Part 11

She turned to Mr. Vyse.

"Oh! I remember," said Mr. Vyse with a groan.

"They found the empty case in his rooms," continued the actress. "He'd been terribly hard up, but the very next day he was able to pay a large sum into his bank. He pretended to account for it by saying that a friend of his had put some money on a horse for him, but he couldn't produce the friend. He said he must have put the case in his pocket by mistake. I think that was a terribly weak thing to say, don't you? He might have thought of something better than that. I had to go and give evidence. There were pictures of me in all the papers. My press agent said it was very good publicity—but I'd much rather have had my opal back."

She shook her head sadly.

"Have some preserved pineapple?" said Mr. Judd.

Miss Nunn brightened up. "Where is it?"

"I gave it to you just now."

Miss Nunn looked behind her and in front of her, eyed her gray silk pochette, and then slowly drew up a large purple silk bag that was reposing on the ground beside her. She began to turn the contents out slowly on the table, much to Mr. Satterthwaite's interest.

There was a powder puff, a lipstick, a small jewel case, a skein of wool, another powder puff, two handkerchiefs, a box of chocolate creams, an enameled paper knife, a mirror, a little dark brown wooden box, five letters, a walnut, a small square of mauve crepe de Chine, a piece of ribbon, and the end of a croissant. Last of all came the preserved pineapple.

"Eureka," murmured Mr. Satterthwaite softly.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Satterthwaite hastily. "What a charming paper knife."

"Yes, isn't it? Somebody gave it to me. I can't remember who."

"That's an Indian box," remarked Mr. Tomlinson. "Ingenious little things, aren't they?"

"Somebody gave me that too," said Miss Nunn. "I've had it a long time. It used always to stand on my dressing-table at the theater. I don't think it's very pretty, though, do you?"

The box was of plain dark brown wood. It pushed open from the side. On the top of it were two plain flaps of wood that could be turned round and round.

"Not pretty perhaps," said Mr. Tomlinson with a chuckle. "But I'll bet you've never seen one like it."

Mr. Satterthwaite leaned forward. He had an excited feeling. "Why did you say it was ingenious?" he demanded.

"Well, isn't it?"

The judge appealed to Miss Nunn. She looked at him blankly.

"I suppose I mustn't show them the trick of it—eh?"

Miss Nunn still looked blank.

"What trick?" asked Mr. Judd.

"God bless my soul, don't you know?"

He looked round the inquiring faces.

"Fancy that now. May I have the box a minute? Thank you."

He pushed it open.

"Now then, can anyone give me something to put in it—not too big. Here's a small piece of Gruyère cheese. That will do capitally. I place it inside, shut the box."

He fumbled for a minute or two with his hands.

"Now see—"

He opened the box again. It was empty.

"Well, I never," said Mr. Judd. "How do you do it?"

"It's quite simple. Turn the box upside down, and move the left-hand flap halfway round, then shut the right-hand flap. Now to bring our piece of cheese back again we must reverse that. The right-hand flap halfway round, and the left one closed, still keeping the box upside down. And now—Hey, presto!"

The box slid open. A gasp went round the table. The cheese was there—but so was something else. A round thing that blinked forth every color of the rainbow.

"My opal!"

It was a clarion note. Rosina Nunn stood upright, her hands clasped to her breast.

"My opal! But how did it get there?"

Henry Judd cleared his throat. "I—er—I rather think, Rosy, my girl, you must have put it there yourself."

Someone got up from the table and blundered out into the air. It was Naomi Carlton-Smith. Mr. Quin followed her.

"But when? Do you mean—"

Mr. Satterthwaite watched her while the truth dawned on her. It took over two minutes before she got it.

"You mean last year—at the theater."

"You know," said Henry apologetically. "You do fiddle with things, Rosy. Look at you with the caviar today."

Miss Nunn was painfully following out her mental processes. "I just slipped it in without thinking, and then I suppose I turned the box about and did the thing by accident, but then—but then—" At last it came. "But then Alec Gerard didn't steal it after all. Oh!"—a full-throated cry, poignant, moving—"how dreadful!"

"Well," said Mr. Vyse, "that can be put right now."

"Yes, but he's been in prison a year." And then she startled them. She turned sharply on the Duchess. "Who is that girl—that girl who has just gone out?"

"Miss Carlton-Smith," said the Duchess, "was engaged to Mr. Gerard. She—took the thing very hard."

Mr. Satterthwaite stole softly away. The snow had stopped. Naomi was sitting on the stone wall. She had a sketchbook in her hand, and some colored crayons were scattered round. Mr. Quin was standing beside her.

