XIX

As the car moved off, a man came running across the road, stepped lightly on to the footboard, and wriggled his way to a place beside the driver. The car was held up outside the Hippodrome, but only for a few seconds, and then, turning, it sped wheezily along Coventry Street. They had a good crossing of Piccadilly Circus, and a few seconds later they had struck the gloom of lower Piccadilly and had turned into Hyde Park.

Leslie had a glimpse now of the faces of her captors; yellow, with that Oriental slant of the eye which is common to the Chinese and Japanese. Here the likeness ended; their faces lacked the intelligence of the people of the island kingdoms.

Javanese, of course. How stupid she had been not to have realized that from the first! Anita Bellini had lived in Java for many years. And then she remembered Peter’s words. She understood the chained door because of the attack that had been made on her flat. Anita’s bodyguard had been engaged elsewhere; she had need of chains to protect her house in their absence.

Who was Diga Nagara? It sounded familiar. It was one of those colourable figures in history that even the skimming student retains as a fluttering rag of memory. Some Javanese god, perhaps.

“Who is Diga Nagara?” she asked suddenly.

She heard the men draw in their breath as though they were shocked.

“The Prince, the Great One,” said the man on her left after a while. He spoke in a low, awestricken voice. “He who is not dead, though the Dutchmen think he is.”

“Dutchmen?” Of course, Java was a Dutch possession. She wished now she had made a study of the Malaysian States, and knew just what was entailed by an inclusion in the harem of this prince who was dead and yet not dead.

The car slipped across Hammersmith Bridge, and, after a few minutes, she could identify the spot where the body of Druze had been found. They were going to Wimbledon, then⁠—to Anita’s grisly house.

The machine came to a stop before the door of May Towers, and she hurried up the steps. She had not reached the top before the door was opened. No light showed in the hall, and she heard the door clang behind her and a chain rattle as it was fastened, and her courage almost deserted her. Somebody flashed the light of a hand-lamp; she saw the wide, heavily carpeted stairs.

“Go up,” said her conductor, his hand still on her arm, and she obeyed.

The stairs turned and they reached a wide landing. Somebody knocked at a door, and a voice which she recognized as Anita’s said:

“Come in.”

The man who had knocked pushed the door open wide. She had a glimpse of a lofty wall, hidden by a black curtain, which was covered with curious designs in gold threadwork. The room was filled with an unearthly greenish light; the hand of the gaoler fell from her arm; she walked into the room alone, and the door closed behind her.

It was a long and ill-proportioned salon. With the exception of a divan at the far end and a low table near by, it was bare of furniture. The carpet underfoot was either purple or black; in the queer light of two green lamps that burnt on either side of the settee, it was impossible to distinguish its colour.

Anita Bellini sat cross-legged on the divan, horribly suggestive of some repellent and grotesque idol, in her golden frock. Her massive arms were smothered from wrist to elbow with glittering bracelets. Three ropes of pearls hung about her strong neck, and every time her hands moved they sparkled and scintillated brilliantly. A long ebony cigarette-holder was between her lips; that immovable monocle of hers gleamed greenly.

“Come along, Maughan; sit here.” She pointed to the floor, and, black against black, invisible from where she had paused when she had entered the room, Leslie saw a heap of cushions.

She sat obediently, looking up into the coarse face. So they sat surveying one another for a space, and then, flicking the ash from her cigarette, Anita Bellini spoke.

“You have brains, I suppose?”

“I suppose so,” said Leslie coolly.

“Sufficient brains to know that I wouldn’t take the risk of bringing you here⁠—abducting is the word, I think⁠—unless my position were rather desperate. I’d have killed you last night, but that would have been a fatal mistake. You are much more useful to me alive.”

Leslie smiled faintly.

“Which sounds like a line from a melodrama,” she said.

To this Anita made no reply.

“Have you heard of Diga Nagara?” she asked. “I see you have. He was a great prince of Java, who died seventy years ago. He has become a legendary figure, and the natives believe he is immortal, that he enjoys, through his subjects, all the creature comforts of a living man. In his name they will go to any extreme.”

She stopped, took out her monocle with a characteristic gesture, polished it mechanically on the knee of her dress, and put it back.

“You were to have been killed last night because Diga Nagara designed your death. If I gave you to be the wife of one of these men, you would be Diga Nagara’s bride, whoever held your hand. Do you appreciate that?”

Leslie nodded. Her eyes did not leave the woman’s face.

“The Javanese are a gentle, kindly people,” Anita continued slowly; “but in some ways⁠—they are not nice.”

“I understand all this is a threat as to what will happen to me if I do not do something you wish.”

