The girl from Scotland Yard — Edition Insights

As Lady Raytham drew aside the long velvet curtains, she looked down into Berkeley Square. It was half-past four o’clock on a cheerless February evening. Rain and sleet were falling and a thin yellow mist added to the gloom of the dying day. An interminable string of cars and taxicabs was turning toward Berkeley Street, their shining black roofs reflecting the glare of the overhead light that had just then hissed and spluttered to life.

She looked blankly toward the desolation of the gardens, a place of bare-limbed trees and shivering shrubs--stared, as though she expected to see some fog wraith take a definite and menacing shape and give tangible form to the shadows that menaced reason and life.

She was a woman of twenty-eight, straight and slim. Hers was the type of classical beauty which would defy the markings of age for the greater part of a lifetime. A fascinating face, calm, austere. Her eyes were a cold English gray. You might imagine her the patrician abbess of some great conventual establishment, or a lady of broad manors defending inexorably the stark castle of her lord against the enemy who came in his absence. Analyse her face, feature by feature, put one with the other, and judge her by the standards which profess to measure such things, and brow and chin said “purpose” with unmistakable emphasis.

She was not in her purposeful mood now; rather was she uncertain and irritable, the nearest emotions to fear that she knew.

She let the curtains fall back until they overlapped, and walked across to the fireplace, glancing at the tiny clock. The salon was half lit; the wall sconces were dark, but the big lamp on the table near the settee glowed brightly. This room bore evidence of money lavishly spent. The greater part of its furnishings would one day reach the museums of millionaire collectors; three pictures that hung upon the apple-green walls were earmarked for the National Gallery.

As she stood looking down into the fire, there was a gentle tap at the door, and the butler came in. He was a tall man, rather portly in his way; a man with double chin and an unlined face. He carried a small salver in his hand, a buff oblong in the centre.

Lady Raytham tore open the envelope. It was dated from Constantinople, and was from Raytham. She had been expecting the telegram all that afternoon. Raytham, of course, had changed his plans. In that sentence was epitomized his life and career. He was going on to Basra and thence to Bushire, to see the interstate oil wells, or the sites of them. He was expensively apologetic for two closely written sheets. If he could not return before April, would she go on to Cannes as she had arranged? He was “awfully sorry,” he must have said that at least four times.

She read it again, folded the pink sheets and laid them on the table.

The butler was waiting, head slightly bent forward as though to catch her slightest whisper. She did not look at him.

He was opening the door when she spoke.

“Druze, I am expecting the Princess Bellini and possibly Mrs. Gurden. I will have tea when they come.”

The door closed softly behind him. She raised her sombre eyes and looked at the polished wood of it with a curious, listening lift of her head as though she expected to hear something. But the butler was going slowly down the stairs, a quizzical smile in his eyes; his white, plump hands sliding in and over one another. He stopped on the landing to admire the little marble statue of Circe that his lordship had brought from Sicily. It was a habit of his to admire that Circe with the sly eyes and the beckoning finger. And as he looked, his mouth was puckered as though he were whistling.

A sharp rat-tat on the door made him withdraw from his contemplation. He reached the hall as the second footman opened the door.

Two women entered. Through the open door he had a glimpse of a limousine drawing away.

“Her ladyship is in the drawing room, your highness. Shall I take your highness’s coat?”

“You can’t,” said the first and the bigger woman brusquely. “Help Mrs. Gurden out of hers. Why you wear such horrible contraptions I can’t understand.”

Mrs. Gurden smiled largely.

“Darling, I must wear something. Thank you, Druze.”

Druze took the transparent silk coat and handed it to the second footman. The princess was already stamping up the stairs. She pushed open the door and walked in unannounced. Lady Raytham, standing by the fire, her head pillowed on her arm, looked up, startled.

“I’m so awfully sorry. Push the lights, Anita. The button is by your hand. Well?”

The Princess Anita Bellini struggled unaided out of her tweed coat and threw it over the back of a chair, jerked off her hat with another movement and tossed it after the coat.

People who saw Anita Bellini for the first time gazed at her in awe; there was a certain ruthless strength in every line, every feature. She was something more than fifty and was just under six feet in height.

