THE CRYSTAL BEADS MURDER (Murder Mystery for Inspector Stoddart). Annie Haynes
face as the numbers went up.
"Goldfoot first," a voice beside her said. "Proud Boy second, Partner's Pride third. Battledore nowhere."
Anne heard a faint sound beside her--between a moan and a sob. She turned sharply.
"Harold!"
Her brother was leaning back in his seat on the coach. His hands had dropped by his side, his face was ghastly white, even his lips were bloodless.
Anne touched him. "Harold!"
He gazed at her with dazed, uncomprehending eyes.
"Don't look like that!" she said sharply. "Pull yourself together! It will be all right, Harold. I have a savings box, you know. You shall have it all."
"All!" Harold laughed aloud in a wild, reckless fashion that made his sister wince and draw back hastily. "It means ruin, Anne!" he said hoarsely. "Ruin, irretrievable ruin. That's all!"
The Dowager Lady Medchester was an old lady who knew her own mind, and was extremely generous in the matter of presenting pieces of it to other people. She and her brother, General Courtenay, were too much alike to get on really well together. Nevertheless, they thoroughly enjoyed a sparring match, and looked forward to their meetings in town and country. The house-party at Holford this year was an extra and both of them were bent on making the most of it.
This afternoon the old people were out for their daily drive, and in the smallest of the three drawing-rooms Anne Courtenay and her brother Harold stood facing one another, both of them pale and overwrought.
"Yes, of course we must find the money. My pearls will fetch something, and I can borrow--"
Anne was anxiously watching her brother's white, drawn face.
He turned away and stood with his back to her, staring unseeingly out of the window.
"That isn't the worst. I--I had to have the money, you understand? I was in debt. I put every penny I had on Battledore and--more."
Anne stared at him, every drop of colour ebbing slowly from her cheeks.
"What do you mean, Harold? You put more--you are frightening me."
"Can't you see? I stood to make my fortune out of Battledore. If he'd won I should. I didn't think he could lose, and money of Melton's was passing through my hands. I put it on."
"Harold!" Anne's brown eyes were wide with horror. "You--you must put it back. I--I will get it somehow."
"I have put it back. I had to. I don't know whether Melton suspected, but he talked of going through his accounts, and it had to be paid into the bank." The boy's voice broke. "I went to a money-lender and he lent me money on a bill that didn't mature till next May. He wouldn't give it to me at first. I couldn't wait--the money had to be replaced at once. The bill had to be backed--I knew it was no use asking Medchester, and the money-lender wouldn't take Stainer--else Maurice would have got it for me like a shot."
"I don't like Maurice Stainer," Anne interposed, "or his sister, either. He is no good to you, Harold."
"Well, anyway, the old shark wouldn't look at him and I couldn't wait--or I should face exposure. I knew I could meet the bill all right if Battledore won. He--the money-lender--suggested I should get Saunderson's name. I knew I couldn't--Saunderson's as close as a Jew, but I had to have the money somehow, and I was mad--mad! I wrote the name."
The fear in Anne's eyes deepened.
"You--you forged!"
A hoarse sob broke in her brother's throat.
"I should have met it--I swear I should have met it, and it gave me six months to turn round in. But it is too late. He has found out--Saunderson. He has got the bill and he swears he will prosecute. He will not even hear me."
"But he cannot--cannot prosecute! He is your friend."
"He will," Harold said hopelessly. "He is a good-for-nothing scoundrel and he will send me to gaol and blacken our name for ever--unless you--"
"Yes?" Anne's voice was low; she put her hands up to her throat. "I don't know what you mean. Unless what?"
"Unless you go to him, unless you plead with him." Harold brought the words out as if they were forced from him. "He thinks more of you than anybody."
Anne threw her head back. In a swift, hot flame the colour rushed over her face and neck and temples.
"Unless I ask him--that man? Do you know what that means? I--I hate him! I am afraid of him."
"I know. I hate him. He is a damned brute, but--well, if I blew my brains out it would not save the shame, the disgrace--" Her brother broke off.
A momentary vision of General Courtenay's fine old face rose before Anne, of his pathetic pride in his dead son's Victoria Cross, in the Courtenay name. A sudden, fierce anger shook her. This careless boy should not cloud the end of that noble life with shame and bitter pain.
Harold slipped forward against the side of the window-frame.
"That's the end."
Anne watched him in unpitying silence. Then old memories came back to her--of their early childhood, of the handsome, gallant father who had been so proud of his little son, of the sweet, gentle mother who had dearly loved them both, but whose favourite had always been Harold. Her heart softened. She looked at her brother's head, bent in humiliation. For the sake of her beloved dead, no less than for the living whose pride he was, Harold must be saved at whatever cost to herself.
She went over and touched his shoulder.
"I will do what I can," she promised. "I will ask him; I will beg him. I will save you, Harold, somehow."
Chapter II
In her room at Holford Hall Anne Courtenay was twisting her hands together in agony. The Medchesters and their guests were amusing themselves downstairs in the drawing-room, the gramophone was playing noisy dance music. In the back drawing-room her grandfather and his sister were having their usual game of bezique. Anne had pleaded a headache and had gone to her room directly after dinner. The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece were creeping on to ten o'clock. In five minutes the hour would boom out from the old church on the hill. It was no use delaying, that would only make matters worse. She sprang up. Purposely to-night she had worn black. She threw a dark cloak round her, and picking up a pull-on black hat crushed it over her shingled hair. Then she unlocked a small wooden box on her dressing-table and took out a piece of notepaper. Across it was scrawled in Robert Saunderson's characteristic bold black writing: "To-night at the summer-house at ten o'clock." That was all. There was neither beginning nor ending. Not one word to soften the words that were an ultimatum. Anne's little, white teeth bit deeply into her upper lip as she read.
The summer-house stood in a clearing to the right of the Dutch garden. From it an excellent view of the moors could be obtained with the hazy, blue line of the northern hills in the distance. It was a favourite resort with Lady Medchester for the picnic teas which she favoured. That Anne Courtenay should be giving an assignation there at this time of night seemed to her to show the depths to which she had fallen. Saunderson had left the Medchesters the day after the St. Leger. He had turned a resolutely deaf ear to all Harold's appeals, and his ultimatum remained the same. He would only treat with Anne. Anne herself must come to him, must plead with him. To her alone he would tell the only terms on which Harold could be saved.
Anne drew her cloak round her as she stole quietly down the stairs to a side door. There was a full moon, but the masses of fleecy cloud obscured the beams; little scuds of rain beat in Anne's face as she let herself out. Through the open windows the laughter and the gaiety of her fellow-guests reached her ears. She crept silently by the side of the house into the shadow of one of the giant clumps of rhododendrons that dotted the lawn and bordered the expanse of grass between the house and the Dutch garden.
Anne