Читать книгу Ask Miss Mott - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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Miss Mott looked up quickly at the sound of the knock at her office door. She had been engaged in the typical task of writing her advice to a young woman whose courtship affairs had become involved and she had rather forgotten the flight of time. Her typist had gone, also her messenger boy, and the lame, but very pleasant young clerk who assisted in her various activities. In other words, Miss Mott was alone on the top floor of a building not far removed from the Adelphi, and the hour being long past office hours, she was not expecting a caller.

"Come in," she invited curiously.

From that moment onwards, strange things happened. First of all, the door was opened only about six inches, and a man's hand—a very well cared for and shapely hand it seemed—crept through the aperture, felt about for a moment, and, finding the switch which controlled the electric light, pulled it firmly down, thereby plunging the room into darkness. The next moment the hand was withdrawn, and the owner had appeared in person, or rather had stepped through the now wide-opened door, and closed it carefully behind him. Little of him was to be seen in the darkness, except the blurred outline of a human being, slim, she imagined, but with broad shoulders, a trifle over medium height, perhaps, but with nothing aggressive in his appearance.

"What do you want?" Miss Mott demanded, an undernote of alarm in her tone.

There was no immediate reply, nor, for some reason or other, did Miss Mott expect one. Congratulating herself upon her presence of mind, she pulled the table telephone instrument towards her and lifted the receiver. There was no answer—a curious deadness, in fact, at the other end of the line. She peered through the gloom, and, although the sensation was unusual with her, she began to be afraid. Her visitor, while his back had been turned towards her, had donned a mask of some dark colour. He had now locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and was leaning back in the easy-chair which she kept for the more distinguished of her clients.

"I shouldn't worry about that, if I were you," he suggested, with a wave of his hand towards the telephone. "I am not an amateur, you know. I am a full-fledged professional criminal, with all the tricks of the trade at my finger tips. I cut the telephone cord outside the room."

"Then you were guilty of a very impertinent action," Miss Mott declared with spirit. "Who are you and what on earth can you want with me?"

"Keep calm, I beg of you," he enjoined. "Do you suppose that I should be likely to mount all these stairs and pay you a visit at this inconvenient hour of the evening without wanting something? If you wait for a few moments in patience, you will certainly hear what it is."

"Wait for a few more moments," Miss Mott lied courageously, "and my secretary and clerk will both be back."

He laughed, derisively but not unpleasantly.

"My dear young lady," he pointed out, "since when have your secretary, and your messenger boy, and your director of intelligence, as I suppose you call the lame youth, returned at something after eight o'clock, when you have once dismissed them? They have all three left for the night. You are here, utterly alone, busily engaged in completing your column for Home Talks. In other words, you are delving into other people's troubles and answering the long string of queries which you invite every week under the heading of:

ASK MISS MOTT."

"You seem to know a great deal about my business," she remarked icily.

"Only," he assured her, "since you began to interfere in mine."

She liked his voice and she was not in the least alarmed now, but she realised to the full the unusualness of the situation.

"Perhaps you will tell me," she invited, "when I had the misfortune to interfere in your affairs?"

"I am coming to that," he promised her.

"Couldn't we have the light on?" she begged. "I don't like sitting in the darkness with a stranger on the seventh floor of a deserted building."

"Compromising, my dear Miss Mott, I admit," the voice from the shadows acknowledged, "but necessary. I am a very shy person, as most criminals are. My mask may disguise my features, but I cannot afford to give you the opportunity of taking note of other details of my person."

"You are sure that you are a criminal, I suppose?" she ventured. "You see, I haven't met many, and I need experience badly."

"Absolutely certain," he assured her. "Really, I should be a godsend to you. Not only am I a criminal, but I am a member of a gang which is very seriously looked upon by the police. If you were in the fortunate position of being able to deliver me up to justice, I have no doubt that you might commence your career auspiciously by touching several rashly offered rewards."

"Then, if that is really your position, why are you here?" she demanded. "I have nothing worth stealing and I imagine a nicely brought up criminal doesn't go about frightening young women, unless there's something to be gained by it."

"Very well put, Miss Mott," he approved. "I will tell you why I am here. It is to stop your interference in my legitimate business."

"But how can I have interfered with your business," she argued, "when I don't know what it is? And, furthermore," she went on, "if you have a business, how can you be a criminal?"

"My dear young lady," he remonstrated, "my business is crime."

"Then what is your business with me?" she asked him point-blank.

He settled himself down more comfortably in his chair.