The masculinity of the powerful face was emphasized by the gray hair, cut close in an Eton crop, and the rimless monocle which never left her eye. Between her white teeth she gripped a long amber holder in which a cigarette was burning.

Her speech was direct, abrupt, almost shocking in its frankness.

She jerked the end of the cigarette holder toward the door.

“Being fussed over by Druze. That woman would ogle a dustman! She’s that age. It is a horrible thing to have been pretty once and to have produced certain reactions. You can never believe that the spirit has evaporated.”

“They say you were an awfully pretty girl, Nita----” she began.

“They lie,” said Princess Anita calmly. “Russell’s used to retouch my photographs till there was nothing left but the background.”

Greta floated in, hands outstretched, her big red mouth opened ecstatically.

“Darling!” she burst forth, and caught both Jane’s hands in hers. Anita Bellini’s fleshy nose wrinkled in a sneer.

And yet she should have grown accustomed to Mrs. Gurden, for ecstasy was Greta’s normal condition. She had that habit of touching people, holding them by the arms, stooping to look up into their faces with her big black eyes that sometimes squinted a little.

She had been pretty, but now her face was long and a little haggard, the face of a woman who was so afraid of missing something that she could not spare the time to sleep. Her lips were heavily carmined, her eyes carefully made up as though she were still expecting a call to return to the chorus from which Anita had rescued her.

“My lovely Jane! Exquisite as usual. That dress--don’t tell me! Chenel--isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Jane Raytham scarcely looked down. “No, I think it is a dress I bought in New York last year.”

Greta shook her head speechlessly.

Anita Bellini blew out a smoke ring and tapped off the ash in the fireplace.

“Greta lays it on thick when she lays it at all,” she said, and cast a critical eye over her hostess. “You’re peaky, Jane. Missing your husband?”

The irony of tone was not lost on Anita.

“Raytham--what is he doing? The man is ill of money and yet won’t take a day off making it. Where the---- Oh, here he is.”

Druze wheeled in the tea wagon.

“Give me a whisky-and-soda, Druze, or I’ll perish!”

She drank the contents of the goblet at a gulp and handed back the glass. She fixed her monocle more firmly and lit another cigarette. The door closed behind the butler.

“Druze wears well, Jane. Where did you get him?”

Lady Raytham looked up quickly.

“Does he? I scarcely notice him. He has always been the same as long as I can remember. He was with Lord Everreed before.”

“That goes back a few years. I remember him when he was a young man.”

The princess had an unhappy habit of smiling with her mouth closed. It was not very pretty.

“It is funny how age comes: thirty to fifty goes like a flash of lightning!”

She changed the subject abruptly and talked about her call of the afternoon.

“I went for bridge and got a string quartet playing every kind of music except one with a tune in it.”

“It was lovely!” exclaimed Greta, her eyes screwed tight in an agony of admiration.

“It was rotten,” retorted the gray-haired Anita. “And more rotten because my sister-in-law was there. The woman’s narrowness depresses me.”

Lady Raytham’s eyes had returned to the fire.

“I asked her what she was going to do about Peter. Thank heavens she has a little sense there! Peter has been wiped off the slate. Margaret would not even discuss him. The only person who believed in him is Everreed, but Everreed was always a simpleton. He would never have prosecuted, but the bank forced his hand.”

She said this with some satisfaction. She had never liked her nephew, and Peter hated her, hated her gibes at him when he, the son of a wealthy man, had preferred a private secretaryship with that great parliamentarian, Viscount Everreed, to entering his father’s bank. She had sat in court with a contemptuous smile on her lips when the haggard boy had been sentenced for forging his employer’s name to a check for five thousand pounds.

The woman by the fire stirred her tea absently.

“He come out? About now, I think. Let me see. He had seven years, and they tell me that these people get a remission of sentence for good conduct--three months in every year. Why, Heaven knows. We pay enormous sums to catch ’em, and as soon as they are safe under lock and key, we go tinkering with the lock to get them out.”

“Disgraceful!” murmured Greta.

But Jane Raytham did not hear her.

“I wonder what he will do?” she mused. “Life will go pretty badly for a man like Peter----”

“Rubbish!” Anita snapped the word. “For goodness’ sake don’t get melancholy about Peter! He has been five years in prison; and at Dartmoor, or wherever he is, they teach men to use their hands to do something besides forge checks. He will probably make an excellent farm hand.”

