Detectives and Young Adventurers: The Complete Short Stories

‘I do hear something. Yes, it’s footsteps behind us. Somebody else walking this way to catch the train. I wonder –’

He stopped suddenly, and stood still, and Tuppence gave a gasp.

For the curtain of mist in front of them suddenly parted in the most artificial manner, and there, not twenty feet away, a gigantic policeman suddenly appeared, as though materialised out of the fog. One minute he was not there, the next minute he was – so at least it seemed to the rather superheated imaginations of the two watchers. Then as the mist rolled back still more, a little scene appeared, as though set on a stage.

The big blue policeman, a scarlet pillar box, and on the right of the road the outlines of a white house.

‘Red, white, and blue,’ said Tommy. ‘It’s damned pictorial. Come on, Tuppence, there’s nothing to be afraid of.’

For, as he had already seen, the policeman was a real policeman. And, moreover, he was not nearly so gigantic as he had at first seemed looming up out of the mist.

But as they started forward, footsteps came from behind them. A man passed them, hurrying along. He turned in at the gate of the white house, ascended the steps, and beat a deafening tattoo upon the knocker. He was admitted just as they reached the spot where the policeman was standing staring after him.

‘There’s a gentleman seems to be in a hurry,’ commented the policeman.

He spoke in a slow reflective voice, as one whose thoughts took some time to mature.

‘He’s the sort of gentleman always would be in a hurry,’ remarked Tommy.

The policeman’s stare, slow and rather suspicious, came round to rest on his face.

‘Friend of yours?’ he demanded, and there was distinct suspicion now in his voice.

‘No,’ said Tommy. ‘He’s not a friend of mine, but I happen to know who he is. Name of Reilly.’

‘Ah!’ said the policeman. ‘Well, I’d better be getting along.’

‘Can you tell me where the White House is?’ asked Tommy.

The constable jerked his head sideways.

‘This is it. Mrs Honeycott’s.’ He paused, and added, evidently with the idea of giving them valuable information, ‘Nervous party. Always suspecting burglars is around. Always asking me to have a look around the place. Middle-aged women get like that.’

‘Middle-aged, eh?’ said Tommy. ‘Do you happen to know if there’s a young lady staying there?’

‘A young lady,’ said the policeman, ruminating. ‘A young lady. No, I can’t say I know anything about that.’

‘She mayn’t be staying here, Tommy,’ said Tuppence. ‘And anyway, she mayn’t be here yet. She could only have started just before we did.’

‘Ah!’ said the policeman suddenly. ‘Now that I call it to mind, a young lady did go in at this gate. I saw her as I was coming up the road. About three or four minutes ago it might be.’

‘With ermine furs on?’ asked Tuppence eagerly.

‘She had some kind of white rabbit round her throat,’ admitted the policeman.

Tuppence smiled. The policeman went on in the direction from which they had just come, and they prepared to enter the gate of the White House.

Suddenly, a faint, muffled cry sounded from inside the house, and almost immediately afterwards the front door opened and James Reilly came rushing down the steps. His face was white and twisted, and his eyes glared in front of him unseeingly. He staggered like a drunken man.

He passed Tommy and Tuppence as though he did not see them, muttering to himself with a kind of dreadful repetition.

‘My God! My God! Oh, my God!’

He clutched at the gatepost, as though to steady himself, and then, as though animated by sudden panic, he raced off down the road as hard as he could go in the opposite direction from that taken by the policeman.

Tommy and Tuppence stared at each other in bewilderment.

‘Well,’ said Tommy, ‘something’s happened in that house to scare our friend Reilly pretty badly.’

Tuppence drew her finger absently across the gatepost.

‘He must have put his hand on some wet red paint somewhere,’ she said idly.

‘H’m,’ said Tommy. ‘I think we’d better go inside rather quickly. I don’t understand this business.’

In the doorway of the house a white-capped maid-servant was standing, almost speechless with indignation.

‘Did you ever see the likes of that now, Father,’ she burst out, as Tommy ascended the steps. ‘That fellow comes here, asks for the young lady, rushes upstairs without how or by your leave. She lets out a screech like a wild cat – and what wonder, poor pretty dear, and straightaway he comes rushing down again, with the white face on him, like one who’s seen a ghost. What will be the meaning of it all?’

‘Who are you talking with at the front door, Ellen?’ demanded a sharp voice from the interior of the hall.

‘Here’s Missus,’ said Ellen, somewhat unnecessarily.

She drew back, and Tommy found himself confronting a grey-haired, middle-aged woman, with frosty blue eyes imperfectly concealed by pince-nez, and a spare figure clad in black with bugle trimming.

‘Mrs Honeycott?’ said Tommy. ‘I came here to see Miss Glen.’

‘Mrs Honeycott gave him a sharp glance, then went on to Tuppence and took in every detail of her appearance.

‘Oh, you did, did you?’ she said. ‘Well, you’d better come inside.’

She led the way into the hall and along it into a room at the back of the house, facing on the garden. It was a fair-sized room, but looked smaller than it was, owing to the large amount of chairs and tables crowded into it. A big fire burned in the grate, and a chintz-covered sofa stood at one side of it. The wallpaper was a small grey stripe with a festoon of roses round the top. Quantities of engravings and oil paintings covered the walls.

It was a room almost impossible to associate with the expensive personality of Miss Gilda Glen.

‘Sit down,’ said Mrs Honeycott. ‘To begin with, you’ll excuse me if I say I don’t hold with the Roman Catholic religion. Never did I think to see a Roman Catholic priest in my house. But if Gilda’s gone over to the Scarlet Woman, it’s only what’s to be expected in a life like hers – and I dare say it might be worse. She mightn’t have any religion at all. I should think more of Roman Catholics if their priests were married – I always speak my mind. And to think of those convents – quantities of beautiful young girls shut up there, and no one knowing what becomes of them – well, it won’t bear thinking about.’

Mrs Honeycott came to a full stop, and drew a deep breath.

Without entering upon a defence of the celibacy of the priesthood or the other controversial points touched upon, Tommy went straight to the point.

‘I understand, Mrs Honeycott, that Miss Glen is in this house.’

‘She is. Mind you, I don’t approve. Marriage is marriage and your husband’s your husband. As you make your bed, so you must lie on it.’

‘I don’t quite understand –’ began Tommy, bewildered.

‘I thought as much. That’s the reason I brought you in here. You can go up to Gilda after I’ve spoken my mind. She came to me – after all these years, think of it! – and asked me to help her. Wanted me to see this man and persuade him to agree to a divorce. I told her straight out I’d have nothing whatever to do with it. Divorce is sinful. But I couldn’t refuse my own sister shelter in my house, could I now?’