‘Well,’ said Jane, ‘that’s that. I wonder how Miss Montresor’s getting on.’
‘No one will notice her. She can slip out quietly.’
‘That’s true,’ said Jane. ‘I did it nicely, didn’t I?’
‘You acted your part with great distinction.’
‘Why isn’t the count with us?’
‘He was forced to remain. Someone must watch over the safety of Her Highness.’
‘I hope nobody’s going to throw bombs,’ said Jane apprehensively. ‘Hi! we’re turning off the main road. Why’s that?’
Gathering speed, the car was shooting down a side road.
Jane jumped up and put her head out of the window, remonstrating with the driver. He only laughed and increased his speed. Jane sank back into her seat again.
‘Your spies were right,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘We’re for it all right. I suppose the longer I keep it up, the safer it is for the Grand Duchess. At all events we must give her time to return to London safely.’
At the prospect of danger, Jane’s spirits rose. She had not relished the prospect of a bomb, but this type of adventure appealed to her sporting instincts.
Suddenly, with a grinding of brakes, the car pulled up in its own length. A man jumped on the step. In his hand was a revolver.
‘Put your hands up,’ he snarled.
The Princess Poporensky’s hands rose swiftly, but Jane merely looked at him disdainfully, and kept her hands on her lap.
‘Ask him the meaning of this outrage,’ she said in French to her companion.
But before the latter had time to say a word, the man broke in. He poured out a torrent of words in some foreign language.
Not understanding a single thing, Jane merely shrugged her shoulders and said nothing. The chauffeur had got down from his seat and joined the other man.
‘Will the illustrious lady be pleased to descend?’ he asked, with a grin.
Raising the flowers to her face again, Jane stepped out of the car. The Princess Poporensky followed her.
‘Will the illustrious lady come this way?’
Jane took no notice of the man’s mock insolent manner, but of her own accord she walked towards a low-built, rambling house which stood about a hundred yards away from where the car had stopped. The road had been a cul-de-sac ending in the gateway and drive which led to this apparently untenanted building.
The man, still brandishing his pistol, came close behind the two women. As they passed up the steps, he brushed past them and flung open a door on the left. It was an empty room, into which a table and two chairs had evidently been brought.
Jane passed in and sat down. Anna Michaelovna followed her. The man banged the door and turned the key.
Jane walked to the window and looked out.
‘I could jump out, of course,’ she remarked. ‘But I shouldn’t get far. No, we’ll just have to stay here for the present and make the best of it. I wonder if they’ll bring us anything to eat?’
About half an hour later her question was answered.
A big bowl of steaming soup was brought in and placed on the table in front of her. Also two pieces of dry bread.
‘No luxury for aristocrats evidently,’ remarked Jane cheerily as the door was shut and locked again. ‘Will you start, or shall I?’
The Princess Poporensky waved the mere idea of food aside with horror.
‘How could I eat? Who knows what danger my mistress might not be in?’
‘She’s all right,’ said Jane. ‘It’s myself I’m worrying about. You know these people won’t be at all pleased when they find they have got hold of the wrong person. In fact, they may be very unpleasant. I shall keep up the haughty Grand Duchess stunt as long as I can, and do a bunk if the opportunity offers.’
The Princess Poporensky offered no reply.
Jane, who was hungry, drank up all the soup. It had a curious taste, but was hot and savoury.
Afterwards she felt rather sleepy. The Princess Poporensky seemed to be weeping quietly. Jane arranged herself on her uncomfortable chair in the least uncomfortable way, and allowed her head to droop.
She slept.
Jane awoke with a start. She had an idea that she had been a very long time asleep. Her head felt heavy and uncomfortable.
And then suddenly she saw something that jerked her faculties wide awake again.
She was wearing the flame-coloured marocain frock.
She sat up and looked around her. Yes, she was still in the room in the empty house. Everything was exactly as it had been when she went to sleep, except for two facts. The first was that the Princess Poporensky was no longer sitting on the other chair. The second was her own inexplicable change of costume.
