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 embarrassed.
"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, God," moaned Mrs Sprot. "What shall I do?"
Tuppence passed 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 fashion:
"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 assumed 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 passage 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:
"Damned 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 -" an
d 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 passed 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.
The Commander was a good organizer and a quick worker. In next to no time, he had filled up the car with petrol, tossed a map of the district and a larger scale map of Leahampton itself to Bletchley and was ready to start off.
Mrs Sprot had run upstairs again, presumably to her room to get a coat. But when she got into the car and they had started down the hill she disclosed to Tuppence something in her handbag. It was a small pistol.
She said quietly:
"I got it from Major Bletchley's room. I remember his mentioning one day that he had one."
Tuppence looked a little dubious.
"You don't think that -"
Mrs Sprot said, her mouth a thin line:
"It may come in useful."
Tuppence sat marvelling at the strange forces maternity will set loose in an ordinary, commonplace young woman. She could visualize Mrs Sprot, the kind of woman who would normally declare herself frightened to death of firearms, coolly shooting down any person who had harmed her child.
They drove first, on the Commander's suggestion, to the railway station. A train had left Leahampton about twenty minutes earlier and it was possible that the fugitives had gone by it.
At the station they separated, the Commander taking the ticket collector, Tommy the booking office, and Bletchley the porters outside. Tuppence and Mrs Sprot went into the Ladies' Room on the chance that the woman had gone in there to change her appearance before taking the train.
One and all drew blank. It was now more difficult to shape a course. In all probability, as Haydock pointed out, the kidnappers had had a car waiting, and once Betty had been persuaded to come away with the woman, they had made their getaway in that. It was here, as Bletchley pointed out once more, that the co-operation of the police was so vital. It needed an organization of that kind who could send out messages all over the country, covering the different roads.
Mrs Sprot merely shook her head, her lips pressed tightly together.
Tuppence said:
"We must put ourselves in their places. Where would they have waited in the car? Somewhere as near Sans Souci as possible, but where a car wouldn't be noticed. Now let's think. The woman and Betty walk down the hill together. At the bottom is the esplanade. The car might have been drawn up there. So long as you don't leave it unattended you can stop there for quite a while. The only other places are the Car Park in James Square, also quite near, or else one of the small streets that lead off from the esplanade."
It was at that moment that a small man, with a diffident manner and pince-nez, stepped up to them and said, stammering a little:
"Excuse me... No offense, I hope... but I c-c-couldn't help overhearing what you were asking the porter just now." (He now directed his remarks to Major Bletchley.) "I was not listening, of course, just came down to see about a parcel - extraordinary how long things are delayed just now - movements of troops, they say - but really most difficult when it's perishable - the parcel, I mean - and so, you see, I happened to overhear - and really it did seem the most wonderful coincidence..."
Mrs Sprot sprang forward. She seized him by the arm.
"You've seen her? You've seen my little girl?"
"Oh, really, your little girl, you say? Now fancy that -"
Mrs Sprot cried: "Tell me." And her fingers bit into the little man's arm so that he winced.
Tuppence said quickly:
"Please tell us anything you have seen as quickly as you can. We shall be most grateful if you will."
"Oh, well, really, of course, it may be nothing at all. But the description fitted so well -"
Tuppence felt the woman beside her trembling, but she herself strove to keep her manner calm and unhurried. She knew the type with which they were dealing - fussy, muddle-headed, diffident, incapable of going straight to the point and worse if hurried. She said:
"Please tell us."
"It was only - my name is Robbins, by the way, Edward Robbins -"
"Yes, Mr Robbins."
"I live at Whiteways, in Ernes Cliff Road, one of those new houses on the new road - most labour saving, and really every convenience, and a beautiful view and the downs only a stone's throw away."
With a glance Tuppence quelled Major Bletchley, who she saw was about to break out, and she said:
"And you saw the little girl we are looking for?"
"Yes, I really think it must be. A little girl with a foreign looking woman, you said? It was really the woman I noticed. Because, of course, we are all on the lookout nowadays for Fifth Columnists, aren't we? A sharp lookout, that is what they say, and I always try to do so, and so, as I say, I noticed the woman. A nurse, I thought, or a maid - a lot of spies came over here in that capacity, and this woman was most unusual looking and walking up the road and on to the downs - with a little girl - and the little girl seemed tired and rather lagging, and half past seven, well, most children go to bed then, so I looked at the woman pretty sharply. I think it flustered her. She hurried to the road, pulling the child after her, and finally picked her up and went on up the path out on to the cliff, which I thought strange, you know, because there are no houses there at all - nothing - not until you get to Whitehaven - about five miles over the downs - a favourite walk for hikers. But in this case I thought it odd. I wondered if the woman was going to signal, perhaps. One hears of so much enemy activity and she certainly looked uneasy when she saw me staring at her."
Commander Haydock was back in the car and had started the engine. He said:
"Ernes Cliff Road, you say? That's right the other side of the town, isn't it?"
"Yes, you go along the esplanade and past the old town and then up - "
The others had jumped
in, not listening further to Mr Robbins.
Tuppence called out: