And this was his next remark:--
"I say, sir, I think Joan got that Dunhill number wrong after all--I'llswear there's latakia on this--don't tell Joan though--this is _entreznous_."
_Entrez nous!_ Between you and I! O modest flower tossed to thewelcoming hands of the Entente!
I handed him his watch back.
Strange, strange days!
V
Why did I not say straight out to him, "Look here, my young friend, thisis all extremely interesting, but what I don't understand is why youshoot a man and then carry his picture on your wrist. In plain English,now, why did you shoot him--always supposing you did?"
Well, I was trying to put myself in his place--trying to picture afriendship such as he had had with this wistful, self-effacing youngfatalist whose picture I had just handed back to him. I have told youhow the more poignant of these experiences between man and man have beendenied me; a flying-friendship I could never by any possibility havehad; but I could reach out to it in my fancy. I could imagine with whatfierce jealousy I should have guarded a treasure so rich. Not a word,not a breath from outside would I have suffered with regard to it. Itwas not a question of mere impertinence. It was rather one of theviolation of a sacred place.
And it seemed to me that I now owed him no less than I would haveclaimed for myself. It made no difference that he was twenty-four and Iwithin hand's-reach of fifty. Less than an hour had swept theseconventions aside, and thenceforward he was entitled to the full honorsof friendship and respect. He might tell me what he chose. Ply him withquestions, however, I could not.
Nay, it even seemed to me now that I should have to drop my point beforePhilip also. However much I had been put on my mettle by thosediscoveries I had made on that Sunday afternoon in his studio, to dragthem up again now would merely be to attack Chummy at one remove. If Icould not have it from himself I could hardly have it at all, and theCase, which had unfolded as a conjuror's pilule unfolds into a flagrantand morbid-hued passion-flower, looked like shutting itself up again andbeing as if it had never been.
Yet the discoveries of that Sunday had been much on my mind. Especiallythat gold ring that had once belonged to Audrey Cunningham had been onmy mind. That the circumstances in which I had found it were directlyconnected with the rupture between her and Monty I could hardly doubt,and several times, as a mere man, I had been on the point of confessingmy share in the incident to Mollie Esdaile.
If Mollie has a little dropped out of the picture, let me now bring herin again as she brought herself in as Chummy Smith and I lay on the turfthat morning.
I forget for what delinquency Alan and Jimmy had spent some hours indisgrace; I think they had been cutting one another's hair. Butapparently all was now expiated. With joyous cries they dashed over alow brow, Mollie's head and shoulders rising behind them, and flungthemselves upon us with the jubilant announcement that they were goodagain and that the hens had laid eleven eggs.
"One's a duck's----"
"Two's duck's----"
"I'll bet you----"
"I'll bet you my purple pencil----"
"I'll bet you my Bible an' all my shells----"
"Where's daddy?"
"Hasn't he finished painting Auntie Joan yet?"
Mollie was laughing and telling Chummy not to get up. She "goes topieces" a little in the country in the matter of dress, and wore hermallow-flower of an old sunbonnet and her gray sandshoes. As Smithreached for his stick and got up on to his feet she caught my eye andlaughed again. She had suffered from big-ends and magnetos too.
"Did Philip bundle you both out?" she asked.
"He bundled this man out. I was behaving myself."
"Well," quoth Smith, "we only gave him till twelve o'clock, and it'sfive to now. You coming, kids?"
They were not merely coming; they were already twenty yards on the way,with Chummy pegging after them. Had Mollie and I followed, Philip wouldmerely have commandeered us for the carrying home of hispainting-tackle. Instead we turned along the cliff-tops in the oppositedirection, towards the zigzag path that dropped steeply to the beach.
Since that impetuous dash of hers to London she had shown herself fromtime to time--I will not say brooding (that is too strong a word), butfrequently withdrawn, pensive, _reveuse_. She was as brisk and practicalas ever about the house or in the arranging of picnics and excursions,but somehow the routine of her daily life struck me as a series ofdetached and separate efforts, that for some reason or other neveracquired momentum. I admit, however, that it would be easy to make toomuch of this change in her, if change there was.
