XI

Greta Gurden occupied an apartment on the first floor of a house in Portman Crescent. Hers was one of those artistic little flats that reflected every taste but her own. She slept in a red lacquer bed, ornamented by golden devils, a bargain acquired many years before in the Caledonian Market, and renovated by her own hands. Life is rather a tragedy for the lonely woman; there was a shadowy husband very much in the background, but he had either run away from her or was in a lunatic asylum or something equally unsatisfactory. She was one of the thousands who were endeavouring to keep a ten establishment on a seven and a half income. By profession she was a journalist; edited a mildly scurrilous little paper called Mayfair Gossip, which enjoyed a very limited circulation, and in truth took up very little of her time. It was certainly not in the paper’s interest that she fostered the delusion that her life was one of hectic gaiety. For she was to be seen occasionally at the most exclusive night clubs; more frequently at less exclusive establishments of the same order, her visitations being governed entirely by her wealth and the taste of her escort. And numerically she had many friends. Her expansiveness and lack of reticence, which had been tersely and uncharitably condensed into the vulgar word “gush,” however it might sicken the more sophisticated, was very pleasant to those who discovered from her for the first time how important or good-looking or well-dressed they were, what taste, discrimination, or tact they displayed upon every conceivable occasion, and how anxiously or impatiently Greta was looking forward to their next meeting.

There were young men who took her out to dinner or to supper or to dances; and there were middle-aged men, fathers of families, whose hearts she fluttered with the promise of adventure never to be fulfilled, who escorted her to the less expensive places of popular amusement. There were, too, women who hovered everlastingly on that no-man’s-land between Suburbia and Mayfair, who courted her society and influence, under the mistaken impression that she had the entrée to the most select circles.

Mayfair Gossip was entirely the property of Anita Bellini, and it was an unprofitable concern, a fact Anita never failed to emphasize when she called on a Friday for her weekly stipend, her only regular source of income. The Princess was good in other ways: she gave her an occasional dinner, a discarded dress or two, marched her off to afternoon concerts, and employed her as a sort of unpaid secretary. Occasionally, windfalls came the way of Greta Gurden: fifty pounds here and there for some little service which she had rendered. And she had always a use for the money⁠—new curtains to buy, a fascinating Chinese cabinet, or something that looked like a fascinating Chinese cabinet, a carved ivory Madonna, a fair copy of a master’s art. She had a passion for picking up entirely valueless articles, and her dining-room was cluttered up with imitation oak, Birmingham-made suits of chain armour, Benares brass from the same enterprising city, a gutted spinet that served only as a sideboard for the display of imitation Bristol ware⁠—there was even a pair of antlers over the doorway, and Greta was not above suggesting to her awestricken visitors that the twelve-pointer had been shot by her when she was the guest of the Duke of Blank at his little hunting-box in Invernessshire.

She enjoyed the services of one who was charlady in the morning and maid in the afternoon, and only to this unemotional lady was the real Greta ever revealed.

Mrs. Gurden lay in bed with a bandaged leg, and between terror that memory brought, fear of blood-poisoning and its horrible consequences (amongst other duties she contributed the health notes to Mayfair Gossip), anger at the inaction which her wound imposed, and irritation with the world in general, she was a difficult patient.

Greta could not afford to neglect her daily duty to herself. Her face was indistinguishable under a mud pack, designed to preserve the face from the ravages of age, and her hands were enclosed in complexion gloves. Two dark eyes glared oddly from the mask of grey, and she spoke with some difficulty, due to the dried earth that plastered her cheeks. Just now she had an additional reason for annoyance.

“Tell her I can’t see her and I won’t see her⁠—tell her to come back at twelve o’clock.”

“She’s from Scotland Yard, ma’am.”

“I don’t care, I won’t see her.”

The obedient charlady disappeared into the outer room. Greta heard the murmur of voices, and after a while the woman came back.

“She says she’ll wait till you’re ready. She wants to know how you hurt your leg.”

Greta had no need to stifle her fury: a sudden panic descended upon her.

“Bring me some hot water⁠—”

It took some time to remove the renovating mud, a little longer time to substitute perfumed creams and powder. A brief glimpse through an open door had revealed to Leslie Maughan the cause of the delay. She waited patiently, being a woman having some sympathy with woman’s losing fight against the ravages of time and care. When at length she was admitted, it was the old Greta who smiled ecstatically.

“My dear! How wonderfully good of you to come! So sweet of you! I was so hoping that I should have another opportunity of meeting you. The Princess is rather difficult, isn’t she? I did so want to have a little chat with you the last time we met. I admire your style awfully. Won’t you sit down somewhere? Yes, I’ve had an awful accident. I was cleaning my husband’s pistol and it went off, but fortunately no bones were broken.”

“Where did this happen?”

It was on the tip of Greta’s tongue to say “here,” but she thought better of it.

“At a country house where I was staying for the weekend. People are so careless. Imagine leaving a pistol loaded! I nearly died of fright!”

