Joan was lying on the bed fully dressed, and at the sound of the creaking bed she turned and got up, fastening her skirt.
“Well, how do you like your new home?” she asked, with an attempt at joviality, which she was far from feeling, in spite of Monty’s assurances.
“I’ve seen better,” said Mirabelle coolly.
“I’ll bet you have!” Joan stretched and yawned; then, opening one of the cupboards, took a shovelful of coal and threw it into the furnace, clanging the iron door. “That’s my job,” she said humorously, “to keep you warm.”
“How long am I going to be kept here?”
“Five days,” was the surprising answer.
“Why five?” asked Mirabelle curiously.
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll tell you,” said Joan.
She fixed a plug in the wall and turned on the small electric fire. Disappearing, she came back with a kettle which she placed on top of the ring.
“The view’s not grand, but the food’s good,” she said, with a gaiety that Mirabelle was now sure was forced.
“You’re with these people, of course—Dr. Oberzohn and Newton?”
“Mister Newton,” corrected Joan. “Yes, I’m his fiancée. We’re going to be married when things get a little better,” she said vaguely, “and there’s no use in your getting sore with me because I helped to bring you here. Monty’s told me all about it. They’re going to do you no harm at all.”
“Then why—” began Mirabelle.
“He’ll tell you,” interrupted Joan, “sooner or later. The old man, or—or—well, Monty isn’t in this: he’s only obliging Oberzohn.”
With one thing Mirabelle agreed: it was a waste of time to indulge in recriminations or to reproach the girl for her supreme treachery. After all, Joan owed nothing to her, and had been from the first a tool employed for her detention. It would have been as logical for a convict to reproach the prison guard.
“How do you come to be doing this sort of thing?” she asked, watching the girl making tea.
“Where do you get ‘this sort of thing’ from?” demanded Joan. “If you suppose that I spend my life chaperoning females, you’ve got another guess coming. Scared, aren’t you?”
She looked across at Mirabelle and the girl shook her head.
“Not really.”
“I should be,” confessed Joan. “Do you mind condensed milk? There’s no other. Yes, I should be writhing under the table, knowing something about Oberzohn.”
“If I were Oberzohn,” said Mirabelle with spirit, “I should be hiding in a deep hole where the Four Just Men would not find me.”
“Four Just Men!” sneered the girl, and then her face changed. “Were they the people who whipped Gurther?”
Mirabelle had not heard of this exploit, but she gave them credit with a nod.
“Is that so? Does Gurther know they’re friends of yours?” she asked significantly.
“I don’t know Gurther.”
“He’s the man who danced with you the other night—Lord—I forget what name we gave him. Because, if he does know, my dear,” she said slowly, “you’ve got two people to be extremely careful with. Gurther’s half mad. Monty has always said so. He dopes too, and there are times when he’s not a man at all but a low-down wolf. I’m scared of him—I’ll admit it. There aren’t Four Just Men, anyway,” she went off at a tangent. “There haven’t been more than three for years. One of them was killed in Bordeaux. That’s a town I’d hate to be killed in,” said Joan irreverently.
An interval of silence followed whilst she opened an airtight tin and took out a small cake, and, putting it on the table, cut it into slices.
“What are they like?” she asked. Evidently the interval had been filled with thoughts of the men from Curzon Street.
“Monty says they’re just bluff, but I’m not so sure that Monty tells me all he thinks. He’s so scared that he told me to call and see them, just because they gave him an order—which isn’t like Monty. They’ve killed people, haven’t they?”
Mirabelle nodded.
“And got away with it? They must be clever.” Joan’s admiration was dragged from her. “Where do they get their money?”
That was always an interesting matter to Joan.
When the girl explained, she was really impressed. That they could kill and get away with it, was wonderful; that they were men of millions, placed them in a category apart.
“They’ll never find you here,” said Joan. “There’s nobody living knows about this vault. There used to be eight men working here, sorting monkey hides, and every one of them’s dead. Monty told me. He said this place is below the canal level, and Oberzohn can flood it in five minutes. Monty thinks the old man had an idea of running a slush factory here.”
“What is a slush factory?” asked Mirabelle, open-mouthed.
“Phoney—snide—counterfeit. Not English, but Continental work. He was going to do that if things had gone really bad, but of course you make all the difference.”
Mirabelle put down her cup.
“Does he expect to make money out of me?” she said, trying hard not to laugh.
The girl nodded solemnly.
“Does he think I have a great deal of money?”
“He’s sure.”
Joan was sure too. Her tone said that plainly enough.
Mirabelle sat down on the bed, for the moment too astonished to speak. Her own financial position was no mystery. She had been left sufficient to bring her in a small sum yearly, and with the produce of the farm had managed to make both ends meet. It was the failure of the farm as a source of profit which had brought her to her new job in London. Alma had also a small annuity; the farm was the girl’s property, but beyond these revenues she had nothing. There was not even a possibility that she was an heiress. Her father had been a comparatively poor man, and had been supported in his numerous excursions to various parts of the world in search of knowledge by the scientific societies to which he was attached; his literary earnings were negligible; his books enjoyed only a very limited sale. She could trace her ancestry back
