The Crimson Circle quotes

Three times he tried and three times he failed, and then the indignant spectators broke through the military cordon, and the prisoner was taken back into the gaol.

Eleven years later that nail killed many people.

“Don’t light your cigar here,” said the driver, “or I shall think that your smoking is really an excuse to strike a match.

And remember this, my friend, that the man who knows me, carries his knowledge to hell.

”

“

Never trust a man or woman until you know the worst of them

,” he said. “I’ve got a man coming to see me today who is a respectable member of society. He has a record as black as my hat and yet I’m going to do business with him—I know the worst!”

For a second a ghost of a smile showed at the corner of her mouth.

“Because I’ve read books,” she said solemnly, “and poor girl secretaries who aren’t stiff and formal with millionaire’s sons usually come to a bad end!”

She had a trick of directness which was very disconcerting.

“Because I’ve read books,” she said solemnly, “and poor girl secretaries who aren’t stiff and formal with millionaire’s sons usually come to a bad end!”

She had a trick of directness which was very disconcerting.

“Besides,” she said, “there is no reason why I shouldn’t be stiff and formal. It is the conventional attitude which people adopt toward their fellow creatures, unless they are very fond of them, and I’m not very fond of you.”

He was a skinny man, in the early fifties, colourless, sharp-featured, prematurely bald.

He had an unpleasant habit of baring his long yellow teeth when he asked a question, a grimace which in some curious way suggested his belief that the answer would be an evasion.

“Morning, Beardmore,” he jerked the salutation grudgingly and turned again to his secretary.

“You see, Jack,” said Yale gently, “you have probably been as much deceived as Froyant. The girl is a thief.”

“If she were a thief and murderess,” said Jack doggedly, “I love her.”

“I asked you for the money,” said the girl coolly.

“If you hadn’t been such a wicked old skinflint, you’d have let me have it.”

“You—you—” spluttered Froyant, and then with a gasp—“I charge her, inspector. I charge her with theft. You shall go to prison for this. Mark my words, young woman. Wait—wait,” he raised his hand. “I will see if anything else is missing.”

Harvey Froyant rose at the same time and made his way out of the court. He was a rich man to whom money represented the goal and object of life.

He was the type of man who counted the contents of his pocket every night before he went to bed, and he would have had his own mother arrested in similar circumstances.

Thalia Drummond’s offence was made more heinous in his eyes because her last act of service had been to hand to him the warning of the Crimson Circle, from the shock of which he had not yet recovered.

“That’s what it means. I can’t have people like you staying in a respectable house. I’m surprised at you, a young lady as I always thought you were.”

“Continue to think so,” said Thalia coolly. “I’m both young and ladylike.”

But the stout landlady was not to be checked in her well-rehearsed indictment.

“And I should like to say—” began the woman.

“Say it on the mat,” said Thalia, and closed the door in the choleric lady’s face.

As it was now growing dark, she lit a kerosene lamp and occupied the evening by manicuring her nails, an operation which was interrupted by the arrival of the nine o’clock post.

“You had better tell your friends that you’re going to get a new address,” said the woman, loath to leave her quarrel half-finished.

“I haven’t told my friends yet that I live in such a horrible place,” said Thalia sweetly, and locked the door before the woman could think of a suitable reply.

She smiled as she carried the envelope to the light. It was addressed in printed characters. She turned it over, looking at the postmark before she opened it, and extracted a thick white card.

Today, with a razor-sharp knife, he was cutting to shreds a pair of pointed patent leather shoes which he had only worn three times. Strip by strip he cut the leather, which he then placed on the fire.

Some men live intensely and suffer intensely.

Mr. Felix Marl was one of those who could crowd into a day the terrors of an aeon.

Some men live intensely and suffer intensely.

Mr. Felix Marl was one of those who could crowd into a day the terrors of an aeon.

In some manner a newspaper had got hold of the story of the footprint in Beardmore’s ground, and a new fear had been added to the many which confused and paralysed this big man.

Her eyes took him in from his dyed hair to his painfully varnished boots.

“You’re a wicked old man,” she said calmly, “but dinner is my favourite meal.”

His grin broadened and the fires of conquest flickered in his faded eyes.

“If amours is French for boys, I haven’t,” she said. “I’ve come to have a straight talk with you, Drummond.”

“Straight talks are meat and drink to me,” said Thalia Drummond.

“Do you remember the money that went out by registered post last Friday to the Sellinger Corporation?”

Thalia swung round and looked at the other under lowered brows.

“What have we here?” she asked in mock consternation. “A female sleuth! Heavens, I am indeed undone!”

The extravagant mockery of it all took Milly aback.

