When Pamela Grey opened her eyes on the Sunday morning following Jack Penrose’s departure for London she was conscious of a weight on her mind. For a moment she could not account for the feeling. But as she struggled into more complete wakefulness the cause recurred to her. That scene with Platt in the cottage had left an unpleasant memory.
She liked to be on friendly terms with those around her, and for that reason alone regretted what had happened. But apart from that and from her physical revulsion at the incident itself, she was a little worried about Jack. For a moment his anger had been so great that he had seemed scarcely sane. Had she not been there to restrain him, she did not like to think what the consequences might have been. Of course it was marvellous and wholly delightful that he should feel like that about her and be so ready to protect her. But there was reason in everything; he had completely lost his self-control. She decided she must talk to him seriously when he came back.
Dear Jack! He was so good! She smiled dreamily as once again she compared him to some great dog. He would dash without a thought into trouble or danger, if only he thought his doing so would be to her benefit. Oh, if only they were married …
She got up presently and dressed. Rather like a fish out of water she would feel for these next few days. Work at the cottage had been so heavy and continuous that it had filled all her spare time and most of her thoughts. And now it was over. There would be nothing more to be done until the Wrenn Jefferson principals came over—if they ever did.
She remembered that she was due to lunch that day with the Whitesides. This had been arranged on the Friday afternoon after the fishing excursion. They had asked her for two reasons. In the first place she had mentioned that Jack was crossing to London on the Saturday night and Dot had immediately said, ‘Then you won’t know what to do with yourself at Hillsborough. Come down to us. The Smiths of Brookvale are coming and we can have some tennis.’ This invitation the others had seconded. Then Mr Whiteside had added, ‘I shall want to hear how your discussion about the agreement went off. You can tell me at the same time.’ She had promised to turn up for lunch and stay for the afternoon.
Pam had no car, so she went by bus, first into Belfast, and then, changing, by the Bangor service. At the end of the Carnalea road she got out and walked down to the house. The rain, which had come on while she and Jack were changing the punctured wheel on the previous evening, had continued all night and during the morning, but now the clouds were breaking and it looked as if fine weather were coming. There would, however, be no tennis. Pam was not altogether sorry. She was not nearly as good as the others and when playing with them always felt a little out of it.
Dot, however, was loud in her regrets. ‘I haven’t had a game since Thursday,’ she declared as if announcing some serious dereliction of fate. ‘Friday we were out fishing with you and yesterday the M‘Laughlins came in and insisted on golf. We were on the links the whole afternoon: two till after seven.’
‘Too much of a good thing,’ said Pam.
‘So I think,’ Dot agreed. ‘Just as well the Smiths can’t come anyway. They’ve just rung up.’ She was in a very companionable mood and had Pam up in her own sanctum to discuss confidentially matters of high import. It appeared that Dot was daily expecting a proposal. She was doubtful as to whether or not to accept it, and put the pros and cons to Pam as one having authority.
On Monday Pam had an engagement in Belfast, but on Tuesday morning she really did feel herself at a loose end. She had grown so accustomed to starting off after breakfast to begin her day’s work at the cottage, that now, when there was no longer anything to be done there, the day appeared stretching out rather interminably. She would, she decided, have a round of golf. Someone would be sure to join her on the links, and if not, she could go round by herself.
She changed, took her clubs and set out. But she had not gone more than a hundred yards when she saw Ferris’s Austin Seven. It drew up beside her. M‘Morris was driving. He leant out and Pam saw that his face was grave.
‘I was just coming for you, Pam. There’s been rather bad news. Come back to the cottage and let’s talk it over.’
Her heart leapt. Jack! … Could anything have happened to him? …
‘What is it?’ she returned urgently. ‘Tell me at once!’
‘It’s Platt,’ he said. ‘Get in and I’ll tell you.’
Platt! A deep wave of relief swept over Pam. Then Jack was all right! A fierce anger burned for a moment against M‘Morris. Why couldn’t he have told her at once and saved her that fright? And what a fright! It seemed as if a hand had gripped her heart so that it could scarcely beat. Gasping slightly, she walked round the front of the car and got in beside M‘Morris.
‘What is it?’ she repeated.
‘Platt has disappeared.’
She stared at him. ‘Disappeared? How? When?’
‘On Saturday night. Off the boat. He left Belfast, but he never got to Liverpool.’
Slowly Pam turned a dead white. What was this? She felt slightly sick. She surely wasn’t going to faint? No, she was all right.
She licked her lips, which had suddenly gone dry.
‘Overboard?’ she whispered hoarsely.
‘Overboard; yes, that’s what they think?’
