II
This evening, thought Anthony, as he stood facing her by the open windows of the drawing-room, Laura Hoode was even less prepossessing than she had seemed on the day before. She had risen at his entry, and though the thin, sharp-featured face was calm, he somehow felt her perturbation.
She waved him to a chair. He sank into it, draping one long leg over its fellow.
“What do you want of me, Mr. Gethryn?” The voice was lifeless as the woman, and Anthony shivered. The sexless always alarmed him.
“A great deal, Miss Hoode.” In spite of his aversion his tone was blandly courteous.
“I cannot imagine—”
“Please—one moment,” said Anthony. “As you know, I came down here to Marling to find out, if possible, who killed your brother. A—”
“That task,” said the woman, “has already been performed.”
“Not quite, I think. In my opinion, young Deacon had no more to do with the murder than I. Each minute I spend in this house increases my certainty. This morning I found something I had been looking for, something that may throw a light where one is badly needed, something which you must tell me about.”
She drew herself yet more upright on her straight-backed chair.
“Mr. Gethryn,” she said, “I like neither your manner nor your manners.”
“Unfortunately,” said Anthony grimly, “neither manner nor manners matter just now. Miss Hoode, I started on this business half out of boredom, half because a friend asked me to; but now—well, I’m going to finish it.”
“But—but I don’t understand at all what you are talking about.” The woman was plainly bewildered, yet there seemed in her tone to be an uneasiness not born of bewilderment alone.
Anthony took from his breast-pocket a thick packet of letters. The paper was a deep mauve, the envelopes covered with heavy, sprawling characters. The bundle was held together by a broad ribbon, this too of deep mauve. He balanced the little bundle in the palm of his hand; then looked up to see white rage on the bony, dull face of the woman. The rage, he thought, was not unmixed with fear; but not the kind of fear he had expected.
“These,” he said, “are what I want you to explain. To explain, that is, who they are from, and why you took them from your brother’s desk and hid them again in your own room.”
She rose to her feet; moved a step forward. “You—you—” she began, and choked on the words.
Anthony stood up. “Oh, I know I’m a filthy spy. Don’t imagine that I think this private inquiry agent game is anything but noisome. It has been nasty, it will be nasty, and it is nasty, in spite of the cachet of Conan Doyle. I know, none better, that to rifle your room while you were at the inquest this morning was a filthy thing to do. I know that browbeating you now is filthier—but I’m going to find out who killed your brother.”
“It was that boy,” said the woman, white-lipped. She had fallen back into her chair.
“It was not that boy. And that’s why I shall go on thinking and spying and crawling and bullying until I find out who it really was. Now, tell me why you stole those letters.” He moved forward and stood looking down at her.
An ugly, dull flush spread over her face. She sat erect. Her colourless eyes flamed.
“You think—you dare to think I killed him?” she cried in a dreadful whisper.
Anthony shook his head. “Not necessarily. I shall know better what I think when you’ve told me what I want to know.”
“But what have those foul scratchings to do with—with John’s death?” She pointed a shaking finger at the little package in his hands.
“Nothing, everything, or just enough,” said Anthony. “You’re asking me the very questions which I want you, indirectly, to answer.”
She said: “I refuse,” and closed tightly the thin-lipped mouth.
“Must I force your hand?” he asked. “Very well. You must tell me what I want to know, because, if you don’t, I shall go to Scotland Yard, where I have some small influence, and lay these letters and the story of how I found them before the authorities. You must tell me because, if you don’t, you will lead me to believe that you do, in fact, know something of how your brother met his death. You must tell me because, if you don’t”—he paused, and looked at her until she felt the gaze of the greenish eyes set in the swarthy face to be unbearable—“because, if you don’t,” he repeated, “the contents of these letters and their implication are bound to become known to others beside you and me. You will tell me because to keep that last from happening you would do anything.”
Even as he finished speaking he knew that last shot had told, fired though it had been in the dark. The woman crumpled. And in her terror Anthony found her more human than before.
“No, no, no!” she whispered. “I’ll tell. I’ll tell.”
Anthony stood, waiting.
“Did you read those—those letters?” The words came tumbling from her lips in almost unseemly haste.
Anthony nodded assent.
“Then you must know that this woman—the Thing that wrote them was John’s—John’s—mistress.”
Again he nodded, watching curiously the emotions that supplanted each other in the nondescript face of his victim. Fear he had seen and anxiety; but now there were both these with horror, indignation, tenderness for the dead, and a fervour of distaste for anything which savoured of “loose living.” He remembered what he had been told of the lady’s rigid dissentingness, and understood.
She went on, more confidently now that she had once brought herself to speak of “unpleasantnesses” to this strange man who watched her with his strange eyes.
