“Meanwhile, the fat countryman has sat down fifty feet away from me. Calmly he opens the grease-proof paper and takes out a sandwich. He pours out tea from the thermos into the cup; he is taking a deep drink when the verger, who is outraged at sandwiches in St. Paul’s, rushes towards him from ten feet away.
“Mr. Lockwood, I know what I saw! The countryman could not have spoken; he is really and truly gulping down tea. The verger could not have spoken — I could see his mouth — and anyway he is too far away from the wall. As for Aunt Hester or Margot, that is nonsense! And, anyway, they are much too far away from the wall, and leaning over the railing.
“But someone spoke in my ear just then.
“It was in English, and horrible. It said: ‘I failed the first time, Jennifer. But I shall not fail the second time.’ And it gloated. And there was nobody there!”
Jenny paused.
With all the nervousness of the past days, there were shadows under her eyes, and she was more than pale. But a passion of appeal met Tom across the table.
“No, I did not say anything!” she told him. “If I had, Aunt Hester would only say I was imagining things. Just as she said I was imagining things last night, and must have turned on the gas-tap myself, because the room was all locked up inside.
“No, no, no! I jumped up and ran out. I ran down those stairs so fast no one could have caught me. I did not know where I was going or what I should do. If I prayed anything, I think I prayed to meet...”
“To meet whom?” prompted Tom.
“Well! To meet someone like you.”
After saying this, defiantly, Jenny drank stone-cold tea.
“But what am I to do?” she demanded, with tears on her eyelashes. “I know Aunt Hester means me no harm — how could she? But I can’t face her — I won’t! Where am I to go?”
“I will tell you exactly,” said Tom, reaching across and taking her hands. “You are going with me to see old H.M., otherwise Sir Henry Merrivale, at an office which nowadays is humorously called The Ministry of Miracles. Afterwards—”
Bang!
The door of the tea bar flew open with a crash which half shattered its glass panel. Tom, sitting with his back to the door, first craned round and then leaped to his feet.
Outside the door, but not yet looking into the tea bar, stood an imperious and stately lady who was addressing someone beyond her.
“I am well acquainted, constable,” she was saying, “with Sir Richard Tringham, the Commissioner of Police. Your deliberate falsehoods will not help you when I report you to him personally. You have denied you saw any young lady run down the steps of the Cathedral. You have denied she met a young man in sports coat and gray flannels. Finally, you have denied they went into any of the shops or other disgusting places along here. Is this so, or is it not?”
“ ’S right, marm,” stolidly answered Police-Constable Dawson.
Whereupon Aunt Hester made her entrance like Lady Macbeth.
“I am Mrs. Hester Harpenden,” she announced to the walls at large. “And I have distinctly different information from a newspaper seller. I have—”
Here she saw Tom, who was standing in the middle of the floor.
“That’s the man,” she said.
Up to this time Stella (rather buck-toothed) and Dolly (distinctly pretty) had remained stupefied and silent behind the counter. Now both of them gave tongue.
“Disgusting place, eh?” cried Dolly. “I like that!”
“Busted the door, officer,” screamed Stella. “Busted the door, that’s what she done!”
“Busted the door, did she?” repeated Police-Constable Dawson, in a sinister voice. “Oh, ah. I see.” And he reached for his notebook.
Meanwhile, as Aunt Hester calmly advanced, Tom glanced back towards Jenny.
But Jenny was not there. She was gone; she was not anywhere in the place.
The sharp pang this gave him was not his only feeling. For an instant he believed he had strayed from St. Paul’s churchyard into a world of monsters and twilight, where anything might happen; and, in a sense, he was not far wrong.
“Young man,” Aunt Hester asked quietly, “where is my niece?”
“Do you see her here, madam?”
“No. But that does not mean... A back entrance! Ah, yes! Where is the back entrance here?”
“Just a moment,” said Tom, stepping in front of her. “Have you a warrant to search these premises?”
“Do I need a warrant to find my own niece?”
“Yes, yer do and all!” screamed Stella. “Either yer orders tea and cakes, which is wot we’re ’ere for, or out yer go straightaway. ’S right, officer?”
“ ’S right, miss,” agreed the law.
Aunt Hester was not fooled for a moment.
Seen close at hand, she was — or seemed — less formidable than bitter and bony, with a high-bridged nose and washed-out blue eyes, as though she had suffered some disappointment in youth and never forgotten it. Tom could tell her clothes were fashionable, as Jenny’s were fashionable, without knowing why he knew.
“Then you are all against me, it seems,” she smiled. “Well! This will indeed make a budget of news for my friend the Commissioner of Police!”
“By the way,” Tom said casually, “who did you say is the Commissioner of Police?”
“But Sir Richard Tringham, of course!”
“Oh, put a sock in it,” said Tom. “Sir Richard Tringham has been dead for seven years. The present Commissioner is Colonel Thomas Lockwood. And I ought to know — he’s my father.”
“Cor!” whispered Dolly.
“ ’S right, marm,” agreed Police-Constable Dawson.
Aunt Hester, not in the least impressed, merely raised her shoulders.
“Ah, well!” she smiled. “If police officers are bribed to tell untruths, then I had better be off.”
Majestically she strolled towards the front of the shop. With a gesture of contempt she opened her purse, took out a couple of pound-notes, and murmured something about paying for the glass door as she tossed the notes towards Stella.
Then, when she was within a step of the door, she whirled round and screamed at Tom like a harpy.
“Where is my niece?”
And Tom’s temper crashed over too, like the glass platform of cakes which Dolly had been nervously handling.
“In a place where you’ll never find her,” he yelled back, only hoping he was telling the truth.
“If I prefer charges of abduction—”
“When she goes away of her own free will? Don’t talk rot! And shall I tell you something else, Mrs. Harpenden?”
“By all means. If you can.”
“That girl is of age,” said Tom, advancing towards her. “Even under French law, her guardian no longer has any authority over her. But she doesn’t seem to know that. She’s being pushed and bullied and hounded into a marriage she doesn’t want, by a lot of ghouls who are only interested in her money. And I tell you straight: I mean to stop it.”
“Ah, I see. You want her money.”
The steamy room was dead quiet, with fragments of shattered glass and colored cakes all over the counter and floor. Both Stella and Dolly had cowered back.
“Yes, that hurt,” said Tom. “You knew it would hurt. All right: if you want open war, it’s war from this time on. Agreed?”
“Oh, agreed,” replied Aunt Hester, her head high. “And I have a feeling, dear Mr. Lockwood, that you are not going to win. Good day.”
With all the honors she marched out, closed the door, and turned right toward Paternoster Row. They had time to see a brown-haired girl of seventeen or eighteen, with slanting eyes and a mischievous look, run after her. It could only have been Jenny’s cousin Margot.