"I will explain," he promised. "You have, I understand, for several years, conducted an extraordinarily successful column in a paper called Home Talks. You give advice, chiefly of course, to members of your own sex, who are in difficulties with their lovers, husbands, cookery or wardrobes. Excellent, so long as you stick to that. Lately, however, encouraged by certain minor successes, you have gone farther afield. You have placed yourself privately at the disposal of your clients who find themselves in any sort of difficulty whatsoever. In pursuit of your vocation, you have engaged a small staff, and you now call yourself, I think, an 'Intelligence Agent'."

"That seems to me a very reasonable definition of my activities," Miss Mott admitted coldly.

"I will not quarrel with it," he agreed. "You must permit me to point out, however, that you fly a little high when you interfere in the enterprises of any one so well known in the criminal world as your humble visitor."

"Who are you then?" she enquired.

"I have many aliases," he confided. "The one under which you would know me best, perhaps,—but, wait a moment."

He rose to his feet and moved towards her. She was conscious of a sudden shiver, which, if it were not of fear, was certainly of some kindred excitement. Her pulses were stirred. She felt her heart beating more quickly. He made no attempt to come round to her side of the desk, however. He leaned over it, his eyes, through the slits in his mask, taking swift and appreciative note of her. She caught a gleam of something white in his hand and was at once aware of a waft of delicate perfume.

"Violet Joe!" she exclaimed.

He nodded approvingly.

"You are really quite intelligent," he acknowledged. "So far as one can gather in this light, too, I should say that you are even more personable than I had imagined. All the same, you must be taught not to interfere in my affairs."

"You are the man who is blackmailing—"

"Hush," he interrupted. "One of the first lessons of our profession—yours and mine, I mean—which must be learned and adhered to, is 'no names.' I have a great many more serious crimes laid to my charge than the present one, but you may take it that it was from my agent that your messenger procured that little packet of letters yesterday afternoon at the Black Boy Inn at Cobham. I must congratulate you upon the idea. It was indeed a very cleverly thought-out piece of work, and I can assure you that it goes very much against the grain with me to insist upon having them back again."

"So that is what you have come for!" she exclaimed.

"That is what I have come for."

Miss Mott was not feeling quite so comfortable. She had an uncle in Scotland Yard who was fond of telling her stories about the famous criminals of the day and she had heard some very ugly tales indeed about the gang with which Violet Joe was connected. There was a murder case in which they were supposed to be concerned, and a case of manslaughter in the suburbs which was put down to them. There was also a crop of minor burglaries attributed to them, and only recently a terrible assault on a wealthy financier, in which the latter had been half killed and robbed of a very large amount of money. She dimly remembered that a reward of a thousand pounds had been placed upon the head of the leader of the gang.

"How do you know that I have not already parted with those letters?" she asked. "You are quite correct in what you say. My agent brought them in yesterday afternoon."

"Because," he answered—"shall I be indiscreet, for once, and mention names?—Mrs. Bland Potterson comes back from Brighton to-night, and she is almost certain to have asked you to deliver them into her own hand. That might almost be one reason why you are working late here. In any case, the letters are in that drawer on your right-hand side and I am afraid that I must ask you to hand them over to me."

It was a very exciting moment for Miss Mott. She had embarked bravely enough upon the high seas of adventure, but she had never dreamed of anything like this happening within a few weeks of her start. How she prayed for a single gleam of light! How she longed to see behind that enveloping mask of purple silk! The eyes and the voice had both their separate thrill, but, more than anything else in the world, she wanted at that moment to look into the face of Violet Joe.

"Supposing I refuse?" she suggested.

"That seems such a foolish supposition," he argued, a touch of weariness in his tone. "You are not a large person, Miss Mott. I personally have a penchant for small, elegant young ladies of your type and build, but you will admit that they are not in a position to deal with affairs where physical strength is the deciding factor. You have heard a few things about Violet Joe, I daresay?"

"I have indeed," she acknowledged.

"Not all to my detriment, I hope?" he enquired anxiously.

"Mostly negative," she confided, sitting upright in her place. "I have heard that you absolutely decline to carry firearms in any of your enterprises, that you can break a man's wrist with your hands, that you are an amateur boxer, a famous wrestler, and all those stupid things. They are part of the equipment of your profession, I suppose."

"Slightly withering," he commented.

She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom now and she could trace the outline of his figure as he lounged opposite.

"One wonders," she went on, "why a man so well equipped as you to fight for what he wants should stoop to the lower branches of crime—perhaps I should say the lowest branch of all—blackmailing."

"Ah, but my dear Miss Mott," he expostulated, "you do not know Mrs. Bland Potterson. You have probably never met Mr. Bland Potterson. I can assure you that if you had made their acquaintance, you would understand the joy—the positive ecstasy—of having them both shivering in their shoes."

