The Square Emerald

Lady Raytham drew aside the long velvet curtains and looked down into Berkeley Square. It was half-past four o’clock on a cheerless February evening. Rain and sleet were falling, and a thin yellow mist added to the gloom of the dying day. An interminable string of cars and taxicabs was turning towards Berkeley Street, their shining black roofs reflecting the glare of the overhead lights that had just then hissed and spluttered to life.

She looked blankly towards the desolation of the gardens, a place of bare-limbed trees and shivering shrubs⁠—stared, as though she expected to see some fog wraith take a definite and menacing shape, and give tangible form to the shadows that menaced reason and life.

She was a woman of twenty-eight, straight and slim. Hers was the type of classical beauty which would defy the markings of age for the greater part of a lifetime. A fascinating face⁠—calm, austere, her eyes a cold English grey. You might imagine her the patrician abbess of some great conventual establishment, or a lady of broad manors defending inexorably the stark castle of her lord against the enemy who came in his absence. Analyze her face, feature by feature, put one with the other, and judge her by the standards which profess to measure such things, and brow and chin said “purpose” with unmistakable emphasis.

She was not in her purposeful mood now; rather was she uncertain and irritable, the nearest emotions to fear she knew.

She let the curtains fall back until they overlapped, and walked across to the fireplace, glancing at the tiny clock. The saloon was half lit; the wall sconces were dark, but the big lamp on the table near the settee glowed redly.

Druze had come in noiselessly at the door and stood, hand clasping hand. His face was strangely pale; as he spoke his right cheek twitched spasmodically.

“Yes?”

“Will your ladyship see Miss Leslie Maughan⁠—?”

“Miss!” snorted Anita, as Jane Raytham rose.

“Miss Leslie Maughan, of the Criminal Investigation Department, Scotland Yard?”

Lady Raytham put out her hand and gripped the back of the chair; her face was bloodless, she opened her mouth to speak, but no word came. Greta was staring at the big woman, but Princess Anita Bellini had no eyes but for the pale butler.

“I will see her⁠—in the small drawing-room, Druze. Excuse me.”

She swept out of the room and pulled the door behind her until Druze had disappeared round the lower landing. By her right hand was the door of her own room, and she entered swiftly and noiselessly, switching on the lights as she closed the door. She stared into the mirror. Ghastly! That white, drawn face of hers carried confession. Had she been betrayed? Had they fulfilled their threat?

Pulling out a drawer of her dressing-table, she fumbled for and found a little pot of rouge, and with a quick, deft hand brought an unaccustomed bloom to her cheeks.

Another glance at her face in the glass and she went out and sailed down the stairs, a smile on her lips and in her heart despair.

Leslie Maughan came striding briskly along the Thames Embankment. It was a bitterly cold night, and the nutria coat was not proof against the icy northerner which was blowing. The man who walked by her side was head and shoulders taller than she. He had the gait of a soldier, and his umbrella twirled rhythmically to his pace.

“Suicide on the left,” he said pleasantly, as though he were a guide pointing out the sights.

The girl checked her pace and looked back.

“Really? You don’t mean that, Mr. Coldwell?”

Her eyes were fixed upon the dark figure sprawling across the parapet, his arms resting on the granite crown, his chin on his hands. He was a gaunt figure of a man, differing in no respect from the waifs who would gather here from midnight onward and strive to snatch a little sleep between the policeman’s visits.

“It is any odds,” said Mr. Coldwell carefully, “when you see one of these birds watching the river in that way, he is thinking up a new way of settling old accounts. Are you interested⁠—sentimentally?”

She hesitated.

“Yes, a little. I don’t know whether it’s sentiment or just feminine curiosity.”

She left his side abruptly and walked back to the man, who may have been watching her out of the corner of his eyes, for he straightened himself up quickly.

“Down and out?” she asked, and heard his soft laugh.

The bed was soft⁠—too soft. Although he was desperately tired, he tossed from side to side in a vain endeavour to sleep. It must have been two hours before he dozed, and then he woke.

It was a shrill, thin cry that woke him, and he sat up in bed listening. It came again, from somewhere downstairs. It was a cat, he thought, no human voice was capable of such an attenuation of sound.

Again the cry. He got out of bed, walked to the door, opened it, and bent his head, listening. And then the hair of his head rose. It was a child’s sobs he heard, and then a voice.

“I want my daddy! I want my daddy!”

He heard Mrs. Inglethorne’s growling voice, as if she had been wakened from her sleep.

“Shut up, blast you! If I get up to you I’ll break your neck!”

And then the voices ceased, and Peter went back to bed. But it was not until the sound of closing doors in the street told him that the early workers were abroad that he fell into a troubled sleep, disturbed by dreams of a child who cried and moaned all the time: “I want my daddy! I want my daddy!”

He strode up the gravelled drive. No light showed in any window; even the transom above the massive front door was lifeless. He pulled the bell and the faint clang of it came back to him. After a long time he heard the rattle of chains, the shooting back of a bolt, and a faint light was reflected behind the fanlight. The door was opened a few inches by a very old man with dirty white hair and wearing the slovenly uniform of a footman. Peter saw that the longer chain was still fastened to the door, and that the aperture was not big enough to squeeze through.

“You’re Simms, aren’t you?” He remembered the ancient. “I want to see the Princess.”

The old man made the grimace that Peter remembered.

“You can’t see the Princess; she’s not at home,” he said, in a loud, cracked voice.

“Tell her Peter Dawlish wishes to see her, and if she will not let me in she can come to the door,” he said.

He was not prepared to have the door slammed in his face, yet that was what happened. He waited for five minutes, and then he heard the lock turn. This time he saw Anita. She wore a long green dress, smothered as usual with beading which glittered in the dim hall light.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“I want to speak to you privately.”