He strode up the gravelled drive. No light showed in any window; even the transom above the massive front door was lifeless. He pulled the bell and the faint clang of it came back to him. After a long time he heard the rattle of chains, the shooting back of a bolt, and a faint light was reflected behind the fanlight. The door was opened a few inches by a very old man with dirty white hair and wearing the slovenly uniform of a footman. Peter saw that the longer chain was still fastened to the door, and that the aperture was not big enough to squeeze through.
“You’re Simms, aren’t you?” He remembered the ancient. “I want to see the Princess.”
The old man made the grimace that Peter remembered.
“You can’t see the Princess; she’s not at home,” he said, in a loud, cracked voice.
“Tell her Peter Dawlish wishes to see her, and if she will not let me in she can come to the door,” he said.
He was not prepared to have the door slammed in his face, yet that was what happened. He waited for five minutes, and then he heard the lock turn. This time he saw Anita. She wore a long green dress, smothered as usual with beading which glittered in the dim hall light.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I want to speak to you privately.”
“This is as private an interview as you’ll get,” she said coolly.
The reflection of the hall light on her monocle produced an eerie illusion. It was as though she was glaring at him with one malignant, golden eye.
“What do you want?” she repeated. “If it’s money, you can’t have it. This is not a charitable institution or a home for convicts.”
In the pause that followed he made a mental calculation as to the strength of the chain that held him from admission. He might at a pinch break it and force an entrance—he was prepared to go to any mad lengths to get the information he sought.
“Where is my child?” he asked.
Not a muscle of the big face moved.
“I didn’t know you’d been raising a family. Surely I’m the last person in the world to be acquainted with your vicarious progeny.”
“Where is Jane’s child? Perhaps you’ll understand that.”
She had been taken aback by the first question, he was sure. The length of time that elapsed before she answered betrayed her.
“So you know that, do you? The child? I’m afraid I can’t tell you. I have something better to do than to keep track of the indiscretions of my friends, and certainly I do not concern myself with the bastards of convicted forgers.”
“You lie,” said Peter quietly. “You know I was married to Jane.”
Anita Bellini chuckled.
“The marriage was illegal—didn’t you know that? You didn’t comply with certain formalities—”
“I have seen Jane tonight. She has no doubt about its legality. Where is my son?”
“Where you will never find him.” All the pent-up malignity of the woman suddenly took expression. Her face, never attractive, was contorted by rage to an appearance that was almost ludicrous. “Where you will never find him! In the slime and the mud where his father belongs—dead, I hope!”
A sudden insane fury possessed him. He was scarcely human, saw the hateful face of this woman through a redness, and flung himself against the door. It jerked back with a crash and suddenly flew open. The chain was broken.
To him she was no longer a woman, but some obscene devil that had taken human shape. He wanted to kill her, to grip that big throat and choke the life out of her. As the chain broke, she stepped back, and he found himself looking into the black muzzle of a pistol.
“Don’t move,” she said gratingly. “Don’t move, Peter Dawlish. I am justified in shooting you in defence of my life.”
She did not see his hand move. The pistol was struck down from her grip and fell with a clatter on the floor, and, in his mad anger, with murder in his heart, his hand was outflung. Then somebody called him.
“Peter!”
At the sound of the voice his arm dropped, paralyzed with amazement. A woman was in the hall; she had come out of a room at the foot of the broad stairway; a woman in black silk, white-haired, hard-faced—it was his mother!
“Come in here.”
She pointed to the open door of the room, and he walked past her without another glance at Anita Bellini—shrinking back against the wall, frightened for the first time in her life.
It was a small study furnished in the Oriental fashion; there was a great silken divan, and a shaded lantern hung from the ceiling. Something more modern he saw; a telephone on the tiny octagonal table. The receiver was off; he had interrupted her in the act of telephoning.
“What is the meaning of this?”
Mrs. Dawlish had assumed the old pontifical air that he knew so well and detested so much.
He was still shaking, but he was calmer.
“I presume you don’t need to be told—you must have heard. I came to your friend—”
“To the Princess Bellini,” interrupted the woman. “Yes?”
“—to discover where was my child.”
“Really?” The grey eyebrows rose, “I was not aware that I was a grandmother.”
The old devil rose again in him.
“Then your hearing is affected,” he said harshly. “You know—of course you know! The whole damned gang of you know! You know about Jane, you know about my marriage, you know about the child. Perhaps you know where he is.”
And then, to add to the fire of his fury, he saw her smile.
“You have always been a fool, Peter. I suppose you will be a fool to the end of your days,” she said. “You had better go back
