The Sleeping Sphinx dgf-17 Read online

  "I'm older now. I suppose, on the whole, I did make an ass of myself. But if s no good debating that I've lost her, Frank, and serves me damn well right"

  Warrender jumped to his feet

  "Don't talk such blithering rubbish! What do you mean, you've lost her? Is she married?"

  "I don't know. Very probably, yes."

  "These other people: are they—still about?"

  "Still about, I believe. Except Mammy Two; she died in the winter of '41. But the rest are well, so far as I know. And happy."

  "When was the last time you saw Celia?" "Three years ago." "Or wrote to her?" Holden looked at him.

  "As you yourself pointed out, Frank," he replied carefully, "from the time Jerry started cracking up you had a number of jobs for me. I was in Germany in '44. In '45 you sent me straight to Italy after Steuben. And, in case it's escaped your memory, for the past fifteen months—fifteen months, mind! —I've been supposed to be dead."

  "Hang it aw, I've apologized) It was damn careless of Kappelman not to . . ."

  "Never mind the official side, Frank. Let's face it."

  Perhaps it was the blazing sun at the window that made Holden's scalp feel thick and hot. He moved away from the window, his thin brown face—reserved, moody, dogged—as unfathomable as the eyes. He stood knocking his knuckles, over and over, restlessly, on Warrender’ s desk.

  "When we're in the services," he said, "we get the mistaken idea that people and things at home always stay the same. But they don't stay the same. They can't be expected to. If s an odd thing, too. Last night, my first night in London, I went to see a play ..."

  "A play!" scoffed Warrender.

  "No; but wait a minute. It was about a man who returned after they supposed he was dead. He raised merry blazes, and cut up all kinds of a row, because his wife wasn't still cherishing him with a grand passion.

  "But how could she be expected to? Changes, new faces, the passage of years—This grand passion is a notion out of the Roman de la Rose; it died with the Middle Ages, if it ever existed. When one man's gone, a woman eventually finds she can be just as comfortable with another, and that’s —well, it’s only sensible. As for Celia, after the thundering fool I made of myself all that time ago . .."

  He paused for a moment, and then added:

  "Last night, of course, I didn't know I was supposed to be dead. But I did know there'd been a severance, a blind gap of years. Not a word on either side. I got up and crept out of that theater like a ghost. And now I've had it" He started to laugh. "By George, I've had it!"

  "Nonsense!" observed Warrender. "Are you still—er— keen about the girl?"

  Holden nearly exploded.

  "Am I still. . . !"

  "All right," Warrender said coolly. "Where is she? Is she still living with Margot and this What's-his-name, or where is she?"

  "When I last heard of her, she was still with Margot and Thorley."

  "Well, we'll assume she's stall there. And where are they now? In town, or at Caswall?"

  "They're in town," answered Holden. "The first thing I picked up in the lounge of my hotel last night, when I got back from that infernal play, was a copy of the Tatter. There was a photograph of Thorley, looking as sleek as his own Rolls Royce, stepping out in front of the Gloucester Gatehouse."

  "Good!" Warrender nodded briskly. He pointed to the battery of telephones on his desk. "There's the phone. Ring her up."

  There was a long silence.

  "Frank, I can't do it."

  "Why not?"

  "How many times must I remind you," inquired Holden, "that I'm supposed to be dead? D-e-a-d, dead. Celia isn't a strapping, uninhibited girl like Margot. She's—excitable. Mammy Two used to say ..."

  "Say what?"

  "Never mind. The point is, suppose Celia answers the phone? She's probably married and not there anyway," Holden added, a little wildly and irrationally, "but suppose she answers the phone?"

  "All right," said Warrender. "This Thorley bloke, I presume, has got an office in the city? Good! Ring him there, and explain the situation. Now look here, Don!" Warrender glared at him, the gray hair over the worn face. "This thing is getting you down. You're already thinking of yourself as a bloody outcast and Enoch Arden. And if s got to stop. If you don't ring, I will." "No! Frank! Wait a minute!"

  But Warrender had already reached for the telephone directory.