"I don't know either of them," Miss Mott acknowledged, "but I don't see what that has to do with it. In any case, I have the letters and I am going to carry out my contract. I am not in the least afraid of you. Besides—"

"Well?"

"There is just one thing more that I have heard said of Violet Joe. He has never robbed or laid his hands upon a woman."

"Touched," he admitted. "My problem then will be how to get the letters without using force—that is, if I am to preserve my reputation."

"What do you want them for?" she asked curiously. "Surely blackmailing on a small scale like this—just for the possession of a few stupid letters—ought to be beneath you. I thought Violet Joe only went in for crimes de luxe."

"You do not know Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson," he reminded her once more, with a grimace behind his mask which she was perfectly well able to divine.

"I don't see what that has to do with it," she repeated.

"Some day you may make their acquaintance. You will understand then the extreme pleasure it would be likely to give a man with a sense of humour—for, though you might not think it, I have a sense of humour, Miss Mott—to keep those two in a state of constant worry and anxiety upon the little dunghill they call life."

"Well, you're not going to have their letters," she assured him firmly, "and if you stay here much longer," she added, with a sudden inspiration, "you will have my uncle to deal with."

"And who may he be?" Violet Joe enquired. "I hate to think that any one, even an uncle, may be taking you out to supper, but let me know about him."

"Superintendent Detective Wragge of Scotland Yard," she answered, with a gleam of triumphant malice in her eyes. "The name may be familiar to you."

He laughed long and softly.

"Oh, Miss Mott," he expostulated—"Miss Mott, how can you tell falsehoods to an engaging stranger who is behaving so nicely to you? Dear Mr. Wragge is a very great friend of mine, but I can assure you that he won't be here to-night. He would probably give a great deal to be in your place and to have the pleasure of a little chat with me, but don't you see, if he was where you are, I wouldn't be where I am. Your respected uncle, Miss Mott, is at Southampton to-night, the passenger list of the Berengaria in his hand."

Miss Mott was uncannily surprised, for she happened to know that her visitor was telling the truth.

"You appear to be very well informed," she remarked.

He leaned back as though to laugh again. Then Miss Mott had the shock of her young life, for she was young in years as well as in her career. Like a crouching cat through the darkness he was by her side with one spring. The drawer towards which her eyes had too frequently wandered was opened. His fingers had closed upon the letters. She struck out at him and met only the empty air. She cried aloud, but that she knew was hopeless, for they were on the seventh storey of an almost empty building. Violet Joe was back again in his chair on the other side of the desk, the packet of letters in his pocket. His eyes were smiling at her through the narrow apertures of his mask. A little breath of the perfume of violets lingered in the disturbed atmosphere.

"Sorry, my dear young lady," he apologised, rising once more lightly to his feet, "but, after all, you mustn't complain. Flash bank notes, which I suppose you got from Scotland Yard, were quite a clever device of yours, but tricky—very tricky. You might have got my poor messenger into serious trouble, supposing he had been obliged to change one—say for his bus fare on the way home. If you stoop to that sort of thing, you must expect this sort of retribution."

He rose swiftly and unexpectedly to his feet, and she saw his outline in the gloom, the head thrust forward, listening intently. Then he crossed the room and felt about as though searching for something. He was by the window now, a little distance behind her desk, moving noiselessly,—an almost invisible presence. Suddenly she became conscious of a familiar, but at that hour unusual, sound. She heard the lift, the terminus of which was two flights down, as it came rattling into its place. A cold wave of air swept through the room. Violet Joe had opened the window.

"You are going to have a caller, Miss Mott," he confided. "Do you know who it might be?"

She listened. They both listened. The roar of the traffic far below came to them as a dead thing. It was a windless night and there was no other sound.

"I know of no likely caller," she admitted, rather breathlessly. "That was not true about my uncle, of course. You were right about his being at Southampton."

"Dear Miss Mott," he went on, and, though she thought of it afterwards with fury, at the time it almost thrilled her to hear the caress in his tone, "I am a little afraid of this mysterious visitor. If you had told me of any one else whom you were expecting, I should only have smiled, but a visitor whom neither you nor I know anything about fills me, I must confess, with apprehension."

Again they listened, and this time there was the faint but distinct sound of shuffling footsteps mounting the last flight of steps.

"Dear me!" Violet Joe sighed. "And I loathe bloodshed—especially before a lady. Do you like bloodshed, Miss Mott?"

"Indeed I do not," she answered vigorously. "Whatever are you doing out there by the window?"

"I have one hand," he confided, "upon the rail of the outside fire escape, but it's an awful long way to swing myself. Will you pray for me, Miss Mott?"

"Don't be mad!" she cried. "Come back into the room and take your mask off. I—I promise—I suppose it's silly of me—but I promise I won't give you away and I won't remember your face afterwards."