"Shall we go down?" she said as we paused at the top of the path. "Ihaven't seen the sands for two days. 'Man works till set of sun----'"
"Come along," I said, giving her a hand; and we began the descent.
The Santon sands were a rather wonderful sight that morning. The tidewas at its farthest out, and some mysterious wave-action had rolled outthe wide spaces, not to an even flatness, but into regular parallelstriations of wet and dry, the wet so mirror-like and shining that thesky was perfectly reduplicated in it and the flight of the seabirds farunder our feet could be distinctly seen, the dry portions theintervening footings from one to the next of which we stepped. Our feetleft no prints on the firm surface, so that looking behind the illusionwas still the same--the dry stripes, the sudden brilliant chasms inbetween, everywhere the interrupted inversions of blue and white anddazzling sun.
"Well, I've been having my first real talk with your Chummy," I remarkedas the alternations slowly flowed under our feet.
"Oh? What about?" she asked.
"About his aims and so on--what he wants to do. Apparently he wants toget on some sort of an Expedition. But is it likely he'll ever flyagain?"
"I don't know," she said; and walked a little way before adding, "Ishouldn't think he'd want to."
"He does."
She looked straight before her, as if to rest her eyes from the passingimmensities underfoot. There was indeed a fantastic sort of consonancebetween flight and the phenomenon of the shore that midday. I do notknow, however, whether this vague association prompted the hugeimplication of her very next words--an implication which I now had fromher for the first time.
"You know what I mean," she said quietly.
I tried to steal a glance at her face, but saw only the folds of thesunbonnet.
"And that it isn't the kind of thing anybody wants to talk about," sheadded, leaving me to take the hint.
"No," I agreed mechanically; but for all that I needed a few moments inwhich to think.
Obviously I was not there to get out of Philip's wife something thatPhilip himself refused me; but the immensity of her quiet assumption hadpulled me up short. I was assumed to know the whole--the whole--of "whatshe meant." It was left to my good sense to see that it was not a thingto talk about. There was to be no argument; she merely expected an equalsimplicity in return, and with a woman like Mollie to expect such athing is to get it. I watched a cloud of sheldrake that wheeled andbroke over their own images a few yards away to our left, and then Iturned to her.
"My dear, I'm not sure that I do understand altogether, but we certainlywon't talk about it. I should, however, like to mention one little thingthat I don't think even Philip knows."
She turned quickly. "What is that?"
"Nor Smith."
"What is it?"
"Nor, I should say, you yourself."
"If only you'll tell me what it is----!"
I looked into her eyes. "Where is Mrs. Cunningham now?" I asked.
VI
Her start could hardly have been more sudden had I asked her where Alanwas a few moments after he had been seen playing at the cliff's edge.
"Audrey Cunningham? She was at Harrogate last, I think--orScarboro--why?"
"Why was her engagement broken off?"
She made an abrupt, impatient gesture. Evidently I had plunged her
backinto an older mood.
"Oh, I don't know! I'm tired to death of--of everything! Why do you wantto remind me of it? I was just beginning to forget a little. Oh, whydidn't we leave London a week earlier! We nearly did--Philip was onlywaiting for Billy to get those pictures back--we should have escapedeverything then!"
I soothed her. "Yes; but about the engagement. I could make very littleof your letter. You said things were tangled and difficult and so on.What did you mean, Mollie?"
She was silent.
"Do you mean that you won't discuss Mrs. Cunningham with me?"
Still she did not speak.
"Because you have discussed her. I had your letter. You said you'd heardfrom her. That was since you last saw her. What happened in between?"
She found her voice. "Nothing that I know, except that it seems to havebeen definitely off."
"By that do you mean that she returned Monty's ring?"
