The Angel of Terror, Edgar Wallace [red queen free ebook .txt] 📗

and stopped, for it was saturated with water—water that dropped from the hanging coverlet, and made little pools on the floor. From the head of the bed to the foot there was not one dry place. Whosoever had done the work was thorough. Blankets, sheets, pillows were soddened, and from the soaked mass came a faint acrid aroma which she recognised, even before she saw on the floor an empty bottle labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen."[Pg 145]

She could only stand and stare. It was too late to arouse the household, and she remembered that there was a very comfortable settee in the dressing-room with a rug and a pillow, and she went back.

A few minutes later she was fast asleep. Not so Miss Briggerland, who was sitting up in bed, a cigarette between her lips, a heavy volume on her knees, reading:

"Such malignant cases are almost without exception rapidly fatal, sometimes so early that no sign of the characteristic symptoms appear at all," she read and, dropping the book on the floor, extinguished her cigarette on an alabaster tray, and settled herself to sleep. She was dozing when she remembered that she had forgotten to say her prayers.

"Oh, damn!" said Jean, getting out reluctantly to kneel on the cold floor by the side of the bed.[Pg 146]

Chapter XIX

Her maid woke Jean Briggerland at eight o'clock the next morning.

"Oh, miss," she said, as she drew up the table for the chocolate, "have you heard about Mrs. Meredith?"

Jean blinked open her eyes, slipped into her dressing jacket and sat up with a yawn.

"Have I heard about Mrs. Meredith? Many times," she said.

"But what somebody did last night, miss?"

Jean was wide awake now.

"What has happened to Mrs. Meredith?" she asked.

"Why, miss, somebody played a practical joke on her. Her bed's sopping."

"Sopping?" frowned the girl.

"Yes, miss," the woman nodded. "They must have poured buckets of water over it, and used up all Mrs. Cole-Mortimer's peroxide, what she uses for keeping her hands nice."

Jean swung out of her bed and sat looking down at her tiny white feet.

"Where did Mrs. Meredith sleep? Why didn't she wake us up?"[Pg 147]

"She slept in the dressing-room, miss. I don't suppose the young lady liked making a fuss."

"Who did it?"

"I don't know who did it. It's a silly kind of practical joke, and I know none of the maids would have dared, not the French ones."

Jean put her feet into her slippers, exchanged her jacket for a gown, and went on a tour of inspection.

Lydia was dressing in her room, and the sound of her fresh, young voice, as she carolled out of sheer love of life, came to the girl before she turned into the room.

One glance at the bed was sufficient. It was still wet, and the empty peroxide bottle told its own story.

Jean glanced at it thoughtfully as she crossed into the dressing-room.

"Whatever happened last night, Lydia?"

Lydia turned at the voice.

"Oh, the bed you mean," she made a little face. "Heaven knows. It occurred to me this morning that some person, out of mistaken kindness, had started to disinfect the room—it was only this morning that I recalled the little boy who was ill—and had overdone it."

"They've certainly overdone it," said Jean grimly. "I wonder what poor Mrs. Cole-Mortimer will say. You haven't the slightest idea——"[Pg 148]

"Not the slightest idea," said Lydia, answering the unspoken question.

"I'll see Mrs. Cole-Mortimer and get her to change your bed—there's another room you could have," suggested Jean.

She went back to her own apartment, bathed and dressed leisurely.

She found her father in the garden reading the Nicoise, under the shade of a bush, for the sun was not warm, but at that hour, blinding.

"I've changed my plans," she said without preliminary.

He looked up over his glasses.

"I didn't know you had any," he said with heavy humour.

"I intended going back to London and taking you with me," she said unexpectedly.

"Back to London?" he said incredulously. "I thought you were staying on for a month."

"I probably shall now," she said, pulling up a basket-chair and sitting by his side. "Give me a cigarette."

"You're smoking a lot lately," he said as he handed his case to her.

"I know I am."

"Have your nerves gone wrong?"

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and her lips curled.

"It wouldn't be remarkable if I inherited a little of your yellow streak," she said coolly, and he growled something under his breath.[Pg 149] "No, my nerves are all right, but a cigarette helps me to think."

"A yellow streak, have I?" Mr. Briggerland was annoyed. "And I've been out since five o'clock this morning——" he stopped.

"Doing—what?" she asked curiously.

"Never mind," he said with a lofty gesture.

Thus they sat, busy with their own thoughts, for a quarter of an hour.

"Jean."

"Yes," she said without turning her head.

"Don't you think we'd better give this up and get back to London? Lord Stoker is pretty keen on you."

"I'm not pretty keen on him," she said decidedly. "He has his regimental pay and £500 a year, two estates, mortgaged, no brains and a title—what is the use of his title to me? As much use as a coat of paint! Beside which, I am essentially democratic."

He chuckled, and there was another silence.

"Do you think the lawyer is keen on the girl?"

"Jack Glover?"

Mr. Briggerland nodded.

"I imagine he is," said Jean thoughtfully. "I like Jack—he's clever. He has all the moral qualities which one admires so much in the abstract. I could love Jack myself."

"Could he love you?" bantered her father.

"He couldn't," she said shortly. "Jack[Pg 150] would be a happy man if he saw me stand in Jim Meredith's place in the Old Bailey. No, I have no illusion about Jack's affections."

"He's after Lydia's money I suppose," said Mr. Briggerland, stroking his bald head.

