She was a surprising woman, for without warning, she came back to the offer she had made to him.
“You would be well advised to go to Canada or Australia, or any other place that takes your fancy,” she said, and went on in a conversational tone to discuss the advantages which might accrue.
He was puzzled. Then it occurred to him that she was talking to gain time—for what? His back had been to the door, and now he edged round until it was under his view. But if Anita Bellini contemplated any treachery, there was no visible or audible evidence.
He heard the front door bell ring, and an exchange of voices in the hall, and then the door opened, and two men entered, and it was not necessary that he should be very experienced in such matters to realize that they were detectives. His mother’s narrative stopped automatically. Her white, skinny finger pointed to him.
“This man is Peter Dawlish—an ex-convict!” she said. “I charge him with threatening to murder my friend, Princess Anita Bellini.”
A quarter of an hour after, the taxicab which Peter had employed to bring him to Wimbledon deposited him at the police station, and he was sitting, dazed and wrathful, behind the locked door of a police cell.
XIV
“I can’t believe it.”
Leslie stared at the inspector.
“His own mother charged him? How monstrous!”
Mr. Coldwell had reached an age where it was almost impossible to surprise him.
“Queer, isn’t it? But, Lord bless you, mothers do rum things! I’ve known cases—but you’ve heard about ’em too, Leslie. Peter went down to Wimbledon to raise hell for some reason or other. It appears his mother had heard the fuss he was making at the door and telephoned for the police before he broke in. It might have been bad for him if he were a convict on licence, but fortunately he’s time-expired, and he has only to say that it was a family quarrel to get bound over. I don’t think he will be called upon for a defence, anyway.”
Leslie Maughan nibbled at the end of her glove, a devastating habit of hers in moments of perturbation.
“I really can’t believe it, though, of course, it must have happened. What was his mother doing down there? And why on earth did Peter do such a mad thing?”
Coldwell smiled.
“Go down and ask him,” he said. “I’ll give you a note to the inspector, and you might have a few minutes’ talk with him before he appears in court. It is very unlikely that they will remand him to Brixton. If the Princess has got horse sense she will get him acquitted. Mrs. Dawlish is pretty sick and sorry that she allowed herself to charge him. I can tell you that because, as soon as I heard about the case, I phoned up the station and the sergeant in charge told me that Mrs. Dawlish came to the police station at seven o’clock this morning to see if she could get her name taken out of the record. She’d allowed her spite to lead her astray, and she knows that when it comes into court, the story of a mother charging her son is going to make a pretty big newspaper sensation. That is why I think that the charge may be withdrawn.”
When Leslie reached the police station she found that Peter had been transferred to the cells adjoining the court, and her own card was sufficient to obtain an interview. He met her with a rueful smile.
“You see me again in my natural environment,” he said cheerfully.
“Why did you go to Bellini’s?”
“I wanted to learn something,” he said, and he would not explain any more.
She told him of the inspector’s prophecy, but he seemed careless as to whether the charge would be supported.
“It was certainly a facer,” he said. “I didn’t expect my mother to take that line. I suppose until then I had not realized how bitterly she hated me. They may go on with the charge, knowing that, in any circumstances, I should not tell what brought me to Wimbledon.”
She did not press him for any further particulars. The interview took place in the passage adjoining the court; policemen and prisoners were passing every few seconds, and the conditions were not favourable to confidences. She told him of her own alarming experience, and when she had finished he whistled.
“That explains everything—the chain on the door and old Simms being on guard. I never saw the old devil again after I broke in.”
She made no attempt to hide her astonishment.
“I don’t see why a chain on Anita Bellini’s door explains a little yellow man in my rooms,” she said.
“It does—most emphatically.”
Just then his name was called by the court usher, and she followed him into court. Peter had hardly been put in the steel pen when the detective-sergeant who had arrested him stood up and addressed the Bench.
“This case, your Worship, arose from a visit which the prisoner paid to the house of the Princess Anita Bellini last night. The prisoner, who is a very distant relative of the Princess’, had some sort of grievance, and the argument became so heated that her Highness was compelled to telephone for the police. The Princess has no wish to prosecute the prisoner in the circumstances, or to bring a family quarrel into court, and in these circumstances I don’t propose to produce any evidence, your Worship.”
“But the charge is attempted murder,” said the presiding magistrate.
“The charge was only taken last night,” explained the detective, “and it was the intention of the police to ask for a remand. But the Princess has modified her statement, and I am advised that a conviction could not follow on the evidence that she would offer. In those circumstances, I ask your Worship to discharge
