VIII

“Ursula Ardfern! She is not the kind of person who would mislay her jewels for the sake of a few lines of advertising,” he said. “Where did she lose them?”

“It is rather a curious story,” said the editor, leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “She went into a post office on Saturday morning on her way to the theatre for the matinee, bought some stamps putting the jewel-case down on the counter by her side. When she looked round the case was gone. It happened so suddenly and in such a surprisingly short space of time that she could not believe her eyes and did not even complain to the Post Office officials. Her own story is, that she thought she must be suffering from some kind of delusion and that she had not brought the jewel-case out at all. She went back to her suite at the Central Hotel and searched every room. By the time she was through, it was near the hour for her matinee, and she hurried down to the theatre⁠—anyway, to cut a long story short, she did not report her loss to the police until this morning.”

“She wouldn’t,” said Tab stoutly. “She’s the kind of girl who would hate the publicity of it and would do all she could to make sure there was not a simple explanation of their loss before she put the matter in the hands of the police.”

“You know her, eh?”

“I know her in the sense that a reporter knows almost everybody from the Secretary of State to the hangman,” said Tab, “but I’ll take this story if you like. There will be nothing doing on the Trasmere case before the evening. She stays at the Central, does she?”

The other nodded.

“You will need to exercise a little ingenuity,” he said, “especially if what you say about her hating publicity is true. I’d like to get a photograph of the actress who hated publicity and hang it up in this office,” he added.

At the Central Hotel, Tab found himself up against a blank wall.

“Miss Ardfern is not receiving callers,” said the enquiry clerk. He was not even certain that she was in.

“Will you send my card up?”

The clerk very emphatically said that he would not send up anybody’s card. Tab went straight to the supreme authority. Fortunately he knew the hotel manager very well, but on this occasion Crispi was not inclined to oblige him.

“Miss Ardfern is a very good customer of ours, Holland,” he said, “and we don’t want to offend her. I will tell you, in the strictest confidence, that Miss Ardfern is not in the hotel.”

“Where is she?”

“She went away this morning in her car to her country cottage. She always spends Sunday and Sunday night in the country and I know that she does not want to see any reporters, because she came back this morning especially to tell me that the staff were to answer no enquiries relative to herself.”

“Where is this country cottage⁠—come on, Crispi,” wheedled Tab, “or the next time you have a robbery in this hotel I’ll make a front page item of it.”

“That is blackmail,” murmured Crispi, protestingly. “I am afraid I cannot tell you, Holland. Maybe if you got a Hertford directory⁠—”

In the office library he found the directory and turned its pages. Against the name of “Ardfern Ursula” was “Stone Cottage, near Blisville Village.”

This distance from town was some forty-five miles and the route carried him past an unfinished building which one day was to play its part in the ending of many mysteries. Tab covered the ground on a fast motorcycle in just over an hour. He leant his machine against a very trim hedge, opened the high garden gate, and walked into the beautiful little garden that surrounded Stone Cottage, which was not ill-named, though the stone which composed its walls was completely hidden by purple flowering creeper.

In the shade of a tree he saw a white figure stretched at her ease, a figure which sat bolt upright in her deep garden chair at the click of the gate-lock.

“This is too bad of you, Mr. Tab,” said Ursula Ardfern, reproachfully. “I particularly asked Crispi not to tell anybody where I was.”

“Crispi didn’t tell. I found you in a directory,” said Tab cheerfully.

The sunlight was very kind to Ursula and it seemed to him that she looked even more beautiful in these surroundings than she had in the generous setting and the more merciful lighting of the theatre.

She was slimmer than he had thought, and conveyed an extraordinary impression of hurt youth. Somewhere, sometime, this girl had suffered, he thought, yet there was no hint of old pain in her unlined face, no suggestion of sorrow or remorse in her clear blue eyes.

“I suppose you have come to cross-examine me about my jewels,” she said, “and I will allow you, on one condition, to ask me any question you wish.”

“What is the condition?” he smiled.

“Bring up that chair.” She pointed across the strip of lawn. “Now sit down,” and when he had obeyed, “the condition is this: that you will confine yourself to saying that I have no recollection of the jewels being taken, but I shall be very glad to have them back and pay a suitable reward, that they were not as expensive as most people thought and that I am not insured against loss by theft.”

“All of which I will faithfully record,” said Tab. “I am an honest man and keep my promises. I admit it.”

“And now I will tell you, for your own private ear,” she said, “that if I never see those jewels again, I shall be a very happy woman.”

He looked at her open-mouthed.

“You don’t think I am posing, do you?” she looked round at him suspiciously. “I see that you don’t. I am not in the least worried that I shall have to play the part with property jewels as I did last night.”

“Why didn’t you go to the police before?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t,” was her unsatisfactory but uncompromising reply. “You may put whatever interpretation you like upon my slackness. You may say or think that it was because of my humanity, my desire to save some person from being accused, or coming under suspicion of having stolen the pieces, when all the time they were smug in my bureau drawer, or you may think or say that I did not want to make a fuss about them. In fact,” she smiled, “you can do or say what you wish.”

“You don’t remember who was standing by you⁠—”

She stopped him with a gesture.

