The Tall House Mystery. Dorothy Fielding

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СКАЧАТЬ I thought you and she would be congenial spirits." And the manageress left them.

      "Oh, do you care too?" Alfreda asked eagerly, scanning the woman in front of her closely. "I didn't know anyone cared—really. Anyone but myself and the man I'm engaged to, Lawrence Gilmour."

      "Lots of people care," Mrs. Findlay answered a trifle coldly. She had rather a forbidding eye and jaw. The woman was one of those people who are often pitied for being solitary, but who are that by choice. True, she had outlived all her family, and was practically alone in the world, but had she had a host of relations the result would have been the same. Now, after a few moments' silence, she made as if to go out again, but Alfreda sprang up.

      "Don't go!" she said appealingly. "I'm so frightfully pleased to have met someone who can tell me about what we women can do. The idea of all these war preparations is awful. Surely, if we band together, we can be of some use."

      Mrs. Findlay was conquered for the moment. This was her hobby, or rather it was more than that. It was the window through which her soul drew in a little air and light and so managed to exist in the desert that she had made of the rest of her life. At first reluctantly, then more freely, she let Alfreda draw her out on the subject. Alfreda, for her part listened as though to a Sibyl.

      "Oh, I would like to join!" she breathed, when Mrs. Findlay mentioned the Women's Peace Movement, of which she was an honorary secretary. "So would Lawrence—Mr. Gilmour. I think you must have seen him at some of the meetings—" and she described Gilmour. Mrs. Findlay looked a trifle impatient. She said that she had not seen any young man at any of their meetings. Something quivered across Alfreda's face and was gone, but whether she wanted to hear an affirmative, or the negative that had been forthcoming, it was difficult to say.

      At ten she put her papers together. "I write, you know," she murmured. "Just little things of no account. But I might be able to get in some article which would help."

      This time it was Mrs. Findlay who looked eager and, on hearing that Alfreda expected to be in the lounge on the following morning at the same hour, said that she would like to continue their talk. Alfreda put her blank paper away in the little basement room that she had taken late yesterday afternoon and hurried to the door. But the manageress stopped her.

      "I saw you having quite a nice chat," she said pleasantly, "and to no one else does Mrs. Findlay ever open her mouth. I told her it would be a change for her to meet someone who shared her interests. Generally she just sits there while her room is being aired, and we daren't talk to her."

      Alfreda nodded and hurried off, her face a mixture of emotions; she jumped on a bus that would take her close to The Tall House, satisfaction and dissatisfaction were to be read in her quick, dark eyes. But at nine on the following day she was in the lounge again, and again she and Mrs. Findlay talked of peace, and of how to stop the preparations for war that were darkening all the world.

      The next morning after that Mrs. Findlay referred to some books she had in her room, and Alfreda seemed so keen on seeing them that, after a second's hesitation, she asked the younger woman in to a large dreary bed-sitting-room as it is called. The books in question were stacked on a table, and Alfreda promptly took off the top one.

      "May I take this home and read it?" she begged. "I'll bring it back tomorrow morning."

      "Tomorrow a friend is coming to see me about this time," Mrs. Findlay quid in her stiff way. "As a matter of fact he too has just read that book."

      "Can't I run in and hand it to you?" Alfreda asked, her face all innocence.

      "I'm afraid my friend is elderly, and has so few minutes to spare, and counts too much on finding me alone," Mrs. Findlay said coldly, and she remained very cool for the rest of the time that Alfreda as usual spent with her, and when the girl left with the book, rather earlier than usual, Mrs. Findlay stopped for a word with the manageress in the hall.

      "That Miss Gray who's just come seems rather a pushing young person," was her remark. "I'm afraid she'd be quite a nuisance if I weren't leaving next week. Please don't let her know I'm going; she's quite capable of asking herself down to my cottage in the country."

      "I wouldn't breathe a word about your going," the manageress assured her. Mrs. Findlay had the largest room in the house, had taken it at a time when rents were at their highest, and, therefore, paid nearly double what it would now bring. Besides, she was leaving, she had just had an unexpected windfall, and the manageress hoped that some parting present might brighten her own none too gay lot.

      "How did she come to speak to you about me in the first place?" Mrs. Findlay asked.

      "She came in just after you the other afternoon. She was looking for a room, and after she had taken hers, we stood a moment chatting, and she said she thought she had seen you at Spiritualistic stances near here. I told her I didn't think that at all likely."

      "Preposterous!" chimed in Mrs. Findlay.

      "She said something about the star you wear, and I told her that was the Star of Peace, and that you were tremendously keen on there being no more wars, and disarmament and so on...She hardly let me finish, she was so eager to tell me that she and a gentleman friend, a Mr. Gil—something, I think that was the name, were both so keen on that too. She said she'd like ever so much to have a chance of talking to you. That you looked so clever she'd love to hear your views."

      Mrs. Findlay's face relaxed.

      "Well, of course, it was quite natural, under the circumstances I mean, for you to have introduced her that first morning...the truth is," Mrs. Findlay lowered her voice, "I wondered if she had got on the track of that little money I came into so unexpectedly the other day...it's to be paid me shortly and I she stopped herself.

      "Oh, no! No one knows about that! You said it was strictly confidential!" the manageress assured her. "I do hope this Miss Gray hasn't been troublesome. She seemed quite the lady."

      "Oh, I don't doubt it's all right, just youthful fervor"—Mrs. Findlay smiled a little at her—"but somehow, it seemed to me so sudden...and so very pronounced..." She half-stopped herself. "I felt doubtful of her sincerity," she finished, "but, as you say, it's probably just her way. But don't let her take to coming to my room. Should she ever speak to you about it, while I'm still here, please discourage her. I did ask her there just now in a moment of weakness, but she's such a stayer...and I'm so busy getting my things together...she spoke of coming in tomorrow morning, for instance, but I told her I should be engaged. Poor old Mr. Nevern would be quite swamped by her. It's his day to drop in for an hour..." and with a nod Mrs. Findlay swept on to her room and castle.

      The manageress passed the conversation on to the head housemaid, her trusted assistant.

      "Funny!" that young woman murmured. "I mean Miss Gray being so keen on Mrs. Findlay. She's not everybody's fancy, is she? I wonder if she has heard about that money and is making up to Mrs. Findlay because of it."

      "She can't possibly know. And don't forget, you don't know anything about it, either!" the manageress warned her.

      "Mrs. Findlay told me about it herself, just now. Said she had come in quite unexpectedly for some money and might easily come in for more. Said she was going round the world. I said I didn't wonder. I'd go round the world twice over if only someone would leave me a five-pound note for doing it. Wouldn't you?" and the talk drifted to what one would do if one came into wealth.

      As the days passed, Winnie and Alfreda avoided each other, but when they met they were quite civil, especially Alfreda, who went out of her way to be nice to the other. She openly admired her beauty, СКАЧАТЬ