“You see,” she said, “nearly a year ago I found out that John was—was associating with this—this woman. I will not tell you how I found out—it is too long a story—but my discovery was accidental. I taxed my brother with his wickedness; but he was so—strange and abrupt—his manner was violent—that I had to leave him with my protest barely voiced.
“Afterwards I tried again and again to make him see the folly, the horror of the sin he was committing—but he would never listen. He would not listen to me, to me who had looked after him since he left school! And I was weak—sinfully weak—and I gave up trying to influence him and—and tried to forget what I had learnt. But those letters kept coming and then John would go away, and I—oh! what is the use—” She broke off, covering her face with her hands.
Anthony felt a growing pity; a pity irrationally the stronger for his own feeling of sympathy with the dead man in what must have been a sordid enough struggle against colourless Puritanism.
She dabbed at the red-rimmed eyes with a handkerchief and struggled on.
“There is not much more to tell you except—except that I—stole those letters for the very reason which you used to—to force me to tell you about them. It is wicked of me, but though John did sin, had been living a life of sin, I determined to keep him clean in the eyes of the world; to keep the knowledge of the evil that he did from the sordid newspapers which would delight in making public the sins of the man they are lamenting as a loss to the nation. And he is a loss to the nation. My poor brother—my poor little brother—” She leant her head against the back of her chair and wept, wept hopelessly, bitterly. The tears rolled slowly, unheeded, down the thin cheeks.
Anthony felt himself despicable. A great surge of pity—almost of tenderness—swept over him. Yet the thought of the great-bodied, greathearted, cleanly-sane man who was like to be hanged held him to his work.
“Do you know,” he asked, leaning forward, “the name of this woman?”
“Yes.” Her tone was drab, hopeless; she seemed broken. “At least, I know that which she goes by.”
Anthony waited in some bewilderment.
“She is a dancer,” said the woman, “and shameless. They call her Vanda.”
“Good God!” Anthony was startled into surprise. He was a fervent admirer, from this side the footlights, of the beautiful Russian. He reflected that politicians were not always unlucky.
He got to his feet. The woman started into life.
“The letters!” she cried. “Give me the letters!”
He handed them to her. “My only stipulation,” he said, “is that they’re not to be destroyed until I give the word.” He looked at her searchingly. “I know that you won’t attempt to be rid of them until then. And please believe, Miss Hoode, that you have my sincere sympathy, and that there will be no idle talk of what we two know.”
“Oh, I believe you,” she said wearily. “And now, I suppose you are happy. Though what good you have done Heaven alone knows!”
Anthony looked down at her. “The good I have done is this: I have added to my knowledge. I know, now, that you had nothing to do with your brother’s death. And I know there is a woman in the business and who she is. She may not be concerned either directly or indirectly, but the hackneyed French saying is often a useful principle to work on.”
The pale eyes of Laura Hoode regarded him with curiosity. He felt with surprise that she seemed every minute to grow more human.
“You are an unusual person, Mr. Gethryn,” she said. “You spy upon me and torture me—and yet I feel that I like you.” She paused; then went on: “You’ll tell me that you know that the young man Deacon did not kill my brother; you tell me that although I have behaved so suspiciously you know also that I had nothing to do with—with the crime. How do you know these things?”
Anthony smiled. “I know,” he said, “because you both told me. I know that neither of you did it as you would know, after talking to him, that the bishop hadn’t really stolen the little girl’s sixpence, even though all the newspapers had said he did. Now I must go. Good night.”
He left Laura Hoode smiling, smiling as she had not for many months.
As he entered the hall from the passage, a woman rushed at him. She was tall, and suspiciously beautiful. She drooped and made eyes. She was shy and daring and coy.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Is it Colonel Gethryn? Is it? Oh, you must be? Oh, Colonel, how thrilling to meet you! How too thrilling!”
Mrs. Roland Mainwaring pleased Anthony not at all. It is to be deplored that he was at no pains to conceal his distaste.
“Mrs. Mainwaring?” he said. “Madam, the thrill is yours.”
She stood blocking his path. Perforce he stood still.
“Oh, colonel, do tell me you don’t think that sweet boy—oh! the beastly police—it’s all too, too horrible and awful!”
Anthony laughed. The thought of Deacon as a “sweet boy” amused him. The lady regarded his mirth with suspicion.
Anthony became ponderously official. “Your questions, madam, are embarrassing. But my opinions are—my opinions; and I keep them”—he tapped his forehead solemnly—“here.”
Awestricken eyes were rolled at him. “Oh, colonel,” she whispered. “Oh, colonel! How won‑derful!” Then, coyly: “How lucky for little me that I’m a poor, weak woman!”
“I have always,” said Anthony gravely, “believed in equal rights for women. They occupy an equal footing with men in my—opinions.” He bowed and brushed past her, crossing the hall.