"Don't be a fool," was the calm reply. "That kind of man doesn't worry about a girl's money. I wish Lydia was dead," she added without malice. "It would make things so easy and smooth."

Her father swallowed something.

"You shock me sometimes, Jean," he said, a statement which amused her.

"You're such a half-and-half man," she said with a note of contempt in her voice. "You were quite willing to benefit by Jim Meredith's death; you killed him as cold-bloodedly as you killed poor little Bulford, and yet you must whine and snivel whenever your deeds are put into plain language. What does it matter if Lydia dies now or in fifty years time?" she asked. "It would be different if she were immortal. You people attach so much importance to human life—the ancients, and the Japanese amongst the modern, are the only people who have the matter in true perspective. It is no more cruel to kill a human being than it is to cut the throat of a pig to provide you with bacon. There's hardly a dish at your table which doesn't represent wilful murder, and yet you never think of it,[Pg 151] but because the man animal can talk and dresses himself or herself in queer animal and vegetable fabrics, and decorates the body with bits of metal and pieces of glittering quartz, you give its life a value which you deny to the cattle within your gates! Killing is a matter of expediency. Permissible if you call it war, terrible if you call it murder. To me it is just killing. If you are caught in the act of killing they kill you, and people say it is right to do so. The sacredness of human life is a slogan invented by cowards who fear death—as you do."

"Don't you, Jean?" he asked in a hushed voice.

"I fear life without money," she said quietly. "I fear long days of work for a callous, leering employer, and strap-hanging in a crowded tube on my way home to one miserable room and the cold mutton of yesterday. I fear getting up and making my own bed and washing my own handkerchiefs and blouses, and renovating last year's hats to make them look like this year's. I fear a poor husband and a procession of children, and doing the housework with an incompetent maid, or maybe without any at all. Those are the things I fear, Mr. Briggerland."

She dusted the ash from her dress and got up.

"I haven't forgotten the life we lived at Ealing," she said significantly.[Pg 152]

She looked across the bay to Monte Carlo glittering in the morning sunlight, to the green-capped head of Cap-d'Ail, to Beaulieu, a jewel set in greystone and shook her head.

"'It is written'," she quoted sombrely and left him in the midst of the question he was asking. She strolled back to the house and joined Lydia who was looking radiantly beautiful in a new dress of silver grey charmeuse.[Pg 153]

Chapter XX

"Have you solved the mystery of the submerged bed?" smiled Jean.

Lydia laughed.

"I'm not probing too deeply into the matter," she said. "Poor Mrs. Cole-Mortimer was terribly upset."

"She would be," said Jean. "It was her own eiderdown!"

This was the first hint Lydia had received that the house was rented furnished.

They drove into Nice that morning, and Lydia, remembering Jack Glover's remarks, looked closely at the chauffeur, and was startled to see a resemblance between him and the man who had driven the taxicab on the night she had been carried off from the theatre. It is true that the taxi-driver had a moustache and that this man was clean-shaven, and moreover, had tiny side whiskers, but there was a resemblance.

"Have you had your driver long?" she asked as they were running through Monte Carlo, along the sea road.

"Mordon? Yes, we have had him six or[Pg 154] seven years," said Jean carelessly. "He drives us when we are on the continent, you know. He speaks French perfectly and is an excellent driver. Father has tried to persuade him to come to England, but he hates London—he was telling me the other day that he hadn't been there for ten years."

That disposed of the resemblance, thought Lydia, and yet—she could remember his voice, she thought, and when they alighted on the Promenade des Anglaise she spoke to him. He replied in French, and it is impossible to detect points of resemblance in a voice that speaks one language and the same voice when it speaks another.

The promenade was crowded with saunterers. A band was playing by the jetty and although the wind was colder than it had been at Cap Martin the sun was warm enough to necessitate the opening of a parasol.

It was a race week, and the two girls lunched at the Negrito. They were in the midst of their meal when a man came toward them and Lydia recognised Mr. Marcus Stepney. This dark, suave man was no favourite of hers, though why she could not have explained. His manners were always perfect and, towards her, deferential.

As usual, he was dressed with the precision of a fashion-plate. Mr. Marcus Stepney was a man, a considerable portion of whose time was[Pg 155] taken up every morning by the choice of cravats and socks and shirts. Though Lydia did not know this, his smartness, plus a certain dexterity with cards, was his stock in trade. No breath of scandal had touched him, he moved in a good set and was always at the right place at the proper season.

When Aix was full he was certain to be found at the Palace, in the Deauville week you would find him at the Casino punting mildly at the baccarat table. And after the rooms were closed, and even the Sports Club at Monte Carlo had shut its doors, there was always a little game to be had in the hotels and in Marcus Stepney's private sitting-room.

And it cannot be denied that Mr. Stepney was lucky. He won sufficient at these out-of-hour games to support him nobly through the trials and vicissitudes which the public tables inflict upon their votaries.

"Going to the races," he said, "how very fortunate! Will you come along with me? I can give you three good winners."

"I have no money to gamble," said Jean, "I am a poor woman. Lydia, who is rolling in wealth, can afford to take your tips, Marcus."

Marcus looked at Lydia with a speculative eye.

"If you haven't any money with you, don't worry. I have plenty and you can pay me[Pg 156] afterwards. I could make you a million francs to-day."

"Thank you," said Jean coolly, "but Mrs. Meredith does not bet so heavily."

Her tone was a clear