“She’s giving me trouble,” he said in a low voice, relating what had happened.
He heard his father’s click of annoyance and hastened to excuse his own precipitancy.
“She had to know sooner or later.”
“You’re a fool,” snarled the old man. “Why couldn’t you leave it?”
“You’ve got to cover me here,” said Jeff urgently. “If she phones to Peter, there is going to be trouble. And Johnny—”
“Don’t worry about Johnny,” said Emanuel Legge unpleasantly. “There will be no kick coming from him.”
He did not offer any explanation, and Jeff was too relieved by the assurance in his father’s voice to question him on the subject.
“Take a look at the keyhole,” said Emanuel, “and tell me if the key’s in the lock. Anyway, I’ll send you a couple of tools, and you’ll open that door in two jiffs—but you’ve got to wait until the middle of the night, when she’s asleep.”
Half an hour later a small package arrived by district messenger, and Jeffrey, cutting the sealed cord, opened the little box and picked out two curiously wrought instruments. For an hour he practised on the door of the second bedroom leading from the saloon, and succeeded in turning the key from the reverse side. Toward dinnertime he heard voices in Marney’s bedroom, and, creeping to the door, listened. It was the Welsh woman, and there came to his ears the clatter of plates and cutlery, and he smiled.
He had hardly got back to his chair and his newspaper when the telephone bell rang. It was the reception clerk.
“There’s a lady to see you. She asked if you’d come down. She says it is very important.”
“Who is it?” asked Jeffrey, frowning.
“Miss Lila.”
“Lila!” He hesitated. “Send her up, please,” he said, and drew a heavy velvet curtain across the door of Marney’s room.
At the first sight of Peter Kane’s maid he knew that she had left Horsham in a hurry. Under the light coat she wore he saw the white collar of her uniform.
“What’s the trouble with you, Lila?” he asked.
“Where is Marney?” she asked.
He nodded to the curtained room.
“Have you locked her in?”
“To be exact, she locked herself in,” said Jeff with a twisted smile.
The eyes of the woman narrowed.
“Oh, it’s like that, is it?” she asked harshly. “You haven’t lost much time, Jeff.”
“Don’t get silly ideas in your nut,” he said coolly. “I told her who I was, and there was a row—that’s all there is to it. Now, what’s the trouble?”
“Peter Kane’s left Horsham with a gun in his pocket, that’s all,” she said, and Jeffrey paled.
“Sit down and tell me just what you mean.”
“After you’d gone I went up to my room, because I was feeling mighty bad,” she said. “I’ve got my feelings, and there isn’t a woman breathing that can see a man go away with another girl—”
“Cut out all the sentiment and let’s get right down to the facts,” commanded Jeff.
“I’ll tell it in my own way if you don’t mind, Jeffrey Legge,” said Lila.
“Well, get on with it,” he said impatiently.
“I wasn’t there long before I heard Peter in his room—it is underneath mine—and he was talking to himself. I guess curiosity got the better of my worry, and I went down and listened. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and so I opened the door of his room a little bit. He had just changed. The moment I went in he was slipping the magazine in the butt of a Browning—I saw him put it in his coat pocket, and then I went downstairs. After a while he came down too, and, Jeff, I didn’t like the look of his face. It was all grey and pinched, and if ever I saw a devil in a man’s eyes I saw it in Peter Kane’s. I heard him order the car, and then I went down into the kitchen, thinking he was going at once. But he didn’t leave for about half an hour.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was in his own room, writing. I don’t know what he was writing, because he always uses a black blotting-pad. He must have written a lot, because I know there were half a dozen sheets of stationery in the rack, and when I went in after he’d left they had all gone. There was nothing torn up in the wastepaper basket, and he’d burnt nothing, so he must have taken all the stuff with him. I tried to get you on the phone, but you hadn’t arrived, and I decided to come up.”
“How did you come up—by train or car?”
“By taxi. There wasn’t a train for nearly two hours.”
“You didn’t overtake Peter by any chance?”
She shook her head.
“I wouldn’t. He was driving himself; his machine is a Spanz, and it moves!”
Jeff bit his nails.
“That gun of Peter’s worries me a little,” he said after a while, “because he isn’t a gunman. Wait.”
He took up the telephone and again called his father, and in a few words conveyed the story which Lila had brought.
“You’ll have to cover me now,” he said anxiously. “Peter knows.”
A long pause.
“Johnny must have told him. I didn’t dream he would,” said Emanuel. “Keep to the hotel, and don’t go out. I’ll have a couple of boys watching both entrances, and if Peter shows his nose in Pall Mall he’s going to be hurt.”
Jeff hung up the receiver slowly and turned to the girl. “Thank you, Lila. That’s all you can do for me.”
“It is not all you can do for me,” said Lila. “Jeff, what is going to happen now? I’ve tried to pin you down, but you’re a little too shifty for me. You told me that this was going to be one of those high-class platonic marriages which figure in the divorce courts, and, Jeff, I’m beginning to doubt.”
“Then you’re a wise woman,”
