Chapter Twenty-three

“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded.

“I’ve come for Lois Reddle,” said Dorn shortly.

“She is not here. I have put her beyond your vindictive reach.”

“Where is she?”

“I refuse to make any statement, after your disgraceful conduct last night in arresting this poor innocent child----”

“You can leave that out, Lady Moron,” said Michael savagely. “Nobody knows better than you why she was arrested. Where is she?”

“I’ve sent her away to friends of mine.”

“The address?”

The Countess of Moron smiled slowly.

“A very persistent young man,” she said, almost pleasantly. “Will you come into the library? I cannot speak in this draughty hall. Is that Miss Smith you have with you? She may come in too.”

“She’ll be safer outside,” said Michael coolly and passed into the hall.

All this time Selwyn had said nothing, but now he turned to his mother.

“Where is Miss Reddle? Perhaps your ladyship will tell me?”

“I shall tell you nothing,” was the cold reply. “You may go back to your room.”

“I’ll be blowed if I’ll go back to my room,” protested Lord Moron. “There’s something remarkably fishy here, and I want to know just what the deuce it is all about.”

It was a most heroic speech for him, and Michael, who knew all the courage that was required to oppose this woman, felt a little glow of admiration for the bullied man. Even the countess was taken aback.

“Why, Selwyn,” she said in a milder voice, “that is not the tone to adopt towards your mother!”

“I don’t care what it is or what it isn’t,” said Selwyn doggedly. “There’s something fishy--I’ve always said there was something fishy about--things. Now, where the deuce is Miss Reddle?”

“She is with some friends of ours in the country,” said her ladyship.

The reply seemed to exhaust his power of resistance.

“Very well,” he said meekly.

He looked through the open door at Lizzy, smiled and waved his hand at her, looked back at his mother, and then, visibly bracing himself for the effort, walked boldly down the steps in his pyjamas and attenuated dressing-gown to talk to the girl.

“Are you satisfied, Mr. Dorn?”

“No, I am far from satisfied, your ladyship,” said Michael, as he followed the woman into the library.

He noticed the dull patch on the carpet where the water had been thrown upon Braime, and saw her eyes also fixed upon the spot.

“And now, Mr. Dorn,” she said, almost amiably, “there is no reason why we should quarrel. What is this mystery that you are making about Miss Reddle? The poor girl was beside herself last night. It was an act of mercy to send her off into the country.”

“Who drove her?”

“My chauffeur.” His keen eyes were fixed upon her, but she did not falter.

“Not Mr. Chesney Praye by any chance?” he asked softly.

“Mr. Praye is in Paris. He has been there some days,” was the staggering reply. “You’ve found a mare’s nest. Really there is no mystery at all about anything that has happened to this young lady in my house. What reason in the world was there for me to engage her, except my desire to find a comfortable job for a very very nice girl?” And then: “Is Braime better?”

“Sergeant Braime is much better,” said Michael, and saw that he had got beneath her guard.

She cringed back as at a blow, and her voice had lost a little of its assurance when she faltered:

“Sergeant Braime? I am talking about my butler----”

“And I’m talking about Sergeant Braime of the Criminal Investigation Department, who has been in your service for six months.”

Her mouth was an O of amazement.

“But--but he was recommended to me by----”

“By a spurious Prisoners’ Aid Society,” said Michael. “The idea was that, if you believed that the man had a criminal record, he had a better chance of coming into your ladyship’s service.”

She had recovered herself in an instant.

“But why?” she drawled. “Why put a detective in my household? It is an abominable outrage and I shall report the matter to the Commissioner of Police immediately.”

He was looking round the room and his eyes rested upon that section of the bookshelves which was protected by the wire-covered door.

“You have a book there that I should like to see. I intended coming last night, only something prevented me.”

“A book?”

“A book called _The Life of Washington_--sounds a fairly innocuous title, doesn’t it?”

She walked to the bookcase, and, taking a key from the drawer of her desk, opened the wire net cover.

“There it is,” she said. “Read it and be improved.”

She turned to walk to the door and stood there watching him. And then he did the last thing she expected. From his pocket he took a thick red glove and drew it on his right hand. Reaching up, he seized the back of the book and jerked it loose. There was a click, a spark of blinding white light, but nothing else happened, and he laid the book with some difficulty on the table.

