N Or M? Part 12

"As you say, dear lady, I am capable of taking a clear unprejudiced view. Now, in my opinion -"

What followed const.i.tuted a monologue. Tuppence, throwing in an occasional "Now that's very interesting," or "What a shrewd observer you are," listened with an attention that was not a.s.sumed for the occasion. For Mr Cayley, carried away by the sympathy of his listener, was displaying himself as a decided admirer of the n.a.z.i system. How much better it would have been, he hinted, if he did not say, for England and Germany to have allied themselves against the rest of Europe.

The return of Miss Minton and Betty, the celluloid duck duly obtained, broke in upon the monologue, which had extended unbroken for nearly two hours. Looking up, Tuppence caught rather a curious expression on Mrs cayley's face. She found it hard to define. It might be merely pardonable wifely jealousy at the monopoly of her husband's attention by another woman. It might be alarm at the fact that Mr Cayley was being too outspoken in his political views. It certainly expressed dissatisfaction.

Tea was the next move and hard on that came the return of Mrs Sprot from London exclaiming: "I do hope Betty's been good and not troublesome? Have you been a good girl, Betty?" To which Betty replied laconically by the single word: "Dam!"

This, however, was not to be regarded as an expression of disapproval at her mother's return, but merely as a request for blackberry preserve.

It elicited a deep chuckle from Mrs O'Rourke and a reproachful: "Please, Betty, dear," from the young lady's parent.

Mrs Sprot then sat down, drank several cups of tea, and plunged into a spirited narrative of her purchases in London, the crowd on the train, what a soldier recently returned from France had told the occupants of her carriage, and what a girl behind the stocking counter had told her of a recent air raid in one of the suburbs.

The conversation was, in fact, completely normal. It was prolonged afterwards on the terrace outside, for the sun was now s.h.i.+ning and the wet day a thing of the past.

Betty rushed happily about, making mysterious expeditions into the bushes and returning with a laurel leaf, or a heap of pebbles which she placed in the lap of one of the grown-ups with a confused and unintelligible explanation of what it represented. Fortunately she required little cooperation in her game, being satisfied with an occasional "How nice, darling. Is it really?"

Never had there been an evening more typical of Sans Souci at its most harmless. Chatter, gossip, speculations as to the course of the war - can France rally? Will Weygand pull things together? What is Russia likely to do? Could Hitler invade England if he tried? Will Paris fall if the "bulge" is not straightened out? Was it true that...? It had been said that... And it was rumoured that...

Political and military scandal was happily bandied about.

Tuppence thought to herself: "Chatterbugs a danger? Nonsense, they're a safety valve. People enjoy these rumours. It gives them the stimulation to carry on with their own private worries and anxieties." She contributed a nice tid-bit prefixed by, "My son told me - of course this is quite private, you understand -"

Suddenly, with a start, Mrs Sprot glanced at her watch.

"Goodness, it's nearly seven. I ought to have put that child to bed hours ago. Betty - Betty!"

It was some time since Betty had returned to the terrace, though no one had noticed her defection.

Mrs Sprot called her with rising impatience.

"Bett-eeee! Where can the child be?"

Mrs O'Rourke said, with her deep laugh: "Up to mischief, I've no doubt of it. 'Tis always the way when there's peace."

"Betty! I want you."

There was no answer and Mrs Sprot rose impatiently.

"I suppose I must go and look for her. I wonder where she can be?"

Miss Minton suggested that she was hiding somewhere and Tuppence, with memories of her own childhood, suggested the kitchen. But Betty could not be found, either inside or outside the house. They went round the garden calling, looking all over the bedrooms. There was no Betty anywhere.

Mrs Sprot began to get annoyed.

"It's very naughty of her - very naughty indeed! Do you think she can have gone out on the road?"

Together she and Tuppence went out to the gate and looked up and down the hill. There was no one in sight except a tradesman's boy with a bicycle standing talking to a maid at the door of St. Lucian's opposite.

On Tuppence's suggestion, she and Mrs Sprot crossed the road and the latter asked if either of them had noticed a little girl. They both shook their heads and then the servant asked, with sudden recollection: "A little girl in a green checked gingham dress?"

Mrs Sprot said eagerly: "That's right."

"I saw her about half an hour ago - going down the road with a woman."

Mrs Sprot said, with astonishment: "With a woman? What sort of a woman?"

The girl seemed slightly embarra.s.sed.

"Well, what I'd call an odd looking kind of woman. A foreigner she was. Queer clothes. A kind of shawl thing and no hat, and a strange sort of face - queer like, if you know what I mean. I've seen her about once or twice lately, and to tell the truth I thought she was a bit wanting - If you know what I mean," she added helpfully.

In a flash Tuppence remembered the face she had seen that afternoon peering through the bushes and the foreboding that had swept over her.

But she had never thought of the woman in connection with the child, could not understand it now.

She had little time for meditation, however. Mrs Sprot almost collapsed against her.

"Oh, Betty, my little girl. She's been kidnapped. She - what did the woman look like - a gypsy?"

Tuppence shook her head energetically.

"No, she was fair, very fair, a broad face with high cheek bones and blue eyes set very far apart."

She saw Mrs Sprot staring at her and hastened to explain.

"I saw the woman this afternoons - peering through the bushes at the bottom of the garden. And I've noticed her hanging about. Carl von Deinim was speaking to her one day. It must be the same woman."

The servant girl chimed in to say: "That's right. Fair-haired, she was. And wanting, if you ask me. Didn't understand nothing that was said to her."

"Oh, G.o.d," moaned Mrs Sprot. "What shall I do?"

Tuppence pa.s.sed an arm round her.

"Come back to the house, have a little brandy and then we'll ring up the police. It's all right. We'll get her back."