“What country house was this?” asked Leslie.

Greta knit her brows.

“What was the name of the place?⁠—I don’t know the people very well. Somewhere in Berkshire.”

“Was your husband there, Mrs. Gurden?”

“Er⁠—no⁠—but he had been staying at the place; left his box behind. I was rummaging through it and found his pistol, and it looked so awfully rusty and dirty that I thought I would clean it.”

“Who else was hurt besides you?” asked Leslie quietly.

Greta shot a swift, suspicious glance at the girl.

“Nobody, thank goodness,” she said.

Leslie waited a second, then:

“Was this before or after Druze was killed?”

Under the rouge Greta’s face went suddenly grey and pinched. She sat bolt upright in bed and stared at the girl.

“Dead?” she said huskily. “Druze is dead? It’s a lie.”

“Druze is dead! She was found last night on Barnes Common⁠—shot!”

“ ‘She’?” The woman’s forehead was puckered into lines. “ ‘She’? What are you talking about? I was speaking of Druze.”

“So was I,” said Leslie. “Druze was a woman; you know that.”

The open mouth, the wide eyes, every visible expression of amazement revealed without question Greta Gurden’s ignorance of the “butler’s” sex.

“A woman⁠—good God!”

She sank back on the pillows, exhausted by her emotion, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. But for those wide-open pools of darkness, Leslie would have thought that the woman had fainted. Presently she spoke.

“I’ve nothing to tell you: I shot myself by accident. I know nothing about Druze⁠—nothing. Why should I? The accident occurred when I was in the country. I won’t talk to you⁠—I won’t.”

She almost screamed the words.

Leslie realized that it would be cruel to question her more closely; the woman was so distressed that she might have hesitated even if she had not feared the effects of a further cross-examination upon one who was in the surgeon’s hands.

“I will come along and see you when you’re a little better, Mrs. Gurden,” she said.

Greta made no answer.

As Leslie’s cab turned out of the street, it passed a big Rolls swinging round to enter the unpretentious thoroughfare, and the girl had a glimpse of the Princess. How she wished now that on some pretext or other she had stayed, that she might see the meeting between these two.

Anita Bellini mounted the stairs and, entering the apartment without knocking, summarily dismissed the charwoman, and Mrs. Hobbs, not unused to such cavalier treatment, departed meekly.

“Has Maughan been here?” she demanded, as she strode into Greta’s room.

Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of the haggard face.

“I see she has,” she said grimly. “What did she come about?”

Greta raised herself on her elbow and pushed her pillow to support her; she was trembling so that after a second she rolled back on the pillow with a groan.

“She wanted to know how I was wounded,” she said at last.

“What did you tell her?” asked the Princess impatiently. “For Heaven’s sake, pull yourself together, my good woman! How did she know you were wounded, anyway? Did you send an announcement to the newspapers?”

“I don’t know how she knew, but she did. I told her that it was an accident, that I was cleaning my husband’s pistol and it went off. Anita, is it true?”

“Is what true?” asked the Princess roughly.

“Is it true that Druze is dead?”

“Yes,” curtly.

“And that she was a woman?”

“I thought you guessed,” said the Princess Anita. “Of course she was a woman.”

“My God, how awful!”

Anita Bellini’s cold glance transfixed the invalid.

“What is the matter with you?” she demanded harshly. “Druze was⁠—”

She stopped short.

“How long are you going to be in bed?”

Greta shook her head.

“I don’t know; the doctor says another week, at least.”

“Did you tell her anything more? Really, Greta, you’re not to be trusted⁠—though I never dreamt that nosy little devil would find out about your being shot. I suppose the doctor reported it.”

She stared down at the woman speculatively.

“I suppose I’d better give you some money,” she said, with no great enthusiasm. “You look awful⁠—you know that? You’re not wearing well, Greta. All the mud in the world will not take those wrinkles from under your eyes. Why, you’re old.”

The red in Greta Gurden’s face was natural; it came and went. Fury blazed in the dark eyes, for now Anita Bellini had touched her upon the rawest place of Greta’s self-esteem, and put into words, at this incongruous moment, all that this poor little poseuse feared. But it was Anita Bellini’s way, to go off at spiteful tangents, to sting and hurt those from whom she expected unswerving loyalty, and it was characteristic of her that at this moment, when her mind and spirit were tensed to meet the very real dangers which threatened her, she could go out of her way to humiliate her creature.

“You aren’t able to attend to Gossip, of course. You’re having the letters sent here?” she asked, and, when the woman nodded silently: “The last batch were valueless⁠—there was a little bit about the Debouson woman, but I knew all about that. She isn’t worth a penny; in fact, there’s a bankruptcy petition out against her husband. You had better write a spicy paragraph about her⁠—that is all the information is worth.”

She was walking about the room as she spoke, stopping now and again to look, with a contemptuous lift of her lips, at the tawdriness of the imitations with which the room was stocked.