She held out the sketchbook to Mr. Satterthwaite. It was a very rough affair—but it had genius. A kaleidoscopic whirl of snowflakes with a figure in the center.

"Very good," said Mr. Satterthwaite.

Mr. Quin looked up at the sky. "The storm is over," he said. "The roads will be slippery, but I do not think there will be any accident—now."

"There will be no accident," said Naomi. Her voice was charged with some meaning that Mr. Satterthwaite did not understand. She turned and smiled at him—a sudden dazzling smile. "Mr. Satterthwaite can drive back with me if he likes."

He knew then to what length desperation had driven her.

"Well," said Mr. Quin, "I must bid you good-by."

He moved away.

"Where is he going?" said Mr. Satterthwaite, staring after him.

"Back where he came from, I suppose," said Naomi in an odd voice.

"But—but there isn't anything there," said Mr. Satterthwaite, for Mr. Quin was making for that spot on the edge of the cliff where they had first seen him. "You know you said yourself it was the world's end."

He handed back the sketchbook.

"It's very good," he said. "A very good likeness. But why—er—why did you put him in fancy dress?"

Her eyes met his for a brief second.

"I see him like that," said Naomi Carlton-Smith.

THE VOICE IN THE DARK

"I am a little worried about Margery," said Lady Stranleigh. "My girl, you know," she added.

She sighed pensively. "It makes one feel terribly old to have a grown-up daughter."

Mr. Satterthwaite, who was the recipient of these confidences, rose to the occasion gallantly. "No one could believe it possible," he declared with a little bow.

"Flatterer," said Lady Stranleigh, but she said it vaguely and it was clear that her mind was elsewhere.

Mr. Satterthwaite looked at the slender white-clad figure in some admiration. The Cannes sunshine was searching, but Lady Stranleigh came through the test very well. At a distance the youthful effect was really extraordinary. One almost wondered if she were grown up or not. Mr. Satterthwaite, who knew everything, knew that it was perfectly possible for Lady Stranleigh to have grown-up grandchildren. She represented the extreme triumph of art over nature. Her figure was marvelous, her complexion was marvelous. She had enriched many beauty parlors and certainly the result was astounding. Lady Stranleigh lighted a cigarette, crossed her beautiful legs, encased in the finest of nude stockings, and murmured:

"Yes, I really am rather worried about Margery."

"Dear me," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "what is the trouble?"

Lady Stranleigh turned her beautiful blue eyes upon him. "You have never met her, have you? She is Charles's daughter," she added helpfully.

If entries in Who's Who were strictly truthful, the entry concerning Lady Stranleigh might have ended as follows: hobbies: getting married. She had floated through life shedding husbands as she went. She had lost three by divorce and one by death.

"If she had been Rudolf's child I could have understood it," mused Lady Stranleigh. "You remember Rudolf? He was always temperamental. Six months after we married I had to apply for those queer things—what do they call them? Conjugal whatnots, you know what I mean. Thank goodness it is all much simpler nowadays. I remember I had to write him the silliest kind of letter—my lawyer practically dictated it to me. Asking him to come back, you know, and that I would do all I could, etc., etc., but you never could count on Rudolf, he was so temperamental. He came rushing home at once, which was quite the wrong thing to do, and not at all what the lawyers meant."

She sighed.

"About Margery?" suggested Mr. Satterthwaite, tactfully leading her back to the subject under discussion.

"Of course. I was just going to tell you, wasn't I? Margery has been seeing things, or hearing them. Ghosts, you know, and all that. I should never have thought that Margery could be so imaginative. She is a dear good girl, always has been, but just a shade—dull."

"Impossible," murmured Mr. Satterthwaite with a confused idea of being complimentary.

"In fact very dull," said Lady Stranleigh. "Doesn't care for dancing or cocktails or any of the things a young girl ought to care about. She much prefers staying at home to hunt instead of coming out here with me."

"Dear, dear," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "She wouldn't come out with you, you say?"

"Well, I didn't exactly press her. Daughters have a depressing effect upon one, I find."

Mr. Satterthwaite tried to think of Lady Stranleigh accompanied by a serious-minded daughter and failed.

"I can't help wondering if Margery is going off her head," continued Margery's mother in a cheerful voice. "Hearing voices is a very bad sign, so they tell me. It is not as though Abbot's Mede were haunted. The old building was burned to the ground in 1836, and they put up a kind of early Victorian château which simply cannot be haunted. It is much too ugly and commonplace."