"You're a sporting little lady," he acknowledged, "but you see, there's your prospective visitor to be taken into consideration. He might not be so amiable. He may be out after me and this room is too small for a man's fight. Besides which, I should hate to have you mixed up in anything of the sort."

She could trace the outline of his figure, poised upon the window sill.

"Come back," she begged. "You can never reach that, and remember—we are seven storeys up."

He was halfway out of the window now. He looked at her and there was a quality of laughter in his voice, as he pulled the key of the door from his pocket and let it drop on to the floor.

"Pray for me, Miss Mott," he begged once more, "and if you hear a very unpleasant crash—in other words, if I miss my swing—it doesn't matter what you do, but if I make it, pull the window down, there's a dear."

For a few seconds he seemed to brace himself. Then his body swung away out of sight. It seemed to Miss Mott that it was the most dramatic moment of her whole life. Every sense she possessed was concentrated in a terrible effort of listening. There came no sound, no cry. She crept towards the window, her knees shaking beneath her. There was a dark form safely upon the ladder, a sheer silhouette against the sky, something which might have been a chuckle, and then blackness. Miss Mott closed the window, and then came back to a consideration of her own affairs, which were in their way pressing....

First of all, she turned the light on and unlocked the door. The footsteps were drawing near. They were definitely mounting now to her modest little suite of offices. She glanced at the telephone with bitter regret. Her thoughts were feverishly distracted. Curiously enough, her most imminent fears were not for herself. She found herself thinking first of the man crawling down those iron steps, storey by storey, the tops of the elm trees hundreds of feet below, with death the penalty for a single slip. She shivered violently, then forced her thoughts back to herself and her own predicament. She listened to the mounting footsteps. Who would be likely to pay her a visit at such an hour? She asked herself the question in vain. She had always laughed at nerves but this was a queer coincidence that, twice in one evening—the first evening of her life amidst her new surroundings—adventure should come and flaunt her. She thought of many things in those few seconds. She must have a revolver and take some shooting lessons. She must have two telephones. But most of all, she thought of that figure stealing down towards the street.

The knock at the door came at last and Miss Mott's apprehensions were not lessened by the sight of the visitor who made his furtive entrance. He could not, by any means, be called prepossessing. He wore the clothes of the shabby-genteel clerk out of work, but the clothes themselves were very much more shabby than genteel. His linen was doubtful and it was obvious that he was wearing his tie inside-out. His coat showed ink stains, but least pleasing of all was his face—long and narrow, with close-set eyes, and unpleasant mouth.

"Good evening, miss," he said, as he slipped across the threshold.

"Good evening," Miss Mott answered coldly. "What do you want? I am busy."

The young man deliberately closed the door behind him. Then he approached the desk at which Miss Mott was seated. He looked her over and there was a gleam of ugly admiration in his eyes. She shrank a little back in her chair.

"First of all, I have a matter of business to discuss with you, miss," he began. "You do the answers, don't you, for ladies and girls what gets into trouble in Home Talks?"

"I do," she acknowledged. "Are you one of my readers?"

Her visitor chuckled.

"Not much, miss," he scoffed. "I ain't come here to waste your time, either, nor mine. You've set up what you call an 'Intelligence Agency', on your own. You had a job from Mrs. Bland Potterson of Portland Place. You got some letters back for her. She hasn't had them yet because she's only returning from Brighton to-night. I'm after those letters."

"Blackmailer Number Two," Miss Mott observed calmly.

"You can call me what you jolly well like," the young man replied. "It was one of the big five who pinched them first. You settled with his messenger, who was a pal of mine, at Cobham this afternoon, and you've got the letters, waiting to give them back to Mrs. Bland Potterson."

"Well?"

"She'll have to pay twice over for them, that's all, because I've cut in to the game," the intruder announced with a grin. "No use making a fuss, miss," he added unpleasantly. "Hand over the letters."

"You are unfortunately too late," Miss Mott told him. "A previous visitor—probably the gentleman to whom you refer as one of the big five—was here half an hour ago, and, finding me alone and unarmed, has, in most chivalrous fashion, possessed himself of them."

"Who are you getting at?" the young man sneered. "I'm not taking any of that stuff, miss. The man I was speaking of isn't that sort of bloke. He wouldn't interfere himself in a trifle like this. My pal handed them over to you at Cobham and I know damned well that you haven't been to the old girl's yet, because you've been watched. As to any one else having pinched them, that's all me eye. Hand 'em over."

He struck the table with his unwashed fist, and the odour of him as he leaned across towards her, a threat in every gesture, was not in the least like the perfume of violets.

"I can assure you that I have not the letters," Miss Mott persisted. "If you do not go away at once, I shall telephone to the police."

She took the receiver from her disabled telephone and promptly regretted it. The young man leaped forward, swept the instrument from the table, and thrust his very disagreeable face within a few inches of her own.

"I ain't no time to waste, miss," he declared. "I'll look for them myself, and if you try to stop me," he went on, with a savage leer, "you'll get what's coming to you, and a bit more besides."

He flung open a drawer, in which Miss Mott had forty pounds in cash, several photographs, which she valued very much, and various other personal trifles far too sacred to be pulled about by this unwholesome person. She had the spirit of a lioness and she forgot her physical deficiencies. She struck out at him with all her power. He only grinned and imprisoned her wrists with one hand. Holding her in that fashion, he swept the money and a few oddments from the drawer into his pocket. He searched the desk in vain. There was no safe in the room and, as Miss Mott had not yet had time to complete her furnishing, there was obviously no other hiding place.

"Tell me where those letters are," he snarled.

"I have told you I haven't got them," she reiterated. "I haven't got them; and if I had, I wouldn't give them to you."

She struggled more violently still. He suddenly changed his tactics. He held her in a grip of iron and there was a sinister leer in his eyes.

"I'll teach you, you little devil!" he muttered. "That's right! Come closer to me! Now, it's you or the letters. Make up your mind."

She shrieked madly—shrieked and shrieked again. He only laughed.

"I know all about this place," he warned her. "No one nearer than the sixth storey down. That's why they have to let these offices so cheap. Now, my dear! The letters, or—"

There was a sound which, to her dazed ears, seemed like the smashing of a thousand windowpanes. The carpet all over the farther side of the office was littered with glass. The man in the purple mask, his hands upon the sill, leaped into the room. He asked no questions. He came at Miss Mott's assailant like a wild-cat. Miss Mott, opening her eyes from the horror which was encompassing her, heard a yell of agony, and saw her tormentor lying motionless in a far corner of the room. The smell of violets was in her nostrils, the fire of a pair of burning blue eyes blazed into hers. Nevertheless, the newcomer's voice, when he spoke, was remarkably steady.

"Turn out the light," he directed. "I've cut my cheek and my hand, and I shall have to take my mask off. I do not wish you to see my face."

She moved over to the switch and obeyed. The blood from his cheek was now dripping on to the desk.

"You had better get out and go home," he told her. "Here are your damned letters. I only wanted them to punish those beastly people, and they're not worth all that fuss, anyway. Get your hat."

She was trembling in every limb now, but she never thought of disobeying. With her coat upon her arm, she went shivering to the door.

"But you must let me bathe your cheek," she begged, stopping short.

"I have already told you," he said sternly, "that I will not allow you to see my face. I will leave this rubbish upon the stairs. He can tell his own story to any one he pleases, when he recovers."

"Why," she gasped, "did you come back?"

He hesitated.

"I didn't feel altogether easy about those shuffling footsteps," he confided. "Besides, some of the rungs of the ladder were very unsafe. Then I heard you call out."

"I'm not going until I have bandaged your hand, at any rate," she insisted.

But for once Miss Mott had met her master. He dragged her late assailant outside and left him groaning upon the stairs. Then he locked the door for her and gave her the key. The letters he had thrust into her bag.

"Go and finish your job," he enjoined.

"But you!"

"As soon as you're out of sight," he assured her, "I shall become a perfectly respectable member of society, who has banged against the lift in the darkness. The only way you can get me into trouble is by hanging about here. On your honour, remember. You won't look?"

"I swear," she promised.

He thrust the torn and blood-stained mask into her hand and she pushed it to the bottom of her bag. Then Miss Mott went flying down the stairs, and Violet Joe, after a contemptuous examination of the groaning figure sprawling upon the stairs, became an ordinary human being. He dabbed the cut in his cheek with a handkerchief, lit a cigarette, and descended towards the lift.

Miss Mott was very nearly cured that evening of any secret feeling of fondness she might have had for the women and girls whom she addressed every week in her column of Home Talks as "My dear friends." The butler at the great house in Portland Place gazed a little more haughtily than usual out of his front door at her timid summons. He rather resented visitors at this unusual hour.

"Mrs. Bland Potterson has just returned from Brighton, miss. If you are the young lady whom she is expecting, I will take you to her. Otherwise the mistress is not at home."

Miss Mott gave her name and was conducted through scenes of Tottenham Court Road magnificence into a glaring drawing-room, brilliantly illuminated, as Miss Mott suspected, for her especial benefit.

"The young person whom you were expecting, madam," the man announced.