Lady Raytham shivered.

“Peter Dawlish is just a fool. He belongs to the type of humans that is made for other people’s service. If you start worrying about Peter, you’ll shed tears over the partridge that comes to your table! I wonder what he thinks about Druze?”

Lady Raytham looked up.

“Do you think he still hates him?”

Anita pursed her large lips.

“Druze was Everreed’s butler and cashed the check; the next day Peter disappears on his holiday--in reality on his great adventure. He returns and is arrested, swears he knows nothing about the check, and accuses poor Druze of forgery--which doesn’t save him from imprisonment.”

Lady Raytham said nothing.

“Naturally Peter feels sore--if he was still right in believing Druze the villain of the piece. There may be trouble; we needn’t deceive ourselves.”

Her cigarette had gone out. She opened her bag with an impatient tug and searched.

“Matches? Never mind.”

There was a letter in the bag; she tore a strip from the top and, bending, lit the paper at the fire.

“Who is Leslie Maughan?”

She was glancing at the signature which footed the letter.

“Leslie Maughan! I don’t know him. Why?”

Anita crumpled the paper into a ball.

“Leslie Maughan would like to see me on a personal matter.” Anita invented the stilted and supercilious accent which she supposed the writer of the letter might assume. “And Leslie Maughan will be glad to know what hour will be convenient for me to see him. He is an inventor or a borrower of money, or he has an expedition to the Cocos Islands that he would like me to finance. To the devil with Leslie Maughan!”

CHAPTER II. THE GIRL DETECTIVE

Druze had come in noiselessly at the door and stood, hand clasping hand. His face was strangely pale; as he spoke, his right cheek twitched spasmodically.

“Will your ladyship see Miss Leslie Maughan?”

“Miss!” exclaimed Anita, as Jane Raytham rose.

“Miss Leslie Maughan of the Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard?”

Lady Raytham put out her hand and gripped the back of the chair; her face was bloodless; she opened her mouth to speak, but no word came. Greta was staring at the big woman, but Princess Anita Bellini had no eyes but for the pale butler.

“I will see her--in the small drawing room, Druze. Excuse me.”

She swept out of the room and pulled the door behind her until Druze had disappeared round the lower landing. By her right hand was the door of her own room, and she entered swiftly and noiselessly, switching on the lights as she closed the door. She stared into the mirror. Ghastly! That white, drawn face of hers carried confession. Had she been betrayed? Had they fulfilled their threat?

Pulling out a drawer of her dressing table, she fumbled for and found a little pot of rouge and with a quick, deft hand brought an unaccustomed bloom to her cheeks.

Another glance at her face in the glass and she went out and sailed down the stairs, a smile on her lips, and in her heart despair.

All the lights were lit in the little drawing room, and her first emotion was one of surprise and relief. She had not known there were women detectives at Scotland Yard, but she could imagine them as hard-faced, sour creatures in ready-made clothes.

The girl who stood by the table looking down at the illustrated newspaper that Druze had supplied looked to be about twenty-two. She wore a straight nutria coat, a big bunch of violets pinned to one of the revers. She was as tall as Jane Raytham and as straight; trim silken ankles, neatly shod. The face under the upturned brim of a little felt hat was more surprising yet. A pair of dark eyes rose to meet Jane Raytham’s. The lips red as Greta’s, yet owing nothing to artifice, were finely moulded. She had a firm, round chin, and the hint of a white throat somewhere behind the protective fur. In some confusion Lady Raytham catalogued the visible qualities of her unexpected caller.

“You are not Miss Maughan?” she asked.

When Leslie Maughan smiled, she smiled with eyes and lips, and the dimpled hollows that came to her cheeks made her seem absurdly young.

“Yes, that is my name, Lady Raytham. I am awfully sorry to bother you, but my chief is rather a martinet.”

“You are a detective? I didn’t know----”

“That there were women detectives?” asked the girl. “And you’re right! My position is unique. I am an assistant to Chief Inspector Coldwell. The commissioners, who are rather conservative people, do not object to that. But I suppose I really am a detective. I make inquiries.”

