CHAPTER IV
I PLAY ANOTHER PHILANTHROPIC PART
I went round the corner, slowed my hurrying steps to a gait less likely to attract attention, and became aware that I would have given a good deal for a glass of brandy—the Franco-Italian dinner is no foundation for strenuous action. A sudden diversion distracted me from the consideration of my feelings; the door of a house some twenty yards ahead of me opened, a girl came out, or was thrust out, on the steps; a harsh voice cried, "Out you go! I won't 'ave no beggarly 'ussies in my 'ouse renting rooms they doesn't pye for!" And the door banged to again.
Unmanned as I had been by the Siberian pheasant, I seemed to snatch at this diversion of my thoughts, stopped short, and with extreme care watched the girl stagger down the steps, and stand at the bottom of them looking this way and that, pull herself together with an effort plain even to my dazed mind, and take her way slowly down the street. I followed her; her figure and the thick plait of hair which hung down her back seemed familiar to me; but my mind was in such a whirl after my recent philanthropic effort and the ventriloquist of the King's Palace of Varieties that I could remember neither when nor where I had known her. However, my mind was not so dazed but that I understood that I had to help her; and as I went under a lamp I pulled my money out of my pocket that I might pay for her night's lodging. I found that I had only a sixpence and some coppers, and the shock cleared my wits.
The girl went under the railway arch, turned on to the embankment and crossed the road. I whipped off my beard, thrust it into my pocket and came up to within ten yards of her. She did not hear my gutta-percha foot-fall. She went to the parapet, and looked over it into the river. I made ready to catch hold of her if she should try to climb it, but she stepped back, drew herself up and went on with a defiant air. I followed her, trying to make my mind work clearly enough to devise some way of helping her—the difficulty was that not only were the sixpence and the coppers all the money I had with me, but there was very little at home. The girl walked along bravely enough for some twenty yards, then she began to droop, and I heard a little sob burst from her.
I caught her up, raised my hat, and said: "I beg your pardon, but I'm afraid you're in trouble. Can I help you?"
She turned on me the startled, woe-begone face of the pretty young girl I had met in Lincoln's Inn Fields on my visit to Morton, looked at me with earnest, scrutinizing eyes, opened her mouth as if to speak, and shut it again.
"I saw you come out of the house just now, and heard what the woman said. I thought perhaps you didn't know where to go."
"I don't," she said in a faint voice.
There came a gust of wind and a patter of rain, and I awoke to the fact that she was wearing a light summer frock.
"What on earth are we to do?" I cried. "I'm nearly broke for the time being. What a stupid fix!"
"I have no money at all, or I shouldn't have been turned out of my lodgings," said the girl bitterly.
Another burst of rain warned me to be quick and do something.
"At any rate, come out of this!" I said. And I hurried her back to the shelter of Vauxhall Station.
She came quickly, and we faced one another in the light of the station lamps. I saw that her face was haggard and gaunt, and her eyes were dim. I stared at her in my perplexity, trying to find a way to help her. I could only think of my spare bedroom at the Temple.
"Well," I said, "I see nothing for it but that you should accept my hospitality. I have a spare bedroom in my chambers at the Temple, Will you let me put you up?"
She shivered, wrung her hands, and her eyes filled with a horrified dread.
"I suppose it must be that," she said huskily, "since I won't drown myself. And I won't—I won't!"
It seemed a strange way of accepting a well-meant offer of hospitality; but I said, "Good, come along."
It was past the hour of trams and omnibuses, and we had something of a walk before us. When I found that she did not walk very steadily, I gave her my arm, and helped her along. Fortunately, though now and again there was a sharp patter of rain, it was not enough to wet us much. I did not bother her with talk; once or twice I said an encouraging word. The stretch from Westminster Bridge to the Temple was the most difficult, and we went very slowly. I put my arm round her and helped her along. Three steps up my stairs she clutched at me to prevent herself from falling. I picked her up and carried her to the top.
I opened the door of my rooms, helped her into them, and set her in an easy chair. Then I made haste to get her food. Fortunately, there was a tin of soup and half a cold chicken in the cupboard. I set the soup on the stove, and while it was warming I spread the cloth, and set out on the table the chicken, bread and butter and a cake. I brought the soup to her in the arm-chair. She took the first two or three spoonfuls in a very feeble way. Then she grew stronger, finished it quickly and turned hungry eyes on the chicken.
