She Fell Among Thieves Read online

  I had no doubt she was looking after the chauffeur and at once I turned my glasses to follow her gaze.

  But the fellow was out of my sight.

  And out of hers, too, I fancy, for when I returned to the girl, she was standing stripped to the skin on the edge of the pool.

  If I lowered my glasses of instinct, I had my reward.

  I have seen many lovely pictures, but the rarest of all was the picture I saw at that moment in the heart of a thousand hills.

  The sun was up and over the mountain-tops and was laying long, clean-cut shadows upon the dew: the majestic trees stood breathless: the meadows were quick with the magic that night had left: and in the midst of this beauty, a slim, straight, girlish figure remembered Artemis.

  The pleasance became her temple: the groves and lawns and fountains became her courts: and she became the darling for whom the dawn had discovered a golden world.

  For a moment she stood like an arrow. Then –

  The snap of a twig behind me brought me about in a flash.

  Twelve feet away was crouching a giant of a man. He was very dark and though he was not ill-favoured, I shall see the look on his face till my dying day. It shook me more, I think, than the look of the knife he was holding close to his ribs.

  4

  We Find Out What Julie Knew

  I owe my life to the fact that the grass was wet.

  As the fellow launched himself at me, I made to leap to one side, but I slipped and fell. Unable to stop himself – for he had expected my body to check his rush – he measured his length across mine, and his knife drove into the turf a foot from my groin. But, as he fell, I had the time and the instinct to turn on my back, and before he could strike again, I let him have my binocular full in his face.

  The glasses were very heavy and weighed between three and four pounds. I had often cursed the day when I bought them, because of their weight. But now, as a knuckle-duster, they were beyond all price.

  Because I was lying, no strength was behind the blow, but the weight of them knocked him sideways, and I was up before he.

  I think the man must have been dazed or else was no sort of fighter and only good at exploiting the upper hand, for I well remember that, as he rose, he had a hand to his head and that, just before I struck him again, he took it away to stare at the blood upon his fingers as though he was loth to believe the tale it told.

  His blood was the last thing he saw.

  As a man puts the weight, I planted those heavy glasses full on the side of his head, not letting them go, but with all my weight behind them – and I am a heavy man.

  I believe that he died there and then, but I cannot be sure. From that time on he certainly never moved. But, though I was shaken, I felt no compunction at all, for the fellow had sought to kill me behind my back. As for Julie… He was, of course, ‘my wallah’, the man I had seen in the meadows the night before Julie died.

  As I stood, nursing my hand, which was very much bruised, I began to wonder what Vanity Fair would say…

  Suddenly I thought of the girl, but she was not to be seen. Only the hound lay couched by the white of her frock. This suggested that she had seen nothing: but since I had run risk enough, I dragged the body into a dip of the ground and then sat down close by behind a swell of the turf.

  It was then that I realised how badly shaken I was, and when I had found my brandy, I had to take two hands to hold the flask to my mouth.

  This was, no doubt, reaction, for I had just walked with Death. It had been a very near thing. There had, in fact, been no fight. The man had allowed me to kill him, as the ox allows the butcher to take his life. But, but for the grace of God, our roles would have been reversed. Had the grass not hidden the twig upon which he had stepped, he would have played the butcher, and I the ox: and my body would have lain in the hollow, and he would have been sitting down and draining my flask. It had been a very near thing.

  I wiped my face and my hands and tried to think what to do.

  I had, it seemed, scrambled home – by the skin of my teeth. I had made a discovery which I had survived to recount. I had found out ‘what Julie knew’.

  This park was a private domain of Vanity Fair’s. And Julie had found it – had found the secret way in.

  That I was right in this, I had next to no doubt. If Carlos was not very far…

  I decided to look for Carlos without delay. Once I had found the village, my job was done. Before I began, however, I had to dispose of my dead. Burial was out of the question. Yet if they sought for the man and employed the dog…

  I decided to look for a pool.