A rubicund lady, dressed in clothes which seemed all too short and too tight for her, nodded patronizingly and pointed to a seat.

"So you're Miss Mott," she remarked, folding her hands in front of her,—"the young lady who gives us all the good advice in Home Talks. Parkins, tell your master that Miss Mott is here."

"Very good, madam."

Miss Mott waited until the man had left the room. Then she produced her little packet.

"I have brought your letters, Mrs. Potterson," she confided.

"How clever of you, my dear!" the lady exclaimed, leaning forward, and positively grabbing them from Miss Mott's outstretched hands. "Well, now, I am glad I thought of writing to you. Bothered to death I was about those letters. You see, my 'usband's by way of being a public man—may have a knighthood next year—it might run to a baronetcy—and when you get into circles like that, you see, young woman, there must never be any scandal. Not a breath of it."

"I quite understand," Miss Mott acquiesced.

Into the room bustled Mr. Bland Potterson and he was very much what one would have imagined the husband of Mrs. Bland Potterson to be like. He, too, was short. He was sleek. He was pompous. His tweed clothes were too load in pattern, his brown shoes were too yellow, and no one appeared to have pointed out to him the enormity of wearing a diamond pin in his tie with a soft shirt and collar.

"My 'usband," Mrs. Bland Potterson announced. "This is the young lady who's got back the letters, 'Erbert. She's brought them with her."

Mr. Bland Potterson smiled as amiably as he knew how. His cunning little eyes were devouring the packet.

"Well, well!" he exclaimed. "I'm not going to ask how you got them, young lady. Very clever of you, I'm sure."

Miss Mott, having risen to her feet, remained standing. She was aching to get away to her small flat, to think over the events of this amazing evening. Husband and wife exchanged glances. Mrs. Bland Potterson coughed.

"I suppose, Miss Mott," she said, "having had the letters in your possession for a whole day, as it were, that you have read them?"

"Why should you suppose any such thing?" was the indignant rejoinder. "I have done nothing of the sort."

Mrs. Bland Potterson coughed again. It was perfectly clear that she did not believe her visitor.

"My 'usband and I have talked it over," she continued, "and we think it only fair to let you know the truth about them. Sit down for a moment, please."

"I really don't want to know the truth about them," Miss Mott said wearily, "and I am anxious to get home."

They appeared not to have heard her. Mr. Bland Potterson, with his hands in his trousers pockets, came over to his wife's side.

"You see, they are all signed by the wretched girl's Christian name, which was Ellen," Mrs. Bland Potterson explained. "She was with us when we lived at Forest Hill, where we 'ad a much smaller establishment. 'Ousemaid, she was, and a very bad one at that. Well, as the letters show, she got into trouble. The first thing the 'ussy does is to try to get to see my 'usband alone. He's too clever for that and keeps out of 'er way. The impudent 'ussy then actually came to see me and an outrageous story she told. Out of the 'ouse I packed her pretty quick. My 'usband may have his weak moments—gentlemen do, it seems to me now, since the War—but not with servant girls."

Mr. Bland Potterson fingered his tie impressively.

"I should think not," he declared. "Very awkward position for me, you can see, Miss Mott, in my station of life. I was coining money at the time and we were making new and more important friends every day. No good tinkering with the young woman. I know the game too well. You begin to give them a little money and they cadge on to you for life. Not for yours truly. She had the impudence to come down to the office. I just sent for a policeman and that was that."

"What happened to her?" Miss Mott asked quietly, with a sudden inexplicable curiosity.

They were both silent for a moment.

"She appeared to have no friends," Mrs. Bland Potterson confided. "I'm not surprised at it—a hussy like that! She came from the country and she knew no one. They took her in at some sort of institution, I believe, to have her baby. Her last letter was written from there."

"And now?"

"She died," was the indifferent and yet somewhat shamefaced reply. "She was a vicious little cat, even on her deathbed. She got the clergyman to write that last letter there for her. Spiteful little beast!"

"And the child?"

Mr. Bland Potterson jangled the keys in his pocket.

"Who the devil cares anything about the child?" he demanded. "They put her into the workhouse, I think. Best place too. Anyway, like a couple of mugs, we kept her letters—some of them to my wife and some of them to me—and they were stolen by a servant. Now you know the whole of the story, Miss Mott, and the letters are going upon the fire within the next few minutes. We shall have a bottle of champagne to drink to their ashes. If you care for a glass yourself, young lady—"

"No thank you," Miss Mott, who was very badly in need of refreshment, replied. "I must be going."

"I suppose you had to pay a trifle for them, my dear," Mr. Bland Potterson enquired, with narrowing eyes.

