Grey Mask

CHAPTER X

The bus went creaking and clanking on its way. It was quite full, and it smelt very strongly of fog, petrol and wet umbrellas. Charles sat opposite the man with the muffler and looked at him curiously. He had a square, fresh face and very blue eyes; he had the look of a man who has followed the sea. Forty had been with Mr. Standing on his yacht. But Forty was deaf, and this man wasn’t deaf.

Just on the impulse Charles leaned across and addressed him.

“Bad fog-isn’t it? I’m glad I’m not at sea.”

The man looked at Charles after a pleasant puzzled fashion and shook his head.

“Sorry, sir, but I’m deaf.”

Charles raised his voice:

“I only said it was a bad fog.”

He shook his head again and smiled deprecatingly.

“It’s no good, sir. Hill 60 going up was the last thing I heard.”

The other people in the bus looked round with interest. A fat woman in a brown velvet dress and stout laced boots said, “What a shime!”

Charles sat back and closed his eyes. Grey Mask had said Forty was deaf-and that this was Forty, Charles had now no more doubt than that he himself was Charles Moray; yet Forty, apologised to by a casual stranger in a fog-no, let’s get it clearer, Forty taken unawares-had answered a casual stranger’s apology. But Forty in a crowded lighted bus not only maintained that he was stone deaf but produced a picturesque reminiscence to account for it. What did it mean?

Charles thought that he would find out what it meant; and when presently the man in the muffler got out of the bus, Charles got out too.

“The one point about this perfectly beastly weather,” he explained to Archie over dinner, “is that you can follow a fellow without his spotting you. I followed him very successfully and tracked him to his lair. He appears to be lodging at No. 5, Gladys Villas, Chiswick. The house belongs to an old lady and her daughter who’ve been there for about forty years-I found that out at the grocer’s. But there I’m stuck. The old lady’s name is Brown, and she’s the widow of a sea captain. I could have found out lots more of that sort of thing. But how am I going to find out the things I want to know about Forty?”

“Get a trained sleuth to do it,” said Archie firmly. “That’s what they’re for. I can put you on to one if you like.”

“A good man?”

“A sleuthess,” said Archie impressively. “A perfect wonder-has old Sherlock boiled.”

Charles frowned.

“A woman?”

“Well, a sleuthess. She’s not exactly what you’d call a little bit of fluff, you know.”

“What’s her name?”

“Maud Silver.”

“Mrs. or Miss?”

“My dear old bean!”

“Well-which is she?”

“Single as a Michaelmas daisy,” said Archie.

“But who is she? And why drag in a sleuthess when there are lots of perfectly good sleuths?”

“Well,” said Archie, “I put my money on Maud. I only saw her once, and she didn’t make my heart beat any faster. I went to see her because my cousin Emmeline Foster was in the dickens of a hole. She’d done one of the silly sort of things women manage to do-can’t imagine how they think of them myself. I can’t give you the lurid details; but what it amounted to was that she’d gone and lost the family jewels, and she was shakin’ in her shoes for fear her mother-in-law would find out. Well, little Maudie got them back. No fuss, no scandal, no painful family scene-a very neat piece of work. That’s only one story. I know half a dozen more, because Emmeline just rushed round with her mouth open tellin’ all her friends what a wonder Maudie was, and all the friends who had private scrapes of their own went and bleated to Maudie about ’em, and when Maudie had got ’em all straightened up again, they came back and told Emmeline, and Emmeline told me.”

Charles took down Miss Maud Silver’s address. If she specialized in getting silly women out of messes, she would just about suit his book. He put the address away in his pocket-book, and as he looked up he caught sight of Freddy Pelham dining at a table with Massiter, the artist, and a large, dull, respectable couple whom Charles did not know. Massiter had the air of a man who is bored to the verge of coma. Freddy looked so forlorn that Charles felt a genuine pang of pity.

Later, when he and Archie were going out, he found himself almost touching Freddy in the doorway, and in a moment Freddy was shaking him by the hand.

“My dear fellow! You’re back-yes, back! Dear me, you’re back again.!”

“As you see,” said Charles.

Freddy dropped the hand he had been shaking; his little grey eyes looked deprecatingly at the young man whom his step-daughter had jilted; his rather high and plaintive voice became more plaintive still.

“My dear fellow-you’re back! Pleased to see you-very pleased to see you!”

“I’m pleased to be back,” said Charles cheerfully.

At another time it might have amused him to observe Freddy’s embarrassment. He plunged straight into the cause of it.

“By the way, can you give me Margaret’s address?”

Freddy blinked.

“Margaret’s address-er-Margaret’s address?”

“Yes.”

Freddy blinked again.

“You’ve heard that she’s deserted me,” he said. “I don’t know why girls can’t stay at home. But it seems to take them all the same way. Now there’s Nora Canning-now let me see, was it Nora? Or is Nora the married one, and am I thinking of Nancy? Or is it Nancy who is the married one? And who the deuce did she marry? It wasn’t Monty Soames, and it wasn’t Rex Fossiter. Now who was it she married? I know I was at the wedding, because I remember they gave us deuced bad champagne-and Esther couldn’t go, but Margaret and I went-” He broke off, and looked down like a shy child. “You’ve heard about Esther?”

Charles felt horribly sorry for him.

“Yes, I-I heard. I can’t say how sorry I am. She-there was something about her.”

Freddy wrung his hand.

“I know, my boy, I know. No one like her-was there? Can’t think what she ever saw in me. Well, well, I’m glad to see you back, Charles. She always liked you very much. I’d be sorry to think there was any sort of feeling now you’ve come back.”

“Oh, there isn’t.”

“Bygones be bygones, eh? That’s right! Stupid to keep things up-that’s what I’ve always said-what’s the sense of keeping things up? I’ve always said that. I remember now saying that twenty years ago to Fennicker-no, if it was Fennicker it couldn’t have been twenty years ago, because that Fennicker was in China until 1914, unless I’m thinking of the other one-their mothers married cousins you know-deuced pretty women both of them-lovely shoulders. Women don’t have shoulders now, eh? Nothing but bones-that’s what I say-scraggy, my boy-and it don’t make them look any younger-”

“What about Margaret’s address?” said Charles quickly. If he had to wait whilst Freddy disentangled the Fennickers for a few generations or so, he would do so; but there seemed to be just a chance of escape; Archie was punching him in the ribs. “What about Margaret’s address?”

“I thought she might have stayed with me,” said Freddy. “But I don’t want you to think we quarrelled-I shouldn’t like anyone to think that.”

“Can you give me her address?”

It took Charles another ten minutes to get it, and Archie had reached groaning point before they finally got away.

They walked the short distance to the show Archie had insisted upon. The fog was still heavy. Charles found himself thinking curiously and angrily about Margaret. Where was she? What was she thinking? What was she doing? He had a furious desire to know, to break away from Archie and to walk to the address which Freddy Pelham had given him.

At intervals during the evening that desire to know what Margaret was doing swept over him again. If he could have looked into Margaret’s room, he would have seen nothing, because the room was dark. It was very dark and very cold, because there was no light and no fire.

Margaret Langton lay face downwards in front of the cold hearth; her forehead rested upon her crossed arms. The fire had gone out a long time ago. It was hours since she had moved at all, but the hot, slow tears went on soaking into the black stuff of her sleeve. Her right arm was crossed over her left arm; her forehead rested upon it. The stuff of her sleeve was quite wet through.