XX

It seemed to Peter Dawlish that he had been unconscious for an eternity when he turned over on his back with a groan and felt carefully towards his damaged head. His face was wet and sticky, and when he essayed to rise to his feet, it seemed that the whole of the building was oscillating violently. Presently, however, he was up, keeping to the wall for support, and, grasping the handle of the door, he jerked it open and was instantly gripped with hands of steel.

“Hullo, who are you?” asked a stern voice.

“I don’t know⁠—Dawlish⁠—something happened. I saw a light and came over⁠—and then the door opened and I don’t remember much more.”

The detective recognized him.

“The door opened?” he said anxiously. “Was somebody in the flat?”

Peter nodded and winced.

“Give me a drink,” he said, and the detective guided him by the arm and led him upstairs to Leslie’s room.

A glass of ice-cold water revived him and he was able to tell a coherent story of his experience.

“It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes ago,” said the detective. “I went round to see my opposite number and I’ll swear I wasn’t gone for more than that time.”

Suddenly he stooped to the floor and took up something. It was a loose native slipper that had slipped from the foot of Leslie’s captor in the hurry of departure. The light he had shown when he searched for this was the light that Peter saw.

“Just wait; I’ll call Mr. Coldwell.”

Inspector Coldwell was at dinner when the message came.

“Hang on, I’ll come down,” he said. “I’ve had a wire from Miss Maughan that she’s going to Plymouth, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

He was in the flat twenty minutes later. By this time Peter’s wound had been roughly dressed, and he had washed the blood from his face. Save for the throb of the wound, he was little the worse for his experience.

“They coshed you with a rubber club; it is rather a good method,” said Coldwell callously.

He looked round the room with pursed lips and a frown.

“It doesn’t follow that because those birds were here, she was here,” he said, and glanced at his watch. “Too early for Miss Maughan to have arrived at Plymouth. Just wait; I want to make sure.”

He drove to the telegraph office from which the message had been sent, and was fortunate to find the postmaster just leaving his office.

“I want to see the telegram that was sent from here about five o’clock tonight addressed to me.”

“You want to see the original telegram, I suppose? That won’t be difficult.”

It was more difficult than he supposed, and half an hour’s precious time was wasted before the pencilled form was produced. Coldwell had only to glance at the writing to know that it was not in Leslie’s hand. Yet a woman had written it; that was obvious from the characteristic writing.

He returned to the flat and sent the detective in a cab to Scotland Yard and Peter employed this interval to tell him of what he had found in Mrs. Inglethorne’s box.

“I pretty well guessed that,” said Coldwell. “So did Leslie⁠—Miss Maughan. ‘The son’ meant nothing. This unfortunate lady had intended keeping the child with her if it were a girl, and that was not the wish of the gang who were bleeding her. They told her she had a son. But I’m going to make sure about that before we go any farther. Somehow I’m not so scared about Leslie Maughan as I ought to be perhaps. She’s got a sort of gun.”

A quarter of an hour after, his cab drew up before the gloomy doors of Holloway Prison, and after a strict scrutiny of his credentials he was admitted, and conducted to one of the main halls of the gaol, where the remand prisoners were housed. The chief wardress opened the door and went in. Presently she came out and beckoned him into the cell.

Mrs. Inglethorne was sitting, a scowl on her face, her big raw hands clasped before her. She knew Coldwell, and lifted her lip in a grin of rage.

“Don’t you come in here!” she said shrilly. “I’m not going to talk to you. If you want to find that kid, you go and find her! And that’ll take you some time, I’ll bet!”

“Listen!” Coldwell had a very direct way with criminals. “Whether you’ll get a nine2 or a lagging depends on the answer you give me, Mrs. Inglethorne. There’s just a chance that you may get something worse than a lagging.”

She scowled up at him.

“What do you mean?”

Very deliberately he sketched a portion of her life; told her where she had lived, and how long she had stayed in her various places of abode. She made no comment or correction, looking down at her hands, and only when he paused did she meet his eyes.

“Is that all?” she asked insolently.

“Not quite all. You have been engaged in baby farming for the past twenty years. In 1916, in the month of July, you received from one called Arthur Druze a baby boy of a few days old. Where is that child?”

“You’d better find out,” she said.

“It is for you to find out,” he said, in that hard, metallic voice which he adopted on occasions. “You have to prove to me that that child is alive, or there’s another charge against you.”

“Eh?” She was startled. The big mouth trembled. “You can’t charge me⁠—”

“I’ll charge you with murder, and I’ll dig up the garden of every house you’ve occupied in the past six years to find evidence.”

