The Counsellor Page 4

  He paused, looked at his cigarette, and then added:

  “It’s just his ‘satiable curtiosity’ breaking out again.”

  Neither Miss Rainham nor Standish stood in any awe of their employer. They had known him when he was too young to expect reverence. Among themselves, The Counsellor was nicknamed The Elephant’s Child after the animal in The Just So Stories.

  The Counsellor glanced from one to the other in feigned disappointment.

  “You don’t seem bubbling over with enthusiasm and desire to help the young master, and that’s a fact,” he commented.

  “We’ll bail you out when the police arrest you as a public nuisance,” Standish promised. “That’s always something.”

  “And his tall uncle, the Giraffe, spanked him with his hard, hard hoof!” quoted The Counsellor, quite undepressed. “That means you,” he added to Standish.

  “ ‘And still he was full of ‘satiable curtiosity,’ ” Sandra continued the quotation. “And that means you. Seriously, Mark, do you really mean to go down there as the complete detective?”

  “Absolutely,” retorted The Counsellor. “I shall take with me all the necessaries. A hypodermic syringe, cocaine, a violin, a pound of shag, a Thorndyke research case, Sir Clinton Driffield’s copy of Osborn’s Questioned Documents, some of Mr. Fortune’s intuitive capacity in my vest-pocket, and Lord Peter Wimsey’s collection of jade—I can get that into a sack over my shoulder. . . .”

  “I see,” interjected Standish. “You’re going down there disguised as a caddis-worm? It’s an idea, certainly.”

  “. . . and some of Poirot’s little grey cells,” The Counsellor concluded.

  “That’s a sound notion,” Standish conceded. “It’ll be just as well to have some brains with you.”

  Miss Rainham made an arresting gesture.

  “You’ve forgotten the most important thing of all.”

  “Have I. What’s it?”

  “A Watson, of course.”

  “Oh, that?” said The Counsellor in a tone of relief. “That’s provided for. That’s it there.”

  With a jerk of his head, he indicated Standish. His subordinates exchanged a glance and then spoke in stage whispers.

  “He really means to go?”

  “Looks rather like it, doesn’t it? Perhaps he’ll waken up when he actually gets there.”

  “You’d better go with him, Wolf. He might get into trouble, in this state.”

  “Something in that. I can say his nurse let him fall on his head when he was in short clothes.”

  The Counsellor ignored this by-play.

  “While you’ve been chattering, I’ve been thinking,” he explained benignantly. “This is the plan. I’ll go down to Grendon St. Giles to-day, to spy out the land. I hope to clear the matter up at once. If I have to stay overnight, I take rooms at the best hotel—just look it up in the A.A. book, Sandra, please. Wolf will mind the shop here, while I’m away. If I happen to need you, Sandra, I’ll wire for you.”

  “Need me?” demanded Miss Rainham indignantly. “What for?”

  “Delilah, or something in that line, perhaps,” explained The Counsellor casually. “One never knows, beforehand. As to the next broadcast, I’ll get it recorded so as to leave me free.”

  “Napoleonic!” Standish ejaculated in mock admiration. “What a grasp of detail. You’re starting to-day, are you, Bonaparte?”

  “As soon as I can get my car round.”

  Standish reflected for a moment and then began to whistle an air softly.

  “What’s that?” inquired The Counsellor.

  Standish changed his whistle to song:

  “ ‘Malbrouck s’en va-t-en guerre,

  Mironton, mironton, mirontaine,

  Malbrouck s’ en va-t-en guerre,

  Ne sait quand reviendra.’

  It’s what Napoleon whistled as he watched his troops file over the river to the invasion of Russia,” he explained. “It seems appropriate at this solemn moment.”

  “A bright and encouraging lot of helpers I have,” said The Counsellor, disgustedly. “Throw yourself into the part, Watson. Now, Sandra, let’s see that A.A. book. Heaven send there’s a decent hotel.”

  “Grendon St. Giles isn’t in the list,” said Miss Rainham, with satisfaction in her tone. “There’s no hotel there at all, so far as the A.A. goes. There may be a good-pull-up-for-carmen, perhaps.”

  “That being so, I shall probably return to town to-night,” The Counsellor decided, glancing out of the window as he spoke. “I see my car below. The god will now get into the machine. Ta-ta!”

