Hello! Are you there? I say you shall answer me or I swear I'll tell the police every word you've told me. I could recognize your voice again anywhere. And I will tell them every single thing--- I will, I swear it. What has happened? You are trying to hide something from me. Either that or you are afraid to tell me what you know. What is it? What is all this absurd mystery?"
"Absurd lady?" The voice grunted horribly. "You'll find it ain't nothing absurd--- not when you get the news. you'll be putting the blinds up at Greydene inside an hour--- and you can lay your life on that. It ain't up to me to break nasty news to a lady--- and I ain't no hand at it in anyway. But if Mr. Lyall never got home from Hendon last night, it means that the other man got him."
"What----what on earth do you mean?" Mercia felt her whole body drain white. It was as though the blood had fallen out of her, leaving her a cold bloodless thing, a mere form cast in marble. Hendon-- the man had mentioned Hendon! And Valmon Dain lived out at Hendon! She felt her senses reeling.
"Speak to me," she pleaded. "What do you mean? You are hinting at something
Who was Mr. Lyall going to see last night?"
"Lady, that ain't for me to say. I'm not letting myself in any deeper than I am already. Goodbye lady. Forget I ever rang you up." There was an ominous click and a silence at the other end.
Mercia hung up her receiver and sat down heavily in a big armchair. Her brain was seething, a frothy flux of disjointed thoughts and dreads that whirled round in her head like chaff in a whirlwind. She was stunned and dazed, scarcely comprehending the enormity of the unknown caller's hints. The only thing she definitely realised was that something awful had happened to her father, and that the mystery man of Notting Hill knew all about it but would not say. There was something inexplicably shocking going on behind the scene of which she was in sublime ignorance.
"My dear, what on earth is the matter?"
She looked up with a start. Her
mother, queenly and graceful, even in her undress was standing in the doorway holding her dress gown over her breast with a white, perfectly moulded hand. "I heard the telephone ringing and then I heard your voice dear. You were shouting the most extraordinary things. What, in heaven's sake, has happened?"
Mercia looked up dully.
"Did you know dad went out last night?" she asked.
"Why, no. I---"
"He did. His bed hasn't been slept in. He's missing. And now some horrible man rings up from Notting Hill hinting at the most awful consequences. The police will be here at any minute."
"Mrs. Lyall went deathly white, but by a tremendous effort she retained her composure. Ever since the morning that telegram arrived she had been living in a constant dread of subsequent complications.
She gathered her dressing-down closer about her.
"Please come upstairs, Mercia into my room," she said.
"The servants will be down at any moment now. The telephone must have wakened them--- I could hear them moving about when I came down. You know what chatterboxes they are; bound to make mountains out of nothing at all. We simply can't let them hear anything. I'll talk to you in my room."
The two women crept upstairs, pathetic bits of flotsam of the tragedy of life about to be flung up helplessly by the storms of unalterable events, and yet knowing nothing if what the fates had already dealt out to them.
Once in the privacy of her room Mrs. Lyall, with set face and clear, unflinching eyes turned and asked her daughter for the plain story of all she knew, the blunt truth with no adornment and no glossing over of difficult details.
And Mercia told her. With the same straight sincerity that had characterised the whole of their mature relationship, she told her mother the facts as she had gleaned them almost forced them from the unknown resident of Notting Hill.
Mrs. Lyall listened in a stony silence. she knew even then that a dreadful blow had fallen somewhere but, woman-like, she did not realize that the fullest force of it had fallen upon herself.
"Have you---have you any idea what he meant when he said we should be putting up the blinds at Greydene? she asked at last.
"I --- I daren't think mother. it is too terrible to contemplate. I am trying to hope that he was talking in the unpleasant slang terms of his type. people of that sort wrap their speech up in such queer idioms that sometimes one can hardly tell what they do mean."
"And you've no idea who he was?"
"Not the slightest. He was ringing from a call-box in the Notting Hill district. and he had been ringing since five o'clock. That shows that it was awfully serious--- even if dad had got home last night."
"What can it be? Oh, if only I could get rid of this dreadful suspense! Dare we---dare we ring up Scotland Yard? perhaps we could inquire there---- couch our inquiries in such discreet terms that they would not suspect anything wrong themselves, and possibly----"
Mercia shook her head. "Either of us would give herself away before we had been talking a minute," she said. "We are neither of us in a fit state to talk to police officers. And if there is anything wrong, look what an awful thing it would be to get information from such a source as that."
"Well then perhaps?" Mrs. Lyall looked hopefully at Mercia. And Mercia nodded.
"I have been thinking about that ever since you knew," she said, the colour coming up on her face in a mounting flush.
"That man said all that was really necessary for him to say about Hendon. personally i am quite convinced it was Mr. Dain dad went to see last night."
"Then phone him, dear you can do that with greater delicacy than I. And quite possibly he will talk to you a little more freely than he would to me. slip some things on first, dear you mustn't let the servants see you running about the house like that. They will begin gossiping quite soon enough. And oh, what can we do about dad's empty room?"
It was a sudden thought of the hopelessness of the case that almost overwhelmed her.
Mercia soothed her. "Don't worry mummy," she said gently; "I will tell them that dad is not to be disturbed. in any case they won't be taking tea in to him for another hour yet. And I'll go in and ruffle the bed up si that they won't know anything."
She hurt along to her own room and dressed quickly.
In a few minutes she was down at the telephone again Waiting for a reply to Valmon Dain's number.
An answering voice came on eventually, but it seemed an unconscionable time before it came through. she had to ring several times with ten minutes halts in between.
The voice was nervous, agitated, almost incoherent.
"Is Mr. Valmon Dain in?" she asked, screwing up her courage to its last ounce.
"He's----it's---is it---er----Who are you?" came the barely intelligible reply, and then for some utterly inexplicable reason, the lunatic at the other end hung up the receiver on her, cut her off cold.
She thought she recognized the voice of Manders, Dain's confidential valet, but it was dreadfully shaky. And certainly he had never had the effrontery to be so amazingly rude as that.
She rang again and again. The exchange assured her that they could get no reply, and would she care to try again later on? But Mercia retorted that she had already had a reply from the number, and asked them to continue ringing.
Eventually, after what seemed an age, another voice came on gruff, authoritative and awesomely competent.
"Yes?" said the voice, as emotionless as the law itself.
"Is----please, is Mr. Dain in?" Mercia took comfort from her mother, who by that time had dressed and joined her.
"Who is that speaking, please?"
"My name is Mercia Lyall. And I am speaking from Greydene, Highgate."
There was a sudden sound of coughing from the other end and a suggestive silence. Mercia waited, with straining ears listening for a sound from the house of mystery.
"Madam, I have to regret to inform you that Mr. Valmon Dain is not, at the moment available," said the voice after a long absence.
"Then cab I speak to Manders the valet?"
"No, madam----for reasons which I need not disclose at present. may I inquire if you are miss Lyall, daughter of Mr. Willard Lyall of Greydene Highgate?"
"Yes, yes. Quickly tell me, please what has happened. is he there? is dad there?
"H'm! yes madam, your father is here----er----h'm! Has anybody called yet at your house."
"No. But----"
"Then, madam, I must ask you to make no more inquiries until you have been spoken to by the police. A police officer is on his way to you now. Thank you, goodbye!".
With an awful air of finality the constable rang off.