food and firing and—yes, even on dress. But I did not want to make my own bed any more. I had to get the more sordid part of the work of living done for me. Naturally I was not anxious that Minnie Saxe should discover the badness of my luck and the lowness of my exchequer. She accepted without comment my statement that I found tea and bread-and-butter the best breakfast if one were going to work in the morning. She said nothing when I found it was more hygienic to work in a cold room. When she came in unexpectedly one night and caught me in the very act of dining on tea and bread-and-butter she became extremely bad-tempered and was rather rude. Next morning she informed me that her cousin at Yarmouth had sent them a present of a box of kippers, and her father had taken the liberty of asking if I would accept six with his best thanks for all my kindness to her. I went into my own room to cry, and then came back and had a kipper for breakfast. They were remarkably good kippers, fat and well-liking.
An exclusive diet of tea and bread-and-butter would perhaps be good for many people, but it does not act as a stimulus to the imagination. The editors at this time sent my work back with commendable promptitude; but I did get one little story placed inTomlinson’s Magazine, which I had considered to be altogether too high for me and had only attempted in desperation. I had a mutton-chop for dinner the night I received my cheque, and this gross feeding, acting on an already enfeebled constitution, as they say in the obituaries, led me to believe that I could write just the kind of serial thatTomlinson’s Magazinewould like. I planned it all out that night. Next morning I took a ’bus to the City to see the editor ofTomlinson’s Magazineand tell him all about my idea.
He consented to see me. He seemed to be a very young man and very tired, and had the fingers of a confirmed cigarette-smoker. An older and a fatter man was standing by his side when I was shown in, and was handing him some proof sheets for inspection.
“Cut out ‘A Mother’s Prayer,’ and fill up with small jokes. Otherwise all right.” The fat man went out and the editor turned to me. I began to tell him my business.
“About a serial story!” he said. “All right, send it in and we’ll read it.” He rose from his chair and glanced at the large, framed notice on the wall. The notice said—
“YOU CAN SAY IT ALL IN FIVE MINUTES.”
I followed the glance and looked back at him. “So I can,” I said, “and I don’t want to waste any time over a long story unless I know that it has, at any rate, a chance.”
“Certainly,” he said. “Quite natural. The first few chapters and a synopsis will be enough.” He was opening the door and shaking hands with me. The fat man was in the passage outside, and he called to him that after all he would let that “Mother’s Prayer” stand. Some people liked a bit of sentimental verse now and then.
I got on a ’bus to go home and felt incompetent and hopeless. I rode on the top, and in front of me sat a well-dressed man, making pencil notes. In Piccadilly he got up, and as he passed me I noticed that he had a strong face, full of character. A moment later I noticed that he had left his pocket-book behind him. I picked it up and dashed after him.
“Pardon,” I said, as I handed the book to him, “but you left this on the ’bus.”
He took off his hat and looked at me keenly with deep-set, blazing eyes.
“Thank you,” he said. “My house is quite near, in the Square here. I should like to speak to you of this, if you can spare a few minutes.”
“I don’t want a reward,” I said bluntly, “and I don’t see what there is to say.”
“I never dreamed of offering you a reward.” He grinned pleasantly. “You really insult me in supposing that I could have made the blunder. But you have done me a very great service, and I wish you to understand how great it is. I shall wish very probably to speak to you on quite a different matter. We cannot talk here. Come, my name is Wentworth Holding, and only respectable people live in Berkeley Square.”
“Very well,” I said. “My time, unfortunately, is not valuable. I will come. I know your name, of course. In fact, I once met an agent of yours, a Dr. Morning.”
He looked at me sharply. “Were you the honest medium?” he said.
“I was.”
“You impressed Dr. Morning and his wife very favourably, especially his wife.” I certainly had not thought so at the time. “He couldn’t make out how you got mixed up with that crew. You will have to tell me that, for I can’t make it out either, and I hate puzzles.”
I laughed. “Oh, I’ll tell you anything you like about that,” I said.