Mrs Sprot went with her meekly, murmuring in a dazed fas.h.i.+on: "I can't imagine how Betty would go like that with a stranger."

"She's very young," said Tuppence. "Not old enough to be shy."

Mrs Sprot cried out weakly: "Some dreadful German woman, I expect. She'll kill my Betty."

"Nonsense," said Tuppence robustly. "It will be all right. I expect she's just some woman who's not quite right in her head." But she did not believe her own words - did not believe for one moment that that calm blond woman was an irresponsible lunatic.

Carl! Would Carl know? Had Carl something to do with this?

A few minutes later she was inclined to doubt this. Carl von Deinim, like the rest, seemed amazed, unbelieving, completely surprised.

As soon as the facts were made plain. Major Bletchley a.s.sumed control.

"Now then, dear lady," he said to Mrs Sprot, "sit down here - just drink a little drop of this - brandy - it won't hurt you - and I'll get straight on to the police station."

Mrs Sprot murmured: "Wait a minute - there might be something -"

She hurried up the stairs and along the pa.s.sage to hers and Betty's room.

A minute or two later they heard her footsteps running wildly along the landing. She rushed down the stairs like a demented woman and clutched Major Bletchley's hand from the telephone receiver, which he was just about to lift.

"No, no," she panted. "You mustn't - you mustn't..."

And sobbing wildly, she collapsed into a chair.

They crowded around her. In a minute or two, she recovered her composure. Sitting up, with Mrs Cayley's arm round her, she held something out for them to see.

"I found this - on the floor of my room. It had been wrapped round a stone and thrown through the window. Look - look what it says."

Tommy took it from her and unfolded it.

It was a note, written in a queer stiff foreign handwriting, big and bold.

WE HAVE GOT YOUR CHILD IN SAFE KEEPING. YOU WILL BE TOLD WHAT TO DO IN DUE COURSE. IF YOU GO TO THE POLICE YOUR CHILD WILL BE KILLED. SAY NOTHING. WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS. IF NOT -.

It was signed with a skull and crossbones.

Mrs Sprot was moaning faintly: "Betty - Betty -"

Everyone was talking at once. "The dirty murdering scoundrels -" from Mrs O'Rourke. "Brutes!" from Sheila Perenna. "Fantastic, fantastic - I don't believe a word of it. Silly practical joke," from Mr Cayley. "Oh, the dear, wee mite," from Miss Minton. "I do not understand. It is incredible," from Carl von Deinim. And above everyone else the strenuous voice of Major Bletchley: "d.a.m.ned nonsense. Intimidation. We must inform the police at once. They'll soon get to the bottom of it."

Once more he moved toward the telephone. This time a scream of outraged motherhood from Mrs Sprot stopped him.

He shouted: "But, my dear Madam, it's got to be done. This is only a crude device to prevent you getting on the track of these scoundrels."

"They'll kill her."

"Nonsense. They wouldn't dare."

"I won't have it, I tell you. I'm her mother. It's for me to say."

"I know. I know. That's what they're counting on - your feeling like that. Very natural. But you must take it from me, a soldier and an experienced man of the world, the police are what we need."

"No!"

Bletchley's eyes went round seeking allies.

"Meadowes, you agree with me?"

Slowly, Tommy nodded.

"Cayley? Look, Mrs Sprot, both Meadowes and Cayley agree."

Mrs Sprot said, with sudden energy: "Men! All of you! Ask the women!"

Tommy's eyes sought Tuppence. Tuppence said, her voice low and shaken: "I - I agree with Mrs Sprot."

She was thinking, "Deborah! Derek! If it were them, I'd feel like her. Tommy and the others are right, I've no doubt, but all the same I couldn't do it. I couldn't risk it."

Mrs O'Rourke was saying: "No mother alive could risk it and that's a fact."

Mrs Cayley murmured: "I do think, you know, that - well -" and tailed off into incoherence.

Miss Minton said tremulously: "Such awful things happen. We'd never forgive ourselves if anything happened to dear little Betty."

Tuppence said sharply: "You haven't said anything, Mr von Deinim?"

Carl's blue eyes were very bright. His face was a mask. He said slowly and stiffly: "I am a foreigner. I do not know your English police. How competent they are - how quick."

Someone had come into the hall. It was Mrs Perenna; her cheeks were flushed. Evidently she had been hurrying up the hill. She said: "What's all this?" And her voice was commanding, imperious, not the complaisant guest house hostess, but a woman of force.

They told her - a confused tale told by too many people, but she grasped it quickly.

And with her grasping of it, the whole thing seemed, in a way, to be pa.s.sed up to her for judgment. She was the supreme court.

She held the hastily scrawled note a minute, then she handed it back. Her words came sharp and authoritative.

"The police? They'll be no good. You can't risk their blundering. Take the law into your own hands. Go after the child yourself."

Bletchley said, shrugging his shoulders: "Very well, If you won't call in the police, it's the best thing to be done."

Tommy said: "They can't have got much of a start."

"Half an hour, the maid said," Tuppence put in.

"Haydock," said Bletchley. "Haydock's the man to help us. He's got a car. The woman's unusual looking, you say? And a foreigner? Ought to leave a trail that we can follow. Come on, there's no time to be lost. You'll come along, Meadowes?"

Mrs Sprot got up.

"I'm coming, too."

"Now, my dear lady, leave it to us -"

"I'm coming, too."

"Oh well -"

He gave in - murmuring something about the female of the species being deadlier than the male.

III.

In the end Commander Haydock, taking in the situation with commendable Naval rapidity, drove the car. Tommy sat beside him, and behind were Bletchley, Mrs Sprot and Tuppence. Not only did Mrs Sprot cling to her, but Tuppence was the only one (with the exception of Carl von Deinim) who knew the mysterious kidnapper by sight.