CHAPTER XXXVII

Flossie Palmer was alone in the kitchen when the front door bell rang. The cook had gone to bed, but as it was still only a quarter to ten, Gladys had not come in, and goodness only knew when Mr and Mrs Gilmore would be home. After what had happened earlier in the evening she would just as soon have had someone about while she went to the door. Cook was as good as dead once her door was shut, and Gladys wouldn’t be in a minute before half past ten, so it wasn’t any good shilly-shallying. A vague thought of just leaving the bell to ring until it got tired presented itself, but Aunt’s upbringing had not been without its effect, and Flossie dismissed this temptation. She wouldn’t open the door except on the chain though, not for nothing in the world.

Whoever it was that was ringing was in a mortal hurry, for the bell went on ringing all the time she was coming upstairs and all the time she was crossing the hall. She didn’t come very quickly, but she came, and when she got to the door she made sure that the chain was fast, and then she slid the bottom bolt and pulled back the catch.

The door opened a couple of inches. Flossie’s heart banged and her knees shook.

“Ooh! It’s a man!” she thought. And then there he was, calling urgently through the crack in Miles Clayton’s voice.

“Is that you, Flossie? Let me in quick!”

“Ooh, Mr Miles—you did frighten me!”

She undid the chain, and he came in, jerking it out of her hand as he pushed the door.

“What’s the hurry?” said Flossie to herself—“pushing in like that!” She was cross because she had been frightened. Aloud she said, “Mr and Mrs Gilmore is out.”

“It’s you I want to see,” said Miles. He slammed the door, took her by the arm, and hurried her into the dining-room.

When the four ceiling lights came on, Flossie wondered what had happened. If it had been some people, she would have wondered if he had been drinking. His fair hair was rumpled, his face pale, and his voice unsteady.

“Lor’ Mr Miles!” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Look here, Flossie, you’ve got to give me back that promise.”

Flossie’s expression changed. The very first instant he said “promise”, she knew what he was getting at. It was what she had told him in the fog, and he’d promised faithful he wouldn’t go to the police about it, nor let on to nobody. She said sharply,

“What promise?”

“Flossie, you know—I can see you do. Look here—someone’s life may depend on it. Was that all true that you told me about seeing a hole in the wall when you were at 16 Varley Street?”

Flossie’s colour and Flossie’s temper flared together.

“True? Of course it’s true! I don’t tell lies, Mr Miles, nor I don’t like people that thinks I tell them!”

He ran a distracted hand through his hair. If Flossie was going to go off the deep end, he wouldn’t be able to do anything with her.

“My dear girl, I didn’t mean lies. I only meant are you sure there wasn’t any mistake?”

Flossie tossed her head.

“Sure enough to make me run out of the house in what I stood up in!” she said defiantly.

“Then, Flossie, listen. The girl who went there after you has disappeared. I don’t know what’s happened to her. I—we—we’re engaged. I think she’s the real Miss Macintyre, but she doesn’t know about it yet. I was going to tell her this afternoon, but when I went there Mrs Green said she couldn’t come—she was up with Miss Rowland. And when I went back at half-past four she said there had been a row, and that Kay had gone.”

Flossie’s eyes rested upon him with a cold sparkle.

“And what makes you think there’s anything wrong about that?”

He told her rather disjointedly, walking up and down the end of the room, using his hands in jerky, forcible gestures, and finally producing the strip of cambric with that faint scrawl which might be a capital K.

“You see, you’ve got to give me back my promise. I can’t keep it any longer. I’ve been to the police, and they pooh-pooh the whole thing. I can’t make them listen to me. You see, it sounds too thin—I know it does. When I simply wouldn’t go away, they sent a man round to the house and the garage. Mrs Green told him just what she’d told me, and at the garage they said their driver had picked up a young lady and her luggage at No. 16 Varley Street and driven her to Waterloo. After that it was no use saying anything more, but if you will come round there with me and tell them what you saw—”

“Not much I won’t!” said Flossie in the loudest voice he had ever heard from her. It was loud because she was afraid—afraid that Mr Miles would make her go to the police, and quite dreadfully afraid of what would happen to her if she went.

“Flossie—”

“I won’t, I tell you! Why can’t you believe what Mrs Green and the garridge man had to say? Seems to me you think everybody’s telling lies to-night! Why shouldn’t she have had a row with them and cleared out same as Mrs Green says she did? It’s a house as any girl ’ud want to clear out of, I should say. If you go home and go to bed, you’ll be getting a letter from her in the morning telling you all about it.”