"I don't think you ought to eat much straight off," I said doubtfully. "When did you eat last?"
"This morning," she said in a stronger, clearer voice. "I had a penny loaf."
"Then you may safely have a moderate meal," I said, and drew a chair to the table for her.
I carved some chicken and cut some bread for her, bade her eat very slowly, and watched her with a good deal of pleasure. I had never seen any one so hungry. I opened a small bottle of Burgundy and poured her out a glass. Then I sat down at the table and helped myself to some chicken; that Franco-Italian dinner had proved as innutritious as unmanning. I would only allow her the one helping of chicken, two slices of bread and butter and one of cake. But that took the gauntness out of her face.
When we had finished, I begged her to sit in the easy chair again, took the easy chair opposite to her, with her permission lighted a cigarette, and began to talk to her—or rather, to be exact, I tried to talk to her. It was a most difficult business. She seemed frightened out of her wits, she trembled, she stammered confused answers; her face was now a burning flush and now dead white. Then, of a sudden, she buried her face in her hands and burst into a storm of sobs.
"What on earth's the matter?" I cried, starting up; and then in a flash I knew the reason of her confusion and dread.
"Hang it all," I cried, bitterly mortified, "I'm not such a cad as that! I don't take advantage of a starving girl."
She let fall her hands, raised her head and looked at me with questioning, unbelieving eyes.
"I thought—I thought—" she muttered. "London is a wicked place. I've—I've always heard so. And I've been here three months—several times men have—have spoken to me—" She stopped with a kind of long sigh, and fell back in a dead faint. I suppose it was sudden relief on the top of an ecstasy of terror.
I ran for water and sprinkled it on her, then I poured some brandy into her mouth with a teaspoon. She was so long coming to that I grew rather frightened; but her pulse, though slow and weak, beat steadily. When at last she did come to, I gave her some more brandy, and she lay back very still, looking at me. I could not stand her eyes, they made me uncomfortable—something very like an ecstasy of gratitude, very discomfiting, shone in them; and all for nothing at all.
Presently she moved a little in the chair, and I said at once: "Now I think that bed is the best place for you; and we will arrange your affairs in the morning. Do you think you can manage to get into it?"
"Yes, I think so," she said faintly.
"Or, I tell you what. You lie on the top of it, and get to sleep. When you wake, the food will have got hold of you, and you'll feel stronger."
With that I picked her up, carried her into the bedroom, laid her on the bed and covered her with a rug.
"There," I said. "You put in a good night's rest, and you'll be another creature in the morning. Good-night!"
"Good-night, and I'm so much obliged—and—and—so sorry. I—I ought to have seen," she stammered.
"That's all right; that's all right. Good-night," I said hastily, and came out and shut the door.
I came into the sitting-room, filled a pipe, lighted it, and sat down to consider my windfall and its responsibilities. In the midst of this consideration I was disturbed by a rapping on my oak, low, but fast and nervous. The sound brought back Pudleigh's removal to my mind in a very disquieting fashion, and with a lively foreboding of evil afoot I went and opened it.
Outside stood Bottiger, scared and nervous.
"You are here!" he cried. "You've given us a devil of a fright! We thought the police had got you!"
"By Jove! I quite forgot I'd arranged to come round to your rooms," I said, snapped the oak to, and led the way into the sitting-room.
As luck would have it, the first thing that caught Bottiger's eye was the girl's hat lying on a chair.
"Well, I'll be hanged! " he cried. "Of all the coolness! You come straight back from murdering a financier to this kind of thing! Well, of all the coolness!"
"It's my sister's. I found her waiting for me on the landing. She's run away from school," I said, lying valiantly.
"I never knew you had a sister," said Bottiger.
"Ah, one doesn't talk about one's womankind to all the men one knows," I said nastily.
"I don't believe it is your sister's," said Bottiger, and he eyed the hat suspiciously.
"Look here, what you want is your neck wringing! We can't all be in Debrett. It is my sister's. If you come round to-morrow, you'll see," I said truculently.
"Murder does your temper no good, that's clear," said Bottiger. "Are you coming round to my rooms?"