She stood by the table, one hand on her hip, one playing with the leaves of the picture paper, her unwavering gaze fixed on Jane Raytham.

“I’m making inquiries now, Lady Raytham,” she said quietly. “I want to know why you drew twenty thousand pounds from your bank last Monday.”

For a second the woman was panic-stricken; so far lost control that she all but stammered the truth. The will that held her silent, apparently unmoved, was the supreme effort of her life. Then her training came to her rescue.

The control of her voice was perfect.

“Since when have the police had authority to supervise the banking accounts of private citizens?” she asked in cold, measured tones. “That is an extraordinary request! Is it then an offence for me to withdraw twenty thousand pounds from my own account? How did you know?”

“One gets to know things, Lady Raytham.” She was cool, unruffled by the indignation, real or simulated. “Lady Raytham, you think we are being very impertinent and abominable. And it is certain that, if you report this matter to Scotland Yard, I shall be reprimanded. But we expect that----”

Jane Raytham had so far recovered toward the normal that she could open her gray eyes in astonishment.

“Then why on earth have you come?” she asked.

She saw Leslie Maughan draw a deep breath; the ghost of a smile trembled at the corner of her mouth and vanished.

“Twenty thousand pounds is a lot of money,” she said softly. There was a note of pleading in her voice, and suddenly, with a cry she could not suppress, the significance of the visit flashed upon the woman. They knew. The police knew the destination or purpose of that money.

Her breath came faster; she could only look into those dark eyes in fear and try as best she could to order her thoughts. Dark eyes--violet, not the burned brown of Greta’s, but a violet that was almost black. A detective--this slip of a girl! She was well dressed, too; the femininity in Jane Raytham took stock of it unconsciously. The gloves were from Renaud’s; only Renaud cut that quaint, half-gauntlet wrist.

“Won’t you tell me? It might save you so much unhappiness. We try to do that at the Yard--save people unhappiness. You’d never dream that, would you? But the police are more like big brothers than ogres. Won’t you?”

Jane Raytham shook her head; it was a mistake, the only one she made, to attempt speech.

“No, I won’t!” she said breathlessly. “There is nothing to tell. Your interference is unwarrantable. I shall write. I shall write.”

She swayed, and instantly Leslie Maughan was by her side; and the strength of her grip was the second surprise that Jane Raytham had.

With an effort, she wrenched her arm free.

“Now you can go, please! And if I do not report you, it is because I think you have acted in ignorance--overzeal.”

She nodded toward the door, and Leslie slowly gathered up her bag and her umbrella.

“If you ever want me, you will find my telephone number on my card.”

Lady Raytham still held the crumpled card in her hand. Now she looked at it and very deliberately walked to the fire and dropped it into the flames.

“Or the telephone book,” said Leslie, as she went out.

Druze was in the hall, dry-washing his hands with nervous rapidity. He hastened to the street door and opened it.

“Good-night, miss,” he said huskily, and she looked at him and shivered. Why Leslie Maughan shivered she did not know, but she had at that moment a vivid and terrifying illusion.

It was as though she were looking into the blank eyes of one who was already dead.

CHAPTER III. MEETING PETER

Leslie came striding briskly along the Thames Embankment. It was a bitterly cold night, and the nutria coat was not proof against the icy norther that was blowing. The man who walked by her side was head and shoulders taller than she. He had the gait of a soldier, and his umbrella twirled rhythmically to his pace.

“Suicide on the left,” he said pleasantly, as though he were a guide pointing out the sights.

The girl checked her pace and looked back.

“Really? You don’t mean that, Mr. Coldwell?”

Her eyes were fixed upon the dark figure sprawling across the parapet, his arms resting on the granite crown, his chin on his hands. He was a gaunt figure of a man, differing in no respect from the waifs who would gather here from midnight onward, and strive to snatch a little sleep between the policeman’s visits.

“It is any odds,” said Mr. Coldwell carefully, “when you see one of these birds watching the river in that way, he is thinking up a new way of settling old accounts. Are you interested--sentimentally?”

“Yes, a little. I don’t know whether it’s sentiment or just feminine curiosity.”

She left his side abruptly and walked back to the man, who may have been watching her out of the corner of his eyes, for he straightened himself up quickly.

“Down and out?” she asked, and heard his soft laugh.