‘They?’
‘Yes, the police. A sergeant has just been down talking to Ferris. He’ll tell you.’
The police? Once again that strange feeling swept over Pam. She clenched her hands. No, she wouldn’t faint. It was ridiculous of her. There was nothing to be upset about. Platt—even if he had—gone overboard … It was nothing to her. Dreadful! But nothing to her. No, of course, nothing to her.
‘What happened?’ she asked, still in that hoarse whisper. She couldn’t speak normally.
‘They don’t know. We imagined they suspected suicide.’
Suicide! Another sudden wave of relief swept over her. Suicide! Of course that was what had happened. But how dreadful! She touched her forehead. It was wet. Surreptitiously she wiped it.
‘Oh, Mac, how horrible!’ she said in more normal tones, albeit a trifle shakily. ‘What did the police want to know?’
‘All they could about him: what he’d been over for and so on. Ferris’ll tell you. Here we are.’
But Ferris hadn’t a great deal more to tell. He was just finishing breakfast when a car had come to the door. He had opened it to find three men waiting. One was their own Hillsborough sergeant. The others were in plain clothes, but the sergeant had introduced them as Detective-Sergeant M‘Clung and Constable Brown of the Belfast headquarters staff. M‘Clung had immediately said that he wanted all the information about Platt that Ferris could give him. He asked all sorts of questions covering everything connected with the man, and when Ferris asked what was wrong, he said he was believed to have gone overboard on the way over to Liverpool on the Saturday night.
‘What did you tell him?’ Pam asked still rather hoarsely.
‘Whatever he asked I answered as fully as I could,’ Ferris returned. ‘I didn’t volunteer anything. Not,’ he added, ‘that there was anything to volunteer.’
‘What sort of questions did he ask?’
‘Every blessed thing that you could think of; about when the man came and what he came for and all that. Then he went on about whether he was depressed or seemed to have anything on his mind. It was easy to see what he was after. He was thinking of suicide.’
‘Did he say he suspected suicide?’
‘He did not. It was I asked him the question. He said that was what they were trying to find out. But sure that’s only what you’d expect. The police’ll never give anything away.’
‘Was that all he asked?’
Ferris shook his head. ‘Not by a long way,’ he declared. ‘He was on first about the process. Did Platt know the process? It was a secret, wasn’t it? Very well, did Platt know the secret? I said he did not, but that didn’t satisfy him. How did I know that Platt didn’t know the secret? Could he not have found it out for himself? Had I notes of it? Where were they? Then have a look and make sure they’re there still. And so on and so forth till all was no more. Then he started about the safe key. He wasn’t missing much, I can tell you.’
‘There’s no doubt what was in his mind anyway,’ M‘Morris remarked.
‘There is not,’ agreed Ferris. ‘He was wondering if anyone had murdered him for the secret.’
Pam shivered. This was the most dreadful affair.
‘What else did you tell him?’ she insisted.
‘What did I tell him? He wanted to know who we all were. I told him that, and I told him how I came to be living here and about you and Jack and Mac and Mr Whiteside. Mac by the way had come in and he talked to him too. He asked me was Jack the Mr Penrose who had crossed that same night, and I said he was. He said he would like a statement from him and when would he be back? I told him I didn’t know exactly. Then I said we could get you in a few minutes, but he said that was all right, he didn’t want to see you.’
Pam felt horribly upset. She continued questioning Ferris, but he said he had told her everything. After a time, there being no more to be learnt, she went home. In the afternoon she wrote a long letter to Jack, asking him when he would be back.
That evening there was an account of the affair in the Belfast Telegraph, and next morning notices in the Belfast Newsletter and Northern Whig. But none of these were illuminating. They merely said that Platt, a representative of the firm of Wrenn Jefferson of Bristol, had disappeared from the motor ship Ulster Sovereign during a voyage from Belfast to Liverpool on the Saturday night, and that it was feared he had been lost overboard.
Next day, so far as the papers were concerned, the matter was at an end. No reference to the affair appeared. Pam would have given a great deal to have forgotten it in the same way.
After discussion it was arranged that Ferris should write to Wrenn Jefferson, expressing the profound regret of the party at what had happened, and asking what the firm proposed to do in connection with the petrol process.
Pam found the following few days almost interminable. There was a short note from Jack saying that his business had dragged out unexpectedly and that he wouldn’t be home till Sunday morning. He made no reference to the Platt affair, except one short comment which read, ‘Rotten thing about Platt. I expect Jefferson will come over himself now.’ Even Pam thought it was a little callous.
