Greta Gurden sat bolt upright, shivering with triumph, yet with a sinking sense of terror at what the morrow would bring forth. She had charred her boats, but she had not burnt them. Her shaking hand grabbed the telephone.
“Put me on to Scotland Yard,” she said.
She heard the weary sigh of the operator.
“Is Scotland Yard blessed with a number?” she asked.
Greta hung up the phone and looked round in search of the directory. But apparently Scotland Yard had no number, nor did there seem to be such a place on the face of the earth. She was to learn later that the official designation was New Scotland Yard, but she did not dream of looking under the N’s. And then she remembered one Leslie Maughan, and the M’s yielded a good result. She waited for a while after she had given the number, and then:
“Yes. I want to speak to you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Gurden.”
Greta started.
“How did you know?”
She heard a laugh.
“I always remember voices, especially nice voices like yours,” said the mendacious young lady from Scotland Yard.
“I want to see you very much—very badly, I mean—tremendously.”
“In fact, you want to see me,” said Leslie. “I’ll come along.”
It required some persuasion to induce Lucretia to wait for the arrival of Mr. Coldwell.
“Very well, then,” said Leslie patiently, “wait in the street. You’ll catch your death of cold, but I don’t suppose that will worry you very much. You might even hobnob with a policeman. I trust you.”
“I should jolly well say you did!” said the indignant Lucretia.
She compromised by sitting on the baggage in the passage, the door being propped open with a weight. She found it a little more draughty than the street.
Greta’s boats seemed a little more burnt than she could have desired when she surveyed the desolation just before Leslie’s arrival. She had little stamina for quarrelling, and already her mind was a confusion of fear and penitence when Mrs. Hobbs, who had returned for her evening duties, showed the girl into the dining-room.
“It’s awfully good of you to come.” Greta was her conventional self, grabbed the girl’s hand in both of hers, used that old and artless trick of looking up pleadingly into her visitor’s face. “I’m so worried, my dear. The truth is, I’ve quarrelled with Anita. Definitely and finally,” she said, recovering a little of her lost ground. “The paper is dead, as you’ve probably heard—you know everything at Scotland Yard. That means I’m out of a job, though I can get one tomorrow by asking. Anita has behaved abominably. I should never have dreamt, after all I’ve been to her, the thought and care and experience I have devoted to her, as it were—do take your hat and coat off. Shall I ask the maid to make you a cup of tea?”
Leslie, secretly amused, shook her head. She guessed that the woman had changed her mind since she first sent for her. It was hardly likely that she would trouble to telephone about one of those quarrels which, if her information was accurate, were not an infrequent occurrence between Greta Gurden and the Princess.
“Of course, I’ve nothing to tell you that would harm Anita.” Mrs. Gurden planted one foot firmly on shore, and prepared, figuratively, to splash the waves of her venom with the other. “But she’s so peculiar—and such a temper! I shouldn’t be surprised if she goes off in a fit of apoplexy one of these days.”
“What is her trouble now?”
Greta could tell her this much, she decided, without disloyalty to her late employer. The very thought that she was “late” filled her with dismay.
“She wanted me to go to Wimbledon to stay there for a month, and I hate the place—I simply loath it! I’m rather temperamental; I suppose all artists are—I mean, artists and literary people. And May Towers gives me the horrors. And, of course, she was terribly rude to me, in spite of the fact that I am far from well and my leg aches excruciatingly. Anita is the most unreasonable person. You’ve no idea, Miss Maughan. Of course, we quarrelled, and I simply told her that I’d have no more to do with her. And then she made a fearful scene because I asked old Dr. Wesley to come up and see me and tell me whether I was fit to be moved. She practically cursed me for calling him. Really, I thought she was going mad. And he’s such a dear old soul—awfully talkative, of course, but a perfect gentleman, and a kind man. Why, do you know, he was with Mr. Dawlish for the last twenty-four hours of his life—never left his side, my dear, hoping he’d regain consciousness—so kind!”
Leslie was sitting at the other side of the table, her hands folded patiently, waiting for the real story to come. Now she leaned forward, her eyes upon the woman’s face.
“Dr. Wesley? Was he the Dawlishes’ doctor?”
“A very charming old man, but awfully fond of Mr. Dawlish. Except for six hours just before his death, he was with old Mr. Dawlish for a whole day and a night—never left his side.”
Leslie hardly heard the next five minutes’ complaint, but when she came to bring her understanding to bear upon her hostess, Greta was not much nearer to the reason for her telephone message.
“… if anything comes out I can always say, and Anita must bear me out, that I never knew this wretched man was a woman. The first thing I saw was Anita and this man struggling, and I wanted to send for the police. And then those wretched men came in and tried to drag the pistol out of Druze’s hand—her hand, I mean, Druze’s hand. And there was I, lying on a sofa—fainted, my dear, and with simply not a notion in the world that I was wounded—it may sound strange to you, but it is true. When I
