“MY BLESSED children, what is the matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?”
The two men had dropped into chairs on each side of her, and she regarded their paralyzed expressions with amusement as they stared at her unbelievingly.
At last, “Glad to see her,” murmured Benvenuto weakly. “She wants to know if we’re glad to see her, Paul.”
Paul removed his gaze with difficulty from Adelaide’s face and met Benvenuto’s eye. Suddenly they started to laugh as though they would never stop, and Adelaide looked at them with amazement, concern, and finally petulance.
“I’ve always been told women have no sense of humour,” she said, “and really I begin to believe it. All the same, if it’s such an exceptionally good one I do think you might try it on me. Ben! Paul!”
Exhausted, they lay back, and then Benvenuto addressed her with something like fury. “Oh, disgraceful and abominable woman,” he said, “d’you realize that the police of every country in Europe are this moment writing down descriptions of you—and that Paul and I have been spilling our heart’s blood because we believed you’d been abducted?”
She dimpled. “I very nearly was,” she said, “and it’s entirely due to my native wit and feminine intuition that I’m with you now—so don’t be rough with me. Hadn’t you both better have some tea and hear my piteous story? But—oh, Ben!—what about the poor policemen? Oughtn’t we to go and reassure them?”
Benvenuto looked at her wearily. “I refuse to stir from this spot until I’ve had a drink and a sandwich,” he said. “I’ll write a note to the gendarmerie to tell them you’ve been found, and you’ll have to come around and explain afterwards.”
He scribbled a note while Adelaide poured out tea, and despatched a messenger with it, after which both men fell upon sandwiches and brioches with fury. Paul suddenly remembered he’d had no food all day—he’d not given it a thought before.
“Fire away,” said Benvenuto with his mouth full.
“In your own words—take your own time,” quoted Paul. By now he was feeling quite weak and childish.
Adelaide fired away.
“I’d better tell it you as it happened, from the moment I left the hairdresser’s. I stayed there until twelve, and then of course I had to leave because they were closing for lunch. I was standing in the doorway looking at the rain—it was simply pouring—and wondering what on earth to do. Just then a car drew up opposite where I was standing and I looked up and saw that it was Hernandez’s. I turned away quickly and was about to hurry down the street, rain or no rain, when he jumped out and came towards me. He looked awfully subdued and rather ill, and stood there in the rain with his hat in his hand. He said, ‘Adelaide, don’t go. I’ve been waiting for you all the morning, don’t go. I must speak to you—I must apologize to you. I have thought of nothing else for two days. I am so miserable—please do not refuse me.’ ‘I’m sorry, Hernandez,’ I said, ‘I can’t stay now, and I’ve got to meet Benvenuto. There is no need for an apology—I would rather not hear it. Good-bye.’ Then he rushed after me. ‘At least let me drive you to wherever you’re going,’ he said. ‘You cannot walk in this. It is more than I can bear if you leave me like this. I shall kill myself.’ It seemed so silly standing there in the middle of the pavement in that awful downpour, being jostled by people with umbrellas. He still held his hat in his hand, and he looked so funny and bedraggled with the rain trickling down his face. I didn’t mind his threatening to kill himself, but somehow I couldn’t stand watching him get a cold in the head, so I walked back and got in the car. It was so difficult to realize he was possibly a murderer, with raindrops running off the end of his nose, if you see what I mean.
“So when we got to the Bristol I looked at him and said severely, ‘You’ll probably get pneumonia if you go about like that—you’d better come in and have some hot rum.’ Then he looked so pleased I was sorry I’d said it. However, there was nothing for it but to go on now that I’d started, and we were soon inside in a corner of the café drinking hot coffee and rum, and looking as if we’d both been shipwrecked.
“He started a long and impassioned apology about the other night—said he’d drunk far too much and didn’t realize what he was doing. His hands were shaking, and he kept breaking into Spanish, which I don’t understand, and was working himself up into a terrible state. I noticed people were beginning to turn round and stare at us, and I tried to interpose a few soothing words, but it was no use. Apparently he’d been turning over in his mind what I’d said the other night about seeing him in London, and he asked me why I’d said it. I opened my eyes innocently and said I really thought I’d seen him, but that seemed to make him worse and he swept on and said he was surrounded by an atmosphere of suspicion—and what were you and Leech doing in his house the other night? Apparently his servant had seen us when we went out, and had told him, and he was beginning to believe we all suspected him of something. I thought this would never do, so I did my level best to disabuse him of the idea—and succeeded only too well, for the next thing was he asked me out to lunch. I said I couldn’t possibly come because I was meeting you two at half-past twelve, and he begged me to leave a note for you and come with him. He said he wouldn’t believe I had forgiven him unless I did, and began to work himself up into a state again, about our all being in league against him, so finally I agreed and wrote you that note and gave it to Georges. You see, Ben, I really thought it better not to antagonize him while you were still making investigations, and I didn’t dare to do anything that might hinder our clearing Adrian. It was a perfectly hateful business—I simply loathed eating his food, and I was so miserable the caviar tasted like sawdust.