"Yes, it cost something, naturally," Miss Mott acquiesced, trying to bring her mind to business. "I have opened an office, as you know, and my expenses mount up. I had quite a little trouble to persuade the people who had got possession of the letters to deal with me at all. However, I understood from your last communication that you were in a state of great anxiety, and I think you said that you would give almost anything in the world to recover the letters."

Mrs. Bland Potterson smiled.

"Well, well," she murmured, her puffy fingers tightening upon the packet, "one always exaggerates a trifle, I suppose. Anyhow, I am sure you did very nicely, and we must give you something to remember us by."

She leaned over and opened a bag upon the table by her side. From amongst a sheaf of money, she selected a five-pound note and showed it to her husband.

"Yes, yes, my dear," he agreed, with a wave of the hand. "We can afford it. Certainly."

Mrs. Bland Potterson handed the five-pound note over to Miss Mott and rang the bell.

"There you are, young lady," she announced, with ponderous grandiloquence. "Don't say a word, I beg of you. You're very welcome. I must certainly continue to subscribe to Home Talks and, if any of my friends get into trouble, I shall tell them to call you."

Miss Mott was feeling a little confused. She looked at the note, she looked at Mrs. Bland Potterson, she looked at the short, pompous figure of her husband, she looked at the butler, waiting to see her out, and gained at last some inspiration. She handed the note into his eager fingers.

"Perhaps you wouldn't mind getting me a taxi," she begged.

Miss Mott, as she crossed the pavement towards the waiting taxi, was very angry indeed. She was angry with herself, she was angry with the obsequious butler, she was more than ever angry with Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson. It seemed to her, however, that the climax had been reached when she flung herself back in the corner of the taxicab and became conscious that it was already occupied!

"Who are you?" she cried, leaning forward. "This is my taxicab."

"Then I cannot congratulate you upon your choice, Miss Mott," a voice answered. "It is a nasty, smelly vehicle. The fellow's been driving about all day with the windows up, I should think."

Miss Mott gasped.

"What on earth are you doing in here?" she demanded.

"I followed you," her dimly seen companion confessed. "The butler should have made sure that he was handing you into an empty cab."

"But what do you want?"

"I wanted to see how you got on with Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson."

"Beastly people!" she exclaimed.

He laughed softly.

"I had an idea you would not be pleased," he said. "I have to ask you a delicate question, Miss Mott. Please do not refuse to answer me."

"Well?"

"How much did they give you?"

"Five pounds," she answered scornfully. "I gave it to the butler."

This time his laugh, although just as soft, was more prolonged.

"I told you what unpleasant people they were. I am going to call on them myself in a few minutes."

"What do you mean? What do you want with them?"

"That would take too long to tell just now," he answered. "We are, I gather, on our way back to your rooms."

"We are just there."

"Then, will you be so kind," he begged, "as to slip into an evening gown—black would suit you very well, I think, with your pretty hair and your perfect complexion. I should like to dine somewhere where the light is not too strong or the music too loud—say Ciro's Grill Room—in an hour."

"Thank you," she replied. "I never dine out."

"My dear young lady," he protested. "Is it or is it not true that you have embarked upon a career of adventure?"

"I suppose it is more or less true," she admitted.

"You are Miss Mott, the one Miss Mott, who teaches people how to live their lives. It is your ambition to penetrate into every nook and cranny of the living world. I have heard all about you, you see. How can you lead the life adventurous if you refuse to dine with a humble criminal? There is much that you still have to learn about my profession. I will be your instructor. Besides, I want to tell you about Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson."

"I think," she said deliberately, "that you are mad!"

"And I think," he rejoined, "that you are terribly attractive. That little dash of colour—anger, I am afraid—becomes you, and I wish that I could believe that I were the first to tell you that your eyes are marvellous. In one hour's time, please, I shall be waiting for you in the hall. Don't be surprised if at first you fail to recognise me. I have many aliases. And do not trouble about this taxi, please," he added, as he stepped out and handed her to the pavement. "I am going to take it on. In one hour then."

"I shall not be there," she declared positively.

"I shall hope for the best," he replied.

Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson were still indulging in their orgy of complacent self-congratulation.

"And to get them for only five pounds!" Mrs. Bland Potterson chuckled.

"Your cleverness, my dear," her husband declared. "One could plainly see that the little girl was overpowered by her surroundings."

"She has probably heard, too," Mrs. Bland Potterson remarked, "that you are soon to be an M.P."

The door was thrown open. The butler once more insinuated his bland presence.

"The Honorable Mr. Gervase Mallincourt," he announced.

Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson were surprised. The young man who was approaching them was without doubt a person of consequence. Mrs. Bland Potterson smiled a greeting.

"I must apologise for this intrusion," the newcomer said. "My only excuse is that I shall merely keep you a matter of two minutes."

