Leslie Maughan! He smiled a little at the thought of her, more at his own madness. What barriers separated them—barriers more real, more invincible, than the difference between Scotland Yard and Dartmoor Prison! It was worse than madness to think about her—
The scream that brought him to his feet was shrill and charged with fear and mortal agony. In two strides he was at the door and had pulled it open.
Now he heard it plainly—the whistle and fall of a whip, the terrified, frantic cries for mercy. He ran down the stairs in the dark and tapped at Mrs. Inglethorne’s door. From inside the room came a deep, heartbreaking sound of sobbing.
“Who’s that?” asked Mrs. Inglethorne defiantly. “Go away and mind your own business!”
“Open the door, or I’ll break it open!” cried Peter in a cold fury.
“I’ll send for the police if you interfere with me!” yelled the woman.
His answer was to throw his weight against the flimsy door. The catch broke with a snap, and he was in the foul bedroom. Elizabeth lay cowering on a filthy camp bed, clad only in a coarse nightdress. Her head was pillowed in the crook of her arm, and convulsive sobs shook the thin shoulders. Her face aflame, Mrs. Inglethorne stood at the foot of a big brass bedstead, one hand holding herself steady, the other grasping an old dog-whip.
“I’ll learn her to go talking about me!” she said thickly. “After all I’ve done for her!”
There was another child there, a girl who was apparently the same age as Elizabeth. She, however, enjoyed the luxury of Mrs. Inglethorne’s ample bed, and was so used to this exhibition of the woman’s wrath that she was asleep.
“Where is your coat, Elizabeth?” asked Peter gently.
The child looked up, her eyes swollen, her face red, and cast one fearful glance at her mother.
“Whatcher goin’ to do?” asked Mrs. Inglethorne unsteadily.
“She will sleep in my room for the night,” replied Peter. “Tomorrow I will make other arrangements for her, and if you give any trouble I shall send for the police.”
Mrs. Inglethorne was amused in her way.
“Send for the police!” she scoffed. “I like that! An old lag sending for the police! And they’ll come, won’t they?”
“I think so,” said Peter quietly. “They will come, if only to discover why you never use the back room upstairs as a bedroom; why it is always kept locked, except after your visitors’ calls.”
The smile died from the woman’s face.
“As far as I’m concerned,” Peter went on, “you can ‘fence’ till the cows come home. But I’m not going to have you beating this child while I’m in the house. And when I’m out of it, and out of it for good, I’ll see that she is well looked after.”
The woman’s face was mottled with fear.
“ ‘Fence’!” she spluttered. “I don’t know what you mean by that low word! If you mean I receive stolen property, then you’re a liar!”
“Let me call the police and settle the matter,” said Peter.
The threat sobered her.
“I don’t want any police in my house. The kid annoyed me, and it’s a hard thing if a mother can’t cane her own children without being interfered with. If she wants to sleep upstairs she can, but she’d be better off down here, Mr. Dawlish. You haven’t got any accommodation for a little gel.”
Which was true.
“All right, get into bed, Elizabeth.” He covered her up with the pitifully thin bedclothes, and, without apology, took Mrs. Inglethorne’s heavy coat that lay over the bedrail and put it on top. “Sleep well,” he smiled, and patted her cheek.
She was safe for the night. What happened in the morning depended entirely on the view which Leslie Maughan took of a scheme that was beginning to take definite shape.
Mrs. Inglethorne was a fence, a buyer of stolen property. He had lived too long in association with the worst criminals of England to have any doubt upon the point, and, squinting through the keyhole one day in his curiosity, he had seen enough to remove the last remnants of doubt that remained.
He went to bed, determined to interview Leslie at the earliest opportunity, and it was not only on Elizabeth’s account that the thought pleased him.
When he arrived at the flat in Charing Cross Road next morning, Lucretia did not recognize him, and scowled fearfully at the suggestion that he should be admitted. She looked at his shabby attire and shook her head.
“It’s no good your trying to see Miss Maughan. You’d better call on her at Scotland Yard. She’s very busy now.”
“Who is it, Lucretia?”
Leslie was leaning over the rails of the landing; she could not see the visitor, but she could hear the uncompromising note in Lucretia’s voice.
“A young man wants to see you, miss. What’s your name again? Dawlish.”
“Oh, is that you, Peter Dawlish? Come up, will you?”
Peter ran up the stairs, followed by the muttered protests of the maid.
“You’re in time for breakfast. How are the envelopes going?”
“They’re melting!” he said.
He was conscious of a certain indefinable change in her tone. It was not that she was more serious, but there seemed some listlessness about her, as though she were tired. It was almost an effort to talk. She looked weary, he saw, when they passed from the dark landing, and he commented on this.
“I’ve been up half the night,” she said, “wandering about in a very cold garden, watching an elderly lady searching the ground with an electric lamp. That sounds mysterious, doesn’t it?”
She pointed to a chair and Peter sat down.
“It sounds almost romantic. Where was this?”
“At Wimbledon.” She waved the matter out of discussion. “Well,” she asked, “what brings you to West Central London at this unholy hour?”
Her grave eyes were fixed on his; there was something of reproach in them, something of hurt.