The library of his house was on the ground floor. Every available inch of wall space was covered with book-shelves, and when I sat down I noticed that the books near me dealt principally with Satanism. He remained standing, opened the pocket-book, and showed me that it contained twenty bank-notes of fifty pounds each.
“These,” he said, “are of comparatively little importance. These pages of memoranda are worth more. At any rate there are people in the City who would have given you a good deal more for them. If you had read them you would have had very little difficulty in finding your market. Don’t you think you had better have slipped the book into your pocket and said nothing?”
I hated this kind of thing. “No,” I said bluntly. “Why say these things?”
He looked at me long and seriously. “You are,” he said, “in many respects exactly like Charles. Charles,” he added, “is my son. He is a singularly quixotic young man, and at present he’s in the deuce of a mess.”
What on earth was I to say to that? As I did not know, I said nothing.
“May I ask,” he said, “if you have any occupation or profession?”
“I write stories which are not accepted. I have tried other things—taking good ideas to a business man, for instance. But I could do nothing with it. My time is my own.”
“You live alone?”
“Quite alone.”
He walked up and down the room once or twice and then sat down in a chair opposite to me. “Would you have any objection,” he said, “to telling me rather more about yourself? I can assure you that I do not ask from idle curiosity, and if you wish it, nothing that you say will be repeated.”
“I don’t think,” I said, “that there are any dark secrets in my life. At the same time I don’t know why I should tell you anything.”
“No more do I,” he repeated. “Except that I have some delicate work that I want done and that I think you are one of the few people who could do it for me properly.”
“That’s all right,” I said, “I want work. I’ll tell you.”
I gave him a rapid sketch of what I had done. I noticed at the time that it was still more a sketch of what I had failed to do. He put in a keen question here and there. At the end he turned to me with a smile.
“Now,” he said, “I am going to speak to you plainly, Miss Castel. I should imagine that your father was a clever fool.”
“He was—but I don’t let you say so. You can speak quite plainly about myself.”
“Certainly,” he said. “We will begin then with you. You have a decided taint of the clever fool in your disposition. For the rest, you are a singularly honest lady; you look pretty; you inspire confidence, and you have tact. You are not, perhaps, the most perfect person I could find for the work I wish to have done, but the work presses, and it might take me months to find anyone better. The work concerns my son Charles. Do you know him?”
“No,” I said.
“He is, I am sorry to say, a very good young man. He is quixotically good. I get very little amusement out of spending money myself, but I had hoped that my only son would have some gift for it. He has none. He has never from childhood done an extravagant thing. He buys cheap clothes, and when I get angry in consequence he tells me that these are not the things which matter. He might marry brilliantly, but he will not. He has decided to marry a poor girl who has worked for her living. I don’t mind that in the least, but, if you will pardon me the expression, I am damned if he is going to marry Miss Sibyl Norton.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Matter with her? Haven’t I said the name?—Sibyl Norton.”
“Yes, but I don’t know it.”
“You don’t want to know it. It’s a name that gives itself away. It’s obviously not a real name. It’s dishonest; it’s stagey; it makes the whole room smell of patchouli.”
I laughed. “Really,” I said, “this is very extravagant. Is that all you’ve got against her?”
“No. I dislike her type of mind and her personal appearance. She is quite respectable, has failed on the stage, and is as cunning as a cartload of monkeys. She talks of virtue and she thinks of the main chance. She lives with a tow-coloured aunt, who has less individuality than I ever met in anybody in my life. It is with the greatest possible difficulty in conversation with her that one can manage to remember that she is there at all. To come to business, the work I want you to do is to prevent my son from marrying Miss Sibyl Norton.”
“How?”
“Any way you like. That’s your affair. When I tell a clerk to get me out a statement he does not say ‘how?’ He knows how to do it, and he knows that I don’t.”
I got up to go. “Thanks,” I said. “But I don’t think I care about this kind of thing.”
