The Devil's Paw Part 22

"You must forgive my prejudices, Mr. Fenn," she said--"my foreign bringing up, perhaps--but I hate being touched."

"Oh, come!" he remonstrated. "No need to be so stand-offish."

He tried to hold her hand, an attempt which she skilfully frustrated.

"Really," she insisted earnestly, "this sort of thing does not amuse me.

I avoid it even amongst my own friends."

"Am I not a friend?" he demanded.

"So far as regards our work, you certainly are," she admitted. "Outside it, I do not think that we could ever have much to say to one another."

"Why not?" he objected, a little sharply. "We're as close together in our work and aims as any two people could be. Perhaps," he went on, after a moment's hesitation and a careful glance around, "I ought to take you into my confidence as regards my personal position."

"I am not inviting anything of the sort," she observed, with faint but wasted sarcasm.

"You know me, of course," he went on, "only as the late manager of a firm of timber merchants and the present elected representative of the allied Timber and Shipbuilding Trades Unions. What you do not know"--a queer note of triumph stealing into his tone "is that I am a wealthy man."

She raised her eyebrows.

"I imagined," she remarked, "that all Labour leaders were like the Apostles--took no thought for such things."

"One must always keep one's eye on the main chance; Miss Abbeway," he protested, "or how would things be when one came to think of marriage, for instance?"

"Where did your money come from?" she asked bluntly.

Her question was framed simply to direct him from a repulsive subject.

His embarra.s.sment, however, afforded her food for future thought.

"I have saved money all my life," he confided eagerly. "An uncle left me a little. Lately I have speculated--successfully. I don't want to dwell on this. I only wanted you to understand that if I chose I could cut a very different figure--that my wife wouldn't have to live in a suburb."

"I really do not see," was the cold response, "how this concerns me in the least."

"You, call yourself a Socialist, don't you, Miss Abbeway?" he demanded.

"You're not allowing the fact that you're an aristocrat and that I am a self-made man to weigh with you?"

"The accident of birth counts for nothing," she replied, "you must know that those are my principles--but it sometimes happens that birth and environment give one tastes which it is impossible to ignore. Please do not let us pursue this conversation any further, Mr. Fenn. We have had a very pleasant dinner, for which I thank you--and here we are at Mr.

Orden's flat."

Her companion handed her out a little sulkily, and they ascended in the lift to the fifth floor. The door was opened to them by Julian's servant. He recognised Catherine and greeted her respectfully. Fenn produced his authority, which the man accepted without comment.

"No news of your master yet?" Catherine asked him.

"None at all, madam," was the somewhat depressed admission. "I am afraid that something must have happened to him. He was not the kind of gentleman to go away like this and leave no word behind him."

"Still," she advised cheerfully, "I shouldn't despair. More wonderful things have happened than that your master should return home to-morrow or the next day with a perfectly simple explanation of his absence."

"I should be very glad to see him, madam," the man replied, as he backed towards the door. "If I can be of any a.s.sistance, perhaps you will ring."

The valet departed, closing the door behind him. Catherine looked around the room into which they had been ushered, with a little frown. It was essentially a man's sitting room, but it was well and tastefully furnished, and she was astonished at the immense number of books, pamphlets and Reviews which crowded the walls and every available s.p.a.ce.

The Derby desk still stood open, there was a typewriter on a special stand, and a pile of ma.n.u.script paper.

"What on earth," she murmured, "could Mr. Orden have wanted with a typewriter! I thought journalism was generally done in the offices of a newspaper--the sort of journalism that he used to undertake."

"Nice little crib, isn't it?" Fenn remarked, glancing around. "Cosy little place, I call it."

Something in the man's expression as he advanced towards her brought all the iciness back to her tone and manner.

"It is a pleasant apartment," she said, "but I am not at all sure that I like being here, and I certainly dislike our errand. It does not seem credible that, if the police have already searched, we should find the packet here."

"The police don't know what to look for," he reminded her. "We do."

There was apparently very little delicacy about Mr. Fenn. He drew a chair to the desk and began to look through a pile of papers, making running comments as he did so.

"Hm! Our friend seems to have been quite a collector of old books. I expect second-hand booksellers found him rather a mark. Some fellow here thanking him for a loan. And here's a tailor's bill. By Jove, Miss Abbeway, just listen to this! 'One dress suit-fourteen guineas!' That's the way these fellows who don't know any better chuck their money about," he added, swinging around in his chair towards her. "The clothes I have on cost me exactly four pounds fifteen cash, and I guarantee his were no better."

Catherine frowned impatiently.

"We did not come here, did we, Mr. Fenn, to discuss Mr. Orden's tailor's bill? I can see no object at all in going through his correspondence in this way. What you have to search for is a packet wrapped up in thin yellow oilskin, with 'Number 17' on the outside in black ink."

"Oh, he might have slipped it in anywhere," Fenn pointed out. "Besides, there's always a chance that one of his letters may give us a clue as to where he has hidden the doc.u.ment. Come and sit down by the side of me, won't you, Miss Abbeway? Do!"

"I would rather stand, thank you," she replied. "You seem to find your present occupation to your taste. I should loathe it!"

"Never think of my own feelings," Fenn said briskly, "when there's a job to be done. I wish you'd be a bit more friendly, though, Miss Abbeway.

Let me pull that chair up by the side of mine. I like to have you near. You know, I've been a bachelor for a good many years," he went on impressively, "but a little homey place like this always makes me think of things. I've nothing against marriage if only a man can be lucky enough to get the right sort of girl, and although advanced thinkers like you and me and some of the others are looking at things differently, nowadays, I wouldn't mind much which way it was," he confided, dropping his voice a little and laying his hand upon her arm, "if you could make up your mind--"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her arm away, and this time even he could not mistake the anger which blazed in her eyes.

"Mr. Fenn," she exclaimed, "why is it so difficult to make you understand? I detest such liberties as you are permitting yourself. And for the rest, my affections are already engaged."

"Sounds a bit old-fashioned, that," he remarked, scowling a little. "Of course, I don't expect--"

"Never mind what you expect," she interrupted, "Please go on with this search, if you are going to make one at all. The vulgarity of the whole thing annoys me, and I do not for a moment suppose that the packet is here."

"It wasn't on Orden," he reminded her sullenly.

"Then he must have sent it somewhere for safe keeping," she replied. "I had already given him cause to do so."

"If he has, then amongst his correspondence there may be some indication as to where he sent it," Fenn pointed out, with unabated ill-temper. "If you don't like the job, and you won't be friendly, you'd better take the easy-chair and wait till I'm through."

She sat down, watching him with angry eyes, uncomfortable, unhappy, humiliated. She seemed to have dropped in a few hours from the realms of rarefied and splendid thought to a world of petty deeds. Not one of her companion's actions was lost upon her. She watched him study with ill-concealed reverence a ducal invitation, saw him read through without hesitation a letter which she felt sure was from Julian's mother. And then:

The change in the man was so startling, his muttered exclamation--so natural that its profanity never even grated. His eyes seemed to be starting out of his head, his lips were drawn back from his teeth.

Blank, unutterable surprise held him, dumb and spellbound, as he stared at a half-sheet of type written notepaper. She herself, amazed at his transformed appearance, found words for the moment impossible. Then a queer change came into his expression. His eyebrows drew closer together, his lips turned malevolently. He pushed the paper underneath a pile of others and turned his head towards her. Their eyes met. There was something like fear in his.

"What is it that you have found?" she cried breathlessly.

"Nothing," he answered, "nothing of any importance."