Mrs. Inglethorne’s many-chinned jaw dropped; her eyes stared wildly, and in their depths Coldwell read the very terror of death.

“I’ve done nothing⁠—like that!” she almost screamed.

“You were Martha’s servant, weren’t you?”

She nodded dumbly, and then, throwing herself on the couch, she writhed like a woman demented. And in her dementia she broke the habit of a lifetime and told the truth.

A police tender was standing outside the door of Leslie’s flat when Coldwell came back, and a dozen men stood about on the sidewalk. He beckoned Peter to him.

“You had better come along,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“To Wimbledon. Do you feel fit enough? There may not be a scrap, but I rather imagine that her supreme and exalted Highness will die fighting.”

“Is Leslie there?”

Coldwell nodded.

A hundred yards short of May Towers the tender stopped and the little army of men got down. On the journey Coldwell had made his arrangements. Four of the detectives were to make their way to the back of the house; the remainder were to force the entrance. It was Coldwell who rang the bell. In his right hand he gripped an axe, ready to strike at the chain the moment the door was opened.

Standing behind him, Peter saw him stoop his head.

“Can you hear anything?” he whispered.

“No, sir.”

“Thought I heard a scream.”

He waited a few seconds longer, and then:

“Give me the crowbar.”

Somebody passed him up the long steel bar, and with a swing he drove the clawed ends between door and lintel. Again he struck, and this time had his purchase. Pulling back with all his strength, the door cracked open. Two blows from the axe broke the chain, and they streamed into the dark hall and up the stairs.

The squat Javanese stooped and lifted the girl without an effort, and as he did so the little men who stood around clapped their hands rhythmically and droned the marriage song of their class. Leslie heard and set her teeth, as she felt herself raised in the strong hands of this hideous little man.

She had a glimpse of Anita Bellini⁠—the hate in her eyes made her shudder in spite of herself.

“Goodbye, little Maughan!” she mocked. “There is death at the end of this.”

And then she stopped, her eyes glaring towards the door.

“Stand fast, everybody! Tell these fellows not to move, Bellini!”

It was Coldwell’s voice. Leslie felt herself slipping from the encircling arms. Then suddenly somebody caught her, and she looked round into the haggard face of Peter Dawlish.

“No gunplay,” said Coldwell gently, “and there will be no trouble. I want you, Bellini; I suppose you are prepared for that?”

“I am called Princess Bellini,” she began.

“Whether you’re Princess Bellini or Annie Druze or Alice Druze is a matter of supreme indifference to me,” said Coldwell, as he caught her wrist. “But you have the distinction of being the first woman I’ve ever handcuffed.”

He snapped the cold circle about her wrist.

“But then, you see, most of the ladies I’ve pinched have been gentle little souls who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

She made no reply. That old look had come into her face again which Leslie had seen before.

Then Anita Bellini did an unexpectedly generous thing. She nodded to the wondering group of natives shepherded behind three armed detectives.

“These men have done no harm,” she said. “They have merely carried out my instructions in ignorance of the law.”

She said something in Javanese to the man who had held Leslie, and he grinned and answered in the same language.

“My head boy here”⁠—she nodded to him⁠—“will accept responsibility for the other natives.”

And then, with a sideways jerk of her head and a hard smile:

“Well, here is the end of the Druzes,” she said.

“Not quite.” Leslie’s quiet voice interrupted her. “Martha has still to be disposed of.”

There was anger, but there was fear also in Anita Bellini’s grimace.

“Martha? What do you mean⁠—Martha?” she asked sharply. “I have not seen her for years.”

Leslie smiled.

“I saw her two days ago, so I have the advantage of you,” she said.

They waited only long enough for Leslie to gather a change of dress and a coat for the prisoner, and thereafter Anita Bellini went out of her life forever, except for the day when Leslie stood in the witness-box and testified against the monocled prisoner, who did not look at her but sat staring straight ahead at the scarlet-robed judge.

Before she collected the clothes she went in search of Elizabeth, and found her weeping in her bed in the little dressing-room, and persuaded her to dress. By the time the Princess was out of the house and on her way to Wimbledon police station, the child was arrayed in her rags. Leslie stood in the doorway looking at her, and she was very near to tears.

“Elizabeth, do you remember how you used to pretend you had all sorts of nice fathers?”

The child nodded and smiled.

“Well, I’m going to introduce you to a real one.”

“A real father?” asked the girl breathlessly. “My father?”

“And you’ll never guess who he is.”

Suddenly the child was clinging to her, her arms locked about her neck. Thus Peter found them, weeping together.