She enjoyed the services of one who was charlady in the morning and maid in the afternoon, and only to this unemotional lady was the real Greta ever revealed.
Mrs. Gurden lay in bed with a bandaged leg, and between terror that memory brought, fear of blood-poisoning and its horrible consequences (amongst other duties she contributed the health notes to Mayfair Gossip), anger at the inaction which her wound imposed, and irritation with the world in general, she was a difficult patient.
Greta could not afford to neglect her daily duty to herself. Her face was indistinguishable under a mud pack, designed to preserve the face from the ravages of age, and her hands were enclosed in complexion gloves. Two dark eyes glared oddly from the mask of grey, and she spoke with some difficulty, due to the dried earth that plastered her cheeks. Just now she had an additional reason for annoyance.
“Tell her I can’t see her and I won’t see her—tell her to come back at twelve o’clock.”
“She’s from Scotland Yard, ma’am.”
“I don’t care, I won’t see her.”
The obedient charlady disappeared into the outer room. Greta heard the murmur of voices, and after a while the woman came back.
“She says she’ll wait till you’re ready. She wants to know how you hurt your leg.”
Greta had no need to stifle her fury: a sudden panic descended upon her.
“Bring me some hot water—”
It took some time to remove the renovating mud, a little longer time to substitute perfumed creams and powder. A brief glimpse through an open door had revealed to Leslie Maughan the cause of the delay. She waited patiently, being a woman having some sympathy with woman’s losing fight against the ravages of time and care. When at length she was admitted, it was the old Greta who smiled ecstatically.
“My dear! How wonderfully good of you to come! So sweet of you! I was so hoping that I should have another opportunity of meeting you. The Princess is rather difficult, isn’t she? I did so want to have a little chat with you the last time we met. I admire your style awfully. Won’t you sit down somewhere? Yes, I’ve had an awful accident. I was cleaning my husband’s pistol and it went off, but fortunately no bones were broken.”
“Where did this happen?”
It was on the tip of Greta’s tongue to say “here,” but she thought better of it.
“At a country house where I was staying for the weekend. People are so careless. Imagine leaving a pistol loaded! I nearly died of fright!”
“What country house was this?” asked Leslie.
Greta knit her brows.
“What was the name of the place?—I don’t know the people very well. Somewhere in Berkshire.”
“Was your husband there, Mrs. Gurden?”
“Er—no—but he had been staying at the place; left his box behind. I was rummaging through it and found his pistol, and it looked so awfully rusty and dirty that I thought I would clean it.”
“Who else was hurt besides you?” asked Leslie quietly.
Greta shot a swift, suspicious glance at the girl.
“Nobody, thank goodness,” she said.
Leslie waited a second, then:
“Was this before or after Druze was killed?”
Under the rouge Greta’s face went suddenly grey and pinched. She sat bolt upright in bed and stared at the girl.
“Dead?” she said huskily. “Druze is dead? It’s a lie.”
“Druze is dead! She was found last night on Barnes Common—shot!”
“ ‘She’?” The woman’s forehead was puckered into lines. “ ‘She’? What are you talking about? I was speaking of Druze.”
“So was I,” said Leslie. “Druze was a woman; you know that.”
The open mouth, the wide eyes, every visible expression of amazement revealed without question Greta Gurden’s ignorance of the “butler’s” sex.
“A woman—good God!”
She sank back on the pillows, exhausted by her emotion, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. But for those wide-open pools of darkness, Leslie would have thought that the woman had fainted. Presently she spoke.
“I’ve nothing to tell you: I shot myself by accident. I know nothing about Druze—nothing. Why should I? The accident occurred when I was in the country. I won’t talk to you—I won’t.”
She almost screamed the words.
Leslie realized that it would be cruel to question her more closely; the woman was so distressed that she might have hesitated even if she had not feared the effects of a further cross-examination upon one who was in the surgeon’s hands.
“I will come along and see you when you’re a little better, Mrs. Gurden,” she said.
Greta made no answer.
As Leslie’s cab turned out of the street, it passed a big Rolls swinging round to enter the unpretentious thoroughfare, and the girl had a glimpse of the Princess. How she wished now that on some pretext or other she had stayed, that she might see the meeting between these two.
Anita Bellini mounted the stairs and, entering the apartment without knocking, summarily dismissed the charwoman, and Mrs. Hobbs, not unused to such cavalier treatment, departed meekly.
“Has Maughan been here?” she demanded, as she strode into Greta’s room.
Her eyes narrowed as she caught sight of the haggard face.
“I see she has,” she said grimly. “What did she come about?”
Greta raised herself on her elbow and pushed her pillow to support her; she was trembling so that after a second she rolled back on the pillow with a groan.
“She wanted to know how I was wounded,” she said at last.
“What did you tell her?” asked the Princess impatiently. “For Heaven’s sake, pull yourself together, my good woman! How did she know you were wounded, anyway? Did you send an announcement to the newspapers?”
“I don’t know how she knew, but she did. I told her that it was an accident, that I was cleaning
