The Clue of the Twisted Candle Part 20

"Shall I ring up for a messenger?"

"No, I don't think that would be advisable. You had better take it yourself."

Kara was in the habit of employing Fisher as a confidential messenger when the occasion demanded such employment.

"I will go with pleasure, miss," he said.

It was a heaven-sent opportunity for Fisher, who had been inventing some excuse for leaving the house. She handed him the letter and he read without a droop of eyelid the superscription:

"T. X. Meredith, Esq., Special Service Dept., Scotland Yard, Whitehall."

He put it carefully in his pocket and went from the room to change.

Large as the house was Kara did not employ a regular staff of servants.

A maid and a valet comprised the whole of the indoor staff. His cook, and the other domestics, necessary for conducting an establishment of that size, were engaged by the day.

Kara had returned from the country earlier than had been antic.i.p.ated, and, save for Fisher, the only other person in the house beside the girl, was the middle-aged domestic who was parlour-maid, serving-maid and housekeeper in one.

Miss Holland sat at her desk to all appearance reading over the letters she had typed that afternoon but her mind was very far from the correspondence before her. She heard the soft thud of the front door closing, and rising she crossed the room rapidly and looked down through the window to the street. She watched Fisher until he was out of sight; then she descended to the hall and to the kitchen.

It was not the first visit she had made to the big underground room with its vaulted roof and its great ranges--which were seldom used nowadays, for Kara gave no dinners.

The maid--who was also cook--arose up as the girl entered.

"It's a sight for sore eyes to see you in my kitchen, miss," she smiled.

"I'm afraid you're rather lonely, Mrs. Beale," said the girl sympathetically.

"Lonely, miss!" cried the maid. "I fairly get the creeps sitting here hour after hour. It's that door that gives me the hump."

She pointed to the far end of the kitchen to a soiled looking door of unpainted wood.

"That's Mr. Kara's wine cellar--n.o.body's been in it but him. I know he goes in sometimes because I tried a dodge that my brother--who's a policeman--taught me. I stretched a bit of white cotton across it an' it was broke the next morning."

"Mr. Kara keeps some of his private papers in there," said the girl quietly, "he has told me so himself."

"H'm," said the woman doubtfully, "I wish he'd brick it up--the same as he has the lower cellar--I get the horrors sittin' here at night expectin' the door to open an' the ghost of the mad lord to come out--him that was killed in Africa."

Miss Holland laughed.

"I want you to go out now," she said, "I have no stamps."

Mrs. Beale obeyed with alacrity and whilst she was a.s.suming a hat--being desirous of maintaining her prestige as housekeeper in the eyes of Cadogan Square, the girl ascended to the upper floor.

Again she watched from the window the disappearing figure.

Once out of sight Miss Holland went to work with a remarkable deliberation and thoroughness. From her bag she produced a small purse and opened it. In that case was a new steel key. She pa.s.sed swiftly down the corridor to Kara's room and made straight for the safe.

In two seconds it was open and she was examining its contents. It was a large safe of the usual type. There were four steel drawers fitted at the back and at the bottom of the strong box. Two of these were unlocked and contained nothing more interesting than accounts relating to Kara's estate in Albania.

The top pair were locked. She was prepared for this contingency and a second key was as efficacious as the first. An examination of the first drawer did not produce all that she had expected. She returned the papers to the drawer, pushed it to and locked it. She gave her attention to the second drawer. Her hand shook a little as she pulled it open. It was her last chance, her last hope.

There were a number of small jewel-boxes almost filling the drawer. She took them out one by one and at the bottom she found what she had been searching for and that which had filled her thoughts for the past three months.

It was a square case covered in red morocco leather. She inserted her shaking hand and took it out with a triumphant little cry.

"At last," she said aloud, and then a hand grasped her wrist and in a panic she turned to meet the smiling face of Kara.

CHAPTER X

She felt her knees shake under her and thought she was going to swoon.

She put out her disengaged hand to steady herself, and if the face which was turned to him was pale, there was a steadfast resolution in her dark eyes.

"Let me relieve you of that, Miss Holland," said Kara, in his silkiest tones.

He wrenched rather than took the box from her hand, replaced it carefully in the drawer, pushed the drawer to and locked it, examining the key as he withdrew it. Then he closed the safe and locked that.

"Obviously," he said presently, "I must get a new safe."

He had not released his hold of her wrist nor did he, until he had led her from the room back to the library. Then he released the girl, standing between her and the door, with folded arms and that cynical, quiet, contemptuous smile of his upon his handsome face.

"There are many courses which I can adopt," he said slowly. "I can send for the police--when my servants whom you have despatched so thoughtfully have returned, or I can take your punishment into my own hands."

"So far as I am concerned," said the girl coolly, "you may send for the police."

She leant back against the edge of the desk, her hands holding the edge, and faced him without so much as a quaver.

"I do not like the police," mused Kara, when there came a knock at the door.

Kara turned and opened it and after a low strained conversation he returned, closing the door and laid a paper of stamps on the girl's table.

"As I was saying, I do not care for the police, and I prefer my own method. In this particular instance the police obviously would not serve me, because you are not afraid of them and in all probability you are in their pay--am I right in supposing that you are one of Mr. T. X.

Meredith's accomplices!"

"I do not know Mr. T. X. Meredith," she replied calmly, "and I am not in any way a.s.sociated with the police."

"Nevertheless," he persisted, "you do not seem to be very scared of them and that removes any temptation I might have to place you in the hands of the law. Let me see," he pursed his lips as he applied his mind to the problem.

She half sat, half stood, watching him without any evidence of apprehension, but with a heart which began to quake a little. For three months she had played her part and the strain had been greater than she had confessed to herself. Now the great moment had come and she had failed. That was the sickening, maddening thing about it all. It was not the fear of arrest or of conviction, which brought a sinking to her heart; it was the despair of failure, added to a sense of her helplessness against this man.

"If I had you arrested your name would appear in all the papers, of course," he said, narrowly, "and your photograph would probably adorn the Sunday journals," he added expectantly.

She laughed.

"That doesn't appeal to me," she said.