The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile "Sapper". Sapper
She bit her lip and drummed with her fingers on the arm of her chair. "If I tell you," she said at length, "will you promise me, on your word of honour, that you won't go blundering into The Elms, or do anything foolish like that?"
"At the present moment I'm very comfortable where I am, thanks," remarked Hugh.
"I know," she said; "but I'm so dreadfully afraid that you're the type of person who ... who..." She paused, at a loss for a word.
"Who bellows like a bull, and charges head down," interrupted Hugh with a grin. She laughed with him, and just for a moment their eyes met, and she read in his something quite foreign to the point at issue. In fact, it is to be feared that the question of Lakington and his companions was not engrossing Drummond's mind, as it doubtless should have been, to the exclusion of all else.
"They're so utterly unscrupulous," she continued hurriedly, "so fiendishly clever, that even you would be like a child in their hands."
Hugh endeavoured to dissemble his pleasure at that little word "even," and only succeeded in frowning horribly.
"I will be discretion itself," he assured her firmly. "I promise you."
"I suppose I shall have to trust you," she said. "Have you seen the evening papers to-day?"
"I looked at the ones that come out in the morning labelled six p.m. before I had lunch," he answered. "Is there anything of interest?"
She handed him a copy of the Planet. "Read that little paragraph in the second column." She pointed to it, as he took the paper, and Hugh read it aloud.
"Mr. Hiram C. Potts—the celebrated American millionaire—is progressing favourably. He has gone into the country for a few days, but is sufficiently recovered to conduct business as usual." He laid down the paper and looked at the girl sitting opposite. "One is pleased," he remarked in a puzzled tone, "for the sake of Mr. Potts. To be ill and have a name like that is more than most men could stand.... But I don't quite see..."
"That man was stopping at the Carlton, where he met Lakington," said the girl. "He is a multi-millionaire, over here in connection with some big steel trust; and when multi-millionaires get friendly with Lakington, their health frequently does suffer."
"But this paper says he's getting better," objected Drummond. "'Sufficiently recovered to conduct business as usual.' What's wrong with that?"
"If he is sufficiently recovered to conduct business as usual, why did he send his confidential secretary away yesterday morning on an urgent mission to Belfast?"
"Search me," said Hugh. "Incidentally, how do you know he did?"
"I asked at the Carlton this morning," she answered. "I said I'd come after a job as typist for Mr. Potts. They told me at the inquiry office that he was ill in bed and unable to see anybody. So I asked for his secretary, and they told me what I've just told you—that he had left for Belfast that morning and would be away several days. It may be that there's nothing in it; on the other hand, it may be that there's a lot. And it's only by following up every possible clue," she continued fiercely, "that I can hope to beat those fiends and get Daddy out of their clutches."
Drummond nodded gravely, and did not speak.
For into his mind had flashed suddenly the remembrance of that sinister, motionless figure seated by the chauffeur. The wildest guess-work certainly—no vestige of proof—and yet, having once come, the thought stuck. And as he turned it over in his mind, almost prepared to laugh at himself for his credulity—millionaires are not removed against their will, in broad daylight, from one of the biggest hotels in London, to sit in immovable silence in an open car—the door opened and an elderly man came in.
Hugh rose, and the girl introduced the two men. "An old friend, Daddy," she said. "You must have heard me speak of Captain Drummond."
"I don't recall the name at the moment, my dear," he answered courteously—a fact which was hardly surprising—"but I fear I'm getting a little forgetful. I am pleased to meet you, Captain Drummond. You'll stop and have some dinner, of course."
Hugh bowed. "I should like to, Mr. Benton. Thank you very much. I'm afraid the hour of my call was a little informal, but being round in these parts, I felt I must come and look Miss Benton up."
His host smiled absent-mindedly, and walking to the window, stared through the gathering dusk at the house opposite, half hidden in the trees. And Hugh, who was watching him from under lowered lids, saw him suddenly clench both hands in a gesture of despair.
It cannot be said that dinner was a meal of sparkling gaiety. Mr. Benton was palpably ill at ease, and beyond a few desultory remarks spoke hardly at all: while the girl, who sat opposite Hugh, though she made one or two valiant attempts to break the long silences, spent most of the meal in covertly watching her father. If anything more had been required to convince Drummond of the genuineness of his interview with her at the Carlton the preceding day, the atmosphere at this strained and silent party supplied it.
As if unconscious of anything peculiar, he rambled on in his usual inconsequent method, heedless of whether he was answered or not; but all the time his mind was busily working. He had already decided that a Rolls-Royce was not the only car on the market which could break down mysteriously, and with the town so far away, his host could hardly fail to ask him to stop the night. And then—he had not yet quite settled how—he proposed to have a closer look at The Elms.
At length the meal was over, and the maid, placing the decanter in front of Mr. Benton, withdrew from the room.
"You'll have a glass of port, Captain Drummond," remarked his host, removing the stopper, and pushing the bottle towards him. "An old pre-war wine which I can vouch for."
Hugh smiled, and even as he lifted the heavy old cut glass, he stiffened suddenly in his chair. A cry—half shout, half scream, and stifled at once—had come echoing through the open windows. With a crash the stopper fell from Mr. Benton's nerveless fingers, breaking the finger-bowl in front of him, while every vestige of colour left his face.
"It's something these days to be able to say that," remarked Hugh, pouring himself out a glass. "Wine, Miss Benton?" He looked at the girl, who was staring fearfully out of the window, and forced her to meet his eye. "It will do you good."
His tone was compelling, and after a moment's hesitation, she pushed the glass over to him. "Will you pour it out?" she said, and he saw that she was trembling all over.
"Did you—did you hear—anything?" With a vain endeavour to speak calmly, his host looked at Hugh.
"That night-bird?" he answered easily. "Eerie noises they make, don't they? Sometimes in France, when everything was still, and only the ghostly green flares went hissing up, one used to hear 'em. Startled nervous sentries out of their lives." He talked on, and gradually the colour came back to the other man's face. But Hugh noticed that he drained his port at a gulp, and immediately refilled his glass....
Outside everything was still; no repetition of that short, strangled cry again disturbed the silence. With the training bred of many hours in No Man's Land, Drummond was listening, even while he was speaking, for the faintest suspicious sound—but he heard nothing. The soft whispering night-noises came gently through the window; but the man who had screamed once did not even whimper again. He remembered hearing a similar cry near the brickstacks at Guinchy, and two nights later he had found the giver of it, at the edge of a mine-crater, with glazed eyes that still held in them the horror of the final second. And more persistently than ever, his thoughts centred on the fifth occupant of the Rolls-Royce....
It was with almost a look of relief that Mr. Benton listened to his tale of woe about his car.
"Of course you must stop here for the night," he cried. "Phyllis, my dear, will you tell them to get a room ready?"
With an inscrutable look at Hugh, in which thankfulness and apprehension seemed mingled, the girl left the room. There was an unnatural glitter in her father's eyes—a flush on his cheeks hardly to be accounted for