"No, I'm not. Not now. It's too late. "What's the use? And I wish to goodness you would not call a strenuous philanthropic enterprise murder!"
"Very well. But Chelubai says you carried off a black bag from the body—a senseless thing to do. I'm to take it away and destroy it."
I had forgotten Pudleigh's bag. I took it up from a chair, and tried to open it It was locked.
"We may as well see if there's anything of interest in it," I said; and I took a screw-driver from a drawer and forced the bag open. There were half a dozen papers in it, and I tumbled them out on the table.
"I shall look through these carefully," I said. "There may be something here that will give us a hold on some King of Finance. It would be in the highest degree unphilanthropic to miss a chance of extracting reluctant subscriptions from those enemies of Humanity. Besides, it has always been my ambition to hear a financier sing, and it might turn out another effective method of obtaining subscriptions to the hospital. Here's your bag," and I tossed it to him.
He caught it, saying with some irritation: "You seem to be growing perfectly grasping."
"Not perfectly—at least not perfectly yet—but I hope to become a perfect money-grubber in the interests of that hospital, now that I've been started on that course," I said firmly.
Bottiger growled, put a lump of coal from the scuttle into the bag, shut it and said: "I'm off back to Chelubai to set his mind at rest. It's just like you to leave us anxious. You never think of anyone but yourself. I'll go out of the Tudor Street entrance and chuck this beastly thing into the river."
I went with him to the door, bade him good-night and returned to my easy chair. Once more I set about considering how to help the girl. I had devised no method, when my eye fell on Pudleigh's papers. I reached for them and looked them through one by one. There was a share certificate for 12,000 shares in Amalgamated Fertilizers, another share certificate for 2,000 shares in Barnato Consols, a paper of memoranda concerning a company evidently in process of promotion, and a document which excited my liveliest interest and not a little wonder. It was a transfer of 40,000 shares in the Quorley Granite Company from Dudley Wedgewood, whom I remembered to be the late idiot trustee of Morton's client, Miss Pavis, to Albert Amsted Pudleigh, for £200. I could not for the life of me see what it was doing in Pudleigh's bag. Either it ought to be in the safe or the bank of the Quorley Granite Company, or Pudleigh had not yet had the shares registered in his name though the transaction was months old.
I foresaw that I was going to put Pudleigh's executor to a good deal of trouble, hunting for these documents; but I crumpled up a newspaper in the empty grate, laid the certificates and the memoranda on the top of it, put a match to it, and burnt them to very fine ashes. The granite share transfer I locked up in my safe, and promised myself to give Morton a hint to refuse to admit that the shares had ever passed out of the possession of Miss Pavis and to insist on the production of the transfer, so that if anything were ever made of the property she would get her share of it.
I went to bed with a strangely even mind, no longer troubled by thoughts of the Siberian pheasant or of Pudleigh. Later events had left but little room in my mind for musing upon his fate; I was thinking about my guest. I soon fell asleep, and slept soundly until I was awakened next morning by the noise of Mrs. Plimsoll, my housekeeper, banging her broom against the furniture in her efforts to sweep the sitting-room. I called to her to wake my sister and show her the bathroom; then I lay in a pleasant drowsiness, reflecting gratefully that £2,000 would very soon be in my hands for the Children's Hospital, and trying to remember exactly which children must first go into it, till I heard my guest come out of the bathroom and go back to her bedroom; then I rose, bathed and dressed.
When I came into the sitting-room I found her sitting in the easy chair, and she greeted me nervously and shyly. She seemed to me in her bright morning freshness prettier than ever. I asked her to pour out the tea, and we sat down at the table. I asked her how she felt, and whether she had slept well, remarked on the beauty of the morning and prophesied fine weather. My indifferent talk soon set her at her ease, and she joined in it presently without constraint I found it exceedingly pleasant to breakfast with so charming a companion, for I am not of those who come to that meal unamiable, and I made no secret of my pleasure. She flushed very prettily at my frank expression of it.
The more I saw of her face the more I delighted in its beauty. Her mouth indeed was a little large, but her admirably curved lips were not thin, her square chin was well-moulded, her nose was straight and her brow broad. Her large gray eyes met mine with a resolute frankness, and a fine spirit looked out of them. Above all, she had one of the delightful voices I love, a voice full of tones pathetic with all the woe of the world.
