A.E.W. Mason - The Summons

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"You must realise, Jenny, the unfortunate position into which your
answers are leading you," said Sir Chichester with a trace of bluster.

Hillyard could have laughed. As if she didn't realise exactly the drift
and meaning of every word which she uttered. Jenny was not at all
perturbed by Sir Chichester's manner. Her face took on a puzzled look.

"I don't understand, sir."

"No? Let me make it clear! If your mistress never took drugs, if she did
not place the glass of chloroform in the particular position which would
ensure her death, then, since you, her maid, were alone in this part of
the house with her and were the last person to see her alive----"

"No, sir," Jenny Prask interrupted.

Sir Chichester stared. He was more and more out of his depth, and these
were waters in which expert swimming was required.

"I don't understand. Do you say that somebody saw Mrs. Croyle after she
had dismissed you for the night?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you please explain?"

The explanation was as simple as possible. Jenny had first fetched a
book for her mistress from the library, before the house-party left for
the ball. She then had supper and went to Mrs. Croyle's room. It was
then about half-past nine, so far as she could conjecture. Her mistress,
however, was not ready for bed, and dismissed Jenny, saying that she
would look after herself. Jenny thereupon retired to her own bedroom and
wrote a letter. After writing it, she remembered that she had not put
out the distilled water which Mrs. Croyle was in the habit of using for
her toilet. She accordingly returned to Mrs. Croyle's bedroom, and to
her surprise found it empty. She waited for a quarter of an hour, and
then becoming uneasy, went downstairs into the hall. She heard her
mistress and some one else talking in the library. Their voices were
raised a little as though they were quarrelling.

"Quarrelling!" Sir Chichester Splay cried out the word in dismay. His
hand flapped feebly on the table. "I am afraid to go on.... What do you
think, Hillyard? I am afraid to go on...."

"We must go on," said Luttrell quietly. He was very white. Did he guess
what was coming, Hillyard wondered? At all events he did not falter. He
took the business of putting questions altogether out of his host's
hands.

"Was the somebody a man or a woman?"

"A woman, sir."

"Did you recognise her voice?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who was it?"

"Miss Whitworth."

Harry Luttrell nodded his head as if he had, during these last minutes,
come to expect that answer and no other. But Sir Chichester rose up in
wrath and, leaning forward over the table, shook his finger
threateningly at the girl.

"Now you know you are not speaking the truth. Miss Whitworth was at
Harrel last night with the rest of us."

"Yes, sir, but she came back to Rackham Park almost at once," said
Jenny; and Harry Luttrell's face showed a sign of anxiety. After all, he
hadn't seen Joan himself in the ball-room until well after ten o'clock.
"I should have known that it was Miss Whitworth even if I had not heard
her voice," and Jenny described how, on fetching Mrs. Croyle's book, she
had seen Joan unlatch the glass door of the library.

Sir Chichester was shaken, but he pushed his blotting-paper here and his
pen there, and pished and tushed like a refractory child.

"And how did she get back? I suppose she ran all the way in her satin
shoes and back again, eh?"

"No, sir, she came back in Mrs. Brown's motor-car. I saw it from my
bedroom window waiting in the drive."

"Ah! Now that we can put to the test, Jenny," cried Sir Chichester
triumphantly. "And we will----" He caught Hillyard's eye as he moved
towards the door in order to summon Miranda from the garden. Hillyard
warned him with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. "Yes, we
will, in our own time," he concluded lamely. His anger burst out again.
"Joan, indeed! We won't have her mixed up in this sordid business, it's
bad enough as it is. But Joan, no! To suggest that Joan came straight
back from the Willoughbys' dance in order to quarrel with a woman whom
she was seeing every day here, and, having quarrelled with her,
afterwards----No, I won't speak the word. It's preposterous!"

"But I don't suggest, sir, that Miss Whitworth came back in order to
quarrel with my mistress," Jenny Prask returned, as soon as Sir
Chichester's spate of words ran down. "I only give you the facts I know.
I am quite sure that Miss Whitworth can quite easily explain why she
came back to Rackham Park last night. There can't be any difficulty
about that!"