Mr. Satterthwaite coughed. He was wondering why he was being told all this.

"I thought perhaps," said Lady Stranleigh, smiling brilliantly upon him, "that you might be able to help me."

"I?"

"Yes. You are going back to England tomorrow, aren't you?"

"I am. Yes, that is so," admitted Mr. Satterthwaite cautiously.

"And you know all these psychical research people. Of course you do, you know everybody."

Mr. Satterthwaite smiled a little. It was one of his weaknesses to know everybody.

"So what can be simpler?" continued Lady Stranleigh. "I never get on with that sort of person. You know—earnest men with beards and usually spectacles. They bore me terribly and I am quite at my worst with them."

Mr. Satterthwaite was rather taken aback. Lady Stranleigh continued to smile at him brilliantly.

"So that is all settled, isn't it?" she said brightly. "You will go down to Abbot's Mede and see Margery, and make all the arrangements. I shall be terribly grateful to you. Of course, if Margery is really going off her head, I will come home. Ah! here is Bimbo."

Her smile from being brilliant became dazzling.

A young man in white tennis flannels was approaching them. He was about twenty-five years of age and extremely good-looking.

The young man said simply, "I have been looking for you everywhere, Babs."

"What has the tennis been like?"

"Septic."

Lady Stranleigh rose. She turned her head over her shoulder and murmured in dulcet tones to Mr. Satterthwaite, "It is simply marvelous of you to help me. I shall never forget it."

Mr. Satterthwaite looked after the retreating couple.

I wonder, he mused to himself, if Bimbo is going to be number five.

The conductor of the Train de Luxe was pointing out to Mr. Satterthwaite where an accident on the line had occurred a few years previously. As he finished his spirited narrative, the other looked up and saw a well-known face smiling at him over the conductor's shoulder.

"My dear Mr. Quin," said Mr. Satterthwaite. His little withered face broke into smiles. "What a coincidence! That we should both be returning to England on the same train. You are going there, I suppose."

"Yes," said Mr. Quin. "I have business there of rather an important nature. Are you taking the first service of dinner?"

"I always do so. Of course it is an absurd time—half-past six, but one runs less risk with the cooking."

Mr. Quin nodded comprehendingly. "I also," he said. "We might perhaps arrange to sit together."

Half-past six found Mr. Quin and Mr. Satterthwaite established opposite each other at a small table in the dining car. Mr. Satterthwaite gave due attention to the wine list and then turned to his companion.

"I have not seen you since—ah, yes—not since Corsica. You left very suddenly that day."

Mr. Quin shrugged his shoulders. "Not more so than usual. I come and go, you know. I come and go."

The words seemed to awake some echo of remembrance in Mr. Satterthwaite's mind. A little shiver passed down his spine—not a disagreeable sensation, quite the contrary. He was conscious of a pleasurable sense of anticipation.

Mr. Quin was holding up a bottle of red wine, examining the label on it. The bottle was between him and the light but for a minute or two a red glow enveloped his person.

Mr. Satterthwaite felt again that sudden stir of excitement. "I too have a kind of mission in England," he remarked, smiling broadly at the remembrance. "You know Lady Stranleigh, perhaps?"

Mr. Quin shook his head.

"It is an old title," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "a very old title. One of the few that can descend in the female line. She is a baroness in her own right. Rather a romantic history really."

Mr. Quin settled himself more comfortably in his chair. A waiter, flying down the swinging car, deposited cups of soup before them as if by a miracle. Mr. Quin sipped it cautiously.

"You are about to give me one of those wonderful descriptive portraits of yours," he murmured, "that is so, is it not?"

Mr. Satterthwaite beamed on him.

"She is really a marvelous woman," he said. "Sixty, you know—yes, I should say at least sixty. I knew them as girls, she and her sister. Beatrice, that was the name of the elder one. Beatrice and Barbara. I remember them as the Barron girls. Both good-looking and, in those days, very hard up. That was a great many years ago—why, dear me, I was a young man myself then." Mr. Satterthwaite sighed. "There were several lives then between them and the title. Old Lord Stranleigh was a first cousin once removed, I think. Lady Stranleigh's life has been quite a romantic affair. Three unexpected deaths—two of the old man's brothers and a nephew. Then there was the Uralia. You remember the wreck of the Uralia? She went down off the coast of New Zealand. The Barron girls were on board. Beatrice was drowned. This one, Barbara, was among the few survivors. Six months later old Stranleigh died and she succeeded to the title and came into a considerable fortune. Since then she has lived for one thing only—herself! She has always been the same, beautiful, unscrupulous, completely callous, interested solely in herself. She has had four husbands, and I have no doubt could get a fifth in a minute."

