She brought to police work the keenest of woman’s wits and a queer instinct for ultimate causes that sometimes amazed and sometimes amused headquarters.
And now she was building up a new fabric, but, as she realized, on the shakiest of foundations—a little book of verse found in a Cumberland cottage.
She took it down from her shelf, a thin volume of Elizabeth Browning’s poems. On the flyleaf was an inscription and eight lines of writing in a neat hand. A stanza of free verse, and not especially good free verse. She read it for the fiftieth time.
“Do you recall
One dusky night in June
Over by Harrlow Copse,
Heart of my heart?
Ecstasy lay on your lips,
Nectar of gods was your gift—
All in ‘the kiss of one girl’
Joy and despair.”
The writer was no poet. Even as a writer of vers libre his effort left something to be desired.
She put away the book, returned to her desk, and sat for half an hour, her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed vacantly on the opposite wall. For the moment Peter Dawlish was off her hands, and though he came back again and again to her thoughts, it was not in the role of a responsibility.
She took from a drawer the tin of cigarettes she had offered him on the previous night and examined it absently. She had searched London for this brand of Egyptian cigarettes, and in the end had found them in the last place in the world she expected—Scotland Yard. The Chief Commissioner, an old Egyptian officer, imported them for his own use.
She closed the lid, found an envelope, and, addressing it to “Peter Dawlish, Esq., 104, Severall Street, London,” she enclosed the cigarettes. It was nearly dark when Lucretia brought in her tea.
“You’re not going out again tonight, miss, are you?” and when Leslie replied in the affirmative: “What about taking me with you, Miss Leslie?”
Leslie did not laugh.
“Somehow I can’t see you in the setting of a night club, Lucretia,” she said.
“I could stay outside,” insisted Lucretia stoutly. “Anyway, I’d never dream of going into a night club after what the papers say about ’em. I saw a party getting out of a car the other night—ladies! Why, miss, I could have carried all their dresses in a little bag! Disgraceful, I call it!”
Leslie laughed quietly.
“You’ve got to understand, Lucretia,” she said, “that no woman is properly dressed for dinner unless she feels comfortably nude—don’t faint!”
“Women are not what they was,” said Lucretia severely.
“That’s the devil of it, Lucretia—they are!” said Leslie.
She had only half made up her mind as to the course she should pursue. Mr. Coldwell often twitted her about her luck, but her “luck” was largely a matter of abnormal instinct, and it was in her bones that there was tragedy in the air. Suppose she saw Lady Raytham again, and this time spoke not in parables, but in plain English? It required no particular effort on Leslie’s part, for her moral equipment was free from the faintest tinge of cowardice. She had inquired that morning as to whether Lady Raytham had carried her threat into execution and had written to the Chief Commissioner, but apparently her ladyship had reconsidered her decision. Had Peter Dawlish told her of the attack which had been made upon him, and which had so surprisingly led him to Mrs. Inglethorne, she would have called at Berkeley Square before then. But Peter had been silent on the subject, and Leslie did not know till the next day of that surprising outrage.
She went to her bedroom and changed her dress; she was dining that night with Mr. Coldwell at the Ambassadors, which is sometimes called a night club by the uninitiated, but is in reality the centre of London’s smart life. Over her flimsy gown, which Lucretia never saw without closing her eyes in mental anguish, she put her heavy fur coat, slipped her shoes over a pair of rubbers, and sent Lucretia for a taxi. At a quarter-past seven she was pressing the visitors’ bell at No. 377, Berkeley Square. The door was opened almost instantly by a footman.
“Have you an appointment with her ladyship?” he asked, as he closed the door upon her.
“No, she hasn’t an appointment with her ladyship.”
Leslie turned in amazement at the sound of a loud, raucous voice. It was Druze, who had come into the hall from a door beneath the stairs. The white face was red and blotchy; his hair untidy; there was a stain on his white shirt front, and when he walked towards her his step was unsteady. He was, in point of fact, rather drunk, and Mr. Druze drunk was an exceedingly different person from Mr. Druze sober.
The whole character of the man seemed to have changed. From being a shrinking, rather fearful servitor, he had become a blustering, loud-mouthed bully of a man.
“You can get out—go on; we don’t want you!”
He advanced towards her threateningly, but the girl did not move. The second footman had withdrawn to a respectful distance, and was looking with frowning amusement at the antics of his chief.
“Do you hear what I say? Clear out! We don’t want any spying police girls round here.”
It looked as though he would use physical force to eject her, but his hand had hardly been raised when she said something in a low voice—one word. The big white hand went down; the blotchy red went out of his face, and he blinked at her like a man who was trying to swallow something that would not be swallowed. And then, looking up, she saw a resplendent figure at the head of the stairs. It was Lady Raytham.
“Come up, please.”
The voice was hard and metallic. There was neither cordiality nor welcome in it, nor did Leslie expect any such demonstration. She mounted the stairs, but before she could reach the landing Lady Raytham had turned and preceded her into the