  This made me remember the girl, but when I peered at the chestnut, the dog and her dress were gone. Straining my eyes – for, apart from their horrid condition, my glasses were out of shape – I thought I could see in the distance a flutter of white.

  I could hardly employ the pool which the girl had used, but I could find no other, search as I would. I dared not go far, of course: I had no desire to be seen. And in the end I could do no more than drag the corpse into the bushes, perhaps twenty paces beyond the mouth of the cleft.

  I had some hazy idea of bringing back Bell that night to help me to other rites, but the honest truth is that I was too tired to think. My one idea was to locate the village and then repair to the bridge and sleep until Bell arrived. I must be there by midnight, whatever befell. But first I had to find Carlos. Till then I dared not rest, for such was my state that if once I had closed my eyes, I should, as like as not, have slept the sun out of the sky.

  As I shambled across the circus, I tried to determine the angle at which I should bear to the west… And that shows the state I was in. Nearly two hours went by before it entered my head to look at my map.

  Upon this the circus was marked – a natural colosseum entitled the Cirque des Morts. And Carlos lay two miles west. Of the park I had found, the map showed no sign at all.

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when I stumbled into the road and plodded down to the bridge by which I had spoken with Bell.

  On its coping I scrawled a note.

  Don’t go. I’m asleep in the leaves by the side of the rill.

  I folded it up and stuffed it into the crevice. Then I left the road, to slide and scramble into a drift of leaves.

  A touch on my arm woke me, and I started up, blinking and helpless before the glare of a torch.

  ‘Are you all right, sir?’ said Bell.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, yawning. ‘I think so. I’m still damned tired. Did you get to Anise all right?’

  ‘There’s blood on your sleeve, sir.’

  ‘Is there?’ said I, sitting up. ‘Well, it isn’t mine.’

  ‘Tell me the worst,’ said Mansel. ‘Whom have you hurt?’

  That brought me up to my feet.

  ‘By Jove,’ I cried, ‘I’m thankful to hear your voice. You’re not going back, are you?’

  ‘Well, I was,’ said Mansel slowly: ‘but now I’m less sure. Come to the Rolls, William. Bell’s got some beer.’

  As we scrambled on to the road, Carson rose out of the shadows and touched his hat.

  ‘Hullo, Carson,’ I said. And then, ‘Hullo, it’s your car.’

  ‘Yours is at Anise,’ said Mansel. ‘We didn’t need two, and I didn’t want your number-plates showing round here. And now you get in and sit down.’

  Though he must have been very eager to hear my news, since I was very hungry, he made me eat: and whilst I ate, I listened to what he said.

  ‘My hand has been forced, William. For twenty-four hours I tried to find a way out, but it couldn’t be done. Vanity Fair never mentioned Candle to me, but he’s due to arrive tomorrow at ten o’clock. Well, I couldn’t put him off, so I had to go. Candle knows me quite well. If I could have seen him alone, I might have stopped his mouth: but that would have been no good, for Vanity Fair would have had it open all right. And so I had to be gone.

  ‘Well, that was easy enough. I’ve always a bolt-hole read
y, by day and night. I said I was in touch with Carson. Well, off he goes to Bordeaux and gets on the telephone: and last night I get a wire to say that my little girl is dangerously ill. You know I’ve no little girl: but Vanity Fair has seen her photograph… So this morning I left – much to her suspicion and entirely to her disgust. I certainly meant to go back, when Candle had gone: but now that depends on your news. Who did you have your scrap with?’

  ‘“My wallah,”’ said I. ‘The fellow I saw in the fields.’

  ‘Dead?’ said Mansel.

  I nodded.

  ‘I killed him in self-defence.’

  ‘That I can well believe. Does anyone know?’

  ‘Nobody saw,’ said I. ‘But I couldn’t bury the body. I hid it as well as I could.’

  ‘And the shot,’ said Mansel. ‘Was anyone thereabouts?’

  ‘I didn’t shoot him,’ said I. ‘I did him in with my glasses. Cracked his skull.’

