Chapter NINETEEN: Angela Is Frank

When we were back again at Sackville Street and she was reseated, I stood upon the hearth-rug and gazed at her expectantly.

I knew well she was testing me in order to reassure herself that memory of the past had not returned to me, that I still failed to recognize her. By dint of great effort I had kept up the fiction. Yet it was difficult to pretend friendship when I knew her to be my most dangerous enemy.

I wanted to ask her why she had interfered with my meeting with Illona, and why she had sent me that scrap of false music. Yet how could I do so without disclosing what I knew?

“Well,” I said at last. “What have you to say to me, Angela?” And I waited for lies to fall from her lips.

“I want to speak to you of something that closely concerns both of us,” she said, in a quiet, changed voice. “You know that Roddy is missing, and I am extremely anxious to find him. Have you the slightest idea why he should be missing, or of the motive?”

And she fixed her eyes straight upon mine.

“How should I?” my surprise at her question was genuine, but at the same time I realized her cleverness in trying to trick me into admitting secret knowledge of her friend.

“I thought you were friendly with him.”

“Only in consequence of the interview I had with him on your behalf,” was my reply.

“I thought he knew a lady friend of yours--a Miss Gell,” she said, as though speaking to herself.

“Did he know her?” I cried, in quick anxiety.

“I have heard so,” she answered. “So I thought you might know something concerning his mysterious disappearance. Has Miss Gell told you nothing?”

“No, nothing.”

“Ah! That is curious,” my visitor said.

“No, not curious in the least,” I blurted forth. “Miss Gell is also missing and cannot be found.”

The Little Countess started.

“Miss Gell also missing!” she gasped. “Then they might both have gone away together, eh?”

“I think not, because Joan disappeared some time before Owen.”

The girl masquerading as daughter of an Italian count paused for some time, her eyes upon the empty grate.

“Look here, Signor Hipwell,” she said at last. “Let us be frank with each other.”

“I am entirely frank,” I ventured.

“I mean, let us act in each other’s interests. Each of us has a friend who seems to have dissolved into space. Why cannot we help each other and tell the truth as far as we know it?” Then, after another pause, she looked at me strangely and added, “I can tell you something if you tell me what you know concerning Roddy.”

“Do you know anything about Joan?” I asked eagerly. “Tell me.”

“When you have told me what you know about Roddy,” was her firm reply. “That is a bargain.”

“But I know so little,” I declared with truth. “I only heard that early one morning he left his flat and has not been seen since.”

“That I know. But who informed you?”

I hesitated a moment. There was an agreement between us that we should each tell what we knew.

“I was told by the police,” I said.

“The police!” she cried, starting up in genuine alarm. “Are they after him?”

“I think so.”

“For what reason?” she asked breathlessly. “Tell me all you know about the affair. Remember our compact.”

“Your friend Owen, I believe, was on terms of friendship with a young man known in certain circles as Tuggy Wilson.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Well, Owen and the latter were in Fulham one night when Wilson was shot dead by somebody unknown.”

“Tuggy dead!” she cried, staring at me in astonishment.

“Yes. It was in the papers.”

“I was in Italy and saw nothing of it. Surely they didn’t suspect Roddy of murdering him?”

“No. A man named Dufour, a foreign waiter, was arrested; but, there being no evidence, he was discharged.”

“Dufour!” she echoed. “But of what did the police suspect Roddy?”

“Of being an accomplice of Wilson, whose finger-prints, taken after death, proved him to be an expert thief, well known to the police.”

“Impossible that Roddy should be an associate of such people!” declared the girl, whom I knew herself to be a member of a most desperate international gang.

“Now Wilson was, to your knowledge, a thief?” I asked, whereupon she replied:

“I have heard so. Do they suspect the man Dufour?”

“Yes. He tried to escape abroad from Southampton, but was arrested.”

“And he has been discharged,” she said, in a tone of relief.

“Yes. There was no evidence,” I replied, but I did not tell her that his every movement was being carefully watched.

“I cannot understand why the police should suspect Roddy,” said the pretty woman, seated with her hands lying idly in her lap.

“Because it was known that he was a friend of the dead man.”

“But he would never have slipped away from the police. There could be no motive.”

“Not if he were innocent of any hand in the affair,” I ventured to remark.

“Then you think he had a hand in Tuggy’s murder?” she exclaimed, regarding me resentfully.

“Not at all,” I assured her. “I only follow the police views that he discovered they were watching, and grew frightened.”

“But he might have fallen a victim of his enemies just as your girl friend has done,” she said.

“What do you know about Joan?” I asked quickly. “Tell me. I have told all I know about Owen.”

“What you have told me concerning him, Signor Hipwell, has made plain to me many things that were mysterious. It has opened my eyes, and given me a clue to much that was perplexing. I can only thank you for it,” she said, in a quiet, strained voice. “I quite see what fear would fall upon Roddy when young Wilson was killed by some unknown person. The reason of his disappearance is now quite clear to me. I only hope that the police will relax their vigilance in due course, and that he will be able to escape abroad without further trouble. He is, I am sure, quite innocent.”

“You mentioned that he was a friend of Joan’s; this is entirely new to me. How did you know that?”

“He wrote me a long time ago, saying he had met her, and that she was your fiancée.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh, quite a year now.”

I reflected that I was at that time in my unconscious state.

“There is a belief that, on the night of Joan’s disappearance, she was at the Florida dance-club with a fair-haired young man closely resembling Owen. Have you any knowledge of it?”

“Not in the least,” she said. “I know nothing more than what he told me.”