Jenny Prask had kept every intonation of her voice under her control.
There was no hint of irony or triumph. She was a respectful lady's maid,
frankly answering questions about her dead mistress. But she did not so
successfully keep sentinel over her looks. She could not but glance from
time to time at Harry Luttrell savouring his trouble and anxiety; and
when she expressed her conviction that Joan could so easily clear up
these mysteries, such a flame of hatred burnt suddenly in her eyes that
it lit Martin Hillyard straight to the heart of her purpose.

"So that's it," he thought, and was terrified as he grasped its reach.
An accusation of murder! Oh, nothing so crude. But just enough
suggestion of the possibility of murder to make it absolutely necessary
that Joan Whitworth should go into the witness box at the coroner's
inquest and acknowledge before the world that she had hurried secretly
back from Harrel to meet Mario Escobar in an empty house. Mario Escobar
too! Of all people, Mario Escobar! Jenny Prask had builded better than
she knew. That telegram which Martin had welcomed with so much relief
but an hour ago taunted him now. The scandal would have been bad enough
if Mario Escobar were nothing more than the shady hunter of women he was
supposed to be. It would be ten times louder now that Mario Escobar had
been interned as a traitor within twelve hours of the secret meeting!

Some escape must be discovered from the peril. Else the mud of it would
cling to Joan all her life. She would be spoilt. Harry Luttrell, too! If
he married her, if he did not. But Martin could not think of a way out.
The whole plan was an artful, devilish piece of hard-headed cunning.
Martin fell to wondering where was Jenny Prask's weak joint. She
certainly looked, with her quiet strength, as if she had not one at all.

To make matters worse, Miranda Brown chose this moment to re-enter the
hall. Sir Chichester, warned already by Martin, threw the warning to the
winds.

"Miranda, you are the very person to help us," he cried. "Now listen to
me, my dear, and don't get flurried. Think carefully, for your answer
may have illimitable consequences! After your arrival at Harrel last
night, did Joan return here immediately in your car?"

Sir Chichester had never been so impressive. Miranda was frightened and
changed colour. But she had given her promise and she kept it pluckily.

"No," she answered.

Jenny Prask permitted herself to smile her disbelief. Sir Chichester was
triumphant.

"Well, there's an end of your pretty story, my girl," he said. "You
wanted to do a little mischief, did you? Well, you haven't! And here, by
a stroke of luck, is Joan herself to settle the matter."

He sat down and once more he drew his sheet of foolscap in front of him.
He could write his clear succinct statement now, write it in "nervous
prose." He was not quite sure what nervous prose actually was, but he
knew it to be the correct medium to use on these occasions.

Meanwhile Joan ran down the stairs.

"I am afraid I have been very lazy this morning," she cried. She saw
Harry Luttrell, she coloured to the eyes, she smiled doubtfully and said
in a little whimsical voice, "We didn't after all, practise in the
passage."

Then, and only then, did she realise that something was amiss. Millie
Splay in her desire to spare her darling the sudden shock of learning
what calamity had befallen the house that night had bidden Joan's maid
keep silence. She herself would break the news. But Millie Splay was
busy with telegrams to Robert Croyle and Stella's own friends, and all
the sad little duties which wait on death; and Joan ran down into the
midst of the debate without a warning.

Martin Hillyard would have given it to her, but Sir Chichester was hot
upon his report.

"Joan, my dear," he said confidently. "There's a little point--not in
dispute really--but--well there's a little point. It has been said that
you came straight back here last night from Harrel?"

Joan's face turned slowly white. She stood with her great eyes fixed
upon Sir Chichester, still as an image, and she did not answer a word.
Harry Luttrell drew in a quick breath like a man in pain. Sir Chichester
was selecting a new pen and noticed nothing.

"It's ridiculous, of course, my dear, but I must put to you the formal
question. Did you?"

"Yes," answered Joan, and the pen fell from Sir Chichester's hand.

"But--but--how did you come back?"

"I borrowed Miranda's car."

Miranda's legs gave under her and she sank down with a moan in a chair.

"But Miranda denies that she lent it," said Sir Chichester in
exasperation.

"I asked her to deny it."

"Why?"

Joan's eyes for one swift instant swept round to Harry Luttrell. She
swayed. Then she answered:

"I can't tell you."

Sir Chichester rose to his feet and tore his sheet of foolscap across.

