Very odd. I don't think I could put anything like that in my book. It would look rather too much of a coincidence, don't you think?' Mrs. Oliver rose from her seat. 'Good gracious, what have I been sitting on? A dustbin! Really! Not a very nice dustbin either.' She sniffed. 'What is this place I've got to?' David was looking at her. She felt suddenly that she was completely mistaken in everything she had previously thought.
'Absurd of me,' thought Mrs. Oliver, 'absurd of me. Thinking that he was dangerous, that he might do something to me.' He was smiling at her with an extraordinary charm. He moved his head slightly and his chestnut ringlets moved on his shoulders. What fantastic creatures there were in the way of young men nowadays!
'The least I can do,' he said, 'is to show you, I think, where you've been brought to, just by following me. Come on, up these stairs.' He indicated a ramshackle outside staircase running up to what seemed to be a loft.
'Up those stairs?' Mrs. Oliver was not so certain about this. Perhaps he was trying to lure her up there with his charm, and he would then knock her on the head.
'It's no good, Ariadne,' said Mrs. Oliver to herself, 'you've got yourself into this spot, and now you've got to go on with it and find out what you can find out.'
'Do you think they'll stand my weight?' she said, 'they look frightfully rickety.'
'They're quite all right. I'll go up first,' he said, 'and show you the way.' Mrs. Oliver mounted the ladder-like stairs behind him. It was no good. She was, deep down, still frightened. Frightened, not so much of the Peacock, as frightened of where the Peacock might be taking her. Well, she'd know very soon.
He pushed open the door at the top and went into a room. It was a large, bare room and it was an artist's studio, an improvised kind of one. A few matresses lay here and there on the floor, there were canvases stacked against the wall, a couple of easels. There was a pervading smell of paint. There were two people in the room, a bearded young man was standing at an easel, painting. He turned his head as they entered.
'Hallo, David,' he said, 'bringing us company?' He was, Mrs. Oliver thought, quite the dirtiest-looking young man she'd ever seen.
Oily black hair hung in a kind of circular bob down the back of his neck and over his eyes in front. His face apart from the beard was unshaven, and his clothes seemed mainly composed of greasy black leather and high boots. Mrs. Oliver's glance went beyond him to a girl who was acting as a model. She was on a wooden chair on a dais, half flung across it, her head back and her dark hair drooping down from it.
Mrs. Oliver recognised her at once. It was the second one of the three girls in Borodene Mansions. Mrs. Oliver couldn't remember her last name but she remembered her first one. It was the highly decorative and languid- looking girl called Frances.
'Meet Peter,' said David, indicating the somewhat revolting looking artist. 'One of our budding geniuses. And Frances who is posing as a desperate girl demanding abortion.'
'Shut up, you ape,' said Peter.
'I believe I know you, don't I?' said Mrs. Oliver, cheerfully, without any air of conscious certainty. 'I'm sure I've met you somewhere! Somewhere quite lately, too.'
'You're Mrs. Oliver, aren't you?' said Frances.
'That's what she said she was,' said David. 'True, too, is it?'
'Now, where did I meet you,' continued Mrs. Oliver. 'Some party, was it?
No. Let me think. I know. It was Borodene Mansions.' Frances was sitting up now in her chair and speaking in weary but elegant tones.
Peter uttered a loud and miserable groan.
'Now you've ruined the pose! Do you have to have all this wriggling about?
Can't you keep still?'
'No, I couldn't any longer. It was an awful pose. I've got the most frightful crick in my shoulder.'
'I've been making experiments in following people,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'It's much more difficult than I thought. Is this an artist's studio?' she added, looking round her brightly.
'That's what they're like nowadays, a kind of loft - and lucky if you don't fall through the floor,' said Peter.
'It's got all you need,' said David.
'It's got a north light and plenty of room and a pad to sleep on, and a fourth share in the loo downstairs - and what they call cooking facilities. And it's got a bottle or two,' he added. Turning to Mrs. Oliver, but in an entirely different tone, one of utter politeness, he said, 'And can we offer you a drink?'
'I don't drink' said Mrs. Oliver. 'The lady doesn't drink,' said David. 'Who would have thought it!'
'That's rather rude but you're quite right,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'Most people come up to me and say 'I always thought you drank like a fish'.' She opened her handbag - and immediately three coils of grey hair fell on the floor. David picked them up and handed them to her.
'Oh! thank you.' Mrs. Oliver took them. 'I hadn't time this morning. I wonder if I've got any more hairpins.' She delved in her bag and started attaching the coils to her head.
Peter roared with laughter - 'Bully for you,' he said.
'How extraordinary,' Mrs. Oliver thought to herself, 'that I should ever have had this silly idea that I was in danger. Danger - from these people? No matter what they look like, they're really very nice and friendly. It's quite true what people always say to me. I've far too much imagination.' Presently she said she must be going, and David, with Regency gallantry, helped her down the rickety steps, and gave her definite directions as to how to rejoin the King's Road in the quickest way.
'And then,' he said, 'you can get a bus - or a taxi if you want it.'
'A taxi,' said Mrs. Oliver. 'My feet are absolutely dead. The sooner I fall into a taxi the better. Thank you,' she added, 'for being so very nice about my following you in what must have seemed a very peculiar way. Though after all I don't suppose private detectives, or private eyes or whatever they call them, would look anything at all like me.'
'Perhaps not,' said David gravely.
'Left here - and then right, and then left again until you see the river and go towards it, and then sharp right and straight on.' Curiously enough, as she walked across the shabby yard the same feeling of unease and suspense came over her. 'I mustn't let my imagination go again.' She looked back at the steps and the window of the studio. The figure of David still stood looking after her. 'Three perfectly nice young people,' said Mrs, Oliver to herself.
'Perfectly nice and very kind. Left here, and then right. Just because they look rather peculiar, one goes and has silly ideas about their being dangerous. Was it right again? or left? Left, I think - Oh goodness, my feet. It's going to rain, too.' The walk seemed endless and the King's Road incredibly far away. She could hardly hear the traffic now - and where on earth was the river? She began to suspect that she had followed the directions wrong.
'Oh! well,' thought Mrs. Oliver, 'I'm bound to get somewhere soon - the river, or Putney or Wandsworth or somewhere.' She asked her way to the King's Road from a passing man who said he was a foreigner and didn't speak English.
Mrs. Oliver turned another corner wearily and there ahead of her was the gleam of the water. She hurried towards it down a narrow passageway, heard a footstep behind her, half turned, when she was struck from behind and the world went up in sparks.
Chapter Ten
'Drink this.' Norma was shivering. Her eyes had a dazed look. She shrank back a little in the chair. The command was repeated. 'Drink this.' This time she drank obediently, then choked a little.
'It's - it's very strong,' she gasped.
'It'll put you right. You'll feel better in a minute. Just sit still and wait.' The sickness and the giddiness which had been confusing her passed off. A little colour came into her cheeks, and the shivering diminished. For the first time she looked round her, noting her surroundings.
She had been obsessed by a feeling of fear and horror but now things seemed to be returning to normal. It was a medium-sized room and it was furnished in a way that seemed faintly familiar. A desk, a couch, an armchair and an ordinary chair, a stethoscope on a side table and some machine that she thought had to do with eyes. Then her attention went from the general to the particular. The man who had told her to drink.
She saw a man of perhaps thirty-odd with red hair and a rather attractively ugly face, the kind of face that is