"Something to do with the election, perhaps?" Mr. Bland Potterson suggested. "Take a chair, Mr.—er—Mallincourt."

"Your surmise is correct," the visitor agreed. "Something to do with the election."

He produced a packet of letters from his pocket, folded together and secured with a rubber band. Something about those letters from the first seemed ominous—the mauve notepaper, the faint odour of cheap patchouli!

"A quarter of an hour ago," the young man went on, "you bought and have doubtless already destroyed a packet of letters written to you both by the domestic servant whom you, Mr. Bland Potterson, seduced. You imagined that you were destroying the originals. You were not. You were destroying copies which had been palmed off upon a cheap blackmailer. The originals have been kept for a different purpose. Here they are. Ten thousand pounds would not buy them, Mr. Bland Potterson. Your resignation from your candidature of the Western Division of St. Pancras would and will."

Mrs. Bland Potterson collapsed in her chair. Her husband sat with his mouth open—incapable of speech. This amazing young man stood between them, turning the letters over so that they could both catch a glimpse of them. Gradually the horrible truth became perfectly apparent to Mr. Bland Potterson. These were, without a doubt, the genuine letters. There had seemed to him something inexplicably unfamiliar about the others.

"Who are you?" he demanded at last.

"I am a patriot," the visitor replied. "I live for the sake of my country, and I conceive it very much against my country's interests that you, sir, should become a member of the British Parliament. Mr. Hulings Johnson is an infinitely better man. All my friends wish Mr. Hulings Johnson to be elected. As there will be no time to secure a new candidate, it seems to me that he probably will be. The time is very short. I should recommend, sir, that you take to your bed to-night, send for your doctor, announce your illness and communicate with your party organisation."

There was a babel of angry questions, disjointed threats, unbridled fury from Mr. and Mrs. Bland Potterson. The young gentleman who had introduced himself as the Honorable Gervase Mallincourt once more waved the letters in their faces and turned towards the door.

"If the announcement of your resignation, sir, appears in the evening press to-morrow, upon my word as a gentleman, the letters will be destroyed or returned to you—whichever you prefer. If it does not appear, I shall be on the platform of your meeting at two o'clock in the afternoon. Do not trouble to ring. I can find my own way out."

"I came," Miss Mott said severely, "because I was curious."

"And you will remain," her companion replied, as they descended the stairs into the Grill Room, "because you are going to have a delightful dinner."

"What have you done to yourself?" she asked. "You look about twenty years older and, although you have been frightfully clever about it, I know that that is not your own hair, and those lines in your face are not natural."

"We criminals," he assured her, "get into the way of this sort of thing. We are quite accustomed to being blonds one evening and bruns the next! You may yet see me as Father Christmas. How thankful I am," he went on, as they seated themselves in the bar and ordered cocktails, "that you are on the right side of the fence. You will never need to disguise yourself. On the whole, I am glad that you did not wear black—although I'm afraid that that was obstinacy—that particular shade of grey goes with your eyes. You are very distracting, Miss Mott—"

"I did not come here to listen to you talking nonsense," she said severely.

"Of course not. I know that," he acknowledged. "Wait a minute. This has been a busy day. Let's drain these cocktails; then I will take you to the little corner table I have engaged. You shall read the menu of the dinner I have ordered and then, when I am quite sure that nothing would induce you to get up and leave me until after the dinner has been served, I shall tell you what you are dying to hear."

She looked at him curiously. After all, he had not exaggerated. They were very beautiful grey eyes and very beautifully set.

"I could almost believe," she said, "that you are rather masterful."

"I am also disagreeable," he told her, "if I don't get my own way."

Miss Mott read the menu and gave a little sigh of content. She had a weakness for exquisite food.

"Nothing," she assured him, "would induce me to leave until after the strawberries!"

"Then here is the truth," her companion confessed. "Such matters do not come within the sphere of our activities as a rule, but I have a young cousin, brilliantly clever, who is aching to get into Parliament. Mr. Bland Potterson's withdrawal at the last moment will make the seat a certainty for him. How we got to know about the letters doesn't matter. We should never have done anything about them in an ordinary way—not in our line at all—but in a good cause, against a Bland Potterson, everything is admissible. The letters you got back were copies. I have just shown the originals to Mr. Bland Potterson. I think that he would have given me more than five pounds for them but I told him that there was only one price. That he will pay. To-morrow night you will see the announcement of his sudden illness and retirement!"

Miss Mott's lips parted in a faint smile. There was a twinkle in her eyes as she watched the Amontillado being reverently poured into her consommé.

"Perhaps," she murmured, "after all, five pounds were as much as my copies were worth!"