  During the run down to Grendon St. Giles, The Counsellor put his coming business out of his mind. He had no doubts about a successful issue. With thousands of his wireless listeners to help him, the mere tracing of an easily-identifiable car was a dead certainty. But his audience would be interested in the hunt. It would be a good advertisement for his broadcasts. And, just possibly, there might be a story behind this girl’s disappearance, something with the human touch in it. One must play the game, of course. It might not be the kind of thing for public use at all.

  Grendon St. Giles, at the first glimpse, appeared as a little spire rising from among trees. On closer acquaintance, it turned out to be a pleasant little village, the cottage gardens bright with roses, a tiny village green with some spotless geese, a church with a lych-gate, and a tidily-kept inn. A glaring petrol-pump was the only jarring feature in sight.

  The Counsellor picked up the speaking tube.

  “Pull up at that pump,” he directed his chauffeur. “Get a couple of gallons and ask the way to Longstoke House. Then go on there.”

  Longstoke House, it appeared, was a couple of miles further along the road and just beyond an A.A. telephone-box. They turned into a gate. No lodge-keeper appeared, though the cottage was evidently inhabited. A short avenue led up to the main building; and The Counsellor, who kept his eyes open, noted that the proprietor did not seem to spend much in upkeep. What had at one time been the park was now obviously let out as grazing-ground; and the gardens, through part of which they ran as they neared the house, had been allowed to run to seed. The mansion itself, when they came to it, proved to be a gaunt affair in the Rural Italian style; and its uncurtained windows reinforced the impression that the owner spent nothing on outward show. The whole place looked bleak and lifeless, except for the smoke rising from a chimney.

  Telling his chauffeur to wait, The Counsellor got out and went up to the out-jutting portico of the main entrance. He had taken the precaution of wiring before he left London; and when he asked for Mr. Whitgift he was shown into a room and asked to wait for a few moments. Mr. Whitgift, it seemed, was occupied.

  Judging from the size of the mansion, The Counsellor inferred that originally this apartment had been a small morning-room; but from the wholly feminine style of the furnishing it had evidently been converted into the modern equivalent of a boudoir. Its windows, unlike those in the front of the house, were curtained; the colour scheme had been chosen by someone with a good eye; and the furniture combined comfort with a certain artistry. It was obviously a room meant to be lived in. The only discord was struck by the ceiling, which had a heavy, old-fashioned decoration in stucco from the centre of which, in earlier days, a chandelier had evidently depended, for The Counsellor could see the closed end of an old gas-pipe in the middle of the design. Now the lighting was electric, by a standard lamp and a couple of pillar-lights on the mantelpiece. The Counsellor had no time for a further survey, for the door opened and Whitgift appeared.

  He was a big man, rather over six feet in height, with broad shoulders and a slow gait which somehow added to the impression of physical power. Instead of a jacket, he wore a white linen coat, as though he had just come from a workroom. He came forward with a pleasant smile showing even lines of very white teeth. A good mixer, The Counsellor decided at the first glance, a fellow who would get on equally well with men and women.

  “Mr. Brand?
Well, I know you better than you know me, I guess. Your broadcasts, you know. It was very good indeed of you to give us your help in this awkward affair.”

  His face clouded at the last sentence as though it touched some sore spot in himself. Then he recovered himself almost immediately.

  “Sit down, won’t you? Cigarette? Or perhaps you’d rather smoke your own brand?”

  He took a box of cigarettes from a table near by, offered them to The Counsellor, picked out one for himself and lighted it before saying anything further. Meanwhile his eyes were evidently busy with Brand’s outward appearance. It seemed to be not quite what he had expected.

  “Any further news of Miss Treverton?” The Counsellor asked, as soon as he got his cigarette alight.

  Whitgift shook his head despondently.

  “Not a sign of her. It’s extraordinary. I can’t make it out, you know. She was a level-headed girl, not the sort of girl to fly off the handle. Nothing freakish about her, I mean.”

  He went over to a writing-desk and came back with a framed enlargement of a snapshot which he handed to The Counsellor. It showed a girl in a sports coat stooping to pat a collie. She was looking towards the camera, and The Counsellor saw at a glance that she had an attractive face, with a frank smile and a dimple on each cheek. In the flesh, she must be pretty; and, judging purely from the snapshot, The Counsellor put her down as a girl of character, dependable, and not at all likely to indulge in silly pranks.