Wednesday and Thursday dragged away without incident. But on Friday Pam had another shock. Once again during the forenoon M‘Morris drove round for her in Ferris’s car.
‘There’s another inquiry about this affair,’ he explained. ‘The same police officer’s back from Belfast and he’s got a new man with him, an Englishman, a big pot from Scotland Yard. He said if you were disengaged, he’d like to ask you a few questions. A sort of Royal command, I would think. Anyhow you are disengaged.’
Pam’s heart sank and for a moment she faced sheer panic. Then she began to pull herself together and by the time they reached the cottage, she had herself well in hand.
The police officers proved to be less formidable than she had expected. The Belfast sergeant—M‘Clung, he said his name was—seemed straight and was civil and not overbearing, while she actually took to the London man. Chief Inspector French was not only polite and appeared to be straight, but she thought he looked kindly and decent. He it was who asked the questions, and while he did not allow any point to slide, she could not but realise his efforts to make the interrogation as little irksome as possible, particulary to herself. Before the interview was over she felt grateful to him for his consideration.
But what the police gained by their visit she could not imagine. So far as she could make out they simply asked the same questions as on the first occasion and received the same answers.
Ferris, however, broke fresh ground by asking directly what the police thought about the case. French answered with an air of charming candour, though even Pam wondered if he were quite as transparent as he seemed. He said they really did not know what had taken place. There was the chance that Platt had fallen overboard by accident, that he had committed suicide, or that, if he had the secret, that he had been murdered for it. They hadn’t enough evidence to say which of these had occurred. That was what they were here for—to try to find some more evidence. And he, French, might take that opportunity of thanking the party for what they had told him.
On the surface it was all very pleasantly done, though what might be beneath it only the policemen knew. Presently they left to carry their investigation a stage further at the Hillsborough Hotel. The others remained on in the cottage discussing the interview.
‘They didn’t make much by that,’ Ferris declared presently. ‘I don’t believe they learned a single thing that they didn’t know on Monday.’
‘The London one likely wanted to get the dope at first hand,’ M‘Morris suggested.
‘But don’t you think,’ Pam asked, ‘that they must think it was serious? I mean, if they thought it was suicide, they would never go to all this trouble?’
‘Is it murder you mean?’ asked Ferris.
Pam shivered. ‘I suppose so,’ she admitted. ‘Would they make such a fuss for anything else?’
Ferris shook his head. ‘Ask me an easier one,’ he begged.
‘They seemed satisfied with what we told them anyway,’ M‘Morris pointed out.
‘Well, and why shouldn’t they be? We told them everything. There was no more they could get from us.’
Pam controlled herself as best she could, but she was really terribly uneasy. Panic as to what the police might think assailed her, and it took all the strength she had to fight it back. While she was at the cottage she succeeded, but on her walk home it grew to almost overwhelming dimensions. How she wished that Jack was back! How she wished to see him and to hear him and to be comforted by what he would have to tell her!
Because that this would comfort her, she never for a moment doubted. Never for a moment! And yet … Oh, how she wished he would come!
The remainder of Friday and Saturday dragged out as if each of them were a month. Each evening she walked over to the cottage to know if any news had come in, and each evening she was partly disappointed and partly relieved that none had. Both Ferris and M‘Morris seemed to be feeling the strain also, though not to the extent she was herself.
At last Sunday morning dawned. Pam would have liked nothing better than to get up at half-past five and drive into Belfast to meet the boat when it came in about seven. But she could not admit her anxiety and she hadn’t a car of her own. She decided she must just possess her soul in patience. Jack would come to her as soon as he could.
He did turn up—after breakfast. She supposed he could not very well have come earlier. When she heard the car she ran down, her heart throbbing painfully. Jack obviously was glad to see her, but he was just as casual and offhand as ever. ‘Hallo, old thing,’ he greeted her, and catching her in his arms, kissed her, though without any special warmth or significance. ‘Got a letter that I think’ll interest you. Look here!’
He drew a paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and handed it across. She glanced at the headlines, ‘Wrenn Jefferson & Co., Ltd.’ But for a moment she could not read it. She stood looking from the letter to Jack and from Jack to the letter, and her heart sang within her. What a fool she had been! What a fool! And a disloyal fool! If Jack were to throw her over, it would only be what she deserved. How could she have let that dreadful little doubt come into her mind and poison it and destroy her happiness? Well, it would be a lesson to her. She felt she could hardly look Jack in the face. Never again as long as she lived would she allow such a thought to enter her mind.
But he was staring at her in surprise. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to read it? You haven’t got a stroke or anything, I suppose?’
Then she surprised him further. Before he knew what she was going to do, she had thrown her arms round his neck and buried her face in his coat. When he lifted her in his arms she was sobbing.
