Tell them, I interrupted, that I cannot see them. And, John
Sir?
I am not at home to anybody anybody at all. You understand?
Quite, sir.
I noticed that his tone was not quite as deferential as usual. I knew the reason. Of course he had seen this odious paper, or some paper more odious still. Probably he and the other servants in the building had been discussing me, and hazarding all sorts of wildly improbable stories about me.
The telephone bell rang again. I forget what I said. I think it was a short prayer, or an invocation of some kind. My first impulse was not to answer the phone again at all, but to let the thing go on ringing. It rang so persistently, however, that in desperation I pulled off the receiver.
Who the dickens is it? What do you want? I shouted.
I gasped.
What! Vera? Where are you? I want to see you. I must see you at once!
My love was in dire distress. I could hear emotion in her voice. My heart beat quickly in my eagerness.
Oh, come to me do come to me! she was saying hurriedly in a low tone, as though fearful of some one overhearing her. Im in such trouble, and you alone can help me. Tell me when you will come. Tell me quickly. At any moment someone may catch me talking on the telephone.
Where are you? Give me your address, quickly, I answered, feverishly. I was madly anxious to meet her again.
We are in London but we go to Brighton to-day this afternoon
Your address in London, quick.
Twenty-six Upper
There was a sudden clatter. The receiver had been put back. Some one had interrupted her.
I tapped the little lever of the instrument repeatedly.
Number, please, a monotonous voice asked.
What number was I talking to this instant? I said, almost trembling with anxiety.
Im sure I dont know. What number do you want?
The number Ive been talking to.
I tell you I dont know it, replied the female operator.
Cant you find it out?
Ill try. Hold the line, please.
After a brief interval, the voice said
It may have been double-two two two Mayfair. Shall I ring them for you?
Please do.
I waited.
Youre through.
Hello, what is it? a beery voice asked.
I want to speak to Miss Vera Thorold?
Vera oo?
Thorold.
Theobald? Hes out.
Thorold, Miss Vera Thorold, I shouted in despair.
Oh, we aint got no Veras here, the beery voice replied, and I could picture the speakers leer. This aint a ladies seminary; its Poulsens Brewery Company, Limited. Youre on the wrong number. Ring off.
And again the instrument was silent.
Vera had been cut off just at the moment she was about to reveal her whereabouts.
Almost beside myself with anxiety, I tried to collect my thoughts in order to devise some means of discovering Veras whereabouts and getting into immediate communication with her. I even went to the telephone exchange, interviewed the manager, and told him the exact time, to the fraction of a minute, when I had been rung up, but though he did his best to help me, he could not trace the number.
I have a vivid imagination, and am of an exceptionally apprehensive disposition, which has led some men to declare that I meet trouble half-way, though that is a thing I am constantly warning my friends not to do. In this case, however, I found it impossible not to feel anxious, desperately anxious, about the one woman I really cared for in the whole world. She had appealed to me urgently for help, and I was impotent to help her.
Dejectedly I returned to my flat. The lift-boy was standing in the street, his hands in his pockets, the stump of a cheap cigarette between his lips. Without removing his hands from his pockets, or the cigarette-end from his mouth, he looked up at me with an offensive grin, and jerked out the sentence between his teeth
Theres a lady here to see you a Miss Thorold.
Miss Thorold? Where is she? How long has she been here? I exclaimed, quelling all outward appearance of excitement.
About ten minutes. Shes up in your rooms, sir. She said you knew her, and shed wait till you came back.
Vera! I gasped involuntarily, and entered the lift, frantic with impatience.
At last. She was there in my rooms, awaiting me with explanation!
Chapter Five
Puts Certain Questions
Rarely have I felt more put out, or more bitterly disappointed, than I did when I hurried into my flat, expecting to come face to face with Vera, my beloved, and longing to take her in my arms to kiss and comfort her.
Instead, I was confronted by a spinster aunt of Veras whom I had met only three times before, and to whom I had, the first time I was introduced to her she insisted upon never remembering me either by name or by sight, and each time needing a fresh introduction taken an ineradicable dislike.
Ah, Mr Ashton, Im so glad youve come, she said without rising. I have called to talk to you about a great many things I daresay you can guess what they are about all this dreadful affair at Houghton.
Now the more annoyed I feel with anybody of my own social standing, the more coldly polite I invariably become. It was so on this occasion.
I should love to stay and talk to you, Miss Thorold, I answered, after an instants pause, but I have just been sitting at the bedside of a sick friend. To-day is the first day he has been allowed to see anybody. The doctor said he ought not to have allowed me in so soon, and he warned me to go straight home, take off every stitch of clothing I have on, and send them at once to be disinfected.
Oh, indeed? she said rather nervously. And what has been the matter with your friend?
It was the question I wanted.
Didnt I tell you? I said. It was smallpox.
My ruse proved even more successful than I had anticipated. Miss Thorold literally sprang to her feet, gathered up her satchel and umbrella, and with the hurried remark: How perfectly monstrous keep well away from me! she edged her way round the wall to the door, and, calling to me from the little passage: I will ring you on the telephone, went out of the flat, slamming the door after her.
But where was Vera? How could I discover her? I was beside myself with anxiety.
The Houghton affair created more than a nine days wonder. The people of Rutland desperately resent anything in the nature of a scandal which casts a disagreeable reflection upon their county. I remember how some years ago they talked for months about an unpleasant affair to do with hunting.
Even if it were true, some of the people who knew it to be true said one to another, it ought never to have been exposed in that way. Think of the discredit it brings upon our county, and what a handle the Radicals and the Socialists will be able to make of it, if ever it is discovered that it really did occur.
And so it came about that, when I was called back to Oakham two days later, to attend the double inquest, many of the people there, with whom I had been on quite friendly terms, looked at me more or less askance. It is not well to make oneself notorious in a tiny county like Rutland, I quickly discovered, or even to become notorious through no fault of ones own.
Shall I ever forget how, at the inquest, questions put to me by all sorts of uneducated people upon whom the duty devolved of inquiring into the mysterious affair connected with Houghton Park?