The Lion's Share by Arnold Bennett (booksvooks TXT) 📕

Audrey. "And so he didn't keep me from wandering in." She felt rather disappointed that Aguilar should once more have escaped her reproof and that the dream of his double life should have vanished away, but she was determined to prove that he was not perfect.

"Well, I don't know about that," said Miss Ingate. "It wouldn't startle me to hear that he knew you were intending to come. All I know is that Miss Foley's been here for several days. Not a soul knows except me and Aguilar. And it seems to get safer every day. She does venture about the house now, though she never goes into the garden while it's light. It was Aguilar had the idea of putting this room straight for her."

"And it was he who cut the bread-and-butter," added Jane Foley.

"And this was to be our first tea-party!" Miss Ingate half shrieked. "I'd come--I do come, you know, to keep an eye on things as you asked me--I'd come, and we were just having a cosy little chat in the tank-room. Aguilar's gone to Colchester to get a duplicate key of the front gates. He left me his, so I could get in and lock up after myself, and he put the water on to boil before leaving. I said to Miss Foley, I said, up in the tank-room: 'Was that a ring at the door?' But she said it wasn't."

"I've been a little deaf since I was in prison," said Jane Foley.

"And now we come down and find you here! I--I hope I've done right." This, falteringly, from Miss Ingate.

"Of course you have, you silly old thing," Audrey reassured her. "It's splendid!"

"Whenever I think of the police I laugh," said Miss Ingate in an unsettled voice. "I can't help it. They can't possibly suspect. And they're looking everywhere, everywhere! I can't help laughing." And suddenly she burst into tears.

"Oh! Now! Winnie, dear. Don't spoil it all!" Audrey protested, jumping up.

Madame Piriac, who had hitherto maintained the most complete passivity, restrained her.

"Leave her tranquil!" murmured Madame Piriac in French. "She is not spoiling it. On the contrary! One is content to see that she is a woman!"

And then Miss Ingate laughed, and blushed, and called herself names.

"And so you haven't had my letter," said she. "I wish you had had it. But what is this yachting business? I never heard of such goings-on. Is it your yacht? This world is getting a bit too wonderful for me."

The answer to these questions was cut short by rather heavy masculine footsteps approaching the door of the drawing-room. Miss Ingate grew instantly serious. Audrey and Jane looked at each other, and Jane Foley went quickly but calmly to the door and opened it.

"Oh! It's Mr. Aguilar--returned!" she said, quietly. "Is anything the matter, Mr. Aguilar?"

Aguilar, hat in hand, entered the room.

"Good afternoon, Aguilar," Audrey greeted him.

"'Noon, madam," he responded, exactly as though he had been expecting to find the mistress there. "It's like this. I've just seen Inspector Keeble and that there detective as was here afore--_you_ know, madam" (nodding to Audrey) "and I fancy they're a-coming this way, so I thought I'd better cut back and warn ye. I don't think they saw me. I was too quick for 'em. Was the bread-and-butter all right, Miss Ingate? Thank ye."

Miss Ingate had risen.

"I ought to go home," she said. "I feel sure it would be wiser for me to go home. I never could talk to detectives."

Jane Foley snatched at one of the four cups and saucers on the table, and put it back, all unwashed, into the china cupboard.

"Three cups will be enough for them to see, if they come," she said, with a bright, happy smile to Audrey. "Yes, Miss Ingate, you go home. I'm ever so much obliged to you. Now, I'll go upstairs and Aguilar shall lock me in the tank-room and push the key under the door. We are causing you a lot of trouble, Mrs. Moncreiff, but you won't mind. It might have been so much worse." She laughed as she went.

"And suppose I meet those police on the way out, what am I to say to them?" asked Miss Ingate when Jane Foley and Aguilar had departed.

"If they're very curious, tell them you've been here to have tea with me and that Aguilar cut the bread-and-butter," Audrey replied. "The detective will be interested to see me. He chased me all the way to London not long since. Au revoir, Winnie."

"Dear friend," said Madame Piriac, with admirable though false calm. "Would it not be more prudent to fly back at once to the yacht--if in truth this is the same police agent of whom you recounted to me with such drollness the exploits? It is not that I am afraid----"

"Nor I," said Audrey. "There is no danger except to Jane Foley."

"Ah! You cannot abandon her. That is true. Nevertheless I regret ..."

"Well, darling," Audrey exclaimed. "You would insist on my coming!"

The continuing presence of Miss Ingate, who had lost one glove and her purse, rendered this brief conversation somewhat artificial. And no sooner had Miss Ingate got away--by the window, for the sake of dispatch--than a bell made itself heard, and Aguilar came back to the drawing-room in the role of butler.

"Inspector Keeble and a gentleman to see you, madam."

"Bring them in," said Audrey.

Aguilar's secret glance at Inspector Keeble as he brought in the visitors showed that his lifelong and harmless enemy had very little to hope from his goodwill.

