Nevertheless, Tommy did blame her. He was filled with a passionate and utterly illogical resentment. It was all very well to say things like that—but a real girl would never marry for money. Tuppence was utterly cold-blooded and selfish, and he would be delighted if he never saw her again! And it was a rotten world!
Julius’s voice broke in on these meditations.
“Yes, we ought to gee along together very well. I’ve heard that a girl always refuses you once—a sort of convention.”
Tommy caught his arm.
“Refuses? Did you say refuses?”
“Sure thing. Didn’t I tell you that? She just rapped out a ‘no’ without any kind of reason to it. The eternal feminine, the Huns call it, I’ve heard. But she’ll come round right enough. Likely enough, I hustled her some—”
But Tommy interrupted regardless of decorum.
“What did she say in that note?” he demanded fiercely.
The obliging Julius handed it to him.
“There’s no earthly clue in it as to where she’s gone,” he assured Tommy. “But you might as well see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
The note, in Tuppence’s well-known schoolboy writing, ran as follows:
“Dear Julius,
“It’s always better to have things in black and white. I don’t feel I can be bothered to think of marriage until Tommy is found. Let’s leave it till then.
Tommy handed it back, his eyes shining. His feelings had undergone a sharp reaction. He now felt that Tuppence was all that was noble and disinterested. Had she not refused Julius without hesitation? True, the note betokened signs of weakening, but he could excuse that. It read almost like a bribe to Julius to spur him on in his efforts to find Tommy, but he supposed she had not really meant it that way. Darling Tuppence, there was not a girl in the world to touch her! When he saw her—His thoughts were brought up with a sudden jerk.
“As you say,” he remarked, pulling himself together, “there’s not a hint here as to what she’s up to. Hi—Henry!”
The small boy came obediently. Tommy produced five shillings.
“One thing more. Do you remember what the young lady did with the telegram?”
Henry gasped and spoke.
“She crumpled it up into a ball and threw it into the grate, and made a sort of noise like ‘Whoop!’ sir.”
“Very graphic, Henry,” said Tommy. “Here’s your five shillings. Come on, Julius. We must find that telegram.”
They hurried upstairs. Tuppence had left the key in her door. The room was as she had left it. In the fireplace was a crumpled ball of orange and white. Tommy disentangled it and smoothed out the telegram.
“Come at once, Moat House, Ebury, Yorkshire, great developments—Tommy.”
They looked at each other in stupefaction. Julius spoke first:
“You didn’t send it?”
“Of course not. What does it mean?”
“I guess it means the worst,” said Julius quietly. “They’ve got her.”
“What?”
“Sure thing! They signed your name, and she fell into the trap like a lamb.”
“My God! What shall we do?”
“Get busy, and go after her! Right now! There’s no time to waste. It’s almighty luck that she didn’t take the wire with her. If she had we’d probably never have traced her. But we’ve got to hustle. Where’s that Bradshaw?”
The energy of Julius was infectious. Left to himself, Tommy would probably have sat down to think things out for a good half-hour before he decided on a plan of action. But with Julius Hersheimmer about, hustling was inevitable.
After a few muttered imprecations he handed the Bradshaw to Tommy as being more conversant with its mysteries. Tommy abandoned it in favour of an A.B.C.
“Here we are. Ebury, Yorks. From King’s Cross. Or St. Pancras. (Boy must have made a mistake. It was King’s Cross, not Charing Cross.) 12:50, that’s the train she went by. 2:10, that’s gone. 3:20 is the next—and a damned slow train too.”
“What about the car?”
Tommy shook his head.
“Send it up if you like, but we’d better stick to the train. The great thing is to keep calm.”
Julius groaned.
“That’s so. But it gets my goat to think of that innocent young girl in danger!”
Tommy nodded abstractedly. He was thinking. In a moment or two, he said:
“I say, Julius, what do they want her for, anyway?”
“Eh? I don’t get you?”
“What I mean is that I don’t think it’s their game to do her any harm,” explained Tommy, puckering his brow with the strain of his mental processes. “She’s a hostage, that’s what she is. She’s in no immediate danger, because if we tumble on to anything, she’d be damned useful to them. As long as they’ve got her, they’ve got the whip hand of us. See?”
“Sure thing,” said Julius thoughtfully. “That’s so.”
“Besides,” added Tommy, as an afterthought, “I’ve great faith in Tuppence.”
The journey was wearisome, with many stops, and crowded carriages. They had to change twice, once at Doncaster, once at a small junction. Ebury was a deserted station with a solitary porter, to whom Tommy addressed himself:
“Can you tell me the way to the Moat House?”
“The Moat House? It’s a tidy step from here. The big house near the sea, you mean?”
Tommy assented brazenly. After listening to the porter’s meticulous but perplexing directions, they prepared to leave the station. It was beginning to rain, and they turned up the collars of their coats as they trudged through the slush of the road. Suddenly Tommy halted.
“Wait a moment.” He ran back to the station and tackled the porter anew.
“Look here, do you remember a young lady who arrived by an earlier train, the 12:50 from London? She’d probably ask you the way to the Moat House.”
He described Tuppence as well as he could, but the porter shook his head. Several people had arrived by the train in question. He could not call to mind one young lady in particular. But he was quite certain