He went on to describe the mission with which he had been entrusted by Lady Stranleigh.

"I thought of running down to Abbot's Mede to see the young lady," he explained. "I—I feel that something ought to be done about the matter. It is impossible to think of Lady Stranleigh as an ordinary mother." He stopped, looking across the table at Mr. Quin.

"I wish you would come with me," he said wistfully. "Would it not be possible?"

"I am afraid not," said Mr. Quin, "but, let me see—Abbot's Mede is in Wiltshire, is it not?"

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded.

"I thought as much. As it happens, I shall be staying not far from Abbot's Mede, at a place you and I both know." He smiled. "You remember that little inn, The Bells and Motley?"

"Of course," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, "you will be there?"

Mr. Quin nodded. "For a week or ten days, possibly longer. If you will come and look me up one day, I shall be delighted to see you."

And somehow or other Mr. Satterthwaite felt strangely comforted by the assurance.

"My dear Miss—er—Margery," said Mr. Satterthwaite, "I assure you that I should not dream of laughing at you."

Margery Gale frowned a little. They were sitting in the large comfortable hall of Abbot's Mede. Margery Gale was a big, squarely built girl. She bore no resemblance to her mother, but took entirely after her father's side of the family, a line of hard-riding country squires. She looked fresh and wholesome and the picture of sanity. Nevertheless, Mr. Satterthwaite was reflecting to himself that the Barrons as a family were all inclined to mental instability. Margery might have inherited her physical appearance from her father and at the same time have inherited some mental kink from her mother's side of the family.

"I wish," said Margery, "that I could get rid of that Casson woman. I don't believe in spiritualism, and I don't like it. She is one of these silly women that run a craze to death. She is always bothering me to have a medium down here."

Mr. Satterthwaite coughed, fidgeted a little in his chair and then said in a judicial manner, "Let me be quite sure that I have all the facts. The first of the—er—phenomena occurred two months ago, I understand."

"About that," agreed the girl. "Sometimes it was a whisper and sometimes it was quite a clear voice, but it always said much the same thing."

"Which was?"

"'Give back what is not yours. Give back what you have stolen.' On each occasion I switched on the light, but the room was quite empty and there was no one there. In the end I got so nervous that I got Clayton, Mother's maid, to sleep on the sofa in my room."

"And the voice came just the same?"

"Yes, but—and this is what frightens me—Clayton did not hear it."

Mr. Satterthwaite reflected for a minute or two. "Did it come loudly or softly that evening?"

"It was almost a whisper," admitted Margery. "If Clayton was sound asleep, I suppose she would not really have heard it. She wanted me to see a doctor."

The girl laughed bitterly. "But since last night even Clayton believes," she continued.

"What happened last night?"

"I am just going to tell you. I have told no one as yet. I had been out hunting yesterday and we had had a long run. I was dead tired and slept very heavily. I dreamed—a horrible dream—that I had fallen over some iron railings and that one of the spikes was entering slowly into my throat. I woke to find that it was true—there was some sharp point pressing into the side of my neck and at the same time a voice was murmuring softly, 'You have stolen what is mine. This is death.'

"I screamed," continued Margery, "and clutched at the air but there was nothing there. Clayton heard me scream from the room next door where she was sleeping. She came rushing in, and she distinctly felt something brushing past her in the darkness, but she says that, whatever that something was, it was not anything human."

Mr. Satterthwaite stared at her. The girl was obviously very shaken and upset. He noticed on the left side of her throat a small square of sticking plaster. She caught the direction of his gaze and nodded.

"Yes," she said, "it was not imagination, you see."

Mr. Satterthwaite put a question almost apologetically, it sounded so melodramatic. "You don't know of anyone—er—who has a grudge against you?" he asked.

"Of course not," said Margery, "what an idea."

Mr. Satterthwaite started on another line of attack. "What visitors have you had during the last two months?"

"You don't mean just people for week-ends, I suppose? Marcia Keane has been with me all along. She is my best friend and just as keen on horses as I am. Then my cousin Roley Vavasour has been here a good deal."

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded. He suggested that he should see Clayton, the maid. "She has been with you a long time, I suppose?" he asked.

"Donkey's years," said Margery. "She was Mother's and Aunt Beatrice's maid when they were girls. That is why Mother has kept her on, I suppose, although she has got a French maid for herself. Clayton does sewing and pottering little odd jobs."