"She didn't say what she did with the ring."
"Well, she neither returned it nor kept it. I have it. I don't want it.Will you take it?"
I fetched it from my pocket and held it out to her.
Her hand found my sleeve, almost as if that brilliance underfootunsteadied her head. Her eyes had closed and there was a little hardcrumple between her brows. I put my other hand on her shoulder.
"Let's get up the beach--this is too dazzling--it's making you dizzy," Isaid.
Faintly she murmured, "Yes--it does get in your eye----"
VII
On the hot loose sand above the highest seaweed I made her sit down.Presently she had recovered a little. Her manner was now undoubtedlythat of a person on whose back a half-withdrawn burden is reimposed. Butshe shouldered it.
"Where did you get it?" she asked, her eyes on the ring in my palm.
"Do you remember Philip asking me to pack up some sketches for him andsending me his key?"
"He did say something about it. Monty had left."
"I found the ring on the Sunday afternoon I went for the sketches. Itwas in a hole in the studio floor."
"In a hole.... Ah-h-h-h!"
I looked sharply at her, but continued.
"Stuck quite firmly in: in fact, I had to prise it out with ascrewdriver. I didn't know which of them it belonged to--I don't knownow--so I slipped it into my pocket. Perhaps you'd better take it."
But she made no movement to do so. She was picking up handfuls of sandand allowing it to slip through her fingers again. She made quite anumber of little heaps, which her eyes attentively watched, but her mindwas elsewhere--perhaps on that last letter of Audrey Cunningham's, whenapparently the engagement had been neither off nor on. She made no signwhen I placed the ring in her lap. I had to speak.
"Queer, wasn't it?"
Her murmur was so low that I scarcely heard it. "Of course a thing likethat _would_ make it definitely off."
"A thing like what?"
"Losing it like that--after all the other."
"Come, she can hardly have 'lost' it, since I had to get a screwdriverto prise it out!"
"I don't mean 'lost' in that way--be quiet and let me think."
The fingers began to make a fifth sandhill.
I hope I have made it clear that I was confining myself quite strictlyto Monty Rooke's affair. If it was simply a misunderstanding I did notthink I was going beyond my business in discussing with Mollie whetherthat misunderstanding might not be removed. But it now seemed to me thatI was once more on the verge of far more than this. That deep long-drawn"Ah-h-h-h!" that "A thing like that _would_ make it definitely off" wereenough to convince me of this. Evidently my words had meant more to herthan to myself who had uttered them. Therefore if Mollie claimed time tothink, so did I.
And first of all I recalled my firm persuasion of that Sunday afternoonthat Audrey Cunningham had made some sort of a discovery. It might havebeen an accidental one, or she might merely not have rested until shehad made it, but a discovery she had made, and it had to do with thehole in the studio floor. I remembered too my own pacings,eye-measurements, judgment of angles, and my slight chagrin that Philiphad frustrated my further investigations by his removal of the key fromthe cellar door. And it seemed to me that again everything seemed tocome round to that cellar of Esdaile's--the cellar on which Hubbard hadinstantly fastened as holding the answer to the riddle, the cellar inwhich Philip had spent that unaccountable half-hour and over which hehad since so jealously watched, yet the self-same cellar into which bothRooke and Mrs. Cunningham had since descended and found ... nothing.
Yet instantly all my former objections rose again as vividly asever--the extreme physical improbability that Philip could have seenanything through that peep-hole, the utter unlikelihood that he shouldhave had his eye at it at that particular moment of time, the virtualimpossibility that he should have thought of the hole at all on hearingthe crash.
And yet in this hole had been tightly jammed the ring now lying inMollie's lap.
Suddenly Mollie surprised me by looking up and almost brightly smiling.She smoothed out the sandhills and picked up the ring from her lap.
"Well," she said in a tone of relief, "that makes an immense difference.I'm awfully glad you told me. Shall we be getting back?"