  ‘Did you, though?’ said Mansel. He laughed. ‘History repeats itself. Your prototype did his damage with the jawbone of an ass. And when and where did this happen?’

  ‘At five o’clock this morning, five miles from here.’

  ‘Then I can go back,’ said Mansel. ‘I’ve got a good alibi. All the same… And now you get on with your meal, and I’ll tell you the news of Jezreel.

  ‘Vanity Fair is peevish. She misses you very much, as I knew she would. She rang up Bayonne this morning, but they said that you’d left for Spain. Virginia is also peevish, and Gaston is getting the wet. He disparaged you yesterday: and she choked him off in terms that I wouldn’t have thought she knew. No love lost there. She’s marrying the man by order – no doubt about that. But why? That’s where I’m damned well stuck. They both hate de Rachel – loathe him, as he deserves. Yet they have agreed together, the one to become his wife and the other to make him a virtual millionaire. De Rachel has no hold upon them: that I’ll swear. Yet each is going to make him a present. Virginia is going to be joined, to use her own words, “to a dirty shop-soiled mutt that ought to be pushing soap in a fourth-rate store”: and Vanity Fair is going to part with a fortune which he will proceed to debauch with the hideous finesse of his kind.’

  He lay back and closed his eyes.

  ‘Of course there’s a snag somewhere: but I’m damned if I see where it is.

  ‘Oh, and poor old Below is peevish. At least he laments your loss. He talked to me about you, after you’d gone. He knew your father at Oxford.’

  ‘He never said so,’ said I.

  ‘I know. It was rather pathetic. “It would have seemed boastful,” he said: “and in the absence of proof…”’

  ‘Poor old fellow,’ said I. ‘She’s got him where he belongs.’

  ‘Perhaps she has. D’you pity the bears at the Zoo? They’re a damned sight better off there than taking their chance in the mountains. Look at the buns they get.’

  ‘I’ve broken my fast,’ said I, laughing. ‘And now you shall hear my tale. I’ll eat again presently.’

  With that, I told him the truth from beginning to end.

  When I had done –

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Mansel. ‘And now you must see what I meant when I talked at Cleveland Row. Only an amateur could ever have done so well. No money on earth could ever buy service like that. Never mind. What a glorious show. But I’d like to have a look at that girl. Not a peasant, you say. Well bred. It looks to me as if she was “what Julie knew”.’

  ‘I never thought of that,’ said I.

  ‘You would have,’ said Mansel, ‘if you hadn’t been so tired. And why is she there? And what has she to do with Vanity Fair?’

  ‘And Jean?’ said I.

  Mansel frowned.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘And Jean. Assassins don’t go with dryads… Can you eat as we go? I’ll drive. And I’m devilish glad I brought Carson, because we’ll have need of Bell.’ He asked for my map. ‘How close can you get to this pleasance, using the road?’

  ‘To within three miles,’ said I.

  ‘That’s not too bad,’ said Mansel. ‘When we take to our feet, d’you think you can find the way?’

  ‘I’ll do it somehow.’

  ‘That’s the stuff,’ said Mansel. ‘Now if you were being paid, you’d want a private bathroom and a couple of days in bed.’

  The sky was not yet pale when Mansel and Bell and I passed under the fine cascade and into the cleft.

  The corpse was as I had left it.

  Mansel said it was that of a Spaniard, the moment he saw its face: then he went on his knees and proceeded to search the body with infinite care. The pockets yielded nothing, but the sash of coarse, red cloth, which had served the man as a belt, was containing two sealed letters, the superscriptions of which had been written by Vanity Fair. One was addressed to ‘Lafone’ and the other to ‘Jean’. We did not wait to read them, for we wished to bury the body before it was day, and, after a little discussion, Mansel and Bell took it up and bore it the way we had come.