“It is strange that Joan never mentioned him,” I remarked. But I inwardly reflected that their acquaintance was during my period of ignorance.

I longed to reveal my knowledge to the clever criminal who sat there before me, and to demand from her the meaning of that piece of music she had sent me.

I felt it wiser, however, not to show my hand. That she was playing some very deep game was apparent. By pretending loss of memory, then, and giving her the impression that I was still her cats-paw, I might discover much more than by denouncing her.

“Well, Contessina,” I said, addressing her by the name which I was confident misled her into a sense of security. “I have told you all I know about your friend Mr. Owen. Now--explain your knowledge of Joan.”

For a few moments she remained silent. Her eyes were fixed on mine with a distinctly suspicious look. She was still uncertain, I think, whether I had penetrated her true identity, though I had strained every nerve in pretence of ignorance. I still treated her as the Little Countess, beside whom I had had my ridiculous tumble under the British Ambassador’s table in Rome.

“I can tell you very little, Signor Hipwell,” she replied. “I fear that you regard both Mr. Owen and me, as your enemies, rather than your friends. Now tell me truthfully, is not that so?” and she crossed her legs, leaned her chin upon her hand, and smiled up at me.

“Now that you tell me what I never dreamt before--that Joan was acquainted with Roddy Owen--I confess I begin to suspect that he has some hand in her disappearance. And the more so, because certain people have stated that she danced with him at the Florida on the night she was lost.”

“All rubbish,” she laughed. “Depend upon it that Roddy has had nothing to do with Miss Gell’s disappearance. It is a case of revenge and retaliation. That is my view.”

“How?”

“Has it never occurred to you that her father, Mr. Gell, the famous prosecutor for the Crown, has been instrumental in sending dozens of crooks, of various sorts and ages, for long stretches on the Moor? And what more natural than the crooks themselves have had their own back on him?”

I paused and looked at her. Though she spoke with the pretty foreign accent that I cannot here attempt to reproduce--the same accent which had charmed me when we used to breakfast in our unpretending lodgings in Camberwell--yet was not that word “stretches” criminal slang for terms of penal servitude, and “the Moor” for His Majesty’s Penal Institution at Dartmoor?

“Do you really think that Joan’s disappearance is due to revenge for some conviction or other, which her father has secured at the Old Bailey?” I asked, eager to learn her views.

“Without a doubt,” was her reply. “That is why I came here in order to tell you my candid opinion!”

“Well--and what can I do?” I asked, in blank dismay. Her theory was one which had suddenly gripped me.

“Discover what serious conviction her father has of late obtained,” she replied, in a low, intense voice.

She was posing as my friend, yet I knew instinctively, and with no better proof than the trickery in Kensington Gardens, that she was my fierce, subtle enemy.

Oh, how I longed to turn on her, and demand an explanation of her masquerade as daughter of an Italian count, and why she had sent me that sheet of puzzling manuscript music!

But I managed to remain unperturbed. How I accomplished it I know not.

“Then your theory is that Joan is the victim of enemies of her father--criminals whom he, as prosecutor for the Crown, has sent to penal servitude?”

“Of that I am convinced,” she said. Then, after a moment’s pause, she added frankly: “What you have told me about Tuggy Wilson has revealed much to me, Signor Hipwell. I had never dreamt of that!”

“Neither have I ever imagined that Joan’s disappearance is due to her father’s success as a criminal lawyer.”

“Well, there you are,” said the woman, who had two years before suggested I should be blinded, so that I could never identify her accomplices. “We exchanged promises, and we have fulfilled them. What more can be done?”

“You will seek Owen, eh?”

“Of course I shall. I must find him. And you--you must discover your fiancée, Joan Gell.”

“Ah! If I only could!” I cried. “The weeks go on, yet Scotland Yard are ever at fault. After being seen at the Florida she vanished completely.”

“A reprisal on the part of her father’s enemies,” she remarked. “By revealing to me what you have, concerning Roddy’s friendship with young Wilson, and the latter’s murder, you have done me a very good service. If I can assist you in any way to find Joan Gell, I will. I think I may have my own channel of inquiry.”

“I thank you heartily, Contessina,” I replied quickly, suspicious at once of her reference to her own channel of inquiry. She knew much more than she would reveal to me. Of that I felt certain.

The strong incentive within me at that moment was to seize the guilty-faced crook by the throat and wring the truth from her lips. But I hesitated again, still feeling that only by watchfulness could I hope to cope with the plot against me, of which I had been warned by the mysterious Illona.

The Contessina knew her and feared her. Evidently she intended that we should never meet.

In the drawer in my writing-table lay the letter I had written to Illona, enclosing the sheet of music which Lisely had sent me. How I longed to present it to the woman who thought she was so cleverly tricking me, and who, after all, had set up in my mind a new theory as to the cause of Joan’s absence.

She took up the little red morocco handbag and rose to leave, rather reluctantly it seemed to me.

“Is there anything else I can do to assist you, Contessina?” I asked, with studied politeness.

“Nothing, I fear, Signor Hipwell. Except,” and she paused, “except, when we next meet, I hope you will believe in my sincerity a little more strongly than you do to-day,” she added with a strange, meaning smile.

“Sincerity!” I echoed. “Why, of course, we are friends, Contessina--Hence, I certainly believe in your sympathy,” I said, in an endeavor to assure her further of my continued ignorance of her true identity.

But she only gave way to a little hysterical laugh. As we shook hands I asked her where I could write to her.

“To Cook’s Office in Berkeley Street,” she replied. “Letters sent there always find me sooner or later.”

And then she went out, Bruce seeing her into the elevator.