“Ursula Ardfern! She is not the kind of person who
would mislay her jewels for the sake of a few lines of
advertising,” he said. “Where did she lose them?”
“It is rather a curious story,” said the editor, leaning
back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head.
“She went into a post office on Saturday morning on her
way to the theatre for the matinee, bought some stamps
putting the jewel-case down on the counter by her side.
When she looked round the case was gone. It happened
so suddenly and in such a surprisingly short space of
time that she could not believe her eyes and did not even
complain to the Post Office officials. Her own story is,
that she thought she must be suffering from some kind
of delusion and that she had not brought the jewel-case
out at all. She went back to her suite at the Central Hotel
and searched every room. By the time she was
through, it was near the hour for her matinee, and she
hurried down to the theatre—anyway, to cut a long story
short, she did not report her loss to the police until this
morning.”
“She wouldn’t,” said Tab stoutly. “She’s the kind of
girl who would hate the publicity of it and would do all
she could to make sure there was not a simple explanation
of their loss before she put the matter in the hands
of the police.”
“You know her, eh?”
“I know her in the sense that a reporter knows almost
everybody from the Secretary of State to the hangman,”
said Tab, “but I’ll take this story if you like. There will
be nothing doing on the Trasmere case before the evening.
She stays at the Central, does she?”
The other nodded.
“You will need to exercise a little ingenuity,” he said,
“especially if what you say about her hating publicity is
true. I’d like to get a photograph of the actress who
hated publicity and hang it up in this office,” he added.
At the Central Hotel, Tab found himself up against a
blank wall.
“Miss Ardfern is not receiving callers,” said the enquiry
clerk. He was not even certain that she was in.
“Will you send my card up?”
The clerk very emphatically said that he would not
send up anybody’s card. Tab went straight to the supreme
authority. Fortunately he knew the hotel manager
very well, but on this occasion Crispi was not inclined
to oblige him.
“Miss Ardfern is a very good customer of ours, Holland,”
he said, “and we don’t want to offend her. I will
tell you, in the strictest confidence, that Miss Ardfern is
not in the hotel.”
“Where is she?”
“She went away this morning in her car to her country
cottage. She always spends Sunday and Sunday night
in the country and I know that she does not want to see
any reporters, because she came back this morning especially
to tell me that the staff were to answer no enquiries
relative to herself.”
“Where is this country cottage—come on, Crispi,”
wheedled Tab, “or the next time you have a robbery in
this hotel I’ll make a front page item of it.”
“That is blackmail,” murmured Crispi, protestingly. “I
am afraid I cannot tell you, Holland. Maybe if you got
a Hertford directory—”
In the office library he found the directory and turned
its pages. Against the name of “Ardfern Ursula” was
“Stone Cottage, near Blisville Village.”
This distance from town was some forty-five miles and
the route carried him past an unfinished building which
one day was to play its part in the ending of many mysteries.
Tab covered the ground on a fast motor-cycle
in just over an hour. He leant his machine against a
very trim hedge, opened the high garden gate, and walked
into the beautiful little garden that surrounded Stone
Cottage, which was not ill-named, though the stone which
composed its walls was completely hidden by purple flowering
creeper.
In the shade of a tree he saw a white figure stretched
at her ease, a figure which sat bolt upright in her deep
garden chair at the click of the gate-lock.
“This is too bad of you, Mr. Tab,” said Ursula Ardfern,
reproachfully. “I particularly asked Crispi not to
tell anybody where I was.”
“Crispi didn’t tell. I found you in a directory,” said
Tab cheerfully.
The sunlight was very kind to Ursula and it seemed
to him that she looked even more beautiful in these surroundings
than she had in the generous setting and the
more merciful lighting of the theatre.
She was slimmer than he had thought, and conveyed
an extraordinary impression of hurt youth. Somewhere,
sometime, this girl had suffered, he thought, yet there
was no hint of old pain in her unlined face, no suggestion
of sorrow or remorse in her clear blue eyes.
“I suppose you have come to cross-examine me about
my jewels,” she said, “and I will allow you, on one condition,
to ask me any question you wish.”
“What is the condition?” he smiled.
“Bring up that chair.” She pointed across the strip
of lawn. “Now sit down,” and when he had obeyed,
“the condition is this: that you will confine yourself to
saying that I have no recollection of the jewels being
taken, but I shall be very glad to have them back and
pay a suitable reward, that they were not as expensive
as most people thought and that I am not insured against
loss by theft.”
“All of which I will faithfully record,” said Tab. “I
am an honest man and keep my promises. I admit it.”
“And now I will tell you, for your own private ear,”
she said, “that if I never see those jewels again, I shall
be a very happy woman.”
He looked at her open-mouthed.
“You don’t think I am posing, do you?” she looked
round at him suspiciously. “I see that you don’t. I am
not in the least worried that I shall have to play the part
with property jewels as I did last night.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police before?” he asked.
“Because I didn’t,” was her unsatisfactory but uncompromising
reply. “You may put whatever interpretation
you like upon my slackness. You may say or think
that it was because of my humanity, my desire to save
some person from being accused, or coming under suspicion
of having stolen the pieces, when all the time they
were smug in my bureau drawer, or you may think or
say that I did not want to make a fuss about them. In
fact,” she smiled, “you can do or say what you wish.”
“You don’t remember who was standing by you—”
She stopped him with a gesture.
