The Red Widow: or, The Death-Dealers of London

"Am all right, dear! Do not worry. Have discovered something, but am not returning for a day or two.– GERRY."

"Is it from Mr. Boyne?" asked her aunt as she watched the girl's face.

"No. Why?" she asked.

"Because Mr. Boyne hasn't been home all night," was her aunt's reply. "I can't think what's happened to him! When I went up this morning to wake him, because I thought he had overslept himself, I found that his bed had not been slept in!"

CHAPTER XVII

"NEWS" FROM LANCASTER GATE

Marigold was naturally much puzzled.

What had her lover discovered? What did he know?

By the varying forms of the telegrams she saw that he had excused himself from the office upon a plea of illness, while really he was working in secret to elucidate the mystery of the hooded man of Hammersmith.

The fact that Boyne had been absent that night and had not yet returned, did not arouse her curiosity, for she concluded that Gerry had been following him ever since the previous evening.

She relied upon her lover's cleverness and ingenuity. The changing of his clothes showed her that he was resourceful. She admired him for it.

So she took her tea with her aunt, and afterwards laid Mr. Boyne's table in eager readiness for his return.

He came in and greeted her as cheerily as usual.

"Tell Mrs. Felmore that I expect she's been wondering where I've been all this time. But I went out to Loughton, in Essex, to see a friend last night, and I stayed there. Tell her so, Miss Marigold, will you? And now for my supper! I'm horribly hungry!"

He ate his meal, yet not by any means in the manner of a hungry man. He only toyed with it, for, a matter of fact, he had left Pont Street half an hour before, having taken leave of the Red Widow and his wife, whose faces had borne grim smiles of complete satisfaction.

That night as Marigold lay awake, unable to sleep, she became obsessed by the one idea that she ought to leave the house of mystery and return to Wimbledon Park.

Gerald, by his mysterious message to her, had evidently got upon the track of something, therefore it was useless for her to remain any longer in that strange atmosphere of doubt and fear.

Boyne had retired, and though she remained on the alert until the first streak of dawn shone through the blinds, she heard no movement to arouse her suspicion.

Next day, when she came down into the kitchen, she told her aunt that she was returning home. So, taking her blouse-case, she left before Mr. Boyne came downstairs.

"Marigold has gone to the bank, sir," said Mrs. Felmore when she placed Boyne's coffee and kippers upon the table. "She left word that she thanks you very much for allowing her to stay here, but she couldn't encroach on your kind hospitality any longer."

"Oh!" exclaimed Boyne in surprise. "She's gone – eh?"

"Yes, sir. She went out a quarter of an hour ago. She waited to see if you came down – but she had to go."

Boyne grunted, and remarked something beneath his breath – words that the deaf woman, even with her expert lip-reading eyes, could not understand.

Marigold had slipped safely out of the way. The fact filled him with intense chagrin. What did it portend?

"At least Durrant's activity is at an end!" he growled deeply to himself. "Now we have to deal with this girl. For the present nobody can know of the whereabouts of Gerald Durrant. When they do – I hope the peril will be over!"

And he swallowed his coffee with the gusto and satisfaction of a man who had made a most complete coup, and from whose mind some great weight had been lifted.

An hour later he entered the Hammersmith Post Office and telephoned to the Red Widow.

"Any news, Ena?" he asked as he sat in one of the boxes.

"Yes. Augusta spoke to me half an hour ago. I'm going round to Lancaster Gate at eleven. She's taken ill. A pity, isn't it?"

"Sorry to hear that!" he replied in a grim voice. "I'll see you at Pont Street at seven – eh?"

"Yes. I'll run round," Ena answered. "I've just been through to Lilla. I wonder what can be the matter with poor Augusta? A chill, perhaps – eh? Poor lady! But I hope it isn't serious."

"I hope not. Good-bye for the present."

And then the honest, hard-working collector of insurance premiums of the poor of Hammersmith went forth upon his daily round, trudging from street to street, knocking or ringing at the doors of the insured.

He made a call in Dalling Road, just beyond the railway arch, and then, proceeding up the thoroughfare, consulted his pocket account-book. Close to Chiswick High Road he made a further call, where he signed the book for the weekly premium.

Presently he halted at a small and very poor-looking house in the Devonport Road, a turning off the Goldhawk Road, where he rang at the door. At the windows were curtains blackened by the London smoke, for the whole neighbourhood was one of genteel poverty, but of despair.

An ugly, but cleanly dressed old woman answered, and, seeing him, knit her brows.

"Ah! Come in, Mr. Boyne!" she said, and the collector of premiums entered.

Five minutes later he came out, the old woman following him. He was evidently not himself, for usually his was a kindly nature towards the poor. But that day his manner was rough and uncouth. Something had upset him.

"Well, I'm sorry, Mrs. Pentreath," he said in a loud voice. "But, you see, it isn't in my hands. I'm only a humble servant of the company – an ill-paid servant who gets just a living wage upon the premiums he collects. You've had time to pay, you know, and if you can't pay up this week – well, the policy must lapse. You've been given notice of it for six weeks. The company has been very lenient with you. Other companies wouldn't have been so lenient."

"But my poor Bertha! She's come home from service, and is in bed with consumption. I have to look after her and try to give her the nourishment Doctor James orders. It isn't my fault that I haven't paid you. It really isn't."

"I can't help that," replied Boyne roughly. "Your insurance policy must lapse – that's all.

"And after fifteen years that I've paid regularly each week!" exclaimed the poor woman in dismay.

"Well, it isn't my fault, I tell you. I'm not the company," was his harsh reply.

"And my poor Bertha so ill. It's cruel – it's inhuman, I say!" she shouted in a shrill voice.

Boyne only smiled grimly. He was not the kindly man of other days.

"It probably is so," he replied, turning away from the door. "But it's our insurance business; and business is business, after all!

"Yes!" retorted the poor woman. "You people are robbing the poor – that's what it is! And after fifteen years! Why, I've paid your company more in that time than what they would have paid to bury my Bertha!"

At a small house in the Loftus Road he knocked three times, and a dwarfed, red-eyed girl at last opened the door.

"Poor mother's dead, Mr. Boyne! Didn't you see the blinds?" she asked.

"Dead!" he exclaimed, looking at the little window of the sitting-room. "Get your book."