  “That’s her collie with her, poor old Clyde,” Whitgift explained. “He died less than a week ago. We found him out in the fields one morning, stiff. She was immensely fond of the beast, and I guess that’s why she has the photo on her desk. I took it myself about six weeks back, the last one she had of him.”

  “She wasn’t engaged, was she?” asked The Counsellor, who had noted the ringless finger visible in the picture. “Nothing of that sort to account for her vanishing?”

  “No, she wasn’t engaged,” Whitgift answered with a reluctant sullenness in his tone which attracted The Counsellor’s attention. “There was an American who was keen on her at one time, but nothing came of it that I know. Querrin, his name was, Howard Querrin. Not good enough for her, I thought, and probably she thought the same.”

  That sounded almost like a touch of jealousy, The Counsellor reflected. And not so unlikely, perhaps. Grendon St. Giles obviously offered little in the way of society. Whitgift must have seen a good deal of the girl, if she lived on the premises here. Add her attractiveness to the propinquity factor, and it wasn’t unlikely that he might fall in love with her. If he had, then his obvious dislike of an intruding rival, in the form of this American, was intelligible. There might be something in Sandra Rainham’s suggestion about the nature of Whitgift’s interest in the case. But that was a side-issue. The Counsellor’s present interest was in the facts of the disappearance.

  “Was it her own car that she went off in?” he asked.

  Whitgift nodded.

  “Yes, we’ve each got a car. Treverton has an old Ford, though he seldom uses it; and I’ve got a car down at the lodge. I live there, you know.”

  The Counsellor reflected before putting his next question.

  “What about money? Could she lay her hands on enough to finance her for, say, a month away from home? Without asking her uncle for it, I mean.”

  “Oh, yes, easily. Her father left her some capital, I believe. I know she put a fair sum into the Press when she came of age four or five years ago. We’re all in it, if it comes to that, you see. I’m a director, as well as shareholder and expert, myself. Dividends are sub-microscopic, though. She had the rest of her capital, whatever it was, in other concerns which paid better, one hopes. I don’t suppose she was rich, by any means; but she had enough to go on with, I think. Enough for a girl living here, anyhow.”

  He pondered for a moment or two, then added reluctantly:

  “I believe she and her uncle. . . . Well, there’s been some faint friction because lately she talked of taking her cash out of this concern. But that’s between ourselves, of course.”

  “I’d like to hear just how she came to disappear,” said The Counsellor.

  “I can tell you what I know myself, but that’s not much. Last Thursday morning, I had to go into Grendon St. Giles on an errand. My own car was scuppered at the moment, something gone wrong with the pump; and it was at the village garage getting fixed. That was a blazing day, you remember, and I didn’t cotton to tramping four miles through it. Miss Treverton offered to take me in. She’d some things she wanted herself. . . . By Jove! I never thought of that!” he ejaculated. “It was your mentioning cash that brings it back. She called at the bank while I was doing my own bits of business.”

  He seemed impressed by this recollection.

  “The bank could tell us how much she drew,” he suggested.

  “Banks don’t babble about their customers’ affairs,” said The Counsellor, impatiently. “The counterfoil of her cheque book’s all you want. Time enough for that. Go on with the story.”

  “All right,” agreed Whitgift, though he seemed to keep the point at the back of his mind. “We came back here. She put her car into the garage because the sun was so hot that it would have been bad for the tyres to leave it standing about. Just as she was switching off, I happened to look at the petrol-gauge and saw her tank was empty, almost. We keep a stock of tins in the garage, just for that kind of emergency, so I pointed out the state of things and offered to fill up her tank for her while she went over to the house. I filled it full, and then came back here myself. That was before luncheon.”

  “Yes, yes,” said The Counsellor. “Your point is that she started off in the afternoon with a full tank. I understand.”

  Whitgift nodded and continued:

  “That afternoon, as I told you in my letter, some people Trulock were giving a kind of garden party, of sorts, and Miss Treverton was going to it. Treverton wasn’t going; he hates all that kind of thing. The Trulocks live about eight miles away and she was going over in her Vauxhall. As it happened, I’d had to go down to the lodge about three o’clock to get a document I’d left in another suit, and I met her with her car as I was coming up the avenue again. I stopped her and told her about having filled her tank, and I saw her glance at the gauge. We said a few sentences to each other, but I can’t remember what they were—just commonplaces about the tennis-party, wishing her a good game, that sort of thing, you know. Finally she drove off, and that was the last I saw of her. That was almost exactly at three o’clock. I know that, because a bus passed the lodge gate while we were talking, and it’s timed to reach Grendon St. Giles at five past three. That’s the last I saw of her,” he repeated.

