"Jane Simmons!" she exclaimed.

The other shook her by no means ill-looking head, and she laughed.

"Not Simmons; my name is Spurrier, Julia Spurrier. Most fortunate my meeting you like this, Miss Forster; I have for some time been most anxious to have a talk with you. Is there anywhere where I can say a few words to you in private? I believe you will regard what I have to say as of the first importance--to you, Miss Forster. I know what I am saying."

CHAPTER XXV

Julia Spurrier

Miss Spurrier was very well dressed; as regards appearance she was really smarter than Miss Forster. All her extremely nice clothes looked as if they had come from the hands of artists, and her hat was a dream. She stood with one well-gloved hand resting on a long-handled parasol--it was a sunny afternoon; with one champagne-coloured shoe she seemed to be describing figures on the ground; her head was held a little back at an angle which became her. It was not easy to recognise in this elegant personage Jane Simmons in her cap and ap.r.o.n. Major Reith, who, with old-fashioned courtesy, stood with his hat in his hand, seemed as if he did not know what to make of her; while possibly the singularity of Miss Forster's bearing was owing to the fact that she was divided between anger and amazement, with possibly a touch of fear lurking in the corner of her heart. She seemed to be in doubt as to whether it would be better and wiser to enter into conversation with this disreputable person, or to pa.s.s contemptuously on. When, at last, she did speak, it was with the plain intention of giving the other to understand that she was to keep what Miss Forster considered her place.

"Have you anything to say to me? Can't you say it here?"

"In the presence of Major Reith?" The lady swung her parasol in that gentleman's direction, and she beamed at him. "Oh, I know you, Major--you're not the only officer in your regiment with whom I have the pleasure of being acquainted. With one of them I've been on quite intimate terms; ask Miss Forster. It's about him I wish to speak to her."

The major, noting his companion's distress, made a somewhat blundering attempt to come to her rescue.

"If I'm in the way, Miss Forster, pray command me; shall I walk on, or would you prefer that I should stay?"

Miss Forster still seemed to be in doubt; her words were scarcely friendly.

"Major Reith, I've only seen this person once in my life--she was a servant at Avonham on the night of the Easter ball--or she pretended to be. Her conduct on that occasion was of a kind which makes it amazing that she should have the a.s.surance to address me now."

Miss Spurrier showed no signs of being hurt by the speaker's candour; she only laughed.

"It's hardly fair, Major Reith, for Miss Forster to put it like that. You will, of course, recollect the robbery of the ladies'

jewels--actually from their bedrooms, when they were fast asleep. You remember how all the jewels were found again, in a leather bag? It was rather a funny story." She turned to the girl. "Miss Forster, shall I tell him all about it? I'm convinced that it would tickle him."

A flush had come over Violet Forster's face, her cheeks were as scarlet as they had just been white. Not only her lips, her whole frame seemed trembling from head to foot.

Miss Spurrier observed her with malicious amus.e.m.e.nt--she remained all smiles.

"Why, Miss Forster, how red you have all at once become, and only a moment ago I was thinking how pale you were. Doesn't a touch of colour become her, Major Reith?"

The major looked extremely uncomfortable, as if he did not know what to make of the position. Miss Forster relieved him of his perplexity.

"I think," she said to him, "that I will hear what this person has to say. She can come with me in this cab to my rooms; and may I ask you to accompany us? I have reasons for wishing you to do so. Get in."

She ordered Miss Spurrier to enter the cab very much as she might have done if she had still been Jane Simmons. Miss Spurrier laughingly complied.

"What funny ways you have, Miss Forster! If you would let me tell Major Reith that story, he'd think they were funnier still."

Miss Forster, following her into the cab, chose to sit with her back to the driver; the major, entering last, was placed in the seat of honour by Miss Spurrier's side. When the cab reached Cobden Mansions, and the pa.s.sengers had alighted, Miss Forster said to the major, as she opened the door of a room which was just inside the hall:

"This is meant to be used as a reception room for visitors to tenants of the flats who do not wish to see them in their own apartments. I am going to take this person with me upstairs; will you wait here till she has gone, or till I send for you?"

The major expressed his perfect willingness to await the lady's pleasure; the two women ascended in the lift to Miss Forster's flat on one of the upper floors. So soon as they were in, Miss Forster's manner entirely changed. All signs of confusion or distress vanished; she a.s.sumed what was almost an air of truculence. Closing the door, she pointed to a seat.

"Sit down." The visitor obeyed. "Now, Jane Simmons, or whatever you call yourself, you say you've been looking for me; I don't know what truth there may be in that, but I do know that I've been looking for you; and now that I've found you, we're not going to part until we've come to an understanding."

"That's what I want, Miss Forster--an understanding."

"In the first place, before you leave this room, you're going to tell me where Sydney Beaton is now."

The visitor raised her grey-suede-covered hands with what was possibly meant to be a gesture of lady-like amazement.

"How odd! How extremely singular! What a coincidence!"

"What's a coincidence--and odd--and singular?"

Nothing could have been grimmer than the tone in which Miss Forster put her question. She had taken up an att.i.tude before the empty fireplace which was almost masculine, and again there was something which was almost masculine in the curt, unceremonious fashion of her speech; nothing could have been in more striking contrast than the other's airs and graces of a fine lady.

"That you should have said such a thing as that to me about dear old Sydney."

Miss Forster bit her lip.

"Have the goodness not to speak of Mr. Beaton in my presence by his Christian name."

"My dear Miss Forster, why not? When he and I have been such friends; I've always called him Sydney."

"Whether that is or is not a lie I am not in a position to say; you'll speak of him as Mr. Beaton to me. Where is Mr. Beaton?"

"That's what I said was so odd, so singular, such a coincidence. That you should put such a question to me, when one of the chief reasons why I was so anxious to have a talk was because I wished to put exactly the same question to you--where is Mr. Beaton?"

"Do you mean to say that you don't know?"

"I've no more idea than the dead."

"You did know."

"Up to a certain point of course I knew."

"Where was he living when--I saw you last?"

The visitor looked at her before she answered, with a smile which grew more and more p.r.o.nounced; there was a singular quality in the woman's smile. In repose her face was good to look at; her smile invested it with a charm, a tenderness, a something daintily malicious, which made it almost irresistible. Miss Forster admitted to herself that she would be easy for any man to fall in love with, and, when she chose, there was a winning something in her voice; she had one of those flexible voices which are capable of expressing so many, and such fine, shades of meaning.

"Where was he living when you saw me last? Well, that's rather a question. I needn't tell you that a good many people would like to know. But as I have every reason to believe that you really are his friend, and have no sympathy with those objectionable creatures, the police, I don't mind telling you. He had rooms at Notting Hill--78 Caversham Street. Mine were close to Brompton Road, and when he wasn't in my rooms I was in his."

Miss Forster was making a note on a sheet of paper.

"78 Caversham Street, Notting Hill. You say that was his address at the time of the Easter ball at Avonham?"

"Exactly, and after what occurred at Avonham I expected that he would return to that address; and I don't mind telling you that when I left I went straight there, to find that he hadn't returned. I was a little surprised, but, of course--in the profession in which he was then engaged, accidents do happen--there's no shutting our eyes to that, is there? There might have been all sorts of reasons why his return had been delayed; but when day after day went by, and still nothing was seen or heard of him, I did begin to wonder."

The lady, pausing, looking down, began to draw figures on the carpet with the end of her parasol, smiling to herself as if in enjoyment of some private joke.