“There’s a gentleman I know—”

“Say ‘man,’ ” said Thalia. “Gentleman always reminds me of a tailor’s ad.”

“Well, a man if you like,” said the patient Miss Macroy. “He’s a friend of mine and he’s been watching you for a week or two, and he thinks you’re the kind of clever girl who might make a lot of money without trouble.

“There’ll be none of that, you understand, Drummond,” she said decisively. “This fellow and I are sort of—engaged.”

“Heaven forbid,” said Thalia Drummond piously, “that I should come between two loving hearts.”

“And you needn’t be sarcastic either,” said Macroy, redder still. “I tell you that there’s to be no lovey-dovey stuff in this. It’s real business, you understand?”

“You’ve been a long time, Drummond,” grumbled Miss Macroy. “You mustn’t keep my friend waiting, you know. He doesn’t like it.”

“He’ll get over that,” said Thalia. “I do not run to timetable where men are concerned.”

She fell in by Milly’s side and they walked a hundred yards along the busy thoroughfare before they turned into Reeder Street.

He shook his head waggishly.

“You’re as full of information as last year’s almanac,” said Thalia Drummond coolly.

“I suppose you didn’t bring me here to exchange compliments?”

“Martha,” she said, “I shan’t want any tea, thank you. Lay out my blue evening gown and telephone to Waltham’s Garage and tell them that I shall want a car to be here at five minutes before half past seven.”

Miss Drummond’s wages from the bank were exactly £4 a week.

“Wait, wait,” he begged. “I want to have a little talk with you about your boss. I can do you a lot of good in that firm—at the bank, Thalia. Who called you Thalia?”

“My godfathers and godmothers, M. or N.,” said Thalia solemnly

, and Mr. Marl squeaked his delight at her humour.

“I think not,” chuckled Mr. Marl. “Now, Thalia, be the dear, good little girl I thought you were.”

“I should hate to dissipate any illusions you may have about my character,” said Thalia coolly.

“You’ll open that door, please.”

A small police audience, which had listened awestricken whilst Yale had developed his theory, could understand the inspector’s feelings. Apparently Yale did, too, for with a good-humoured laugh he made his excuses and went home.

There are moments when the headquarters police should be left alone with their own emotions.

Nobody realised this more than Derrick Yale.

“They’re my own, I tell you, Mr. Parr,” he protested, “would I tell you a lie?”

“Of course you would,” said Inspector Parr without heat.

“If they are your own, where did you get them?”

“Why do you steal, Miss Drummond?”

“Because it is my nature to,” she said without hesitation. “Why should kleptomania be confined to the ruling classes?”

“Do you get any satisfaction out of it?” he demanded. “I’m not asking out of idle curiosity, but as a student of human man and woman.”

Solemn though she was, her eyes were dancing with merriment.

“You’re a queer woman, Thalia Drummond,” said Parr, “and yet I’m sure there is some good in you.”

The remark seemed to cause her unbounded amusement. She laughed until the tears were in her eyes, and Jack grinned sympathetically.

Derrick Yale has gone to search Beardmore’s riverside house.

Thalia Drummond was nothing if not dutiful.

The house stood upon a little wharf, and was a picture of desolation and neglect. The stone foundation of the wharf was in decay, the parapet broken, the yard a wilderness of weed;

“

What charming people we all are when our lives are laid bare!

” he said, and Mr. Froyant resented the implied censure, for it was his boast that his life was a book. He might have added in truth a bankbook.

Only for a second was Thalia taken aback, and then she laughed.

“Well, do you know, Milly Macroy,” she drawled, “when I think of poor ‘Flush’ Barnet in Brixton Gaol, I just have to sniff something to put him out of my mind.”

Macroy banged down the bottle on the table with a snort.

“There may be a trap in the floor,” suggested Yale.

“There are no traps in drawing-room floors in the West End of London,” snapped Parr, but a further search had a surprising result.

Turning up one corner of the carpet, a small trapdoor was discovered, and the butler explained that in the days of the war, when air raids were a nightly occurrence, Mr.

“I am perfectly sure that you are not, in your heart of hearts, a murderess. That word makes you wince, and it is an ugly one. But there are suspicious circumstances which I have not yet revealed to Parr about your movements last night.”

“Being under suspicion is a normal condition with me,” she said, “and since you know so much, it is quite unnecessary for me to tell you more.”

He looked at her, but she returned his gaze without faltering, and then with a shrug of his shoulders, he said:

“Really, I don’t think it matters where you were.”

“I’m almost inclined to agree with you,” she mocked him, and went back to her office and her typewriter.

“An amazing personality,” thought Derrick Yale.

Women did not ordinarily interest him, but Thalia Drummond was beyond and outside of the general run.