“You’re a sensible girl,” said Anita Bellini, and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She was very much like a fishwife in that attitude; there was something inexpressibly common about her, in spite of her monocle and her Parisian gown, and the luxury of her surroundings. “This afternoon”⁠—she was still speaking very slowly and distinctly⁠—“Coldwell applied to the Bow Street magistrate for a warrant⁠—a warrant for my arrest and a search of this house. Did you know that?”

Leslie was genuinely astonished and shook her head.

“I had no idea, and I can’t think that what you say is true,” she said. “Mr. Coldwell made no mention of any such arrest; in fact, I was spending the night at his house, and I know he had arranged⁠—”

Anita broke into her explanation.

“He applied. Whether the warrant was granted or not, I do not know. That is one point. Another is this: you visited Greta Gurden tonight, and she told you the one thing in the world I wished that she should not tell. I know, because I saw you go in and come out of her flat, and I have seen Greta since,” she added grimly. “It isn’t necessary for me to tell you the vital information you discovered.”

“It isn’t,” said Leslie. “But I might have found that out, anyway. In fact, I should, if I’d had the sense to go straight to Dr. Wesley and ask him how long before Donald Dawlish’s death he was unconscious. I’ve always suspected that the alteration of that will was a forgery. I saw a copy of it, and I have compared it with the signature of Donald Dawlish. It would not have been very difficult to prove that the new will, which gave Mrs. Dawlish the whole of her husband’s fortune and which disinherited Peter, was a forgery from beginning to end. The doctor will, of course, prove that beyond any question. On the day he was supposed to have made the new will, Mr. Dawlish did not recover consciousness. Surely, Princess, you don’t imagine that you will get away with that! Mr. Dawlish’s lawyers have always been dissatisfied with the will that was made without consultation, and which was only proved because they could not induce Peter Dawlish to contest its validity.”

Anita Bellini made no answer to this.

“I’m chiefly concerned with myself and my own safety,” she said at last. “You’ve got to help me, and Martha must look after herself. You’ve got to help clear me. I’m going to make you a very good offer⁠—a hundred thousand pounds.”

Leslie shook her head.

“Not all the money in the world will influence me, Princess,” she said. “How could I clear you? You talk as though I were the chief of the detective bureau and had authority to divert the processes of the law. The person you must see is Lady Raytham, whom you have blackmailed for years, and even if she were agreeable, the law requires that you shall explain the death of Annie Druze.”

“It was an accident.”

Leslie nodded.

“I know⁠—or, rather, I guessed. But that has got to come into the light, and it cannot come into the light unless the story of the blackmail is revealed. I am willing to do this: let me walk out of your door unharmed, and the little adventure of tonight will be forgotten. I will forget your smelly Javanese; I will forget what happened last night. Tell me where I can find”⁠—she paused⁠—“Elizabeth Dawlish.”

“There is no such person,” said Anita harshly.

“Elizabeth Dawlish,” repeated Leslie, “Peter’s daughter.”

Princess Anita Bellini was not smoking now. She had the holder in her hand, turning it over and over and examining it critically as though she were looking for some defect.

“You’ve got to get me out of this mess, Leslie Maughan.”

Leslie rose to her feet.

“I thought you were clever,” she said, with a note of contempt in her voice. “Nothing can get you out⁠—nothing!”

“Is that so?” Anita’s voice was soft and silky. “Do you realize, my good woman, that if I can’t get out, who has put me in⁠—you! You’ve been prying into the history of the Druzes, have you? Ah ha!” She laughed harshly. “I know a great deal more than you imagine. And you’ve been putting the little pieces together to trap Anita⁠—poor old Anita, eh?” She showed her big white teeth in a mirthless smile, and suddenly slipped from the divan and drew near to the girl. “Let us have a marriage feast,” she said, and clapped her hands twice.

The room was seemingly empty; yet at that signal half a dozen little men, naked to the waist, appeared as if by magic from behind the long curtains. Anita, her face swollen with rage, spluttered something in the Javanese tongue, and the squat shapes came shuffling towards her.

Leslie did not move; she stood erect, her hands by her sides, her pale face turned to the woman. Even when they seized her, she did not resist, but allowed herself to be hurried behind the fold of a curtain and through a door into a stuffy little room into which she was thrust. The door was closed on her, a lock snapped; from the other side of the door a mocking voice called her.

“Hail to the bride!”

Then a few words in the strange tongue of Java, and, answering these, the chatter of the little men’s laughter.

Leslie stooped, pulled up her skirt, and unstrapped an appendage from a garter. It was a small calibre Browning. She slipped back the jacket, forced in a cartridge and brought the catch to safety. Then she began to explore.

The appointments of the room were a little tawdry. The divan, which seemed an indispensable adjunct to every room, was old and worn; a shaded light hung from the ceiling; there were two brass dishes attached to the wall. It appeared to be the apartment of a highly favoured upper servant, and this she confirmed when she turned over the coverings of the divan and saw what was apparently a suit of native clothing.