“A very good imitation,” he said quietly, “but it is less of a book than a steel box, and any person who attempts to pull it out automatically makes contact with a very powerful electric current. Where is the switch?”

She did not reply. Her face, under the powder, was drawn and haggard. Walking to the door, Michael searched for a while, then, stooping down, he turned over a big switch that was well concealed by a hanging portière.

“Have you the key of this box?”

“It is not locked,” she said, and, coming to his side, pressed a spring. The lid sprang open.

The “book” was, as he surmised, hollow. It was also empty.

“Is there a law against having a safe-box made like a book?” she asked, and her voice was almost sweet. “Does one get into _very_ serious trouble for protecting one’s property from thieving butlers and--inquisitive amateur detectives?”

“There’s a law against murder,” said the other shortly. “If I had touched that book without rubber gloves, I should have been as near dead as makes no difference. It did not kill Braime, because he is constitutionally a giant.”

“I did not ask you to take down the book,” she said.

“Neither did you warn me,” Michael smiled crookedly. “Empty, eh? Of course, it would be. You suspected Braime, and left a little notebook around carelessly in your bedroom, in which you made reference to the _Life of Washington_. Braime saw it and fell into the trap. He came to the library, and would have been a dead man if I hadn’t applied first aid.”

There was a silence.

“Is that all?” asked Lady Moron.

“Not quite all. I want to know where is Miss Reddle?”

“And I’m afraid I cannot tell you. The truth is, when she was released last night, or in the early hours of this morning, she refused to come either here or to her house in--wherever her house may be. She said she wanted to go into the country----”

“And did Mrs. Pinder express a desire to go into the country?” he asked, his cold eyes fixed on hers.

“Mrs. Pinder? I do not know Mrs. Pinder.”

“Did Mrs. Pinder express a desire to go into the country?” he asked again. He raised a warning finger. “Madam, there is very considerable trouble coming to you, and to those who work with you.”

She shrugged her broad shoulders.

“If it takes any other form than an early morning call by a melodramatic detective I shall bear it with equanimity,” she said, and stalked through the doorway into the hall, Michael following.

As she stood aside for him to pass through the door, she saw the grotesque figure of Selwyn leaning over the side of the car--intently occupied--and her lips curled.

“My son has found his intellectual level,” she said, and called him by name.

To Michael’s surprise the young man merely turned his head and resumed his conversation with the girl.

“Selwyn!”

Even then he took his time.

“Good-bye, young lady. Don’t forget”--in a stage whisper--“pork sausages, not beef. Beef gives me indigestion.” And, waving her an airy farewell, he went back to the woman whose face was a thundercloud of wrath.

“It sounded almost as if you were making a date with that young man,” said Michael as they drove off.

“He’s coming to supper,” said Lizzy. “Was Lois there?”

“No, I didn’t expect she would be.”

Even the prospect of a _tête-à-tête_ meal with a scion of the nobility was not sufficient to compensate for this news.

“But where is she, Mr. Dorn?”

“She’s somewhere. I don’t think she’ll come to any harm for a day or two.”

She looked at him quietly.

“You don’t think that.”

“Yes, I do,” he protested.

She did not take her eyes from him.

“You look nearly dead,” she said. “You’re pretty fond of her, aren’t you?”

He was startled by the question.

“Fond of Lois?” The question seemed in the nature of a revelation. “Fond of her--why--I suppose I am.”

At that moment Michael Dorn realised that he had something more than a professional interest in the girl he sought, and he was shocked at the discovery.

He dropped Lizzy Smith in Charlotte Street, and, declining her invitation to come in, drove home, and, leaving his car in the courtyard of Hiles Mansions, he dragged himself wearily up to his room. He was sleeping on the top of his bed when the silent Wills came in with a telegram in his hand, and, struggling up, he tore open the cover and read the message. It had been handed in at Paris at eight o’clock and ran:

Will you please inform me name of District Commissioner, Karrili, during period you were in Punjab.

It was signed “Chesney Praye, Grand Hotel.”

“An ‘I’m here’ enquiry,” said Michael, handing the telegram to Wills, “the idea being to establish the fact that he is in Paris at this moment. Get on the ’phone, Wills, to all the private hire aerodromes within a radius of a hundred miles of London, find out if anybody hired a private machine in the early hours of the morning to take him to Paris. Report to me later.”

Wills nodded and stole forth silently.

“To try that stuff on me!” said Michael wrathfully, as the door closed upon his man.