‘I can’t have dreamt it,’ said Jane. ‘Because if I’d dreamt it, I should-n’t be here.’
She looked across at the window and registered a second significant fact. When she had gone to sleep the sun had been pouring through the window. Now the house threw a sharp shadow on the sunlit drive.
‘The house faces west,’ she reflected. ‘It was afternoon when I went to sleep. Therefore it must be tomorrow morning now. Therefore that soup was drugged. Therefore – oh, I don’t know. It all seems mad.’
She got up and went to the door. It was unlocked. She explored the house. It was silent and empty.
Jane put her hand to her aching head and tried to think.
And then she caught sight of a torn newspaper lying by the front door. It had glaring headlines which caught her eye.
‘American Girl Bandit in England,’ she read. ‘The Girl in the Red Dress. Sensational hold-up at Orion House Bazaar.’
Jane staggered out into the sunlight. Sitting on the steps she read, her eyes growing bigger and bigger. The facts were short and succinct.
Just after the departure of the Grand Duchess Pauline, three men and a girl in a red dress had produced revolvers and successfully held up the crowd. They had annexed the hundred pearls and made a getaway in a fast racing car. Up to now, they had not been traced.
In the stop press (it was a late evening paper) were a few words to the effect that the ‘girl bandit in the red dress’ had been staying at the Blitz as a Miss Montresor of New York.
‘I’m dished,’ said Jane. ‘Absolutely dished. I always knew there was a catch in it.’
And then she started. A strange sound had smote the air. The voice of a man, uttering one word at frequent intervals.
‘Damn,’ it said. ‘Damn.’ And yet again, ‘Damn!’
Jane thrilled to the sound. It expressed so exactly her own feelings. She ran down the steps. By the corner of them lay a young man. He was endeavouring to raise his head from the ground. His face struck Jane as one of the nicest faces she had ever seen. It was freckled and slightly quizzical in expression.
‘Damn my head,’ said the young man. ‘Damn it. I –’
He broke off and stared at Jane.
‘I must be dreaming,’ he said faintly.
‘That’s what I said,’ said Jane. ‘But we’re not. What’s the matter with your head?’
‘Somebody hit me on it. Fortunately it’s a thick one.’
He pulled himself into a sitting position, and made a wry face.
‘My brain will begin to function shortly, I expect. I’m still in the same old spot, I see.’
‘How did you get here?’ asked Jane curiously.
‘That’s a long story. By the way, you’re not the Grand Duchess What’sher-name, are you?’
‘I’m not. I’m plain Jane Cleveland.’
‘You’re not plain anyway,’ said the young man, looking at her with frank admiration.
Jane blushed.
‘I ought to get you some water or something, oughtn’t I?’ she asked uncertainly.
‘I believe it is customary,’ agreed the young man. ‘All the same, I’d rather have whisky if you can find it.’
Jane was unable to find any whisky. The young man took a deep draught of water,
and announced himself better.
‘Shall I relate my adventures, or will you relate yours?’ he asked.
‘You first.’
‘There’s nothing much to mine. I happened to notice that the Grand Duchess went into that room with low-heeled shoes on and came out with high-heeled ones. It struck me as rather odd. I don’t like things to be odd.
‘I followed the car on my motor bicycle, I saw you taken into the house. About ten minutes later a big racing car came tearing up. A girl in red got out and three men. She had low-heeled shoes on, all right. They went into the house. Presently low heels came out dressed in black and white, and went off in the first car, with an old pussy and a tall man with a fair beard. The others went off in the racing car. I thought they’d all gone, and was just trying to get in at that window and rescue you when someone hit me on the head from behind. That’s all. Now for your turn.’
Jane related her adventures.
‘And it’s awfully lucky for me that you did follow,’ she ended. ‘Do you see what an awful hole I should have been in otherwise? The Grand Duchess would have had a perfect alibi. She left the bazaar before the hold-up began, and arrived in London in her car. Would anybody ever have believed my fantastic improbable story?’
‘Not on your life,’ said the young man with conviction.