  CHAPTER II

  And now, in the evening, with the last faint light beyond the trees of Regent's Park, and on the other side of the street—as he passed St. Katharine's Precinct—the tall Regency houses looming up whitish in gloom, Donald Holden still could not feel any less apprehensive, or consider that anything had been settled.

  For a time he stood gripping one of the iron bars of the railing round St. Katharine's. Then he moved forward, his heart beating heavily.

  A little paved drive, shut off from the main road by trees and a wickerwork fence which had replaced the old iron railings, curved in a crescent past these houses. The house where Celia probably was, and where Margot and Thorley certainly were, was Number 1: the house nearest him at the corner.

  Massive, solid as ever! Towering up in smooth white stone, its two storeys above the ground floor buttressed by fluted Corinthian columns set massively into the facade, and supporting a shallow roof peak on which were a few battered statues. Any change here?

  Yes. Though even in the dusk its lightless windows shone, new glass clean polished, across one edge of the facade ran a tiny zigzag crack. One of the roof statues stood a little askew against the darkening sky. Regents Park had got it rather badly in the blitz, but he couldn't remember seeing that crack before. It was probably . . .

  Well? Go on!

  It was certain, as certain as anything could be in this world, that the whole family now knew he was alive. Yet Frank Warrender's telephone call to Thorley's office in the city couldn't have been called an unmitigated success. Again Holden pictured Warrender, with that portentous and stuffed air Frank always assumed at the telephone, dictatorfly attacking the staff. The information that Colonel Warrender, of the War Office, wished to speak to Mr. Thorley Marsh on a matter of vital importance, had brought first a scurry of voices and then the ultrarefined tones of a male secretary, obviously perturbed.

  "I'm sorry, sir," the secretary replied. "Mr. Marsh is not at the office." (Holden's heart sank.) "He phoned that he would be at home all day. You could reach him there, if the matter is urgent. Is there anything I can do?"

  Warrender cleared his throat

  "I believe," he said, tapping his fountain pen on the desk to emphasize each word, "I believe Mr. Marsh has a sister-in-law named Miss Celia Devereux." Whereupon, officialdom being what it is, he could not help rapping out: "Have you any data on Miss Devereux?"

  "Data, sir?"

  "Precisely."

  So great has become our terror of regulations in this free age that the secretary was clearly confusing the War Office with the Home Office, perhaps even with Scotland Yard, and wondering who was in trouble.

  "During the war, sir, Miss Devereux was parliamentary secretary to Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore. The M.P., you know. I—I don't think she is employed at present If you could give me a little more information as to the sort of—er— data you want?"

  "I mean," said Warrender, in a startlingly more human tone, "is she married?"

  The secretary's voice seemed to jump. Holden, who was bending forward to catch each word out of the telephone, gripped the edge of the desk.

  "Married, sir? Not to my knowledge."

  "Ah!" observed Warrender. "Or engaged?"

  The voice hedged. "I believe, sir, there has been some talk of an engagement to Mr. Hurst-Gore. But whether anything has been officially announced. . . ."

  "Thank you," said Warrender, and hung up. His official face relaxed.

  "The only thing for you to do, old boy," Warrender added, "is to send a long telegram to this Thorley What's-it, at his home address. Even if it falls int
o the wrong hands, it’ll break things gently. You hang about until the telegram's certain to have been delivered, and then just go out and see the girl. And . . . well, you know. Good luck."

  Now there was an end of hanging about.

  Over the Park, over Number 1 Gloucester Gate, warm dusk deepened. Distantly a taxi honked; otherwise it was so still that you might have been at Caswall in the country. Holden heard his own footsteps ring on asphalt as he walked into the little crescent of the drive. A short distance, only a short distance from the flight of stone steps leading up to the front door, he stopped again.

  Perhaps the unlighted windows daunted him, the sense that nobody was there. But that couldn't be. Perhaps the front door would be opened by fat Obey, the old nurse. Perhaps it would be opened by Celia herself.

  "Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore. M.P."

  At the right-hand side of the house, a little stone-flagged path, enclosed by a rose trellis on the other side, led to a ack garden surrounded by a high brick wall. Holden, hesitating, made for that path. He told himself (at least, on the surface of his mind) that it was past dinnertime; that they would probably all be in the drawing room; and that the drawing room was at the back of the house, up one floor from the ground with its little iron balcony and staircase. So, of course, it would be best to go straight there.