“I remember nothing except that I bought ten stamps.”

“What was the jewelry worth?” he persisted.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“I can’t even tell you that,” she said.

“Had they any history?”

She laughed.

“You are very persistent, Mr. Tab.” Her eyes were smiling at him, though her face was composed. “And now, since you have surprised me in my Abode of Quiet, I must show you over my little domain.”

She took him round the garden and through the tiny pine-wood at the back of the house, chatting all the time, and then after leaving him, as she said, to ensure that her room was tidy, she beckoned him into a large and pleasant sitting-room, tastefully, if not expensively furnished, a cool, quiet haven of rest.

He had arrived at two o’clock and it was five o’clock before he reluctantly took his leave. And all that afternoon they had talked of books and of people and since she had not mentioned or spoken of the murder which had engrossed his thoughts until her soothing presence had made Mayfield seem very remote and crime a thing of distaste, he did not introduce so jarring a discordance into the lavender atmosphere of her retreat.

“What kind of a story do you call this?” snapped the news editor when Tab handed him two folios of copy.

“From a literary point of view,” said Tab, “it is a classic.”

“From a news point of view, it is rotten,” said the editor. “The only new fact you have discovered is that she loves Browning and maybe even the police know that!”

He grumbled but accepted the copy and with his blue pencil committed certain acts of savage mutilation, what time was Tab making his final roundup of the Trasmere case.

Here again, very little new matter was available. Walters and the man Wellington Brown were still at liberty, and he had to confine himself to a sketch of Trasmere’s life, material for which had, from time to time, been supplied to him by Babe.

The new millionaire he had not seen all day. When he got home that night, he found Rex Lander in bed and asleep and did not disturb him. He was tired to death and more anxious to make acquaintance with his hard pillow, than he was to discuss Ursula Ardfern. In truth, he was not prepared to discuss Ursula at all with any third person.

“I just loafed around,” said Rex the next morning, when asked to give an account of his movements. “I had a very bad night and was up early. You were sleeping like a pig when I looked in. I read your story in the Megaphone⁠—by-the-way, you know that Miss Ardfern’s jewelry has been stolen?”

“I know that very well indeed,” said Tab, “I saw her yesterday.”

Rex was instant attention.

“Where?” he asked eagerly. “What is she like, Tab⁠—I mean off the stage? Is she as beautiful⁠—what colour eyes has she?”

Tab pushed back his chair and frowned at the young man across the table.

“Your curiosity is indecent,” he said severely, “really, Rex, I never dreamt that you were so interested in the lady.”

Rex did not meet his eyes.

“I think she is very beautiful,” he said doggedly. “I’d give my head to spend a day with her.”

“Phew!” said Tab, “why you young devil, you are in love with her!”

Rex’s babyish face went crimson.

“Stuff,” he said loudly. “I am very fond of her. I have seen her a hundred times, I suppose, though I have never spoken to her once. She is my idea of the perfect woman. Beautiful of face, with the loveliest voice I have ever heard. I am going to know her one day.”

This revelation of Babe’s secret passion was, for some reason which Tab could not define, an extremely disquieting one.

“My dear Babe,” he said more mildly, “the young lady is not of the loving or marrying sort⁠—”

Suddenly he remembered.

“Why, you are a millionaire now, Babe! Jumping Moses!”

Rex blushed again and then Tab whistled.

“Do you mean in all seriousness that you are truly fond of her?”

“I adore her,” said Rex in a low voice. “I got so rattled when I heard a fellow say she was going to be married, that I had to send you to see her.”

Tab interrupted him with a roar of delighted laughter.

“So that was why I was sent on a fool’s errand, eh?” he asked, his eyes dancing. “You subtle dog! It was to bring balm to your bruised heart that an eminent crime specialist must stand, hat in hand, in the dingy purlieus of a playhouse, begging admission to the great actress’s dressing-room.” He was serious in a moment. “I hope this isn’t a very violent attachment of yours, Rex,” he said quietly, “in the first place, it struck me that Ursula Ardfern is not of the marrying kind, that even your great possessions would not tempt her. In the second place⁠—” he stopped himself.

“Well?” asked Rex impatiently. “What ever other just cause or impediment do you see?”

“I don’t know that it is any business of mine,” said Tab, “and I certainly am not in a position to give you fatherly advice.”

“You mean that an actress is the worst kind of a wife a man can have, I suppose. I have heard all that rubbish before. Poor Uncle Jesse when I spoke about it⁠—”

“You spoke to him of your⁠—liking for Ursula Ardfern?” asked Tab in surprise.

“Of course I didn’t,” said the other scornfully. “I approached it in a roundabout sort of way. Uncle Jesse foamed at the mouth. It was then he told me that he was going to leave all his money away from me. He said horrible things about actresses.”

Tab was silent, a little puzzled at himself. What did it matter to him, anyway, that Rex Lander should be head over heels in love with the girl? Yet, for some mysterious reason, he regarded Babe’s passion as a personal affront to himself. It was ridiculous, childish in him and he laughed softly.

“You think it is darned funny, I daresay,” growled Rex, getting up from the table in a huff.

“I was laughing at myself for daring to give advice,” said Tab truthfully.