They had been so absorbed in their respective narratives that they had been quite oblivious of their surroundings. They looked up now with a slight start to see a tall sad-faced man leaning against the house. He nodded at them.
‘Very interesting,’ he commented.
‘Who are you?’ demanded Jane.
The sad-faced man’s eyes twinkled a little.
‘Detective-Inspector Farrell,’ he said gently. ‘I’ve been very interested in hearing your story and this young lady’s. We might have found a little difficulty in believing hers, but for one or two things.’
‘For instance?’
‘Well, you see, we heard this morning that the real Grand Duchess had eloped with a chauffeur in Paris.’
Jane gasped.
‘And then we knew that this American “girl bandit” had come to this country, and we expected a coup of some kind. We’ll have laid hands on them very soon, I can promise you that. Excuse me a minute, will you?’
He ran up the steps into the house.
‘Well!’ said Jane. She put a lot of force into the expression. ‘I think it was awfully clever of you to notice those shoes,’ she said suddenly.
‘Not at all,’ said the young man. ‘I was brought up in the boot trade. My father’s a sort of boot king. He wanted me to go into the trade – marry and settle down. All that sort of thing. Nobody in particular – just the principle of the thing. But I wanted to be an artist.’ He sighed.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Jane kindly.
‘I’ve been trying for six years. There’s no blinking it. I’m a rotten painter. I’ve a good mind to chuck it and go home like the prodigal son. There’s a good billet waiting for me.’
‘A job is the great thing,’ agreed Jane wistfully. ‘Do you think you could get me one trying on boots somewhere?’
‘I could give you a better one than that – if you’d take it.’
‘Oh, what?’
‘Never mind now. I’ll tell you later. You know, until yesterday I never saw a girl I felt I could marry.’
‘Yesterday?’
‘At the bazaar. And then I saw her – the one and only Her!’
He looked very hard at Jane.
‘How beautiful the delphiniums are,’ said Jane hurriedly, with very pink cheeks.
‘They’re lupins,’ said the young man.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Jane.
‘Not a bit,’ he agreed. And he drew a little nearer.
Chapter 7
Mr Eastwood’s Adventure
‘Mr Eastwood’s Adventure’ was first published as ‘The Mystery of the Second Cucumber’ in The Novel Magazine, August 1924. It also appeared later as ‘The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl’.
Mr Eastwood looked at the ceiling. Then he looked down at the floor. From the floor his gaze travelled slowly up the right-hand wall. Then, with a sudden stern effort, he focused his gaze once more upon the typewriter before him.
The virgin white of the sheet of paper was defaced by a title written in capital letters.
‘THE MYSTERY OF THE SECOND CUCUMBER,’ so it ran. A pleasing title. Anthony Eastwood felt that anyone reading that title would be at once intrigued and arrested by it. ‘The Mystery of the Second Cucumber,’ they would say. ‘What can that be about? A cucumber? The second cucumber? I must certainly read that story.’ And they would be thrilled and charmed by the consummate ease with which this master of detective fiction had woven an exciting plot round this simple vegetable.
That was all very well. Anthony Eastwood knew as well as anyone what the story ought to be like – the bother was that somehow or other he couldn’t get on with it. The two essentials for a story were a title and a plot – the rest was mere spade-work, sometimes the title led to a plot all by itself, as it were, and then all was plain sailing – but in this case the title continued to adorn the top of the page, and not the vestige of a plot was forthcoming.
Again Anthony Eastwood’s gaze sought inspiration from the ceiling, the floor, and the wallpaper, and still nothing materialized.
‘I shall call the heroine Sonia,’ said Anthony, to urge himself on. ‘Sonia or possibly Dolores – she shall have a skin of ivory pallor – the kind that’s not due to ill-health, and eyes like fathomless pools. The hero shall be called George, or possibly John – something short and British. Then the gardener – I suppose there will have to be a gardener, we’ve got to drag that beastly cucumber in somehow or other – the gardener might be Scottish, and amusingly pessimistic about the early frost.’
