XIX
The days moved with leaden feet for Penelope Noelson. She had come to know every inch of space in the walled garden, and although she gazed wistfully through the iron bars of the gate again and again, no one ever came in sight. Always she felt that certain, if unobtrusive, surveillance over her every movement. The care with which she was watched was brought home to her when she took to dropping notes over the wall in the hope that they would be picked up by some stray wayfarer. Within half an hour they had been returned to her by Sophie Lengholm, with a veiled hint that she might be kept locked in her room if she persisted in trying to communicate with the outside world.
At night the great Alsatian wolfhound, of which she had caught a glimpse on the day of her arrival, patrolled the grounds. Not that that made any difference, for she knew that a key was turned in her lock every evening, although she did not know that Sophie Lengholm for reasons of her own, held the key.
Apart from these restrictions she had little to complain of but her loss of liberty. She saw strange men about the place on occasion and knew they had long interviews with Larry Hughes, but they never interfered with her. The servants were always courteous, but firmly reticent when she attempted to pump them.
Larry Hughes himself treated her with punctilious politeness on the whole, although there were passages in which the mask was lifted and she clashed with his savage and indomitable will. These episodes usually followed a repulsed attempt on his part to make love to her, and she had learned to meet them with a dignified retirement to her room.
She tried to meet her situation gracefully, but there were moments when horror had her by the throat. She was sickened by her own impotence to meet the march of an unknown destiny. Were the police seeking her as a fugitive thief? What was at the back of Larry Hughes’ mind in regard to her? One thing was certain. She could not be held indefinitely as a prisoner in this spot. She contemplated the future with dizzy apprehension.
There came a day when no man moved about the house or grounds. Sophie Lengholm met her inquiries with the grim assurance that they would be back in a little. Penelope knew that she lied. She twisted her brains for some method of using the situation to her advantage. It was a case of woman to woman only. They were alone together, save only for the big Alsatian.
Other things being equal, Penelope knew that in a hand to hand encounter she would have no chance with the elder woman. She moved with apparent aimlessness about the house and grounds seeking for something that might serve as a weapon. At last her eye fell on a short and heavy poker in the dining-room, and she tested its balance and weight critically, although with a little shudder. She knew that if she permitted herself to think she would not have resolution enough to go on with the thing that was in her mind. But it was either that, or an unresisting acquiescence in anything that might befall.
She found Mrs. Lengholm in the kitchen, and making no attempt to conceal the poker which she carried, came straight to the point.
“I want the key of the wall gate,” she said resolutely.
Sophie abandoned the table on which she was kneading dough, and brushed her fingers calmly.
“Why are you carrying that thing?” she asked imperturbably and nodded her head towards the poker which the girl was clutching with tightened fingers.
“You will let me out of this place,” declared Penelope. “I don’t want to hurt you, Mrs. Lengholm, but if you make me use force—” She moved a step towards the other woman.
Sophie’s face set, and she made an angry gesture. “Don’t be an idiot,” she remonstrated. The girl with white face and tightened lips drew another step forward. She was afraid that her resolution might weaken. It was not that she lacked courage, but to strike the other in this way seemed to her like murder. But she told herself that she had to go through with it now.
The older woman retreated, and her lips puckered in a shrill and prolonged whistle. There was the sound of something pounding fiercely along the corridor and Penelope realised her oversight. She had forgotten the dog.
She wheeled abruptly to face the snarling animal and she heard a low chuckle from Mrs. Lengholm. The thing gathered itself for a leap and Penelope flung up her arm to ward off the attack, and instinctively closed her eyes. A sharp command from Sophie checked the dog, and it squatted on its haunches regarding the girl with fierce yellow eyes.
“I don’t blame you,” said Sophie, easily, as moving back to the table she resumed kneading the dough. “In your place I would probably have tried something of the same kind. If I were you I’d go and put that thing back, and settle down. It’ll be easier for you if you are a good girl.”
Penelope’s fingers loosened, and the poker fell with a thud to the floor. There were tears of chagrin in her eyes.
“You go and lie down, and have a nice sleep, now,” went on Sophie with motherly complacency. “You haven’t so much to worry about, anyhow. No need to try and murder the only person about the place of your own sex. If I was gone, things might be so very much worse for you.”
She spoke, as it might be, to a self-willed child. There was no suspicion of resentment in her tone, but rather a tolerant assumption that any outburst by the girl was foredoomed to failure. Penelope dropped into a chair, and her grave grey eyes scrutinised the other with deliberation.
“Where is this going to end?” she asked.
Mrs. Lengholm administered a final punch to the dough before replying. “I don’t know,” she confessed mildly. “Why don’t you ask Mr. Hughes?”