“Do, for Heaven’s sake, sit down! I am quite serious about this. Look here, I’ll give you all the help I can. Why do you suppose I had a thousand pounds in my pocket this morning? It is not like a millionaire; it is especially not like me. Often and often I have had to borrow my ’bus fare from the conductor, who knows me, because I have no money whatever in my pocket. I had that money with me this morning because I wanted an argument. A thousand pounds is as good an argument as I know, except more thousands. I had been down to Dingleton’s, the private detective’s. I meant to go in there and tell them to buy this girl off. A thousand pounds was to be the first instalment of her price. When I came there I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go inside their beastly office. It was too low down on Charles. Their underbred and under-educated agents would have made some blunder or other, and Charles would never have forgiven me. But I expect the woman is to be bought, and that you will be able to buy her. A discreditable past would be of very little assistance, because Charles is a quixotic fool. The more he learned that she was the last kind of woman a man ought to marry, the more his insensate chivalry would drive him to marry her.”
“Why should one be able to buy her off? I presume your only son is your heir?”
“He is, at present. But I can disinherit him to-morrow. That point might be made clear to Miss Norton. I think a woman of her astuteness will find the simplest little sparrow in the hand worth more than an entire aviary of humming-birds in their native freedom.”
“I don’t know your son, and I don’t know her.”
“You will meet my son at lunch here to-day. You can meet Miss Sibyl Norton whenever you like. For, at present, she is getting a precarious existence as a palmist and manicurist. Pretty combination, isn’t it? Takes the mystery out of your hand first, and then cuts your nails.”
“Very well,” I said. “I am going to see these two people. Afterwards, I will tell you if I can do anything.”
I lunched at the house that day. There were about twenty at the luncheon-party, and my clothes were all wrong for it, and I did not care a bit. I had some talk with Mr. Charles Holding, and found that he answered fairly well to his father’s description. He was noble, but vacuous. A weak chin spoilt a face that would otherwise have been good-looking. I would have trusted him better in temptation than in a street riot. He had a great admiration for Lovelace, and was horrified that I did not even possess a copy of his favourite poems. Would I permit him to send me one? I would. He scribbled my address on his shirt-cuff.
I got away from the house about three in the afternoon. Mr. Wentworth Holding himself came down the steps with me, apologising for not being able to let me have his carriage. “You see,” he said, “you must, of course, go on to Miss Sibyl Norton at once, and she knows my horses and liveries.”
I had not intended to go at once. I wanted to get home and think over this extraordinary commission more at my leisure. But, after all, it did not much matter. A hansom took me to Miss Norton’s dingy lodgings in Northumberland Street. The tow-coloured aunt received me in a dusty room and asked whether it was manicure or palmistry.
“Both,” I said.
“Miss Norton’s fee is one guinea, payable in advance, please. I will give you a receipt.” Then she faded out of the room, saying that Miss Norton would be down in a minute.
Miss Norton was down in a minute. She wore a theatrical tea-gown, had a certain amount of pinched prettiness in her face, and seemed to be a fairly hard case. I talked to her the whole time that she was polishing my nails. When it came to the other section of her weird business I asked her if she could tell me anything of the future.
“The law does not permit me to do that,” she said. “But I can tell you two things about the present which may rather surprise you.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“The first is,” she said, as she peered more closely into the lines of my hand, “that you have come here with the intention, sooner or later, of bribing me to give up the man to whom I am at present engaged. The second is, that you will have no success whatever in the attempt.” She broke off laughing. “I did not read that in your hand, of course. I saw you in Berkeley Square conversing earnestly with Mr. Wentworth Holding this morning. The rest was easy enough to guess. Charles told me I might expect something of the kind.”
I tried to keep my composure and my dignity, but I do not think I made a very fine figure. “Perhaps you will tell me,” I said quietly, “why you would refuse?”
“I will tell you, but you won’t believe it. Money has nothing whatever to do with the matter. If Mr. Charles Holding were a pauper it would be all the same to me. If it were necessary, I could earn enough by this nonsense to keep us both.”
“Well,” I said, “let us get on to something more interesting to me personally. Will you go on reading my hand, please?”
She took her revenge by giving me a remarkably bad character.