  We buried the corpse in the circus, scraping a hole in the bed of the stream that was dry. The only tools we had were the Spaniard’s knife and the two tire-levers which Bell had brought from the Rolls, but the bed was of stones and sand, so that, though we could have done with a shovel, the grave grew very much faster than if we had been digging earth. And, what was still more to the point, when the grisly business was over, no one could ever have told that the channel had been disturbed. We laid the man’s knife beside him and buried my useless glasses a hundred yards off.

  As the dawn came up, the three of us stripped and bathed in the mist of the fall, and, though the water was icy, since I had a piece of soap, we did very well. This cost us full half an hour, for whilst one was making his toilet, the others were keeping watch upon either side: but it made a world of difference, and the delicate spray did more than wash the sweat from our skins. Then we set out, all three, to reconnoitre the park.

  Though the letters burned his pocket, Mansel would not read them ‘because,’ he said, ‘we need every moment we’ve got. In less than an hour, this park will be full of light, and by then we must be hiding, if we are to do any good.’

  (Here I may say that I dare say many will wonder why Mansel had not read the letters while Bell and I were bathing in the mist of the fall: but that was not Mansel’s way. He had set himself to play sentry, and, though he was always the captain of every enterprise, he did his share of duty with all his might.)

  In single file we moved at the foot of the mountains confining the park, for so, of course, we were less easy to see, and if we had trodden the meadows, the print of our steps would have stayed till the sun was high. As we went, I began to see that the pleasance had the way of a river that bends and widens and narrows for no apparent cause, and when we had covered about three hundred paces, I saw the edge of some building that stood in a bay on our right.

  Mansel had stopped, and I made my way on to his side.

  From where he stood I could see a broad, grey house, some five hundred yards away. It was plainly very old and had, I judged, been built when worse than thieves broke in, to do worse than steal, for the windows were small and set high and there was no door, but an archway that gave to a court within. It must have looked grim, when new: but wind and rain and sun had softened its ancient face, and the chestnuts that crowded about it – and especially one that was growing within its court – gave it that air of security which only Nature can give.

  Away to the left stood farm buildings, and around and beyond these were pastures, decently fenced.

  Sign of life there was none, except for some sheep that were feeding a long way off.

  Mansel took out his glasses and pointed across the park.

  ‘D’you see a strip of green there? Halfway up the mountain. It looks like the edge of a plateau. I may be wrong.’

  ‘It might be,’ said I, gazing. ‘I think it is.’

  ‘It’s a dell, I think. I can’t see. It looks as
if there’s a path…’ He put his glasses away. ‘Come on. We must try and make it. So far as the manor’s concerned, it’s a natural belvedere.’

  At once we turned about and retraced our steps. Always skirting the mountains, we hastened round the pleasance, past the cleft and presently over the water that was feeding my lady’s pool. So we came to the bay to which the manor belonged.

  The sun was up now and was touching the mountain-tops, so Mansel entered the forest which grew on the mountain-sides. Not to do so would have been folly, for we were now close to the house; but so steep was the slope that, though we held on our course, we were climbing, rather than walking, from that time on. I know no progress more trying than working across a mountain by scrambling from tree to tree, and nearly an hour had gone by before, to our great relief, we encountered a rising path. One glance at the house showed us that this was indeed the path which Mansel had thought that he saw, and five minutes later we stumbled into the dell.

  No place could have suited our purpose one half so well.

  We could look clean over the house, which was only two hundred yards off, we could watch the farm and the pastures, we could see the bushes that grew at the mouth of the cleft: only the pool was hidden, for that was masked by the point that made one horn of the bay. But we could not be observed. Had we stood close to the edge, we could, of course, have been seen, but, lying there prone, only the birds could see us, for the ground sloped down a little into the dell. Add to this that the coign was as charming as was the pleasance below. The turf was soft and blowing, and, when the sun grew hot, we could, if we pleased, withdraw to the shade of the trees: and there a spring was welling, a very tiny business that lost itself in the forest almost at once, but its water was clear as crystal and meant the world to us, for though we had food and to spare, we had nothing to drink.