“I’ll never believe it.” Jack’s face was set and his grey eyes regarded her steadily. “You are not the kind who would indulge in petty pilfering.”
She looked at him for a long time, and then turned her eyes to the inspector.
“You may be able to undeceive Mr. Beardmore,” she said. “I am afraid I cannot.”
“Where are you going?” he asked as, with a little nod, she was passing on.
“I am going home,” she replied. “Please don’t come with me, Mr. Beardmore.”
“But you have no home.”
“I have a lodging,” she said with a hint of impatience.
“Then I am going with you,” he said doggedly.
She did not make any remonstrance, and they passed from the court together into the busy street. No word was spoken until they reached the entrance of a tube station.
“Now I must go home,” she said more gently than before.
“But what are you going to do?” he demanded. “How are you going to get your living with this terrible charge against you?”
“Is it so terrible?” she asked coolly. She was walking into the station entrance when he took her arm and swung her round with almost savage violence.
“Now listen to me, Thalia,” he said between his teeth. “I love you and I want to marry you. I haven’t told you that before, but you’ve guessed it. I am not going to allow you to go out of my life. Do you understand that? I do not believe that you are a thief and—”
Very gently she disengaged his grip.
“Mr. Beardmore,” she said in a low voice, “you are just being quixotic and foolish! You have told me what you will not allow, and I tell you that I am not going to allow you to ruin your life through your infatuation for a convicted thief. You know nothing of me except that I am a seemingly nice girl whom you met by accident in the country, and it is my duty to be your mother and your maiden aunt.” There was a glint of amusement in her eye as she took his offered hand. “Some day perhaps we shall meet again, and by that time the glamour of romance will have worn off. Goodbye.”
She had disappeared into the booking hall before he could find his voice.
X
The Summons of the Crimson Circle
Thalia Drummond went back to the lodging she had occupied before she had entered Mr. Harvey Froyant’s service as resident secretary, and apparently the story of her ill-deeds had preceded her, for the stout landlady gave her a chilly welcome, and had she not continued to pay the rent of her one room during the time she was working for Froyant, it was probable that she would not have been admitted.
It was a small room, neatly if plainly furnished, and oblivious to the landlady’s glum face and cold reception, she went to her apartment and locked the door behind her. She had spent a very unpleasant week, for she had been remanded in custody, and her very clothes seemed to exhale the musty odour of Holloway Gaol. Holloway, however, had an advantage which No. 14, Lexington Street, did not possess. It had an admirable system of bathrooms, for which the girl was truly grateful as she began to change.
She had plenty to occupy her mind. Harvey Froyant … Jack Beardmore … she frowned as though at a distasteful thought, and tried to dismiss him from her mind. It was a relief to go back to Froyant. She almost hated him. She certainly despised him. The time she had spent in his house had been the most wretched period in her life. She had taken her meals with the servants and had been conscious that every scrap of food she ate had been measured and weighed and duly apportioned by a man whose cheque for seven figures would have been honoured.
“At least, he didn’t make love to you, my dear,” she said to herself, and smiled. Somehow she couldn’t imagine Harvey Froyant making love to anybody. She recalled the days she had followed him about his big house with a notebook in her hand, whilst he searched for evidence of his servants’ neglect, drawing his fingers along the polished shelves in the library in a vain search for dust, turning up carpet corners, examining silver, or else counting, as he did regularly every week, the contents of his still-room.
He measured the wine at table and counted the empty bottles, even the corks. It was his boast that in his big garden he could tell the absence of a flower. These he sent to market regularly, with the vegetables he grew and the peaches which ripened on the wall, and woe betide the unlucky gardener who had poached so much as a ripe apple from the orchard, for Harvey had an uncanny instinct which led him to the rifled tree.
She smiled a little wryly at the recollection, and, having completed her change of costume, she went out, locking the door behind her. Her landlady watched her pass down the street, and nodded ominously.
“Your lodger’s come back,” said a neighbour.
“Yes, she’s come back,” said the woman grimly. “A nice lady she is—I don’t think! It is the first time I’ve ever had a crook in my house, and it’ll be the last. I am giving her notice tonight.”
Unconscious of the criticism, Thalia boarded a bus which took her into the city. She got down in Fleet Street, went into the large office of a popular newspaper. At the desk she took an advertisement form, looked at the white sheet for a moment thoughtfully, then wrote:
Secretary.—Young lady from the Colonies requires post as Secretary. Resident-Secretary preferred. Small wages required. Shorthand and Typewriting.
She left a space for the box number, handed the advertisement across the counter, and paid the fee.
She was back again in Lexington Street in time for