Miles turned at the end of the room and came striding down upon her.

“I wish to Heaven I could think so, but I can’t! Flossie think of what you say—think! Look back and make a picture of it in your mind—see it again, and then think! Suppose you hadn’t got away. Suppose you hadn’t been able to open the door. Suppose the man you saw had caught you up on the stairs. You said you saw him looking at you—suppose he had caught you up—where would you be now? And what would you think of someone who knew where you were and wouldn’t move a finger to help you out?”

Flossie had turned very pale. She said, still in that loud defiant voice,

“I’d be past helping all right if he’d caught me, Mr Miles.”

He cried out, “Don’t!” and then, “Flossie, you can’t say that and then refuse to help her!”

Flossie clenched her hands.

“Now look here, Mr Miles—it’s no use your talking, and it’s no use your carrying on. My life’s as good as hers, isn’t it? And I’m not throwing it away along of stirring up a lot of trouble and going to the police. I told you what happened to Ivy, and no later than this very evening I got my warning of what ’ud happen to me if I didn’t hold my tongue.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not saying, thank you, Mr Miles. And I’m not going to the police, not for you nor for no one, and if you bring them here, I’ll say and swear, and stick to it, that I didn’t see nothing—so there!”

She was panting a little and her heart was thumping. He shouldn’t make her speak—no, he shouldn’t. She wanted to marry Ernie and live comfortable. If he made her speak, she’d never do that—no, never. It’d be a hand at her throat round a dark corner and the breath strangled out of her, or a cold dreadful plunge into the river some black night same as Ivy. She wasn’t going to think about that other girl and the hole in the wall. She wasn’t—no, she wasn’t. She’d got herself to think about.

Miles had gone grey in the face. He said,

“You said you’d been warned. Who warned you?”

“I never! No one.”

“You said “you’d been warned—you can’t get away from that. You said it, and you’ve got to tell me.”

“Got to nothing, Mr Miles!”

“Flossie!”

“I dursn’t!” said Flossie with a choking sob. And then all of a sudden she was stamping her foot and telling him to go away. “I’ll call Cook if you won’t—I will reelly! And I won’t say another word, not if you was to stay here all night, and you did ought to be ashamed of yourself, coming here and carrying on like this, and as likely as not getting my character took away, and Ernie as jealous as he can be without any more trouble being made! And whatever Aunt would say, I don’t know nor I don’t want to! And are you going, or have I to go down for Cook? And I think it’s a shame, I do, coming here like this and trying to make me say things! And I won’t never, so it’s no use your going on!”

It wasn’t any use.

He said, “All right, I’m going,” and went.

The slamming of the door relieved Flossie’s terror. She shot the bolt and put up the chain with shaking hands. The tears were running down her cheeks. He hadn’t made her speak—he hadn’t. She wasn’t going to speak—not never, not for no one. She stood in the hall behind the bolted door and cried. There wasn’t nothing to cry about. “Gladys’ll be home any time now.” She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop crying, and her legs had all gone funny.

She got to the bottom step of the stairs and crouched there in a heap, and still she couldn’t stop crying. She knew where that girl had gone all right—through the hole in the wall. She hadn’t been quick enough, and They had got her. Mr Miles wouldn’t get any letter from her in the morning. Ooh! He did look awful! Same as if he’d been ill for a month. “I darsn’t speak—I darsn’t! They’d do me in if I did. And Ernie”—a choking sob—“Ernie ’ud break his heart.” But he wouldn’t go on breaking it—men didn’t. And presently he would go walking out with someone else—and marry them—and have the little house they’d planned. And it wouldn’t be Flossie’s house, because she’d be in the river.

“I darsn’t! Ooh—I darsn’t!” said Flossie.

She got out her handkerchief and tried to stop crying. Gladys would think she was batty. If she could stop seeing the hole in the wall and the way Mr Miles looked, it would be all right. That Kay Moore wasn’t any business of hers.… Wasn’t she?… If she were to speak now, at once, there might be just time to save Kay Moore.… The picture of the black hole rose vividly before her. The man with the wounded head lifted that clawing hand of his and gazed at her with a desperate appeal in his eyes. She might have saved him if she had spoken. He wasn’t dead then. Perhaps the girl wasn’t dead now. She was Mr Miles’s girl. If she spoke at once—

“Ooh—I darsn’t!” said Flossie, and felt the tears gush out again.