But this, it struck me, was rather rushing matters. I thought I had aright to know just a little more than that. Therefore I did not rise.
"One moment," I said. "I should like to know why you said that 'a thinglike that would make it definitely off.'"
She smiled again, with a sort of affectionate raillery.
"Oh ... and you're supposed to understand women!"
This I warmly disclaimed. "In any case I only know Mrs. Cunningham veryslightly," I protested.
"And you formed no impression of her?"
"I didn't say that."
"Not even that she would be just the woman to take a--hint--of thatkind?"
She was gently but quite plainly laughing at me; but, glad as I was tosee the cloud disappear from her brow, she was not going to haveeverything her own way.
"Then she did make a discovery, and received a hint, as you call it, indoing so?"
"Did she?" she parried.
"_Did_ she?"
At that she laughed outright. She patted my sleeve almost as if I hadbeen a child.
"You men _can't_ know how funny you are sometimes!" she mocked me.
VIII
It struck me even then that the moment Mrs. Cunningham's namewas introduced there was introduced also something of thatsex-antagonism--perhaps I had better modify that and saysex-difference--for which her personal story had given her such bitterreason. Here now was Mollie, suddenly and in the middle of our_tete-a-tete_, abolishing me as an individual and saddling me with thecollective qualities of men in general. And I must remind you once morethat as a matter of mere historical sequence I was still unaware of whathad passed between her and Philip on that night when she had put AudreyCunningham to bed, and Monty had spent half the night in wanderingthrough the dark Roehampton lanes.
"Well, let's take it that we're funny," I said rather shortly. "I don'tquite see the joke myself, but that's neither here nor there. The pointis that if I can do Monty a good turn I want to. Whether patching it upbetween him and Mrs. Cunningham is a good turn is for you to decide. Ionly met her once in my life, and hardly exchanged a dozen words withher."
"You shall presently if I can lay my hands on her."
"What do you mean? That you're going to have her down here?"
"Of course I'm going to have her down here if she can come," said Molliein her most matter-of-fact tones. "How slowly you think! She must comeimmediately. I shall see about it this afternoon _meme_."
"And Rooke too?"
"We'll see about that."
"And Hubbard? And Mackwith?"
"No. What have they got to do with it?"
"Merely to make the party complete. We should be just where we startedthen."
/> "Oh, I think we can dispense with that side of it," she answeredlightly. "Let me see: was it Harrogate? It was Buxton, and then Matlock,and then either Harrogate or Scarboro...."
I wonder whether the surmise has dawned on you that was now beginning todawn on me? I admit that I had none but the very slightest grounds forit, and that even these were more exclusions than affirmations; but inthe absence of anything more positive they had to serve. Think for amoment how we men, solemnly, ponderously and sure that we were doing thedecent thing, had decided that at all costs certain facts of our Caseshould be kept from the womenfolk. To that end we had evaded,temporized, shuffled. And now suppose--just suppose--that all our careand concealment had been wasted, and that two of the women at any rateknew as much as Philip Esdaile knew and far, far more than any of therest of us? Mind you, I was only guessing; but I began rather to fancymy guess. If there was little for it, I could see nothing against it.Certain things, moreover, were distinctly in its favor. Why thisremarkable brightening in Mollie's manner, this change from her dizzylittle stagger over those strips of inverted sky when I had firstproduced that ring to her air of lightsome raillery now? Why this quickinstinctive taking of sex-sides, this sudden practical decision to seekout Audrey Cunningham this very day and to have her down to Santon? Itwas not the ring at all; it was--could only be--the place in which thering had been found. Always, always we came back to that hole in thestudio floor at which Philip's eye could not possibly have been at themoment of the crash that May morning. Somewhere between the hole and thecellar the elusive explanation lay. I had been thwarted, Mackwith knewnothing about it, and Hubbard could only grunt and mumble aboutperiscopes and sound-ranging and selenium cells; but Mollie, I waspersuaded, knew.