For a moment Jeff Legge stood, helpless with rage. Then he flung all his weight against the door, but it did not yield. He took up the telephone, but changed his mind. He did not want a scandal. Least of all did he wish to be advertised as Jeffrey Legge. Compromise was a blessed word – he knocked at the door.
“Marney, come out and be sensible,” he said, “I was only joking. The whole thing was just to try you—”
She offered no reply. There was probably a telephone in the bedroom, he thought. Would she dare call her father? He heard another door unlocked. The bedroom gave on to the corridor, and he went out, to see the big chambermaid emerging. She was alone, and no sooner was she outside the door than it was locked upon her.
“I’ll report you to the management,” he said furiously. He could have murdered her without compunction. But his rage made no impression upon the phlegmatic Welsh woman.
“A good character I have, look you, from all my employers. To be in the bedroom, it was my business. You shall not use bad language to me, look you, or I will have the law on you!”
Jeffrey thought quickly. He waited in the corridor until the woman had disappeared, then he beckoned from the far end a man who was evidently the floor waiter.
“Go down to the office and ask the manager, with my compliments, if I can have a second set of keys to my rooms,” he said suavely. “My wife wishes to have her own.”
He slipped a bill into the man’s hand, of such magnitude that the waiter was overwhelmed.
“Certainly, sir. I think I can arrange,” he said.
“And perhaps you would lend me your pass key,” said Jeff carelessly.
“I haven’t a pass key, sir. Only the management have that,” replied the man; “but I believe I can get you what you want.”
He came back in a few minutes to the sittingroom with many apologies. There were no duplicate sets of keys.
Jeff closed the sittingroom door on the man and locked it. Then he went over to the bedroom door.
“Marney!” he called, and this time she answered him. “Are you going to be sensible?”
“I think I’m being very sensible,” was her reply.
“Come out and talk to me.”
“Thank you, I would rather remain here.”
There was a pause.
“If you go to your father, I will follow and kill him. I’ve got to shoot first, you know, Marney, after what you’ve told me.”
There was a silence, and he knew that his words had impressed her.
“Think it over,” he suggested. “Take your time about it.”
“Will you promise to leave me alone?” she asked.
“Why, sure, I’ll promise anything,” he said, and meant it. “Come out, Marney,” he wheedled. “You can’t stay there all day. You’ve got to eat.”
“The woman will bring me my dinner,” was the instant reply, and Jeffrey cursed her softly.
“All right, have it your own way,” he said. “But I tell you this, that if you don’t come out tonight, there will be trouble in your happy family.”
He was satisfied, even though she did not answer him, that Marney would make no attempt to communicate with her father – that night, at least. After that night, nothing mattered.
He got on to the telephone, but the man he sought had not arrived. A quarter of an hour later, as he was opening his second bottle of champagne, the telephone bell tinkled and Emanuel Legge’s voice answered him.
“She’s giving me trouble,” he said in a low voice, relating what had happened.
He heard his father’s click of annoyance and hastened to excuse his own precipitancy.
“She had to know sooner or later.”
“You’re a fool,” snarled the old man. “Why couldn’t you leave it?”
“You’ve got to cover me here,” said Jeff urgently. “If she phones to Peter, there is going to be trouble. And Johnny—”
“Don’t worry about Johnny,” said Emanuel Legge unpleasantly. “There will be no kick coming from him.”
He did not offer any explanation, and Jeff was too relieved by the assurance in his father’s voice to question him on the subject.
“Take a look at the keyhole,” said Emanuel, “and tell me if the key’s in the lock. Anyway, I’ll send you a couple of tools, and you’ll open that door in two jiffs – but you’ve got to wait until the middle of the night, when she’s asleep.”
Half an hour later a small package arrived by district messenger, and Jeffrey, cutting the sealed cord, opened the little box and picked out two curiously wrought instruments. For an hour he practised on the door of the second bedroom leading from the saloon, and succeeded in turning the key from the reverse side. Toward dinnertime he heard voices in Marney’s bedroom, and, creeping to the door, listened. It was the Welsh woman, and there came to his ears the clatter of plates and cutlery, and he smiled. He had hardly got back to his chair and his newspaper when the telephone bell rang. It was the reception clerk.
“There’s a lady to see you. She asked if you’d come down. She says it is very important.”
“Who is it?” asked Jeffrey, frowning.
“Miss Lila.”
“Lila!” He hesitated. “Send her up, please,” he said, and drew a heavy velvet curtain across the door of Marney’s room.
At the first sight of Peter Kane’s maid he knew that she had left Horsham in a hurry. Under the light coat she wore he saw the white collar of her uniform.
“What’s the trouble with you, Lila?” he asked.
“Where is Marney?” she asked.
He nodded to the curtained room.
“Have you locked her in?”
“To be exact, she locked herself in,” said Jeff with a twisted smile.
The eyes of the woman narrowed. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?” she asked harshly. “You haven’t lost much time, Jeff.”
“Don’t get silly ideas in your nut,” he said coolly. “I told her who I was, and there was a row – that’s all there is to it. Now, what’s the trouble?”
“Peter Kane’s left Horsham with a gun in his pocket, that’s all,” she said, and Jeffrey paled.
“Sit down and tell me just what you mean.”
“After you’d gone I went up to my room, because I was feeling mighty bad,” she said. “I’ve got my feelings, and there isn’t a woman breathing that can see a man go away with another girl—”
“Cut out all the sentiment and let’s get right down to the facts,” commanded Jeff.
“I’ll tell it in my own way if you don’t mind, Jeffrey Legge,” said Lila.
“Well, get on with it,” he said impatiently.
“I wasn’t there long before I heard Peter in his room – it is underneath mine – and he was talking to himself. I guess curiosity got the better of my worry, and I went down and listened. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, and so I opened the door of his room a little bit. He had just changed. The moment I went in he was slipping the magazine in the butt of a Browning – I saw him