Valerie Lester did not go direct from Beresford’s flat to the Chesters’ Regent’s Park house, called by others as well as Beresford the mausoleum, because of its vastness, the age of its servants and the longevity of its traditions and the Dowager Lady Chester, Lord Aubrey’s mother. Aubrey and his wife inhabited a small corner of the great house, which corner was as bright and lively as a charade after the thick drama of the entrance hall and the dining-room through which it was necessary to pass when visiting the Chesters; but Valerie had no wish, then, to see either of them.
She walked quickly towards Bond Street, knowing full well that a detective was trailing her, and deliberating on her best move to shake him off. As she walked, she saw a mental picture of Tony Beresford, and twice she bit her lips as she imagined his reactions if he learned that she had deliberately tricked him.
But, she told herself, he didn’t know. It might be possible to get herself out of the tangle of complications in which she was caught before he discovered it.
After ten minutes, she had picked out her trailer, a weedy-looking individual who kept within twenty yards of her as she walked along Bond Street, stopping when she stopped to look in a window, starting in pursuit as soon as she moved. Despite the disadvantage of knowing London only a little, she doubled on her man at the roundabout beneath Eros, and reached the Haymarket subway when the weedy one was breaking his neck to reach the stairs leading to the London Pavilion. She saw the detective hesitate and look about him quickly, and chuckled to herself as he hurried down Shaftesbury Avenue on a false trail.
Taxis were two-a-penny at that hour of the morning, and she hailed one, directing the driver to 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea.
“Do you know them?” she asked.
“Do I know the shape of me nose?” demanded the cabby. “I’ll ’ave yer there in no time, miss. ’Op in.”
Number 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, was a large terrace house near the Embankment, one of the many which were split up into a dozen or more flats for those with enough money to live in comfort as well as at an ‘address’. Quickly—but not until she had paid and tipped the cabby and seen him drive off—she turned into the house and made with the assurance of familiarity for a flat on the third floor. She knocked twice on the gargoyle-shaped iron knocker, and rang the electric bell three times—short, sharp rings.
There was a shuffle of feet on the other side of the door, which was opened suddenly, after Valerie had heard the click of a released lock. An old woman peered short-sightedly round the door, grunting as she saw the visitor.
“Oh, it’s ye back agen, is it? Well, he’s out.”
“I’ll wait for him,” said the younger woman, stepping across the threshold.
The other made way reluctantly. At second sight she was more middle-aged than old, but prematurely white hair and a thin, lined face created the latter impression, and only the careful observer would have noticed that her hands were full-fleshed, with none of the blue veins of age, that the whites of her eyes were clear and bold, and that she carried herself upright and with a vigour which few people over fifty could have shown. Her dress was nondescript. A loose-fitting brown frock was tied at the waist with a black leather belt, her brown lisle stockings wrinkled at the ankles, showing what Beresford would have called poor and insufficient suspension, and her flat-heeled button-and-strap shoes were unfastened. Her near-white hair was drawn severely back from her forehead to meet at the nape of the neck in an old-fashioned bun.
“What time do you expect him back?” demanded Valerie.
“The same time as usual—when he comes.” The elder woman’s voice was sharp, and her lips twitched in bad humour. Valerie Lester told herself that she was looking at a discontented, prematurely aged woman who could not prevent her quarrel with fate from revealing itself in ordinary conversation.
But she knew that the woman was on the right side of forty, that there were times when she could laugh and joke with the best, when her hair was brown, not white, and when the wrinkles on her face were non-existent. She knew that the woman was rehearsing a part which she was to play within the next few days, and that even in her flat, talking with someone who knew her as she was, she maintained that discontented air, the high-pitched, complaining voice, so that when the time came for her to be tested out she would not be found wanting. Valerie dropped wearily into an armchair by the fireplace of the first room which she entered, and watched the other woman walk across the room into the kitchen quarters. Looking round the apartment, the American told herself that it looked what it was supposed to be—the home of a middle-aged bachelor who was rich enough to afford a housekeeper, but well satisfied with the furniture which had lasted him for fifteen or twenty years. Nothing was new in the room, not even the pictures. The only sign of the nineteen-thirties was a wireless set in one corner, an up-to-date and expensive product. For the rest, there was an old oak sideboard, a dining-table of the gate-leg variety, four stiff-backed chairs, two easies, and a large oil-painting set in gilt framework on each wall.