I took a hansom back to my rooms. “Take cabs everywhere when you are on my business,” Mr. Holding had said, though he seemed to prefer the ’bus himself. The bothering thing was that everybody was quite right. Mr. Holding had not exaggerated the bad points of Miss Norton’s character or the weakness of his son. But Miss Norton, dishonest money-grubber though she was, was perfectly sincere in her attachment to Charles Holding and was not to be influenced by money in that particular. The position was impossible of solution, and I decided that I had nothing to do but to call on Mr. Wentworth Holding on the following day and tell him so.
I did not find the volume of poems awaiting me, and had not expected to find it, but there was a letter in my letter-box, which began by explaining why it had not arrived. Mr. Charles Holding had wished to have it put into a rather more suitable dress before it was presented to me. His letter went on to say that his meeting with me had been a revelation to him. It had compelled him to break off his engagement. It was not a time to hesitate. Whatever might be the attractions of the woman whom he had once meant to marry, she had not the high ideals, the quixotic spirit, the chivalrous devotion to all that is best which he had found in me. (Naturally, in talking to him I had humoured him a little in what I knew to be his bent. I even saw that I had made some impression on him, but this was too astounding.) The letter went on in rather enraptured terms to speak of the loveliness of my hair and to propose marriage to me.
So the game had, of its own accord, dropped neatly into my hand. I refused Mr. Charles Holding in writing and immediately, and the same post transmitted to his father Charles Holding’s letter to me. The queer thing about the whole business, in the eyes of Mr. Wentworth Holding, was that Miss Sibyl Norton did not bring an action for breach of promise and scornfully refused the extremely handsome solatium which was suggested to her. But this did not surprise me.
I had to show a certain amount of conscience myself, or I should have been made rich and unhappy, for Mr. Wentworth Holding’s gratitude was extreme. Even as it was I was enabled to feel myself out of all danger of such privations as I had recently suffered for the next year or two.
Extreme poverty and a low diet are not in themselves attractive, but in some ways I was happier in my low-water period than I was now with enough money banked to keep me in moderate comfort for a couple of years. I might be more satisfied with my circumstances, but I now had leisure to become profoundly dissatisfied with myself. I had come to London to play a lone hand and do well by it. I was not going into any of the ruts. I would not become a governess. I had brilliant ideas and enterprise and all the rest of the bag of tricks to make a millionairess of me, yet I had only made few and comparatively small sums by my wits; the rest had been pure luck or—and this seemed more degrading still—had come to me more because of the outside of my head than of the inside. On my arrival in London I did extremely well, merely from the fact that there was a chance resemblance between a girl who was dead and myself. My success in the strange commission that Mr. Wentworth Holding gave me had not been due in the least to my cleverness but to the fact that I was pretty. I had been outwitted by a fraudulent spiritualist and by a romantic lady of title. My attempts at literature had been practically a failure. When I had taken my bright ideas to business men they had either ridiculed me or robbed me. So, on a general review of the case, I did not think as well of myself as I had done. Self-disapproval is not only very unpleasant but it is positively bad for one. It takes away one’s spirit; it checks one’s invention. I determined to make a serious and sober effort to recover my own esteem and incidentally to make a little money.
I looked round for a point from which to start, and after a great deal of consideration I noted as a very useful fact that new motor cars sold for very high prices. A person who could influence the sale of motor cars would be likely to make a good commission. In the old days, after this brief reflection, I should have put on a cheerful smile and my best hat and gone round to one of the big places in Long Acre to explain that I should like to sell cars for them, and the manager of that place, having discovered in twenty seconds that I knew nothing whatever about motor cars, had no influential connection, and was about as likely to sell a motor car as I was to sell the moon, would have shown me out—quite politely, because I happened to be pretty.
So I began in a different way. I went out and bought dark blue linen—many yards of it—and came back and consulted with Minnie Saxe on the manufacture of a garment. Ultimately it was manufactured, and I have seldom seen anyone look more pained and distressed than Minnie Saxe did when I put the abomination on.
“I can’t let you go out in that, miss,” she said. “You’d ’ave all the boys in the place callin’ after you, and that brings disgrice on me, it being known as I work for you.”