When we had finished our breakfast and Mrs. Plimsoll had cleared the table, with my guest's permission I lighted my pipe, and set about the discussion of her situation.
"I've been thinking it over, and the awkward thing is that I'm very hard up at the moment," I said. "In a fortnight I shall have plenty of money, and then I can really help you. How would it be if, till then, you remained my guest? It's awfully awkward and compromising and all that, but I take it you don't care to appeal to your friends and relations or you'd have done it already."
"I have no relations," said the girl quietly. "And no friends—at least only poor ones, and they live in the north of England. And it's awfully good of you to want to help me like this. But I have no claim on you. Why should you do this for an absolute stranger?"
"That's neither here nor there. We needn't discuss that," I said with some haste. "I'm only too happy to have the chance. And I'm sure you'd do as much for me, if the positions were reversed. The point is that I don't see how to keep you without running the risk of your being compromised."
"Compromised?" said the girl, with a bitter little laugh. "If it hadn't been for you—" And she stopped short with a bitter, frowning face.
"Well, well, we'll consider that settled," I said hastily. "And I think we can make it fairly safe, if you will take the relationship of sister to me for the time being, and only see friends whom I can trust to hold their tongues if ever they learn that you're not."
"You're awfully good. But—but I don't see how I am ever going to repay you."
"There will be nothing to repay," I said quickly. "I shall really be very pleased to put you up. It will be a very pleasant change from the loneliness of the bachelor life."
I suppose that my honest admiration warmed my heart or my voice, for she blushed as she shook her head and said, "It's all very well to say that, but"
"Oh, nonsense; there is no but," I protested, cutting her short. "So we'll take it that you'll be my sister for the next fortnight."
"I should like that," she said softly. "I should like it very much." Then she looked up at me with troubled eyes. "You see, I've been so worried and anxious the last three months, and especially the last fortnight, that—oh, I should like a rest!"
"And you shall have one," I said cheerfully. "And to be my sister you'd better know something about me. My name is Brand, Roger Brand; my father had a small estate in Lincolnshire, which my brother Ferdinand inherited. During the last five years I have been a comparatively briefless barrister, living on the somewhat slender portion of a younger son. You had better have run away from your school at Dresden and be taking refuge with me. If you say something now and then about the Fen country, and abuse the Germans, it will clinch the story."
"I see," she said, smiling; and then her face filled with discomfort. "I—I ought to tell you that I know something else about you. I overheard what your friend said last night about your—your having murdered some one."
"The deuce you did!" I cried; and I filled with dismay, for I did not wish her to have a poor opinion of me.
"I couldn't help it—he talked so loud."
"He roared like a bull of Bashan! Hang him!"
"I don't mind about it," she said quickly. "If you—if you murdered anyone, I'm sure you had a good reason."
"Oh, yes, I had a good reason," I said, and I lay back in my chair, thinking quickly.
There was no doubt that Bottiger might have put us in a very awkward and dangerous position. Yet I had no fear that the child would deliberately betray us; I had the firmest faith in her loyalty; but how could one trust to the perpetual discretion of a young girl? She could not be more than sixteen or seventeen. I could not see my way at all. Then an inspiration came to me to tell her the truth.
"The fact is," I said, "I and two friends have formed a Company for the purpose of removing objectionable people in the interests of Humanity. We look on it entirely from the philanthropic point of view. It is our hobby."
She nodded her head gravely, and said: "It sounds rather out of the way, and rather dreadful. And—and last night—you—you murdered a man?"
"Well, I helped one of my friends knock a rising King of Finance on the head."
"You didn't knock him on the head yourself?"
"No; I knocked his hat off."
"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "that makes all the difference."
"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" I said quickly, though for the life of me I couldn't see where the difference came in.
"Who was it?" she said, with a much brighter face.
"A rascally swindler, called Pudleigh."
"Pudleigh?" she cried. "Not Albert Amsted Pudleigh?"
"That was the rascal's name."
Her beautiful face turned savage, and she said: "Oh, I am glad. I am so glad!"
"You're glad?" I cried, beyond measure astonished. "Why—why—you must be Miss Pavis!"
"Yes, I'm Angel Pavis."