"God bless my soul!" he said to himself rather than to any of that
company. "God bless my soul!" He moved away from the table. "I think
I'll go and see Millie. Yes! I'll consult with Millie," and he ascended
the stairs heavily, a very downcast and bewildered man. It seemed as
though old age had suddenly found him out, and bowed his shoulders and
taken the spring from his limbs. Something of this he felt himself, for
he was heard to mutter as he passed along the landing to his wife's
sitting-room:

"I am not the man I was. I feel difficulties more"; and so he passed
from sight.

Harry Luttrell turned then to Joan.

"Miss Whitworth," he began and got no further. For the blood rushed up
into the girl's face and she exclaimed in a trembling voice:

"Colonel Luttrell, I trust that you are not going to ask me any
questions."

"Why?" he asked, taken aback by the little touch of violence in her
manner.

"Because, at twelve o'clock last night, I refused you the right to ask
them."

The words were not very generous. They were meant to hurt and they did.
They were meant to put a sharp, quick end to any questioning; and in
that, too, they succeeded. Harry Luttrell bowed his head in assent and
went out into the garden. For a moment afterwards Martin Hillyard, Joan
and Jenny Prask stood in silence; and in that silence once more Martin's
eyes fell upon the key of Stella's room. The earth had moved since the
interrogatory had begun and the sunlight now played upon the key and
transmuted it into a bright jewel. Martin Hillyard stepped forward and
lifted it up. A faint, a very faint light, as from the far end of a long
tunnel began to glimmer in his mind.

"I must think it out," he whispered to himself; and at once the key
filled all his thoughts. He turned to Joan:

"Will you watch, please?" He opened the drawer in the table and laid the
key inside it. Then he closed the drawer and locked it and took the key
of the drawer out of the lock.

"You see, Joan, what I have done? That key is locked in this drawer, and
I hold the key of the drawer. It may be important."

Joan nodded.

"I see what you have done. And now, will you please leave me with Jenny
Prask?"

The smile was very easy to read now in Jenny's face. She could ask
nothing better than to be left alone with Joan.

Martin hesitated.

"I think, Joan, that you ought to see Lady Splay before you talk to any
one," he counselled gently.

"Is everybody going to give me orders in this house?" Joan retorted with
a quiet, dangerous calm.

Martin Hillyard turned and ran swiftly up the stairs. There was but one
thing to do. Lady Splay must be fetched down. But hurry as he might, he
was not in time. For a few seconds Joan and Jenny Prask were alone in
the hall, and all Jenny's composure left her on the instant. She stepped
quickly over to Joan, and in a voice vibrating with hatred and passion,
she hissed:

"But you'll have to say why you came back. You'll have to say who you
came back to see. You'll have to say it publicly too--right there in
court. It'll be in all the papers. Won't you like it, Miss Whitworth?
Just fancy!"

Joan was staggered by the attack. The sheer hatred of Jenny bewildered
her.

"In court?" she faltered. "What do you mean?"

"That Mrs. Croyle died of poison last night in her room," answered
Jenny.

Joan stared at her. "Last night, after we had talked--she killed
herself--oh!" The truth reached her brain and laid a chill hand upon her
heart. She rocked backwards and forwards as she stood, and with a
gasping moan fell headlong to the ground. She had fainted. For a little
while Jenny surveyed her handiwork with triumph. She bent down with a
laugh.

"Yes, it's your turn, you pretty doll. You've got to go through it! You
won't look so young and pretty when they have done with you in the
witness-box. Bah!"

Jenny Prask was a strenuous hater. She drew back her foot to kick the
unconscious girl as she lay at her feet upon the floor. But that insult
Millie Splay was in time to prevent.

"Jenny," she cried sharply from the balustrade of the landing.

Jenny was once more the quiet, respectful maid.

"Yes, my lady. You want me? I am afraid that Miss Whitworth has
fainted."

CHAPTER XXX

A REVOLUTION IN SIR CHICHESTER

Upon that house which had yesterday rung with joyous life now fell gloom
and sorrow and grave disquiet. Millie Splay drew Miranda, Dennis Brown
and Harold Jupp aside.

"You three had better go," she said. "You have such a little time for
holidays now; and I can always telegraph for you if you should be
wanted."

Miranda bubbled into little sympathetic explosions.

"Oh, Millie, I'll stay, of course. These boys can go. But Joan will want
some one."

Millie, however, would not hear of it.

"You're a brick, Miranda. But I have ordered the car for you all
immediately after luncheon. Joan's in bed, and wants to see no one. She
seems heartbroken. She will say nothing. I can't understand her."