“I’m going to Capri in the spring,” she said. “The new villa has been bought⁠—I suppose I’d better take you along with me.”

She did not see the malignity that shot from the dark eyes.

“The paper will have to go. It is becoming more and more useless. If you had had a spark of genius in you, Greta, you would have made that into a property. You are sure you told that detective girl nothing?”

“Nothing,” said Greta, regaining control of her voice.

“What is this?”

Anita had stopped before a big secretaire, pulled down the flap, and was examining a number of letters, neatly tied in bundles.

“Are those the papers of mine that I asked you to put in order?”

“Yes.”

The Princess detached one letter from a bundle, read it, and tossed it back.

“Most of these things can be burnt,” she said. “You found nothing of importance?”

“No⁠—nothing.”

Something in Greta’s tone made the other turn her head.

“What’s the matter with you?”

And then the pent-up fury of Greta Gurden burst forth. She was sobbing with rage, almost unintelligible in her anger.

“You treat me as if I was a servant⁠—patronizing. I hate your beastly way of talking to me! I’m not a dog. I’ve served you like a slave for twelve years, and I won’t be talked to as you talk to me⁠—I won’t! I’d sooner starve in the gutter! I suppose I am getting old⁠—I know I am⁠—but you needn’t throw it in my face. You’re always talking about my looks. If you can’t say anything nice, say nothing at all. I’m tired of it.”

“Don’t be a fool!” scoffed the Princess. “And don’t be hysterical. You’ve got your future to consider, and you’re not going to help by quarrelling with me. You can’t go back to the chorus.”

“That’s the sort of horrible thing you would say!” stormed Greta. “I think you’re loathsome! I won’t do another stroke of work for you⁠—”

She ended in a passion of weak tears, and Anita Bellini did not attempt to mollify her, knowing from past experience that in an hour or two she would have a penitent message from her slave asking forgiveness for this outburst; for this was not the first time that Greta had revolted, only to come to heel at the snap of Anita’s whip.

With this assurance she took her ungracious leave, and had hardly left the street before all thought of Greta was out of her mind. The Princess Anita Bellini had other matters, more weighty, to think of.

There was very little for Leslie Maughan to tell to her chief, but he did not seem greatly disappointed.

“We’ll leave her alone for a while. If you once start badgering these people, they build up an unbreakable alibi, and that’s bad for trade.”

He looked glumly at the trunks in the corner of his room.

“We’d better dispose of these,” he said. “I’ll get in a clerk to write down the inventory as you call them out.”

He rang for his secretary, the girl who had taken Leslie Maughan’s place on her promotion, and, stooping before the first of the cabin trunks, he unlocked it and threw back the lid. For half an hour Leslie was lifting out articles of wearing apparel, and one little mystery was solved when she came upon a parcel of men’s clothing. They were of the ready-to-wear type, the parts roughly tacked. One of them, however, must have been fitted, for it was half-sewn, and a small tailor’s roll in a pocket of the trunk explained how Druze had avoided the embarrassment of a tailor’s fitting. She was evidently a good sewing woman, for the half-finished garment was beautifully tailored. There was nothing, however, in the first trunk that threw any light upon the mystery of her death.

The second box held a surprise; it was filled with women’s clothing.

“She was going to drop her disguise when she got to the United States,” Leslie concluded, and with this view Mr. Coldwell agreed.

At last the second box was emptied, but again there was nothing that could afford the slightest clue.

“There’s a suitcase; we only discovered it this morning. It was in the parcels office at Waterloo,” said Coldwell.

He opened a cupboard and took out a crocodile-skin travelling grip and put it on the table. It was locked, but suitcase locks respond to almost any key, and at the second attempt it was opened. Here the girl found such articles as she would expect an ocean traveller to carry: sponge-bag, soap, a small jewel-case containing a gold watch and guard, a diamond-encircled wristwatch, and a small diamond bar brooch. A silk dressing-gown, a pair of slippers, and a few odds and ends completed the contents.

“Nothing here,” said Leslie.

She ran her hand round the silken lining of the case, and suddenly her fingers stopped. She felt a thin oblong package under the silk. Reaching out she took Coldwell’s scissors from his desk and cut through the silk. Inserting her fingers, she drew forth an envelope. It was closed and bore no inscription. She tore off the end and drew out an oblong document. It was a marriage certificate, performed apparently by the Rev. H. Hermitz, of Elfield, Connecticut.

“Good Lord!” said the startled Coldwell, reading over her shoulder.

For a moment the words swam before the eyes of the girl, and then out of the blur they appeared with staggering clearness. It was a document certifying that Peter James Dawlish had been joined in holy matrimony with Jane Winifred Hood⁠—and Hood was Lady Raytham’s maiden name!

She read it again, then put the document into the inspector’s hands.

“Then they were married,” she said evenly. “That was the thing I wasn’t sure about.”