  And, as he walked down that path, a rush of memories returned bittersweet. In that back garden he had often had tea with Celia. He could see Margot there, too; in a deck chair, with a fashion magazine or else (her only kind of reading matter) a thriller or a book of trials. In that same garden, during the blitz days which now seemed so far off as to be prewar, Mammy Two—wrinkled-white of face, insatiably curious, her shawl round her shoulders—had stood night after night, watching the raiders under a sky white with gunfire.

  Since their part of Wiltshire was a safe area, Thorley had thought it only prudent to take Margot to Caswall during the blitz. But Mammy Two refused to go.

  "My dear child," Holden could hear her husky indomitable voice saying, in an utterly bewildered tone, "it's so silly of them to think they can browbeat us with this nonsense." (Bam went a battery of three-point-nines in Regent's Park; and the glass lusters of the chandelier jumped and clanked and tingled.) "It makes me really angry. That's why I'm here. I hate London otherwise, y'know."

  And again:

  "Die?" said Mammy Two. "Well, my dear child, I only hope when my time comes they'll have finished the new vault in Caswall churchyard. The old one is so crowded if s a sin and a shame." Her old eyes, pale blue in a white face, hardened and grew apprehensive. "But I don't want to die yet I've got to look out for—things."

  "Things?"

  "There's a funny streak in our family, /know. One of my granddaughters is all right, but I've been worried about the other ever since she was a little child. No, I don't want to be taken yet"

  And so, in the bitter winter of '41, when high explosives showered down amid drifting snowflakes, she stayed too long in that garden watching the searchlights, and she died of pneumonia within a week. Celia, they said, had cried for days. Celia wouldn't leave town either.

  Celia....

  Pushing away these memories, which brought a lump into his throat in spite of himself, Holden hurried past scratching tendrils of rose trees into the garden. Again the utter stillness oppressed him. The cropped lawn, the sundial, the plum trees against the east wall, swam in a thin whitish dusk which made outlines just visible.

  And there were no lights at the back of the house, either.

  But this wasn't possible! There must be somebody at home! Besides, the full-length windows of the drawing room were standing wide open.

  Holden stared at the back of the house. Across it, about fifteen feet above the ground, ran a narrow balcony with a wrought-iron balustrade; a flight of iron stairs led down into the garden. On the left were the tall door-windows of the drawing room; on the right, if he remembered correctly, a similar pair of door-windows led to the dining room. No sign of life anywhere. The ground-floor windows, even, were shuttered; the back door was closed.

  Holden, now so puzzled that his self-assurance was returning, ran quickly up the iron stairs. It was as though, in the vividness of those memories, he had never been away. The balcony still rattled underfoot, just as it used to do. Fishing out his pocket lighter, he walked to the nearer of the open drawing-room windows. He put his head inside, and snapped on the flame of the lighter.

  "Hullol" he called. "Is anybody at home? I. .."

  Inside the room, a woman screamed.

  That scream went piercing up with such suddenness, out of the dim drawing room, that in the shock of it the lighter slipped through Holden's fingers and clattered on the polished hardwood floor. At the same time the realization flooded his wits—ass! fool! Imbecile! that he had done precisely the thing he had been trying so hard to avoid.

  It was the same drawing room, very large and lofty, its walls painted dark green, the arabesque gold of the Venetian mirror above a white marble mantelpiece, the white slip covers on the furniture showing ghostly against dusk. Not a single glass prism seemed missing from its chandelier. And the room was very much occupied.

  Holden could make out the shadowy figure of Thorley Marsh, and of a girl who—thank God!—certainly wasn't either Celia or Margot. They appeared to have been standing rather close together, but they had jumped apart Holden's brain seemed to ring with the intensity of that moment of silence.

  "I'm Don Holden, Thorley! I'm alive! I . . . Didn't you get my telegram?"

  Thorley's voice, usually full throated, quavered out of gloom.

  "Who—?"

  "I tell you, Thorley, I'm Don Holden! It was all a mistake about my being lolled! Or at least . . . Didn't you get my telegram?"

