The Seven Dials Mystery

Chapter 17 AFTER DINNER

George was not a believer in modern innovations. The Abbey was innocent of anything so up to date as central heating. Consequently, when the ladies entered the drawing-room after dinner, the temperature of the room was woefully inadequate to the needs of modern evening clothes. The fire that burnt in the well-furnished steel grate became as a magnet.

The three women huddled round it.

"Brrrrrrrrrr!" said the Countess, a fine, exotic foreign sound.

"The days are drawing in," said Lady Coote, and drew a flowered atrocity of a scarf closer about her ample shoulders.

"Why on earth doesn't George have the house properly heated?" said Bundle.

"You English, you never heat your houses," said the Countess.

She took out her long cigarette holder and began to smoke.

"That grate is old-fashioned," said Lady Coote. "The heat goes up the chimney instead of into the room."

"Oh!" said the Countess.

There was a pause. The Countess was so plainly bored by her company that conversation became difficult.

"It's funny," said Lady Coote, breaking the silence, "that Mrs. Macatta's children should have mumps. At least, I don't mean exactly funny –"

"What," said the Countess, "are mumps?"

Bundle and Lady Coote started simultaneously to explain. Finally, between them, they managed it.

"I suppose Hungarian children have it?" asked Lady Coote.

"Eh?" said the Countess.

"Hungarian children. They suffer from it?"

"I do not know," said the Countess. "How should I?"

Lady Coote looked at her in some surprise.

"But I understood that you worked –"

"Oh, that!" The Countess uncrossed her legs, took her cigarette holder from her mouth and began to talk rapidly.

"I will tell you some horrors," she said. "Horrors that I have seen. Incredible! You would not believe!"

And she was as good as her word. She talked fluently and with a graphic power of description. Incredible scenes of starvation and misery were painted by her for the benefit of her audience. She spoke of Buda Pesth shortly after the war and traced its vicissitudes to the present day. She was dramatic, but she was also, to Bundle's mind, a little like a gramophone record. You turned her on, and there you were. Presently, just as suddenly, she would stop.

Lady Coote was thrilled to the marrow – that much was clear. She sat with her mouth slightly open and her large, sad, dark eyes fixed on the Countess. Occasionally, she interpolated a comment of her own.

"One of my cousins had three children burned to death. Awful, wasn't it?"

The Countess paid no attention. She went on and on. And she finally stopped as suddenly as she had begun.

"There!" she said. "I have told you. We have money – but no organisation. It is organisation we need."

Lady Coote sighed.

"I've heard my husband say that nothing can be done without regular methods. He attributes his own success entirely to that. He declares he would never have got on without them."

She sighed again. A sudden fleeting vision passed before her eyes of a Sir Oswald who had not got on in the world. A Sir Oswald who retained, in all essentials, the attributes of that cheery young man in the bicycle shop. Just for a second it occurred to her how much pleasanter life might have been for her if Sir Oswald had not had regular methods.

By a quite understandable association of ideas she turned to Bundle.

"Tell me, Lady Eileen," she said, "do you like that head gardener of yours?"

"MacDonald? Well –" Bundle hesitated.

"One couldn't exactly like MacDonald," she explained apologetically. "But he's a first-class gardener."

"Oh! I know he is," said Lady Coote.

She looked enviously at Bundle, who appeared to approach the task of keeping MacDonald in his place so light-heartedly.

"I'd just adore a high-toned garden," said the Countess dreamily.

Bundle stared, but at that moment a diversion occurred. Jimmy Thesiger entered the room and spoke directly to her in a strange, hurried voice.

"I say, will you come and see those etchings now? They're waiting for you."

Bundle left the room hurriedly, Jimmy close behind her.

"What etchings?" she asked, as the drawing-room door closed behind her.

"No etchings," said Jimmy. "I'd got to say something to get hold of you. Come on. Bill is waiting for us in the library. There's nobody there."

Bill was striding up and down the library, clearly in a very perturbed state of mind.

"Look here," he burst out, "I don't like this."

"Don't like what?"

"You being mixed up in this. Ten to one there's going to be a rough house and then –"

He looked at her with a kind of pathetic dismay that gave Bundle a warm and comfortable feeling.

"She ought to be kept out of it, oughtn't she, Jimmy?"

He appealed to the other.

"I've told her so," said Jimmy.

"Dash it all, Bundle, I mean – someone might get hurt."

Bundle turned round to Jimmy.

"How much have you told him?"

"Oh! everything."

