The Mystery At Lover's Cave

Anthony had not had very much experience with women. In the brief instant after the girl had spoken it occurred to him with some force that his ideas on the subject might require drastic revision. Women were not necessarily weak, helpless creatures. Names such as Joan of Arc, Boadicea, Florence Nightingale, Queen Elizabeth, occurred to him with startling rapidity. Were they weak, helpless creatures? They were not. Nor was the girl who was standing in front of him and regarding him now with cold, haughty eyes. Anybody less weak and helpless, anybody more obviously capable of looking after herself could hardly have existed.

“I am Miss Cross,” she repeated in frigid tones. “What do you want?”

Anthony’s tongue seemed to have become jammed. His mission, which had seemed a moment before so altogether right and proper, suddenly took on the aspect of the most fatuous thing ever conceived by misguided human mind. Even to connect this beautiful, proud creature with the mere idea of bare self-interest appeared a kind of blasphemy.

“Oh, I—I wanted to speak to you for a minute,” he managed to stammer. “But it doesn’t matter.” At this point Anthony ought to have turned about and run off at top speed with his tail between his legs, making a noise like a flat pancake. But he couldn’t. By some curious action of nature his feet seemed to have taken root in the ground.

“Are you connected with the police?” the girl asked with incredible scorn.

“Great Heavens, no!” cried Anthony, genuinely shocked. “I should think not! Great Scott, no! Good Lord, no!”

The girl’s uncompromising attitude relaxed slightly. “Then why did you want to see me?” she asked, as if very few people except the police ever wanted to see her.

“Well, it was just about something I thought I ought to tell you,” Anthony mumbled. “But it doesn’t matter. I see that now. It doesn’t matter a bit.”

Curiosity could be seen struggling with resentment in the girl’s face. Strangely enough, curiosity won.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you’ve come all this way out to speak to me, and now you’ve got here you’ve decided that it doesn’t matter?” she said, and actually a faint hint of the merest shadow of a suspicion of a smile flitted for a quarter-of-a-second into and out of her eyes.

“Now I’ve seen you, I’m quite sure it doesn’t matter, Miss Cross,” Anthony said simply.

“Well, thank Heaven my appearance seems to impress somebody favourably,” murmured the girl wearily, more to herself than the other, and for an instant the mantle of pride she had been wearing seemed to drop from her and she looked utterly forlorn and miserable.

Anthony was emboldened into a sudden decision. “I’ll tell you why I came, Miss Cross, after all. I just came to say that if you wanted any help in the present circumstances, I should be very proud to— That is to say, I should like you to know that—I mean⸺” He ceased floundering, for the girl’s eyes were regarding him steadily with an expression in their depths which he was finding peculiarly disconcerting.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” she said haughtily. “I was not aware that I needed any ‘help.’ ”

“No, of course not,” Anthony stammered. “Naturally not! I was only thinking that⸺”

“And I must decline to discuss my private affairs with a stranger! So if there is nothing else⸺” She paused, obviously waiting for him to go.

Anthony felt himself becoming annoyed. He knew that his recent embarrassment had made him look a fool and he resented the fact; he knew that his motive in seeking speech with this girl had been a completely altruistic one and here she was treating it as a piece of unwarrantable impertinence, and he resented that still more.

“In that case,” he said stiffly, “there is nothing more to be said, and I must apologise for bothering you. Though I think you should understand,” he added on the impulse of the instant by way of a parting shot as his temper momentarily got the better of his manners, “I think you should understand that possibly your private affairs will soon be becoming of some interest to the public at large, Miss Cross.”

The girl coloured violently and for a moment seemed incapable of speaking. Her eyes blazed, she clinched her small fists by her sides and her dark head was flung back as if to meet an actual attack.

“If you’ve come here to insult me⸺” she choked out.

“But I haven’t!” said Anthony in considerable alarm at this unexpected result of his thrust. “I simply meant that I’ve come down here with a friend of mine who’s working for the Daily Courier and he said something about getting you to give him an interview. I thought you ought to know.”

As abruptly as it had arisen the girl’s anger disappeared and something very like fear took the place of the fire in her eyes. She stared at Anthony widely.

“A—a reporter?” she muttered. “Good Heavens, has it come to that now?”

Men are curious creatures. A moment ago Anthony was severely annoyed and wanted nothing better than to make this extremely crushing young lady severely annoyed too. The instant he had succeeded in doing so, he had been filled with alarm. Now that he had changed her mood once more, from anger to fear, he began to feel the worst kind of inhuman brute imaginable.

