XVII
Jim loved London, the noise and the smell of it. He loved its gentle thunders, its ineradicable good-humour, its sublime muddle. Paris depressed him, with its air of gaiety and the underlying fierceness of life’s struggle. There was no rest in the soul of Paris. It was a city of strenuous bargaining, of ruthless exploitation. Brussels was a dumpy undergrown Paris. Berlin a stucco Gomorrah, Madrid an extinct crater beneath which a new volcanic stream was seeking a vent.
New York he loved, a city of steel and concrete teeming with sentimentalists posing as tyrants. There was nothing quite like New York in the world. Dante in his most prodigal mood might have dreamt New York and da Vinci might have planned it, but only the high gods could have materialized the dream or built to the master’s plan. But London was London—incomparable, beautiful. It was the history of the world and the mark of civilization. He made a detour and passed through Covent Garden.
The blazing colour and fragrance of it! Jim could have lingered all the morning in the draughty halls, but he was due at the office to meet Mr. Salter.
Almost the first question that the lawyer asked him was:
“Have you investigated Selengers?”
The identity of the mysterious Selengers had been forgotten for the moment, Jim admitted.
“You ought to know who they are,” said the lawyer. “You will probably discover that Groat or his mother are behind them. The fact that the offices were once the property of Danton rather supports this idea—though theories are an abomination to me!”
Jim agreed.
There were so many issues to the case that he had almost lost sight of his main object.
“The more I think of it,” he confessed, “the more useless my search seems to me, Mr. Salter. If I find Lady Mary, you say that I shall be no nearer to frustrating the Groats?”
Mr. Septimus Salter did not immediately reply. He had said as much, but subsequently had amended his point of view. Theories, as he had so emphatically stated, were abominable alternatives to facts, and yet he could not get out of his head that if the theory he had formed to account for Lady Mary Danton’s obliteration were substantiated, a big step would have been taken toward clearing up a host of minor mysteries.
“Go ahead with Selengers,” he said at last; “possibly you may find that their inquiries are made as much to find Lady Mary as to establish the identity of your young friend. At any rate, you can’t be doing much harm.”
XVIII
At twelve o’clock that night Eunice heard a car draw up in front of the house. She had not yet retired, and she stepped out on to the balcony as Digby Groat ascended the steps.
Eunice closed the door and pulled the curtains across. She was not tired enough to go to bed. She had very foolishly succumbed to the temptation to take a doze that afternoon, and to occupy her time she had brought up the last bundle of accounts, unearthed from a box in the wine-cellar, and had spent the evening tabulating them.
She finished the last account, and fixing a rubber band round them, rose and stretched herself, and then she heard a sound; a stealthy foot upon the stone of the balcony floor. There was no mistaking it. She had never heard it before on the occasion of the earlier visits. She switched out the light, drew back the curtains noiselessly and softly unlocked the French window. She listened. There it was again. She felt no fear, only the thrill of impending discovery. Suddenly she jerked open the window and stepped out, and for a time saw nothing, then as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, she saw something crouching against the wall.
“Who is that?” she cried.
There was no reply for a little time; then the voice said:
“I am awfully sorry to have frightened you, Eunice.”
It was Jim Steele.
“Jim!” she gasped incredulously, and then a wave of anger swept over her. So it had been Jim all the time and not a woman! Jim, who had been supporting his prejudices by these contemptible tricks. Her anger was unreasonable, but it was very real and born of the shock of disillusionment. She remembered in a flash how sympathetic Jim had been when she told him of the midnight visitor and how he had pretended to be puzzled. So he was fooling her all the time. It was hateful of him!
“I think you had better go,” she said coldly.
“Let me explain, Eunice.”
“I don’t think any explanation is necessary,” she said. “Really, Jim, it is despicable of you.”
She went back to her room with a wildly beating heart. She could have wept for vexation. Jim! He was the mysterious blue hand, she thought indignantly, and he had made a laughingstock of her! Probably he was the writer of the letters, too, and had been in her room that night. She stamped her foot in her anger. She hated him for deceiving her. She hated him for shattering the idol she had set up in her heart. She had never felt so unutterably miserable as she was when she flung herself on her bed and wept until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
“Damn!” muttered Jim as he slipped out of the house and strode in search of his muddy little car. An unprofitable evening had ended tragically.
“Bungling, heavy-footed jackass,” he growled savagely, as he spun perilously round a corner and nearly into a taxicab which had ventured to the wrong side of the road. But he was not cursing the cabdriver. It was his own stupidity which had led him to test the key which had made a remarkable appearance on his table the night before. He had gone on to the balcony, merely to examine the fastenings of the girl’s window, with the idea