Her beauty had no appeal for him; he knew she was pretty, just as he knew his office door was painted brown and that the colour of a penny stamp was red.

He took up the paper again and reread some of the comments upon the inefficiency of police headquarters, and soon after, as he had expected, Parr came into the room with a certain briskness and dropped into a chair.

“I don’t think you need wait for that. But, joking apart, why resign at all? Do you think if I saw the Commissioner—”

“He’d take much less notice of you than he would of a row of beans if they started articulating,” said Mr. Parr.

“As a matter of fact, he isn’t taking me off the case until my resignation comes into effect, and I have you to thank for that.”

They seem to do almost as much as they like, and I don’t see why they should not live in a very handsome block with elevators and electric signs—no, I don’t think they’d better have electric signs, because even the police would see them!”

“Sarcasm in a young woman,” said Mr. Parr severely, “is not only unbecoming, it is indecent!”

Yale was listening to this exchange with a delighted smile. If the girl surprised him, there were moments when Inspector Parr surprised him as much. This heavy man had a very light malicious touch when he wished.

Yale was listening to this exchange with a delighted smile. If the girl surprised him, there were moments when Inspector Parr surprised him as much.

This heavy man had a very light malicious touch when he wished.

“And where were you last night, Miss Drummond?” asked Parr, his eyes on the ground.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Criticism never did anybody any harm; it is only when a man knows he is wrong that this kind of stuff irritates him. As I happen to know I am right, it doesn’t matter to me what they say.”

“You really think you are right? In what respect?” asked Jack curiously, but here Parr was not offering any information.

“What is it?” asked Jack.

“I’m joining the Cabinet,” said Mr. Parr, and laughed as Jack had never seen him laugh before.

“I confess I can see little to admire,” he said. “You take rather a queer, twisted view of things.”

“Don’t I?” she said coolly. “You must never forget, Mr. Yale, that I have a queer, twisted mind.”

He paused at the door of his room and looked back at her, a long, keen scrutiny, which she met without so much as an eyelid quivering.

She looked at him up and down with that cool, insolent glance of hers.

“There are many ways one may meet men,” she said. “One may advertise for them in the matrimonial newspapers, or one may meet them in the park, or one may be introduced to them. I was introduced to Mr. Willings.”

“This morning,” she said, “at about two o’clock. I sometimes go to dances at Merros Club,” she explained. “It is the relaxation which my youth excuses. That is where we became acquainted.”

“There is your week’s wages, Miss Drummond,” he said without heat. “I shall not require your services after this afternoon.”

“Aren’t you going to reform me?” she asked him so seriously that he was taken aback.

Then he laughed.

She picked up the money and counted it.

“Exactly the sum,” she mocked. “You must be Scottish, Mr. Yale.”

“There is only one way that you could be reformed, Thalia Drummond.” His voice was very earnest, and he seemed to experience a difficulty in finding the right words.

The organisation of this great force was extraordinarily complete.

In some uncanny way the chief of the Crimson Circle had smelt penury and disaster almost as soon as the suffering recipients of these two evil factors were aware that they were present.

One by one they had been absorbed, each ignorant of the other’s identity, and profoundly ignorant of their master. He had come to them in strange places and circumstances.

With the envelope in her hand she walked to the door.

“I shall see you tomorrow, Mr. Beardmore, if you are alive.”

He would have laughed, but there was something in her drawn face, some message in her quivering lips, that checked the laughter on his.

Willings came in a few seconds later, and greeted her warmly.

“Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die; perhaps today,” he said melodramatically.

“Have you heard the news?”

Without warning he delivered himself of a sentiment which seemed to have no bearing whatever upon the matter they were discussing.

“All great criminals come to grief through trifling errors of judgment,” he said oracularly.

“The error of judgment in this case, I presume, being that they didn’t kill our friend Willings—he is not a nice man, and I should imagine of all the members of the Cabinet he could best be spared.

Mr. Parr pursed his thick lips.

“If somebody came to me and told me the Archbishop was the leading light, I shouldn’t be surprised, Mr. Beardmore,” he said.

“By the time this Crimson Circle business is settled, we are all going to have shocks. I started my investigations prepared to believe that anybody might be the Crimson Circle—you, or Marl, the Commissioner or Derrick Yale, Thalia Drummond—almost anybody.”

She explained her attitude when they sat together in the big gaunt waiting-room of the gaol, he at one end of the table and she at the other.

“You must excuse my not seeing you in my apartment, Mr. Parr,” she said. “But so many promising young emissaries of the Crimson Circle have met with an untimely end through interviewing policemen in their cells.”

“The only one I can recall,” said Parr stolidly, “is Sibly.”