“No, but look here,” he said eagerly, “there’s nothing to be alarmed about. They always do it, you know. Interviews and all that. He’s an awfully nice chap too. Roger Sheringham, the novelist, you know. Cousin of mine, as a matter of fact. I dare say he won’t try to see you at all if you don’t want him to. Sure he won’t! I’ll tell him, shall I? Dash it all, there are crowds of other people he can interview if he must interview somebody. I was against it at the time, to tell you the truth, but he thought you might want to be interviewed for some reason or other. I’ll tell him, Miss Cross. Don’t you bother about that. I’ll see it’s all right.”

It was doubtful if the girl had understood a single word beyond the general drift of what Anthony was saying. She continued to stare at him; but mechanically, as if paying attention only to her own thoughts. When next she spoke her voice was under control again, though her words were a little halting.

“Then am I to understand that—that the London papers are taking an interest in—in my cousin’s death?” she asked.

“I’m afraid they are,” said Anthony humbly, apologising for the London paper en masse.

The girl shifted her gaze and contemplated the horizon with unseeing eyes, busy again with her thoughts. Anthony, judging he had received permission to exist a little longer, made advantageous use of his reprieve by contemplating her.

She really was extraordinarily pretty, he had no difficulty in deciding. He liked her slimness and grace, he liked the way her head was set on her neck, he liked the way her black hair curled over her ears, he liked her wrists and her small feet, he liked— But why reduce Margaret Cross to a catalogue? There was nothing about her Anthony did not like. When he got back to his lodgings he would probably think this over and the realisation would suddenly strike him that this was the one girl in the world for him—expressly designed and manufactured by a thoughtful Providence for the sole purpose of delighting, harassing, maddening and ultimately very greatly gratifying one Anthony Walton, bachelor. The realisation had already struck him exactly twenty-three times before and twenty-three times he had mistaken the intentions of Providence; but this time it was the real thing. It always was.

Anthony continued his contemplation, each second more raptly than before.

Suddenly the girl appeared to come to a decision. She turned to him with an impulsive movement, and to his relief Anthony saw that she was smiling.

“Will you come and sit down here a minute, Mr.⸺?”

“Walton!” Anthony supplied hastily.

“Mr. Walton. I owe you an enormous apology, I’m afraid. It was very kind indeed of you to think of coming along to give me warning. I was a pig to you.”

“Not a bit,” Anthony averred, scrambling eagerly down the little bank to join her on the little grassy ledge a dozen feet down from the cliff’s lip. “It was most natural. I ought to apologise if anyone should. Frightfully tactless.”

“Not at all!” said the girl warmly. “It was entirely my fault. But if you’ll forgive me, we’ll say no more about it. Now let’s sit down here and make ourselves comfortable, because I’m going to take you at your word.”

“Do, please,” Anthony said earnestly, as he seated himself on the warm, springy turf at her side. “I should be awfully proud.”

The girl clasped her arms round her knees and stared out to sea. Anthony, glancing at her covertly, noted with approval the firm and resolute lines of her profile. She could not be more than one- or two-and-twenty, he decided, but even he could read an experience beyond her years of the world, its trials and its anxieties in the tiny lines of care about her mouth and the faint markings on her white forehead.

“You said something about my needing help,” she said slowly, as if choosing her words with care. “Well, why should I be silly and pretend I don’t? I do need it. You don’t know me, and I don’t know you; but I feel I can trust you, and there’s nobody else to whom I can speak. Not a single soul. I suppose you know that—that⸺”

“Yes,” Anthony interrupted gently. “I think I know all the facts.”

“I supposed so, or you wouldn’t have said that.” She fixed her big, sorrowful brown eyes on Anthony’s face. “But what you don’t know, Mr. Walton, is that a police inspector from Scotland Yard was with me for nearly two hours this morning, asking me the most horrible questions!”

A cold hand seemed to lay itself over Anthony’s heart. “I say, was he really?” he muttered. “No, I didn’t know that.”

The girl nodded. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her lips trembled and she turned her head quickly away. A little quiver shook her body. Then suddenly the control that had borne her up all this time, ever since that dreadful interview in the morning, gave way before Anthony’s silent sympathy. She buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

“He seems to think—oh, the most awful things!” she sobbed.