Like one in a dream she walked slowly from the room, through the hall, and into the open.
Raphael Willings’s car was drawn up some distance from the front of the house, and the chauffeur had left it unattended.
She looked round; there was nobody in sight; then all her energies awakened, and she sprang into the driver’s seat and pressed the plug of the starter. With a whine and a splutter the engines started up, and she sent the car flying down the drive—but here was an obstacle. The iron gates at the end were closed, and she remembered that the chauffeur had had to get down to unlock them. There was no time to be lost. She backed the car, then sent it full speed at the gates. There was a smashing of glass, a crash as the gates broke, and she was in the road with a damaged radiator, lamps twisted beyond recognition, and a mudguard that hung in shreds. But the car was moving, and she set it spinning in the direction of London.
The hall porter of the flats in which she lived did not recognise her, she looked so wild and changed.
“Aren’t you well, miss?” he asked as he took her up in the lift.
She shook her head.
Once behind the door of her flat she went straight to the telephone and gave a number, and to the man who answered, she poured forth such a wild, incoherent story, a story so punctuated by sobs, that he found it difficult to discover exactly what had happened.
“I’m through, I’m through,” she gasped. “I can do no more! I will do no more! It was horrible, horrible!”
She hung up the receiver, and staggered to her room, feeling that she was going to faint unless she took tight hold of herself; hours passed before she was normal.
And it was in that condition that Mr. Derrick Yale found her when he called that evening—her old calm, insolent self.
“This is an unexpected honour,” she said coolly, “and who is your friend?”
She looked at the man who was standing behind Yale.
“Thalia Drummond,” said Yale sternly. “I have a warrant for your arrest.”
“Again?” she raised her eyebrows. “I seem always to be in the hands of the police. What is the charge?”
“Attempted murder,” said Yale. “The attempted murder of Mr. Raphael Willings. I caution you that what you now say may be taken down, and used in evidence against you.”
The second man stepped forward and took her arm.
Thalia Drummond spent that night in the cells of Marylebone Police Station.
XXXIX
A Prison Diet
“As to what happened, I have yet to learn,” said Derrick Yale to a silent but attentive Inspector Parr. “I arrived at Onslow Gardens just after Willings had taken the girl away. The servants at the house were rather reluctant about giving me information, but I soon discovered that she had been taken to Willings’s house in the country. Whether she enticed him or he lured her is a matter for discovery. Probably he is under the impression that she went against her will. All along I have suspected Thalia Drummond as being something more than a servant of the Crimson Circle; naturally I was a little alarmed and flew off to Thetfield, arriving at the house just after she had left. She escaped in Willings’s car, smashing the lodge gates en route; by the way—that girl has got nerve.”
“How is Willings?”
“He will recover; the wound is superficial, but what is significant is the proof that the crime was premeditated. Willings only missed the dagger with which he was stabbed this afternoon, after he had left the girl alone in his armoury whilst he put on his overcoat. He thinks she must have carried it in her muff, and that, of course, is very likely. He gives me no very clear account of what were the events which immediately preceded the stabbing.”
“H’m,” said Inspector Parr. “What sort of a room was it? I mean, the room where this nearly—occurred?”
“A pretty little drawing-room communicating with what Willings calls his Turkish room. It is a marvellous replica of an Eastern interior, and I should imagine the scene of more or less disreputable happenings—Willings hasn’t the best of reputations. It is only separated from the drawing-room by a curtain, and it was near the curtain that he was found.”
Mr. Parr was so absorbed in his meditation that his companion thought he had gone to sleep. But the inspector was not asleep; he was very wide awake. He was conscious of the appalling fact that once more whatever kudos attached to the latest of the Crimson Circle’s outrages went to his companion, and yet he did not grudge him the honour.
Without warning he delivered himself of a sentiment which seemed to have no bearing whatever upon the matter they were discussing.
“All great criminals come to grief through trifling errors of judgment,” he said oracularly.
Yale smiled.
“The error of judgment in this case, I presume, being that they didn’t kill our friend Willings—he is not a nice man, and I should imagine of all the members of the Cabinet he could best be spared. But I for one am very grateful that these devils did not get him.”
“I am not referring to Mr. Willings,” said Inspector Parr rising slowly. “I am referring to a stupid little lie told me by a man who really should have known better.”
And with this cryptic utterance, Mr. Parr went off to break the news to Jack Beardmore.
It was typical of him that Jack was the first person who came to his mind when he learnt of Thalia Drummond’s arrest. He was fond of the boy, fonder than Jack could guess, and he knew, even better than Yale, how heavily the weight of Thalia Drummond’s guilt would lie upon the man who loved her.
Jack had already received his shock. The news of the girl’s arrest had been published in the stop-press columns of the late editions, and when Parr