There was a second door to the room and this she tried. Then, to her surprise and delight, she saw that there was a key on the outside. She turned this, and to her relief it opened, and she found herself in a very conventional bedroom, the type of apartment she would have expected to discover in any of the houses on Wimbledon Common. No lights were burning and it was inadvisable to switch them on. Softly she closed the door of the room she had left, and, tiptoeing across the floor, felt her way to the bedroom door. She turned the handle softly and looked out.

Happily, the two men who stood on the landing had their backs turned to her. She closed the door again, in an agony of fear lest she should make a sound. Running quickly across the bedroom, she tried the windows. They were not only fastened and barred, but, as a further barrier to egress, the bars were covered with a stout wire screen. Perhaps there was a bathroom, she thought, and groped along the wall. After a while she felt the handle of a door and opened it gingerly. She must risk putting on the light for a second, and this she did.

It was evidently used as a dressing-room, and there was another door which, she guessed, led to a second bedroom. She turned out the lights; the door was locked, and again the key was on the outside. For a moment she suspected a trap and hesitated, but after a moment turned the key and entered the room, only to draw back instantly. Somebody was there; she heard the sound of breathing, and a tiny creak as though a body was turning in bed. And then:

“Who is it, please?” asked a voice, and Leslie nearly dropped.

For the child who spoke from the darkness was Elizabeth!

“Don’t make a sound,” she whispered, and, taking out the key, closed the door and locked it on the inside.

Only then did she feel for the light switch. The room was a small one, and apparently there was no other way out than that by which she had come. The small window was barred and wired; the window itself was of opaque glass. She looked round at Elizabeth; she was sitting up in a small bed, looking with astonishment at this unexpected vision. Then suddenly she leapt out of bed and came running towards the girl, and Leslie caught her in her arms.

“Are you going to take me away? I’m so frightened⁠—these little men frighten me. I told you about them. One came and left the pistol with mother. Oh, take me away, please, please!”

Leslie gathered the frail form in her arms and kissed her.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” she said, but without any great conviction. “Tell me quickly, Elizabeth; is there another way out of this room?”

To her surprise, the child pointed to a plain bureau which stood against the wall.

“She comes through there sometimes,” she whispered. “A terrible woman⁠—with an eyeglass. She told me that if I made any trouble one of the black men would kill me.” The child shuddered.

Putting her gently away, Leslie went to the bureau and pulled open the door. The wardrobe was empty and reached from the floor to the height of her head. The back was undoubtedly a door; there was no disguise about it. There was neither keyhole nor handle. Using all her strength, she pushed, and the door swung open⁠—it had been fastened by a very simple spring catch.

She returned to Elizabeth and wrapped a bedspread round her thin shoulders.

“You’re to be very brave and very quiet,” she whispered. “Come with me.”

The child hesitated.

“She told me I must never go through there,” she began, but Leslie reassured her, and they passed through into an apartment which was also a bedroom, though apparently out of use. The bed was not made, and some of the furniture was shrouded in holland covers.

Again Leslie opened the main door, this time to find herself on another landing. There was nobody in sight. Down below, at the foot of a narrow flight of stairs, a light burnt dimly.

“You’ve got a pistol too,” whispered the child in wonder, and Leslie smiled.

“Don’t talk,” she breathed into Elizabeth’s ear, and led the way down the stairs.

They terminated in a small passage, paved with tiles. As she reached the foot of the stairs she heard the sound of voices, and, looking round cautiously, she saw that under the stairs was a door, and it was open. At the far end of the passage was another, and this obviously led to the outside of the house, for it was chained and bolted.

As she stood, debating what she should do, the voices grew fainter, and the patch of light on the wall which marked the open door disappeared. It was her chance. Grasping the child by the arm, she slipped off her shoes and hurried noiselessly along the passage in her stockinged feet.

She had reached the door, and with fingers which, in spite of her will, trembled, moved first one chain and then another. The top and bottom bolts were drawn; her hand was on the key, when from somewhere above came an outcry. A bell rang, a door under the stairs was flung open and three men ran out. The first two did not see her, but made for the stairs. The third caught sight of her over his shoulder and yelled a warning. In an instant the three men were flying towards her. Twice the little pistol banged, and one man slid to the ground with a yell, grasping his knee. And then they were on her and she was fighting desperately for life.

She heard the scream of the child and called out to her to open the door and escape. But Elizabeth was too petrified with terror to make any movement.

They carried Leslie Maughan, trussed and bound, into the purple saloon and laid her at Anita’s feet. And then the man who spoke English lifted his hand.

“Lady,” he said, “here is the woman. What shall be done?”

Anita pointed to him with her thick jewelled finger.

“This night you shall have the soul and body of Diga Nagara,” she said in her grating voice. “Diga Nagara⁠—this is your bride!”