“Do you know who it’s from?”
“No more than a crow, my dear,” said Knebworth patiently. “And now let’s get off the all-absorbing subject of Michael Brixan, and get back to the fair Roselle. That shot I took of the tower can’t be bettered, so I’m going to cut out the night picture, and from now on we’ll work on the lot.”
The production was a heavy one, unusually so for one of Knebworth’s; the settings more elaborate, the crowd bigger than ever he had handled since he came to England. It was not an easy day for the girl, and she was utterly fagged when she started homeward that night.
“Ain’t seen Mr. Brixan, miss?” said a high-pitched voice as she reached the sidewalk.
She turned with a start. She had forgotten the existence of the tramp.
“No, he hasn’t been,” she said. “You had better see Mr. Knebworth again. Mr. Brixan lives with him.”
“Don’t I know it? Ain’t I got all the information possible about him? I should say I had!”
“He is in London: I suppose you know that?”
“He ain’t in London,” said the other disappointedly. “If he was in London, I shouldn’t be hanging around here, should I? No, he left London yesterday. I’m going to wait till I see him.”
She was amused by his pertinacity, though it was difficult for her to be amused at anything in the state of utter weariness into which she had fallen.
Crossing the market square, she had to jump quickly to avoid being knocked down by a car which she knew was Stella Mendoza’s. Stella could be at times a little reckless, and the motto upon the golden mascot on her radiator—“Jump or Die”—held a touch of sincerity.
She was in a desperate hurry now, and cursed fluently as she swung her car to avoid the girl, whom she recognized. Sir Gregory had come to his senses, and she wanted to get at him before he lost them again. She pulled up the car with a jerk at the gates of Griff Towers, flung open the door and jumped out.
“If I don’t return in two hours, you can go into Chichester and fetch the police,” she said.
XXXII
Gregory’s Way
Stella had left a note to the same effect on her table. If she did not return by a certain hour, the police were to read the letter they would find on her mantelpiece. She had not allowed for the fact that neither note nor letter would be seen until the next morning.
To Stella Mendoza, the interview was one of the most important and vital in her life. She had purposely delayed her departure in the hope that Gregory Penne would take a more generous view of his obligations, though she had very little hope that he would change his mind on the all-important matter of money. And now, by some miracle, he had relented; had spoken to her in an almost friendly tone on the phone; had laughed at her reservations and the precautions which she promised she would take; and in the end she had overcome her natural fears.
He received her, not in his library, but in the big apartment immediately above. It was longer, for it embraced the space occupied on the lower floor by the small drawing-room; but in the matter of furnishing, it differed materially. Stella had only once been in “The Splendid Hall,” as he called it. Its vastness and darkness had frightened her, and the display which he had organized for her benefit was one of her unpleasant memories.
The big room was covered with a thick black carpet, and the floor space was unrelieved by any sign of furniture. Divans were set about, the walls covered with eastern hangings; there was a row of scarlet pillars up both sides of the room, and such light as there was came from three heavily-shaded black lanterns, which cast pools of yellow light upon the carpet but did not contribute to the gaiety of the room.
Penne was sitting cross-legged on a silken divan, his eyes watching the gyrations of a native girl as she twirled and twisted to the queer sound of native guitars played by three solemn-faced men in the darkened corner of the room. Gregory wore a suit of flaming red coloured pyjamas, and his glassy gaze and brute mouth told Stella all that she wanted to know about her evil friend.
Sir Gregory Penne was no less and no more than a slave to his appetites. Born a rich man, he had never known denial of his desires. Money had grown to money in a sort of cellular progression, and when the normal pleasures of life grew stale, and he was satiated by the sweets of his possessions, he found his chiefest satisfaction in taking that which was forbidden. The raids which his agents had made from time to time in the jungles of his second home gave him trophies, human and material, that lost their value when they were under his hand.
Stella, who had visions of becoming mistress of Griff Towers, became less attractive as she grew more complaisant. And at last her attraction had vanished, and she was no more to him than the table at which he sat.
A doctor had told him that drink would kill him—he drank the more. Liquor brought him splendid visions, precious stories that wove themselves into dazzling fabrics of dreams. It pleased him to place, in the forefront of his fuddled mind, a slip of a girl who hated him. A gross bully, an equally gross coward, he could not or would not argue a theme to its logical and unpleasant conclusion. At the end there was always his money that could be paid in smaller or larger quantities to settle all grievances against him.
The native who had conducted Stella Mendoza to the apartment had disappeared, and she waited at the end of
