The Summons Part 39

Again A.C. spoke at the other end from an office in Scotland Yard.

Graham put down the instrument with a bang and hung up the receiver.

"He vanished yesterday. Could he have seen you?"

Hillyard shook his head.

"I think not."

"Oh, we'll get him, of course. He can't escape from the country. And we will get him pretty soon," Graham declared. He looked out of the window on to the river. "I wonder what in the world alarmed him, since it wasn't you?" he speculated slowly.

But both Scotland Yard and Commodore Graham were out of their reckoning for once. Mario Escobar was not alarmed at all. He had packed his bag, taken the tube to his terminus, bought his ticket and gone off in a train. Only no one had noticed him go; and that was all there was to it.

CHAPTER XX

LADY SPLAY'S PREOCCUPATIONS

"It's a good race to leave alone, Miranda," said Dennis Brown. "But if you want to back something, I should put a trifle on Kinky Jane."

"Thank you, Dennis," Miranda answered absently. She was standing upon the lawn at Gatwick with her face towards the line of bookmakers upon the far side of the railings. These men were shouting at the full frenzy of their voices, in spite of the heat and the dust. The ring was crowded, and even the enclosure more than usually full.

"But you won't get any price," Harold Jupp continued, and he waved an indignant arm towards the bookmakers. "I never saw such a crowd of pinchers in my life."

"Thank you, Harold," Miranda replied politely. She was aware that he was advising her, but the nature of the advice did not reach her mind. She was staring steadily in front of her.

Dennis Brown and Harold Jupp looked at one another in alarm. They knew well that sibylline look on the face of Miranda Brown. She was awaiting the moment of inspiration. She was all wrapped up in expectation of it.

At times she glanced at her race-card, whilst a thoughtful frown puckered her pretty forehead, as though the name of the winning filly might leap out in letters of gold.

Dennis shook his head dolefully. For the one thing sure and certain was that the fatal moment of inspiration would come to Miranda in time to allow her to reach the railings before the start. Suddenly a name uttered by an apoplectic gentleman in a voice breaking with fine pa.s.sion reached her ears, with the odds attached to it of nine to one.

Miranda's face cleared of all its troubles.

"Oh, why didn't I think of that before?" she said in an extremity of self-reproach. She walked straight to the apoplectic gentleman, followed by the unhappy pair of scientific punters.

"Callow Girl is nine to one, isn't it?"

The apoplectic gentleman smiled winningly.

"To you, missie."

Miranda laughed.

"I'll have ten pounds on it," she said, and did not hear the gasp of her husband behind her. She made a note of the bet in her little pocket-book.

"That's ninety pounds, anyway," she said, turning to her companions.

"They will just buy that simple little Callot frock with the embroidery."

Yes, racing was as easy as that to Miranda Brown. She wanted a simple little Callot frock which would cost ninety pounds, and Callow Girl was obviously marked out to win it for her.

"Then I shall be a Callot girl," she said gaily, and as neither of her companions enjoyed her witticism she stamped her small foot in vexation.

"Oh, how dull you both are!" she cried.

"Well, you see," Dennis rejoined, "we've had rather a bad day."

"So have I," returned Miranda indignantly. "Yet I keep up my spirits."

A look of blank amazement overspread the face of Dennis Brown. He gazed around as one who should say, "Did you ever see anything so amazing outside the Ark?"

Miranda corrected her remark with a laugh.

"Well, I mean I haven't won as much as I should have if I had backed winners." For she had really mastered the science of the race-course.

She knew how to go racing. Her husband paid her losses and she kept her winnings.

Harold Jupp took her seriously by the arm.

"You ought to go into a home, Miranda," he advised. "You really ought.

That little head was never meant for all this weighty thought."

Miranda walked across to the little stone terrace which looks down the course.

"Don't be foolish, Harold, but go and collect Colonel Luttrell if you can find him, whilst I see my filly win," she said. "Dennis has already gone to find the car and we propose to start immediately this race is over."

Miranda ascended the gra.s.s slope and saw the fillies canter down towards the starting post. From the chatter about her she gathered that the odds on Callow Girl had shortened. It was understood that a sum of money had been laid on her at the last moment. She was favourite before the flag was dropped and won by half a length. Miranda ran joyously down the slope.

"What did I tell you, Harold? Aren't I wonderful? And have you found Colonel Luttrell? You know Millie told us to look out for him?" she cried all in a breath.

Luttrell had written to Lady Splay to say that he would try to motor to Gatwick in time for the last races; and that he would look out for Jupp and Dennis Brown, whom he had already met earlier in the week at a dinner party given by Martin Hillyard.

"There's no sign of him," Harold Jupp answered.

There were two more races, but the party from Rackham Park did not wait for them. They drove over the flat country through Crawley and Horsham and came to the wooded roads between high banks where the foliage met overhead, and to the old stone bridges over quiet streams. Harold Jupp was home from Egypt, Dennis Brown from Salonika, and as the great downs, with their velvet forests, seen now over a thick hedge, now in an opening of branches like the frame of a locket, the marvel of the English countryside in summer paid them in full for their peril and endurance.

"I have a fortnight, Miranda," said Dennis, dropping a hand upon his wife's. "Think of it!"

"My dear, I have been thinking of nothing else for months," she said softly. Terrors there had been, nights and days of them, terrors there would be, but she had a fortnight now, perfect in its season, and in the meeting of old friends upon familiar ground--a miniature complete in beauty, like the glimpses of the downs seen through the openings amongst the boughs.

"Yes, a whole fortnight," she cried and laughed, and just for a second turned her head away, since just for a second the tears glistened in her eyes.

The car turned and twisted through the puzzle of the Petworth streets and mounted on to the Midhurst road. The three indefatigable race-goers found Lady Splay sitting with Martin Hillyard in the hall of Rackham Park.

"You had a good day, I hope," she said.

"It was wonderful," exclaimed Dennis Brown. "We didn't make any money except Miranda. But that didn't matter."

"All our horses were down the course," Harold Jupp explained. "They weren't running in their form at all"; and he added cheerfully: "But the war may be over before the winter, and then we'll go chasing and get it all back."