"Wait a moment, you!" called the detective as Aguilar, like a perfect butler, was vanishing. "Good afternoon, ladies. Excuse me, I wish to question this man." He indicated Aguilar with a gesture of apologising for Aguilar.

Inspector Keeble, an overgrown mass of rectitude and kindliness, greeted Audrey with that constraint which always afflicted him when he was beneath any roof more splendid than that of his own police-station.

"Now, Aguilar," said the detective, "it's you that'll be telling me. Ye've got a woman concealed in the house. Where is she?"

He knew, then, this ferreting and divinatory Irishman! Of course Miss Ingate must have committed some indiscretion, or was it that Aguilar was less astute than he gave the impression of being? Audrey considered that all was lost, and she was aware of a most unpleasant feeling of helplessness and inefficiency. Then she seemed to receive inspiration and optimism from somewhere. She knew not exactly from where, but perhaps it was from the shy stiffness of the demeanour of her old acquaintance, Inspector Keeble. Moreover, the Irishman's twinkling eyes were a challenge to her.

"Oh! Aguilar!" she exclaimed. "I'm very sorry to hear this. I knew women were always your danger, but I never dreamt you would start carrying on in my absence."

Aguilar fronted her, and their eyes met. Audrey gazed at him steadily. There was no smile in Audrey's eyes, but there was a smile glimmering mysteriously behind them, and after a couple of seconds this phenomenon aroused a similar phenomenon behind the eyes of Aguilar. Audrey had the terrible and god-like sensation of lifting a hired servant to equality with herself. She imagined that she would never again be able to treat him as Aguilar, and she even feared that she would soon begin to cease to hate him. At the same time she observed slight signs of incertitude in the demeanour of the detective.

Aguilar replied coldly, not to Audrey, but to the police:

"If Inspector Keeble or anybody else has been mixing my name up with any scandal about females, I'll have him up for slander and libel and damages as sure as I stand here."

Inspector Keeble looked away, and then looked at the detective--as if for support in peril.

"Do you mean to say, Aguilar, that you haven't got a woman hidden in the house at this very moment?" the detective demanded.

"I'll thank ye to keep a civil tongue in your head," said Aguilar. "Or I'll take ye outside and knock yer face sideways. Pardon me, madam. Of course I ain't got no woman concealed on the premises. And mark ye, if I lose my place through this ye'll hear of it. And I shall put a letter in the _Gardeners' Chronicle_, too."

"Well, ye can go," the detective responded.

"Yes," sneered Aguilar. "I can go. Yes, and I shall go. But not so far but what I can protect my interests. And I'll make this village too hot for Keeble before I've done, police or no police."

And with a look at Audrey like the look of a knight at his lady after a joust, Aguilar turned to leave the room.

"Aguilar," Audrey rewarded him. "You needn't be afraid about your place."

"Thank ye, m'm."

"May I ask what your name is?" Audrey inquired of the detective as soon as Aguilar had shut the door.

"Hurley," replied the detective.

"I thought it might be," said Audrey, sitting down, but not offering seats. "Well, Mr. Hurley, after all your running after Miss Susan Foley, don't you think it's rather unfair to say horrid things about a respectable man like Aguilar? You were funny about that stout wife of yours last time I saw you, but you must remember that Aguilar can't be funny about his wife, because he hasn't got one."

"I really don't know what you're driving at, miss," said Mr. Hurley simply.

"Well, what were you driving at when you followed me all the way to London the other day?"

"Madam," said Mr. Hurley, "I didn't follow you to London. I only happened to arrive at Charing Cross about twenty seconds after you, that was all. As a matter of fact, nearly half of the way you were following me."

"Well, I hope you were satisfied."

"I only want to know one thing," the detective retorted. "Am I speaking to Mrs. Olivia Moncreiff?"

Audrey hesitated, glancing at Madame Piriac, who, in company with the vast Inspector Keeble, was carefully inspecting the floor. She invoked wisdom and sagacity from heaven, and came to a decision.

"Not that I know of," she answered.

"Then, if you please, who are you?"

"What!" exclaimed Audrey. "You're in the village of Moze itself and you ask who I am. Everybody knows me. My name is Audrey Moze, of Flank Hall, Moze, Essex. Any child in Moze Street will tell you that. Inspector Keeble knows as well as anybody."

Madame Piriac proceeded steadily with the inquiry into the carpet. Audrey felt her heart beating.

"Unmarried?" pursued the detective.

"Most decidedly," said Audrey with conviction.

"Then what's the meaning of that ring on your finger, if you don't mind my asking?" the detective continued.

Certainly Audrey was flustered, but only for a moment.

"Mr. Hurley," said she; "I wear it as a protection from men of all ages who are too enterprising."

She spoke archly, with humour; but now there was no answering humour in the features of Mr. Hurley, who seemed to be a changed man, to be indeed no longer even an Irishman. And Audrey grew afraid. Did he, after all, know of her share in the Blue City enterprise? She had long since persuaded herself that the police had absolutely failed to connect her with that affair, but now uncertainty was born in her mind.

"I must search the house," said the detective.

"What for?"