His big voice altered and sharpened. The whole atmosphere of the office changed as his small eyes narrowed behind the spectacles. He might be irascible, unreasonable, and childish, but he was still the Old Maestro — and you trifled with him at your own risk.
So H.M. spoke gently.
“You understand, my dolly, what I’ve already told you? That neither Général de Senneville nor Armand de Senneville has any hold over you? And neither have Aunt Hester and Company? That you’re a perfectly free woman?”
Jenny pressed her hands against her cheeks.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I always knew that, really. But...”
“But what?”
“People are so determined. They don’t yield a bit. And it’s always gone on like that. So you say to yourself, ‘Oh, what’s the use?’ ”
“Yes, I know,” nodded H.M. “But that’s what causes so much unhappiness in this world, especially for gals. Well, what’s your feeling now? Do you want to fight ’em and beat ’em hands down?”
“Yes!”
“Do you still want to go on staying at your Aunt Hester’s house? What’s-its-name? Near Hampton Court?”
“It’s called Broadacres, on the river. Tomorrow, they tell me, they will save the best of the sights for last — they say they will take me to see Hampton Court Palace in the afternoon.”
“They say that, hey?” H.M. muttered thoughtfully. Something flickered behind his glasses and was gone. “Never mind! Do you still want to stay at your Aunt Hester’s?”
“No. But what else can I do, except return to Paris?”
“Well,” glowered H.M. scratching the back of his neck, “I’ve got a house, and a wife, and two daughters, and two good-for-nothing sons-in-law I’ve had to support for eighteen years. So I expect you’d better move in too.”
“You mean this?” cried Jenny, and sprang to her feet. “You would really want me?” she asked incredulously.
“Bah,” said H.M.
“Sir H.M.! How to thank you I do not know...!”
“Shut up,” said the great man austerely.
Jenny sat down again.
“Then there’s your clothes,” he mused. “That’s a very fetchin’ outfit you’ve got on now, and I expect you brought a whole trunkful?”
“Yes, my clothes! I forget!”
“Don’t worry,” said H.M. with a suggestion of ghoulish mirth. “I’ll send a police-officer to fetch ’em. If that doesn’t put the breeze up Aunt Hester to a howlin’ gale, I don’t know her kind. But understand this, my dolly!”
Again his tone sharpened and struck.
“Aunt Hester’ll hit back. Don’t think she won’t. Also, you’re likely to have the whole de Senneville tribe here and on your neck.” H.M. blinked at Tom. “I say, son. Shall you and I handle ’em?”
“With pleasure!” said Tom. “And definitely without gloves.”
“In the meantime,” H.M. went on, looking very hard at Jenny, “I’ve heard about this rummy business in the whispering gallery, yes. But there’s something else you’ve got to tell me, and very clearly, before I can help you at all.”
“Just a minute!” interrupted Tom.
“Oh, for the love of Esau,” howled H.M. “What’s wrong now?”
“A voice spoke where no voice could possibly have spoken,” said Tom. “Do you believe that?”
“Certainly.”
“Then how was it done?”
“Oh, my son!” groaned H.M., with a pitying glance. “You don’t mean to say that trick fooled you?”
“Do you know how it was done?”
“Sure I do.”
“Then what’s the explanation?”
“I’m not goin’ to tell you.”
Tom got up and did a little dance round his chair. H.M. sternly ordered him back into it.
“I’m not goin’ to tell you,” he went on with dignity, “because very shortly I’m goin’ to show you. You can see with your own eyes. That’s fair enough, hey?”
Whereupon his own eyes narrowed as he looked at Jenny.
“Stop a bit! We don’t want Aunt Hester to pick up the trail too soon. You said you came here in a car, with a chauffeur. Is the car still waiting? Or did you send it back?”
“I have sent it back,” retorted Jenny. “But I know I can trust Pearson — he is the chauffeur. I have told him to say I have gone off on my own, alone, to have tea at Lyons’.”
“Which Lyons’?”
Jenny’s gray eyes opened wide.
“I am English, I keep telling you!” she insisted. “But how can I know much of England if I am never here? Is there more than one Lyons’? The only London restaurants of which I have heard are Lyons and the Caprice and the Ivy.”
“Those three grand old restaurants!” exclaimed Tom, and resisted an impulse to put his arms round her. “H.M., Aunt Hester will think Jenny is giving her the raspberry, which is exactly what you’d do yourself.”
“Uh-huh. That’ll do. Now then: about this first miracle — of a gas-tap being turned on in a locked room.”
When H.M. produced his ancient black pipe, and began to load it with tobacco looking (and tasting) like the steel wool used on kitchen sinks, Tom knew he must brace himself for more trouble.
“My dolly,” said H.M., “a lot of bits and pieces have come flyin’ out of your story. I can see this aunt of yours. I can see her daughter, Margot, who’s eighteen years old and up to mischief. I can see your Uncle Fred, who’s tall and red-faced and looks like a retired major. I can see this white Georgian house, with long windows, set back from the river. But burn me if I can see the details!”
“How do you mean?”
“For instance. D’ye usually sleep with the windows closed, to say nothin’ of being locked? Is that an old French custom?”
“No, no, of course not!”
“Well, then?”
“It is the details,” said Jenny, biting her lip, “I have not wished to talk about. They are — bad. I feel the gas strangle me again. But never mind! First, Aunt Hester put me into a bedroom on the ground floor.”
“Why?”
“And why not?” Jenny exclaimed reasonably. “It is a very nice room. But it has two windows stretching to the ground. Aunt Hester is frightened of burglars, and asks me please to keep the windows tight-locked. By the time I am ready for bed, I am so scared that I put both bolts on the door as well — on the inside. You see, it was at dinner I received the note.”
“What note?”
“It was a little note, folded up in my napkin at the table. I thought—”
“Yes, my dolly?”
“At first,” Jenny explained, peeping sideways at Tom, “I thought it was from a young man I met at a tea party they gave. He has made what you call the eyes at me. So—”
“That’s an old French custom, if you like,” Tom said politely. “You thought the note was from him, and you didn’t want anybody else to know?”
Jenny turned on him flaming.
“I do not like this young man at the tea party! I do not wish to see him again! But if he has written a note to me, can I give the poor man away?”
“No. Sorry, Jenny. Shouldn’t have said that.”
“But it is not from him at all, or anything like that. I read it under the table. It was only one line, in a handwriting I never saw before. It said, ‘You will die tonight, Jennifer.’ ”
Jenny moistened her lips: H.M. had lighted the pipe, and an oily cloud of smoke crept over the desk.
“At first I thought it was a joke. What else can I think? Then I looked at the rest of them, all so normal, with the candles burning on the dinner table. And I know I am alone. I am a stranger, even if I am in my our country — and I am frightened!
“I did not even dare ask if the note was a joke. So I hid it, and afterwards I lost it. At ii o’clock, when it was time to go to bed...”