  Something in the tone of his voice betrayed an anxiety which hitherto he had apparently striven to keep under control.

  “How was she dressed, then?” demanded The Counsellor, more concerned to pick up information than to trouble about Whitgift’s feelings.

  “A light grey coat and skirt, but it’s no good asking me what the material was. I know nothing about girls’ clothes. She was driving over, dressed like that. But she was going to play tennis. She had her racquet in its press on the seat beside her, I noticed; and she had an attaché case, too, with a tennis shirt and shorts and tennis shoes in it, I suppose. She meant to change when she got to the Trulocks. So I suppose, anyhow. There’s quite a good court at the Trulocks’ place, I’m told. I’ve never played on it, though. I’m not more than a nodding acquaintance of Trulock.”

  “And what happened after this?” asked The Counsellor.

  “Nothing. She didn’t come home, that’s all. I told you the rest in my letter, about my getting anxious and ringing up the Trulocks. She hadn’t arrived there, they said. Apparently they took it that she’d got a headache or something like that and hadn’t felt up to going over, and they expected that she’d ring up and explain later on. They’d had enough people there to make up their sets, so they hadn’t bothered to
ring her up and ask why she’d given them a miss.”

  “Yes, yes,” said The Counsellor. “And when did you begin to get anxious about her?”

  “Not till about midnight,” Whitgift explained. “I thought perhaps they’d got up a scratch dance or something and that she’d stayed on for that. It was a hot night, you remember, and I’d been sitting out in a camp-chair at the lodge, trying to get cool, so I knew she hadn’t come home. Naturally I began to get a bit worried, so I came up here, got in with my latch-key, and rang up the Trulocks.”

  The Counsellor had a picture in his mind’s eye of this big man sitting out in his garden in the gathering dusk, watching, watching for the return of that car, with anxiety growing as the clock crept on. Had Whitgift proposed to that girl and, despite a refusal, kept some hope alive of her changing her mind? Or was it that he hadn’t enough money to make a proposal reasonable? That passing remark about the finances of the Ravenscourt Press might point in this direction. And that, too, might account for the jealousy in the matter of the American.

  “Mr. Treverton hadn’t become anxious when his niece failed to turn up?” asked The Counsellor.

  “Apparently not,” Whitgift confessed. “I woke him up when I got the message from the Trulocks, but he wasn’t exactly grateful. He came to the door of his room and grumbled at being disturbed. The girl was old enough to look after herself, and that sort of thing. Between ourselves, you must remember that there had been that friction between him and Miss Treverton over the matter of the money she has in the business, and perhaps that didn’t make him very sympathetic. He’s . . . well . . . a little peculiar in money matters.”

  “Is he?” inquired The Counsellor, without apparent interest.

  “He’s a queer mixture,” Whitgift declared. “Now, when we took over this house for our work, there was no current laid on. It had been empty for years; and the Grid hadn’t reached out to here when it was last inhabited. What they’d used was acetylene gas. There’s a generator in the stables. That was no good to us, of course, so the plant was scrapped and we got in the Grid current. But tearing out the old acetylene piping would have cost some money—not much—and Treverton absolutely refused to spend a penny on that. You can see the piping still in place up there. And most people would have pulled down all this ghastly stucco ornamentation and made a plain plaster ceiling, just to get rid of these eyesores in every room. He wouldn’t, although it could have been done cheap enough, and he’s got an artistic eye which must make him gulp every time he sees one of these abominations. That looks as if he’s mean, doesn’t it? Well, he isn’t mean when it comes to the Press. We’re a very small company working on on a mere mite of capital, and naturally we run up bills which we often can’t pay. If we do, Treverton steps in, foots the bills out of his own pocket, and never thinks of charging that up to the company. A man who does that kind of thing isn’t really mean, as you can see for yourself. It’s simply that with him the Press comes first and foremost all the time, though he grudges money in every other direction.”