  "Tele . . ." began Thorley, and stopped. His hand moved toward the side pocket of his coat. Then, clearing his throat, he enunciated very slowly and clearly, but still shakily: 'Telegram."

  "Ifs true, Thorley!" breathed the girl. (Who was she? Holden couldn't distinguish her face. She had a young, soft voice.) "You—you did get a telegram!" She gulped. "It got here just as I did. We—we landed on the doorstep together. But you didn't open it. You put it in your pocket."

  "Don!" muttered Thorley.

  And he walked forward hesitantly, at his slow moving and heavy tread on the hardwood floor.

  Holden bent over and picked up the fallen lighter. He could have kicked himself. In his pleasure at seeing Thorley, in the radiance of good nature and kindliness which always surrounded Thorley, he had not quite realized the shock this would be. But in that case (swift-prompting thought) what about Celia? Thorley hadn't opened the telegram! Then Celia didn't know either.

  Thorley, wearing a dark suit, had been only a blur of black and white until he emerged into the after glow from the windows. He stood there for a moment, staring. He had changed very little. He had perhaps put on weight, making the bulky body thicker, and gained in the face as well: a handsome face, though the tendency to weight made his fine features seem a little too small. There were tiny horizontal lines across his forehead. But the black hair, shining and plastered down to a nicety, showed no tinge of gray. Then Thorley woke up.

  "My dear old boy!" he cried. It was as though icicles tinkled and fell. He threw an arm across Holden's shoulder, and began to wallop him on the back with real affection. He added, hastily and rather incoherently: "Unexpectedness . .. you must forgive . . . under the circumstances . . . things that have been happening—"

  (Things that have been happening?]

  Anyway," said Thorley, with all the charm and kindliness radiant in his smile, "anyway, my dear fellow, how are you?"

  "I'm fine, thanks. Never better. But listen, Thorley! Celia . . ."

  "Oh, yes, Celia." A new thought came to Thorley; there was a slight pause. His dark eyes grew evasive. "Celia . . . isn't here just now."

  Holden's heart sank. Wasn't he ever to see her, then? Probably she was out with Mr. Derek
Hurst-Gore, M.P. Still, maybe it was better like this.

  Across the room there was a slight click, and a light went on.

  The girl, hovering, had been standing at the far side of a white-covered sofa where there was a little table and a table lamp with a buff-colored shade. Both Thorley and Holden swung round as she pressed the button of the lamp. Standing just over that lamp, with the light from its open top shining up strongly across her face, the girl tried to keep a cool and assured air.

  She was perhaps nineteen, though with a hair style and make-up designed for one considerably older, and she was not very tall. That core of light, brilliant in the midst of green-painted walls, showed .her dark-blue frock trimmed with white, and the blonde hair drawn above her ears, under a white hat A stranger? Apparently. Yet to Holden that pretty face, with its rather angry blue eyes and spoiled mouth, suggested ...

  Yes! It suggested the background of a church, never very far from his thoughts, and a little flower girl, aged twelve, who . . .

  "You're Sir Danvers Locke's daughter," he said flatly. "You're little Doris Locke!"

  The girl stiffened. That word "little" had obviously annoyed her. She stood turning her head slowly from one side to the other, either in keeping her eyes away from the light or in deliberately posing.

  "How terribly clever of you to remember me," she murmured. Then, in a different voice, she burst out: "I think it was an awfully mean trick of you to pop up like that!"

  "It was unpardonable, Miss Locke. I deeply apologize."

  His formal courtesy and grave bearing, for some reason, made her flush.

  "Oh, that’s all right. It--it doesn't matter." She took up gloves and a handbag from the table. "Anyway, I'm afraid I must be pushing off now."

  "You're not going?" Thorley cried incredulously.

  "Oh, didn't I tell you?" said Doris. "I promised to meet Ronnie Merrick at the Cafe Royal, and then we're going on somewhere to dance." Doris looked at Holden. "Ronnie's nice. Probably I shall marry him, because my father wants me to, and they say he's going to be a great painter one day: I mean Ronnie, of course, not my father. But he's so young."