There was only one at Rackham Park who did, and to him Millie Splay
turned instinctively.

"I should like you to stay, if you will put up with us. I think
Chichester feels at a loss, and he likes you very much."

"Of course I'll stay," replied Hillyard.

Mr. Albany Todd drifted away to the more congenial atmosphere of a
dowager duchess's dower-house in the Highlands, where it is to be hoped
that his conversational qualities were more brilliantly displayed than
in the irreverent gaiety of Rackham. Millie Splay meant to keep Harry
Luttrell too. She hoped against hope. This was the man for her Joan, and
whether he was wasting his leave miserably in that melancholy house
troubled her not one jot.

"It would be so welcome to me if you would put off your departure," she
said. "I am sure there is some dreadful misunderstanding."

Luttrell consented willingly to stay, and they went into the library,
where Sir Chichester was brooding over the catastrophe with his head in
his hands and the copy of the _Harpoon_ on the floor beside him.

"No, I can't make head or tail of it," he said, and Harper the butler
came softly into the room, closing the door from the hall.

"There's a reporter from the _West Sussex Advertiser_, sir, asking to
see you," he said, and Sir Chichester raised his head, like an old
hunter which hears a pack of hounds giving tongue in the distance.

"Where is he?"

"In the hall, sir."

The baronet's head sank again between his shoulders.

"Tell him that I can't see him," he said in a dull voice.

The butler was the only man in the room who could hear that
pronouncement with an unmoved face, and he owed his imperturbability
merely to professional pride. Indeed, it was almost unthinkable that a
couple of hours could produce so vast a revolution in a man. Here was a
reporter who had come, without being asked, to interview Sir Chichester
Splay, and the baronet would not see him! The incongruity struck Sir
Chichester himself.

"Perhaps it will seem rather impolite, eh, Luttrell? Rather hard
treatment on a man who has come so far? What do you think, Hillyard? I
suppose I ought to see him for a moment--yes." Sir Chichester raised his
voice in a sharp cry which contrasted vividly with the deliberative
sentences preceding it. "Harper! Harper!" and Harper reappeared. "I have
been thinking about it, Harper. The unfortunate man may lose his whole
morning if I don't see him. We all agree that to send him away would be
unkind."

"He has gone, sir."

"Gone?" exclaimed Sir Chichester testily. "God bless my soul! Did he
seem disappointed, Harper?"

"Not so much disappointed, sir, as, if I may utilise a vulgarism, struck
of all a heap, sir."

"That will do, Harper," said Millie Splay, and Harper again retired.

"Struck all of a heap!" said Sir Chichester sadly. "Well he might be!"
He looked up and caught Harry's eye. "They say, Luttrell, that breaking
a habit is only distressing during the first few days. With each refusal
of the mind to yield, the temptation diminishes in strength. I believe
that to be so, Luttrell."

"It is very likely, sir," Harry replied.

Harper seemed to be perpetually in and out of the library that morning.
For he appeared with a little oblong parcel in his hand. Sir Chichester
did not notice the parcel. He sprang up, and with a distinct note of
eager pleasure in his voice, he cried:

"He has come back! Then I really think----"

"No, sir," Harper interrupted. "These are cigarettes."

"Oh, yes," Hillyard stepped forward and took the parcel from the table.
"I had run out, so I sent to Midhurst for a box."

"Oh, cigarettes!" Sir Chichester's voice sagged again. He contemplated
the little parcel swinging by a loop of string from Martin's finger. His
face became a little stern. "That's a bad habit, Hillyard," he observed,
shaking his head. "It will grow on you--nicotine poisoning may supervene
at any moment. You had better begin to break yourself of it at once. I
think so."

"Chichester!" cried Millie Splay. "What in the world are you doing?"

Sir Chichester was gently but firmly removing the parcel from Martin's
hands, whilst Martin himself looked on, paralysed by the aggression.

"A little strength of character, Hillyard.... You saw me a minute
ago.... The first few days, I believe, are trying."

Martin sought to retrieve his cigarettes, but Sir Chichester laid them
aside upon a high mantelpiece, as if Hillyard were a child and could not
reach them.

"No, don't disappoint me, Hillyard! I am sure that you, too, can rise
above a temptation. Why should I be the only one?"