"I haven't got the hang of it all yet," confessed Bill. "You in that place in Seven Dials and all that." He looked at her unhappily. "I say, Bundle, I wish you wouldn't."

"Wouldn't what?"

"Get mixed up in these sort of things."

"Why not?" said Bundle. "They're exciting."

"Oh, yes – exciting. But they may be damnably dangerous. Look at poor old Ronny."

"Yes," said Bundle. "If it hadn't been for your friend Ronny, I don't suppose I should ever have got what you call 'mixed up' in this thing. But I am. And it's no earthly use your bleating about it."

"I know you're the most frightful sport, Bundle, but –"

"Cut out the compliments. Let's make plans."

To her relief, Bill reacted favourably to the suggestion.

"You're right about the formula," he said. "Eberhard's got some sort of formula with him, or rather Sir Oswald has. The stuff has been tested out at his works – very secretly and all that. Eberhard has been down there with him. They're all in the study now – what you might call coming down to brass tacks."

"How long is Sir Stanley Digby staying?" asked Jimmy.

"Going back to town tomorrow."

"H'm," said Jimmy. "Then one thing's quite clear. If, as I suppose, Sir Stanley will be taking the formula with him, any funny business there's going to be will be tonight."

"I suppose it will."

"Not a doubt of it. That narrows the thing down very comfortably. But the bright lads will have to be their very brightest. We must come down to details. First of all, where will the sacred formula be tonight? Will Eberhard have it, or Sir Oswald Coote?"

"Neither. I understand it's to be handed over to the Air Minister this evening, for him to take to town tomorrow. In that case O'Rourke will have it. Sure to."

"Well, there's only one thing for it. If we believe someone's going to have a shot at pinching that paper, we've got to keep watch tonight, Bill, my boy."

Bundle opened her mouth as though to protest, but shut it again without speaking.

"By the way," continued Jimmy, "did I recognise the commissionaire from Harrods in the hall this evening, or was it our old friend Lestrade from Scotland Yard?"

"Scintillating, Watson," said Bill.

"I suppose," said Jimmy, "that we are rather butting in on his preserves."

"Can't be helped," said Bill. "Not if we mean to see this thing through."

"Then it's agreed," said Jimmy. "We divide the night into two watches?"

Again Bundle opened her mouth, and again shut it without speaking.

"Right you are," agreed Bill. "Who'll take first duty?"

"Shall we spin for it?"

"Might as well."

"All right. Here goes. Heads you first and I second. Tails, vice versa."

Bill nodded. The coin spun in the air.

Jimmy bent to look at it.

"Tails," he said.

"Damn," said Bill. "You get first half and probably any fun that's going."

"Oh, you never know," said Jimmy. "Criminals are very uncertain. What time shall I wake you? Three-thirty?"

"That's about fair, I think."

And now, at last, Bundle spoke:

"What about me?" she asked.

"Nothing doing. You go to bed and sleep."

"Oh!" said Bundle. "That's not very exciting."

"You never know," said Jimmy kindly. "You may be murdered in your sleep whilst Bill and I escape scot-free."

"Well, there's always that possibility. Do you know, Jimmy, I don't half like the look of that countess. I suspect her."

"Nonsense," cried Bill hotly. "She's absolutely above suspicion."

"How do you know?" retorted Bundle.

"Because I do. Why, one of the fellows at the Hungarian Embassy vouched for her."

"Oh!" said Bundle, momentarily taken aback by his fervour.

"You girls are all the same," grumbled Bill. "Just because she's a jolly good-looking woman –"

Bundle was only too well acquainted with this unfair masculine line of argument.

"Well, don't you go and pour confidences into her shell-pink ear," she remarked. "I'm going to bed. I was bored stiff in the drawing-room and I'm not going back."

She left the room. Bill looked at Jimmy.

"Good old Bundle," he said. "I was afraid we might have trouble with her. You know how keen she is to be in everything. I think the way she took it was just wonderful."

"So did I," said Jimmy. "It staggered me."

"She's got some sense, Bundle has. She knows when a thing's plumb impossible. I say. Oughtn't we to have some lethal weapons? Chaps usually do when they're going on this sort of stunt."

"I have a blue-nosed automatic," said Jimmy with gentle pride. "It weighs several pounds and looks most murderous. I'll lend it to you when the time comes."

Bill looked at him with respect and envy.

"What made you think of getting that?" he said.

"I don't know," said Jimmy carelessly. "It just came to me."

"I hope we shan't go and shoot the wrong person," said Bill with some anxiety.

"That would be unfortunate," said Mr. Thesiger gravely.