This method sometimes worked, but it didn’t seem to be going to this morning. Although Anthony could see Sonia and George and the comic gardener quite clearly, they didn’t show any willingness to be active and do things.
‘I could make it a banana, of course,’ thought Anthony desperately. ‘Or a lettuce, or a Brussels sprout – Brussels sprout, now, how about that? Really a cryptogram for Brussels – stolen bearer bonds – sinister Belgian Baron.’
For a moment a gleam of light seemed to show, but it died down again. The Belgian Baron wouldn’t materialize, and Anthony suddenly remembered that early frosts and cucumbers were incompatible, which seemed to put the lid on the amusing remarks of the Scottish gardener.
‘Oh! Damn!’ said Mr Eastwood.
He rose and seized the Daily Mail. It was just possible that someone or other had been done to death in such a way as to lend inspiration to a perspiring author. But the news this morning was mainly political and foreign. Mr Eastwood cast down the paper in disgust.
Next, seizing a novel from the table, he closed his eyes and dabbed his finger down on one of the pages. The word thus indicated by Fate was ‘sheep’. Immediately, with startling brilliance, a whole story unrolled itself in Mr Eastwood’s brain. Lovely girl – lover killed in the war, her brain unhinged, tends sheep on the Scottish mountains – mystic meeting with dead lover, final effect of sheep and moonlight like Academy picture with girl lying dead in the snow, and two trails of footsteps . . .
It was a beautiful story. Anthony came out of its conception with a sigh and a sad shake of the head. He knew only too well the editor in question did not want that kind of story – beautiful though it might be. The kind of story he wanted, and insisted on having (and incidentally paid handsomely for getting), was all about mysterious dark women, stabbed to the heart, a young hero unjustly suspected, and the sudden unravelling of the mystery and fixing of the guilt on the least likely person, by the means of wholly inadequate clues – in fact, ‘THE MYSTERY OF THE SECOND CUCUMBER.’
‘Although,’ reflected Anthony, ‘ten to one, he’ll alter the title and call it something rotten, like “Murde
r Most Foul” without so much as asking me! Oh, curse that telephone.’
He strode angrily to it, and took down the receiver. Twice already in the last hour he had been summoned to it – once for a wrong number, and once to be roped in for dinner by a skittish society dame whom he hated bitterly, but who had been too pertinacious to defeat.
‘Hallo!’ he growled into the receiver.
A woman’s voice answered him, a soft caressing voice with a trace of foreign accent.
‘Is that you, beloved?’ it said softly.
‘Well – er – I don’t know,’ said Mr Eastwood cautiously. ‘Who’s speaking?’
‘It is I. Carmen. Listen, beloved. I am pursued – in danger – you must come at once. It is life or death now.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Mr Eastwood politely. ‘I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong –’
She broke in before he could complete the sentence.
‘Madre de Dios! They are coming. If they find out what I am doing, they will kill me. Do not fail me. Come at once. It is death for me if you don’t come. You know, 320 Kirk Street. The word is cucumber . . . Hush . . .’
He heard the faint click as she hung up the receiver at the other end.
‘Well, I’m damned,’ said Mr Eastwood, very much astonished.
He crossed over to his tobacco jar, and filled his pipe carefully.
‘I suppose,’ he mused, ‘that that was some curious effect of my subconscious self. She can’t have said cucumber. The whole thing is very extraordinary. Did she say cucumber, or didn’t she?’
He strolled up and down, irresolutely.
‘320 Kirk Street. I wonder what it’s all about? She’ll be expecting the other man to turn up. I wish I could have explained. 320 Kirk Street. The word is cucumber – oh, impossible, absurd – hallucination of a busy brain.’
He glanced malevolently at the typewriter.
‘What good are you, I should like to know? I’ve been looking at you all the morning, and a lot of good it’s done me. An author should get his plot from life – from life, do you hear? I’m going out to get one now.’
He clapped a hat on his head, gazed affectionately at his priceless collection of old enamels, and left the flat.