But Hillyard did not answer. Sir Chichester's desire that he should have
a companion in sacrifice set a train of thought working in his mind. In
the hurry and horror of that morning something had been
forgotten--something of importance, something which perhaps, together
with the key locked away in the hall table, might set free Joan's feet
from the net in which they were entangled. He looked at his watch.

"Will you lend me your car, Harry, for a few hours?" he asked suddenly.

"Yes."

"Then I'll go," said Martin. "I will be back this afternoon or evening,
Lady Splay." He went to the door, but was delayed by a box of Corona
cigars upon a small table. "I'll take one of your cigars, Sir
Chichester," he said drily.

"Anything in the house, of course, my boy," began the baronet
hospitably, and pulled himself up. "A very bad habit, Hillyard. You
disappoint me."

A trick of secrecy grows quickly upon men doing the work to which Martin
Hillyard had been assigned during the last two years. Nothing is easier
than to reach a frame of mind which drives you about with your finger to
your lips, whispering "Hush! hush!" over the veriest trifles. Hillyard
had not reached that point, but, like many other persons of his service,
he was on the way to it. He gave no information now to any one of his
purpose or destination, not even to Millie Splay, who came out with him
alone into the hall, yearning for some crumb of hope. All that he said
to her was:

"It is possible that I may be later than I think; but I shall certainly
be back to-night." And he drove off in Luttrell's powerful small car.

It was, in fact, ten o'clock when Hillyard returned to Rackham Park.
There was that in his manner which encouraged the inmates to hope some
way out had been discovered. Questions were poured upon him, and some
information given. The date of the inquest had been fixed for the next
Monday, and meanwhile no statement of any kind had been put before the
coroner. Jenny had not yielded by an inch. She would certainly tell her
story with all the convincing force behind it of her respectful quiet
manner and her love for her mistress.

"I have something to tell you," said Martin. "But I have had no dinner,
and am starving. I will tell you whilst I eat."

"Shall I fetch Joan down?" Millie Splay asked eagerly.

"Better to wait," said Martin. He imagined in what a fever of anxiety
Joan would be. It would be time enough to lift her to hope when it was
certain that the hope would not crumble away to dust.

Joan was at that moment lying on her bed in the darkness of her room,
her face towards the moonlit garden, and such a terror of the ordeal to
be faced the next Monday in her thoughts as turned her cold and sent her
heart fluttering into her throat. Mario Escobar had been taken away that
morning. The news had reached Rackham, as it had reached every other
house in the country-side. Joan knew of it, and she felt soiled and
humiliated beyond endurance as she thought upon her association with the
spy.

The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she
knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their
liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before
her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place.
She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Sussex, that he might carry
the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and
brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly
turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before
her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and
file--how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now
she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her
pillows and lay shivering.

Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester
and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold
beef and drank a pint of champagne.

"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the
_Harpoon_," Martin explained. "There were two questions I wanted answers
for, if I could get them. You see, according to McKerrel--and you, Sir
Chichester, say that he is a capable man--Stella Croyle died at one in
the morning."

"Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.

"_About_ one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the
soldierly mind.

"'About' will do," Martin rejoined. "For newspapers go to press early
nowadays. The _Harpoon_ would have been made up, and most of the
editorial staff would have gone home an hour--yes, actually an
hour--before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham in Sussex. Yet the news is
in that very issue. How did that happen? How did the news reach the
office of the _Harpoon_ an hour before the event occurred?"

"Yes, that is what has been bothering me," added Sir Chichester.

"Well, that was one question," Martin resumed. "Here's the other. How,
when the news had reached the _Harpoon_ office, did it get printed in
the paper?"

Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an explanation of that.

"It's sensational," she said disdainfully.

Martin shook his head.

"I don't think that's enough. The _Harpoon_, like lots of other
newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a
paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational
value. But supposing it wasn't true! A libel action follows, follows
inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous
recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of
bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable
paper would run such a risk. No sub-editor, left behind with power to
alter and insert, would have taken the responsibility. Before he printed
that item of news he would want corroboration of its truth. That's
certain. How did he get it? It was true news, and it was corroborated.
But, again, it was corroborated before the event happened. How?"

"I haven't an idea," cried Sir Chichester. "I thought I knew something
about getting things into the papers, but I see that I am a baby at it."

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