‘Good God!’ he said.
For once in his life he showed tact. He sat down and took her on his knee, and when the weighty letter fell to the ground, he allowed it to lie there unheeded. She clung to him as if she would never let him go and he held her tight in his arms. But when presently he began to ask her what it was all about, she laughed through her tears and wanted to know how he dared treat her with so little respect.
‘I thought you had a letter to show me?’ she went on severely, trying to frown through her tears, but unable to do anything but smile.
‘I gave it to you. It’s here.’
‘Then what did you take it away again for? Let me see it at once.’
He picked it up. ‘I declare, Pam, I think you have gone off your nut. What have you been up to while I was away?’
But now she was reading the letter. ‘Why, Jack, how splendid!’ she cried. ‘Mr Jefferson coming over this week! Then he believes in the thing?’
‘Well, he’s willing to see what we can do. I had a day and I thought I’d run down and see him. He’d had a letter from Platt in which the chap said he was convinced, and recommending the thing be gone into further. Jefferson said he’d come over Wednesday or Thursday, according as he could work it in. Then I got this letter before leaving London, fixing Tuesday. So that looks like business.’
‘Have you told the others?’
‘No. Going to now.’
Jack was full of the coming interview. He said that Jefferson had seemed much more impressed about the affair than formerly. Platt’s interview had evidently borne good fruit.
It was not till later that Pam was able to ask the question which had been so constantly in her mind. ‘It was so dreadful about poor Mr Platt,’ she said. ‘It upset us all so much. You didn’t see him on the boat, did you?’
‘Never set eyes on the fellow. I did look for him because of what you said, but I couldn’t find him.’
‘Oh, Jack, isn’t it dreadful? The poor man must be dead.’
‘Best thing that ever happened to him,’ he returned, at which she cried out till he withdrew the remark.
‘The police were over here inquiring into it,’ she went on. ‘They asked for your address.’
‘I know. A man called French, an inspector or something, called at the hotel in London.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘What could I tell him? Nothing! He wanted to know had I seen the fellow? Well, I hadn’t.’
‘And did he seem satisfied with that?’
‘Of course he seemed satisfied. Why wouldn’t he? Do you think he took me for a liar?’
‘Oh, Jack, don’t be such an ass! Come and tell your news to the others.’
Ferris and M‘Morris were hugely delighted with Wrenn Jefferson’s letter. ‘At last!’ Ferris cried dramatically. ‘It’s looking like business at last!’ And then he gave way to an unexpected outburst of feeling. It seemed that he had been bored and discouraged with the long tedious months of research to the extent almost, as he put it, ‘of going off my chump,’ and the sight of the end of his labours was more than he could bear quietly. M‘Morris too was obviously much moved. Pam had not realised the intensity of their feelings, and a sudden wave of sympathy for them passed over her.
Monday passed for her in comparative ease of mind, and then on Tuesday came the great event. Jefferson and two technical experts arrived by Liverpool and were met by Jack, who after they had all breakfasted together in Belfast, brought them down to the cottage.
Pam at once took to Jefferson. He was gravely courteous to them all, spoke with evident feeling about Platt, and in a short speech before the demonstration said that he had had a favourable report from the missing man about the process. Provided the Hillsborough party were able to substantiate their claims—of which he had no doubt—his firm was prepared to enter into an agreement to work it. He believed that the affair would be profitable to all concerned. No one must mind if his experts were sceptical: he had warned them that they must be so. In order to give the process a real test, these men must be convinced in spite of themselves. And now, if Mr Ferris was ready, he suggested they made a start.
Ferris was ready. He made the demonstration to the obvious surprise and admiration of the visitors. Then tests began. These were just as searching as Platt’s, but they were carried out in less than half the time. By that evening the two experts expressed themselves as satisfied.
Next morning came a discussion of the terms of the proposed agreement, an almost exact repetition of that which had taken place with Platt on that fateful morning some ten days earlier. The clauses agreed on with him were now provisionally accepted by Jefferson, and Jack was asked to get out fair copies. As soon as these were signed, Jack, Ferris and M‘Morris would take the apparatus over to the Bristol works, and there a further demonstration would be made, this time with the screens off.
That evening Jefferson invited the entire party to a dinner in Belfast, at which the future prosperity of the venture was properly toasted. And when at nine o’clock he and his men left for home, it did really seem as if the end of the troubles of the Hillsborough party was in sight.
By the close of that week Pam was in a much happier frame of mind, though occasional little stabs of panic still fought their way into her consciousness. However, she fought against these, and with a good deal of success.