“That snake! Ugh!” Penelope grimaced with conviction.
“He’s got his faults,” admitted Sophie, “but he has a great admiration for you. You could twist him round your little finger if you agreed to marry him. He’s rich, he’s good looking, he’s got culture. You’d be better off than many a princess. I know the man, miss. If he sets his mind on a thing he gets it. He gets it by fair means if he can, but he gets it anyway. I have never known him fail in anything that he set his heart upon. It would be better for you to be dead than to hope to thwart him.”
“I would rather die,” asserted Penelope.
“You think you would. That’s what the girls say in the novels. This is the real thing. You are dealing with a man who will stand at nothing. Believe me or not, Miss Noelson, I have tried to protect you. I can only go so far. If Larry Hughes takes the bit between his teeth—and he will sooner or later—there is nothing that can stop him. Take an older woman’s advice, my dear. Marry him.”
Penelope tilted her head defiantly. She had tried again and again to reach some point of intimate converse with this woman only to be met by polite formulas. Sophie Lengholm had adopted something of the neutral attitude of a warder towards a prisoner. She had confined herself to making the girl comfortable, and to seeing that she did not escape. Now, however, Penelope thought that she had penetrated her reserve.
“We are both women, Mrs. Lengholm. I don’t know what hold this man has on you, but you wouldn’t allow—”
Sophie wiped her hands on her apron. “It isn’t what I would or would not allow, my dear. I can go so far; but there might come a point when Larry Hughes would crush me without a thought, if I stood in his way. No one can help you but yourself. The easy way out is to marry him. That isn’t so terrible a thing as you fancy—unless there is someone else.”
A faint blush stained Penelope’s cheeks, which did not escape the quick eyes of the older woman. “There is no one else,” she said hurriedly, “no one at all. But you must know how I feel. Now, if you are afraid of this man, why don’t you go away? Why not come with me, now? I can’t pay you anything, but I have friends who would protect you.” She clutched impulsively at the skirts of the other who now stood near her. “Dear Mrs. Lengholm—”
Sophie shook her off, with a sudden change of manner. “I am not a sentimental child. Don’t waste any of that kind of stuff on me. Here I am, and here I stay. You’d better go and find something to amuse yourself. I’m busy.”
She turned abruptly away, and Penelope saw that further pleading would be futile. She accepted her dismissal with such philosophy as she could summon.
Most of the rest of that day she spent in her own room, Sophie without any request being made, bringing her her meals on a tray. It was towards evening that she took a stroll in the grounds, and the dullness of her thoughts was distracted by the hooting of a car at the gates. Sophie Lengholm heard it too, and moved swiftly out with the key in her hand. A minute more and Larry Hughes’ Rolls Royce had drawn within.
Hughes himself was the first to descend. There was a blood stained contusion on his face that lent it an uncommonly sinister appearance. He seemed about to say something to her, but checked himself, and turned to the others who were pouring out of the car in grim silence. He grouped himself with others to assist one man down, and Penelope saw that bloodstained handkerchiefs enwrapped one of the feet of this individual. He was assisted into the house by two of his companions, and then a woman appeared in the doorway of the car. Penelope gave a little gasp.
“Adèle!” she exclaimed.
Mrs. Gertstein gave a sharp start. The next moment, half laughing and half crying, she had flung herself into the arms of the girl.
“Oh, Pen,” she cried, and relapsed into dry sobs.
Larry Hughes turned a sour face upon them. “Take her into the house,” he ordered. “Here, Sophie, we’ve another guest for you. Give Miss Noelson a hand. And get out some brandy. We can all do with a drink.”
Penelope’s curiosity was all aflame, but for the moment she dared not ask questions. She walked with Adèle Gertstein and Sophie Lengholm into the morning-room, and there Sophie left them, returning in a little with a small glass which she forced into Mrs. Gertstein’s hands. Then again she disappeared, apparently to carry refreshments to the men in an adjoining room.
Mrs. Gertstein sipped silently, while Penelope waited till she should have somewhat recovered herself. What crisis had brought her friend to that place in Larry’s company, was a question on which she could not but hazard mental speculation. From what she knew and guessed, the notion that at last the police had hit on something near the truth occurred to her as a wild probability. Or it might be that Adèle had been abducted in much the same way as herself, as a measure of precaution by Hughes. That was the more likely. She tried to think how it might affect her own case. Did it bode good or evil for her?
As she finished the brandy, Mrs. Gertstein’s drooping shoulders straightened up, and her dull eyes brightened. She slipped off her coat and hat and threw them nonchalantly to the floor.
“Have you a cigarette, Pen?” she asked. “I’ve had the very devil of a time.”