“That’s all right, Minnie,” I said. “I’m not going to wear it in the street.”
So far I had not gone outside my own province, and had moved with comparative ease. My next step had to be more circumspect, for I was about to attack the business man once more.
There are many cars, and at that time they were all the same to me. I read the motoring news in the daily papers assiduously for a week, and then I thought that I would try the Pegasus people. The Pegasus car had just done some remarkable trials; it had one or two novelties in construction; it had not an immense reputation already, but it seemed to have a chance of making one.
So one afternoon I put on gorgeous apparel and walked into the show-room of the Pegasus people looking exactly as if I were about to buy a car. I even felt a little like it too. A tall, handsome man in a frock coat and a powerful little fellow in a dirty overall removed their attention from a car’s duodenum as I approached. The handsome man came forward. The powerful, squat man remained by the car; he still seemed busy with its vermiform appendix, but he was listening all the time.
“I want,” I said, “to learn how to drive the Pegasus car. I want also to learn a good deal about the interior of the car so that I can do adjustments and slight repairs. And I want to learn everything about tyres.”
There was just the flicker of a smile over the handsome man’s face, but in a moment he had stowed it away at the back of his head and was asking me suavely if I wished to buy a car.
“No,” I said boldly. “Not at all. I could not afford it. I have not the money. Buy a car? I’m more likely to sell one. All I want at present is to understand the car thoroughly, and to know how to drive it.”
The handsome man hesitated. The man in the dirty overall lifted up a bit of the car’s femoral artery, looked at it, and then gave his undivided attention to the handsome man and myself.
“I should, of course, be prepared to pay,” I added.
“Yes, of course, miss,” said the handsome man, “but you see—well, so much of the work is hardly suited for a lady. Some of it requires a good deal of muscular strength. Then, if I may mention it, you would spoil your hands. Then, again, you would hardly like to work in our repairing shop among the ordinary workmen who are there. There really are many difficulties. Hadn’t you better think it over, perhaps?”
“Marshall.” It was the voice of the powerful man in the dirty overall. It was a loud voice, and packed full of authority.
“Yes, sir,” said the handsome man in the frock coat.
“You will arrange that. See? Do the best you can for the lady.”
Then he wandered away through a glazed door which seemed to lead to outer darkness, carrying tenderly in one hand one of the car’s vertebræ.
I had been imagining all this time that the frock coat was the supreme manager and general god of the place, and that dirty overall was a mere workman. I now saw that this was not the case.
“Well, miss,” said Mr. Marshall, “we can but try it, as Mr. James says so. You will have to get something to cover up your clothes if you don’t want to spoil them.”
“I have got that already,” I said. “I don’t want to work many hours a day. Two or three in the morning would be quite enough. I suppose I could not begin by driving?”
“No,” said Mr. Marshall. “You would begin by trying to understand the car; then, of course, the rest would depend upon how you get on.” There was no hope in his face whatever.
Nothing remained but to settle the terms, and here it seemed to me that Mr. Marshall was very reasonable and lenient. But the man to whom I should have liked to talk was Mr. James, and he did not appear again that morning.
A very few days were enough to show me that there was a good deal to be said for Mr. Marshall’s point of view. I had expected to get my hands covered with black oil, and I was not in the least disappointed. I did not like breaking my nails, but that happened also. It takes more force than a woman generally uses to take a tyre off or to screw a thing up really tight. The workmen in the place were all decent, intelligent mechanics, a little inclined to be amused at me at first, but concealing their amusement, and having the fear of Mr. James before their eyes. I saw him several times in the course of my lessons. He could do anything that had to be done in the shop rather better than anybody else in it.
At the end of a month I was still learning my business. One morning as I was leaving Mr. James stood outside with one of the big Pegasus cars in waiting. The overall had vanished. He looked smart, clean, and indefinitely connected with His Majesty’s navy.
“If you have an hour to spare, Miss Castel, I want you to begin to learn how to drive these cars.”
“Thanks very much,” I said. “I should like it. Who’ll teach me?”