And yet, Valerie Lester knew, it was a room of secrets.
She closed her eyes, wondering how long the man whom she had come to visit would keep her waiting.
It was twelve o’clock when he arrived, and he looked exactly what would have been expected for the owner of that room. A man of rather less than medium height, his hair was greying at the sides and temples, he affected a close-trimmed moustache, nearer white than grey, and his complexion was red, almost florid. He was not fat, but he looked sleek and well-filled. His eyes were light blue in colour, and he blinked rather more than seemed necessary in the poor light of the room, the windows of which were hung with heavy red plush curtains.
His voice was the one thing about him which did not fit in with the room. If Beresford had heard it he would have wrinkled his nose in surprise. For the man’s voice was pitched on a high key, and it was a hundred per cent. American!—tough American!
“ ’Lo, you,” he said. “Yo’ back early. Did you see de big fella?”
“Sure I saw him.” Valerie Lester’s voice would have surprised Beresford too. It was more twangy than that to which he had grown accustomed, and she slurred the vowels more in accordance with New York’s West Side than its East.
“Did he bite it?” demanded the man, whose namer as it was known to the postal authorities, was Josiah Long.
“I—I think so.”
“Think?” Long blinked quickly, like a nervous man asking for more money from his boss. “We can’t think in dis game, sister, we gotta know. Did he bite?”
Valerie Lester drew a deep breath.
“Yes, he bit all right.”
“Fine!” Mr. Josiah Long dropped into a chair and lit a Camel cigarette. “Did yuh catch anything?”
“No—only that he’s fighting Gorman.”
“Sho’ thing he’s fighting Gorman. I knew dat de day we started dis game, sister. Anything else?”
“Not yet. I didn’t ask questions.”
Long sprayed grey smoke about the room.
“Better not run him too fast at first,” he acknowledged. “But I wanna know all ’bout Big Beresford,” Long went on. “When’s yo’ next date?”
“To-night.”
“Lay it on thick and heavy,” said Long. “What’s he like? Clever?”
“I should think,” said Valerie Lester, “that he’s very clever. And he’s careful. He had a detective put on my trail to make sure that Gorman didn’t try to rush me.”
Long looked down his nose.
“A dick, eh? Did you shake him off?”
“Yes, at Piccadilly.”
Long blinked at her, still with that false impression of nervousness.
“Say, sister, yuh don’t seem so keen on dis job as you was on de udder side. What’s tickling you?”
The girl stood up suddenly and walked to the window. For a moment she stood there with her back to Josiah Long, and stared out across the sluggishly moving Thames. Long looked at her, but did not move, and he said nothing. She turned round at last, and eyed him frankly.
“No,” she said, and her voice was now the voice that Tony Beresford knew, “I don’t like the job so much. I wish I hadn’t tackled it. There’s something about Beresford which—well, there is.”
Mr. Josiah Long stared at the girl for a full minute. And when he spoke he echoed, unconsciously, Gordon Craigie’s words to Tony Beresford of a few hours before.
“Like that, is it? Well, maybe you’re right. But we can’t let up now. Beresford’s our man, sister. I don’t know who he is, but I’ve a mighty close idea that he’s in the Service, and if he is, and he’s working against Gorman, he’ll be the best man to give us our meat. Pecker up, kid. De woild ain’t all black crape, not by a long way. Keep me in touch, and if Beresford’s got any idea o’ yo’ getting at him, skedaddle like a Christmas turkey!”