“I remember nothing except that I bought ten stamps.”
“What was the jewelry worth?” he persisted.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I can’t even tell you that,” she said.
“Had they any history?”
She laughed.
“You are very persistent, Mr. Tab.” Her eyes were
smiling at him, though her face was composed. “And
now, since you have surprised me in my Abode of Quiet,
I must show you over my little domain.”
She took him round the garden and through the tiny
pine-wood at the back of the house, chatting all the time,
and then after leaving him, as she said, to ensure that her
room was tidy, she beckoned him into a large and pleasant
sitting-room, tastefully, if not expensively furnished, a
cool, quiet haven of rest.
He had arrived at two o’clock and it was five o’clock
before he reluctantly took his leave. And all that afternoon
they had talked of books and of people and since
she had not mentioned or spoken of the murder which
had engrossed his thoughts until her soothing presence
had made Mayfield seem very remote and crime a thing
of distaste, he did not introduce so jarring a discordance
into the lavender atmosphere of her retreat.
“What kind of a story do you call this?” snapped the
news editor when Tab handed him two folios of copy.
“From a literary point of view,” said Tab, “it is a
classic.”
“From a news point of view, it is rotten,” said the
editor. “The only new fact you have discovered is that
she loves Browning and maybe even the police know
that!”
He grumbled but accepted the copy and with his blue
pencil committed certain acts of savage mutilation, what
time was Tab making his final round-up of the Trasmere
case.
Here again, very little new matter was available. Walters
and the man Wellington Brown were still at liberty,
and he had to confine himself to a sketch of Trasmere’s
life, material for which had, from time to time, been
supplied to him by Babe.
The new millionaire he had not seen all day. When
he got home that night, he found Rex Lander in bed
and asleep and did not disturb him. He was tired to
death and more anxious to make acquaintance with his
hard pillow, than he was to discuss Ursula Ardfern. In
truth, he was not prepared to discuss Ursula at all with
any third person.
“I just loafed around,” said Rex the next morning,
when asked to give an account of his movements. “I had
a very bad night and was up early. You were sleeping
like a pig when I looked in. I read your story in the
‘Megaphone’—by-the-way, you know that Miss Ardfern’s
jewelry has been stolen?”
“I know that very well indeed,” said Tab, “I saw her
yesterday.”
Rex was instant attention.
“Where?” he asked eagerly. “What is she like, Tab—I
mean off the stage? Is she as beautiful—what colour
eyes has she?”
Tab pushed back his chair and frowned at the young
man across the table.
“Your curiosity is indecent,” he said severely, “really,
Rex, I never dreamt that you were so interested in the
lady.”
Rex did not meet his eyes.
“I think she is very beautiful,” he said doggedly. “I’d
give my head to spend a day with her.”
“Phew!” said Tab, “why you young devil, you are in
love with her!”
Rex’s babyish face went crimson.
“Stuff,” he said loudly. “I am very fond of her. I
have seen her a hundred times, I suppose, though I have
never spoken to her once. She is my idea of the perfect
woman. Beautiful of face, with the loveliest voice I have
ever heard. I am going to know her one day.”
This revelation of Babe’s secret passion was, for some
reason which Tab could not define, an extremely disquieting
one.
“My dear Babe,” he said more mildly, “the young lady
is not of the loving or marrying sort—”
Suddenly he remembered.
“Why, you are a millionaire now, Babe! Jumping
Moses!”
Rex blushed again and then Tab whistled.
“Do you mean in all seriousness that you are truly
fond of her?”
“I adore her,” said Rex in a low voice. “I got so
rattled when I heard a fellow say she was going to be
married, that I had to send you to see her.”
Tab interrupted him with a roar of delighted laughter.
“So that was why I was sent on a fool’s errand, eh?”
he asked, his eyes dancing. “You subtle dog! It was
to bring balm to your bruised heart that an eminent crime
specialist must stand, hat in hand, in the dingy purlieus
of a playhouse, begging admission to the great actress’s
dressing-room.” He was serious in a moment. “I hope
this isn’t a very violent attachment of yours, Rex,” he
said quietly, “in the first place, it struck me that Ursula
Ardfern is not of the marrying kind, that even your
great possessions would not tempt her. In the second
place—” he stopped himself.
“Well?” asked Rex impatiently. “What ever other
just cause or impediment do you see?”
“I don’t know that it is any business of mine,” said
Tab, “and I certainly am not in a position to give you
fatherly advice.”
“You mean that an actress is the worst kind of a wife
a man can have, I suppose. I have heard all that rubbish
before. Poor Uncle Jesse when I spoke about it—”
“You spoke to him of your—liking for Ursula Ardfern?”
asked Tab in surprise.
“Of course I didn’t,” said the other scornfully. “I approached
it in a round-about sort of way. Uncle Jesse
foamed at the mouth. It was then he told me that he
was going to leave all his money away from me. He said
horrible things about actresses.”
Tab was silent, a little puzzled at himself. What did
it matter to him, anyway, that Rex Lander should be
head over heels in love with the girl? Yet, for some
mysterious reason, he regarded Babe’s passion as a personal
affront to himself. It was ridiculous, childish in
him and he laughed softly.
“You think it is darned funny, I daresay,” growled
Rex, getting up from the table in a huff.
“I was laughing at myself for daring to give advice,”
said Tab truthfully.