“However, the lunch was quite a success, I suppose—I was very bright and encouraged him to talk, hoping he might let drop something useful, but he would enlarge on the beauties of Spain and the Argentine. I could see we were approaching dangerous ground—another minute and he’d have proposed again—so I was terribly relieved when the waiter came and said somebody called Miguel wanted to speak to him. He excused himself and went outside. He was away quite a time and I lay back and looked out of the window, and wished I were sitting over a nice honest bouillabaisse with you, instead of eating everything that was geographically and seasonably improbable. However, I cheered myself up with the thought that I was being terribly knowing and helping you two like anything, really.
“When he came back he looked rather excited, I thought, but he only apologized about being away so long, and said he’d been speaking to his mechanic who knew where he generally lunched, and had come along to tell him that he’d finished working on his plane and it was in perfect shape. Then he remarked that the weather had cleared up and looked like being a nice afternoon—would I care to come up for a short trip?—and that we’d have plenty of time to get back so that I could meet you at three, if we hurried. Well, of course I didn’t know how successful you might have been in running his plane to earth this morning, so I was quite enthusiastic at the idea, having a private vision in my own mind of meeting you both afterwards and your looking very discouraged and saying you’d entirely failed to find out where the machine was kept, and my remarking, casual-like, ‘Oh, I’ve just been up in it.’ Sensation. ‘What a lucky thing for us that we’ve got Adelaide to help us.’”
She smiled mournfully at them. “I take it you’d actually been there first?”
Benvenuto smiled back at her. “We did manage to catch a glimpse of it as a matter of fact. But go on—I can’t bear the suspense.”
She sighed, and continued: “After he’d paid the bill we went out, and there was the mechanic waiting with the car. He scowled when he saw me, and I thought it rather funny for a minute. However, he touched his hat and opened the door for me and then climbed in at the back, and I thought no more about it. Hernandez by this time seemed in an awful hurry and simply tore through the town. I was rather nervous at the way we dashed through the traffic, but thought he was trying to avoid making me late for meeting you, and felt mildly grateful to him. However, he stopped once, outside a big bank in the Rue de la République, and went in for a minute or two. When he came back he was stuffing a note case into his pocket, and he smiled at me and explained the bank would be shut when we came back. For the rest of the drive he didn’t speak and I sat back and felt very excited and ever such a detective. When we got to the flying ground he parked the car with a lot of others outside an office, and a man who was standing there, who, I suppose, was the manager, took off his hat and spoke to him. He bowed to me, and Hernandez explained he was taking me up for a little trip. Miguel, the mechanic, had gone across to a shed on the field and we followed him, and then he and Hernandez had a very excited conversation in Spanish to do with some part of the plane. I couldn’t understand and didn’t take much notice, so after looking at the plane I strolled over to the door and left them to it.
“It had got cold and was beginning to rain again, and I stared at the muddy field and the grey clouds, and all at once I began to feel most peculiar. All my excitement had gone, and I began to get terribly frightened. Hernandez came towards me looking very white and shaking and began to hurry me into the plane, and all the while Miguel went on talking, his voice getting angrier and angrier. I’d got one foot up on the plane when he suddenly dashed forward and pulled Hernandez’s arm, and then they both started to shout at each other. I listened for a bit, and although I don’t speak Spanish I began to understand that Miguel wanted to go up in the plane instead of me, and that he kept on referring to the police. Suddenly I remembered Hernandez’s violent haste—his visit to the bank—the way he’d examined some part of the plane and then tried to hurry me into it—now Miguel refusing to be left behind; and while they were still arguing with each other and getting more and more angry, I slipped down and tore out of the shed and across the field as fast as I could go. There was a taxi standing in the yard and I told the man to drive to the Bristol, and then fairly collapsed on the seat. When we’d got down the road a little way I told him to stop and then got out—and I knew my fears had been justified, for I could hear the roar of the engine. A minute later the plane appeared over the trees and made off—so it seems”—she looked at them comically—“Hernandez wasn’t going to risk his skin in following me!”