Reflected Glory. John Russell Fearn
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it when he had first entered the room, but at that time the angle of sunlight had cast it somewhat in shadow. Now it was perfectly clear, and the brilliant sunshine was playing on eight shiny-headed screws, similar to those in the kitchen cupboard, four driven home on each side.
“Great Scott, don’t tell me that door swings too!” he exclaimed.
“Door?” Elsa looked at him, rousing herself from meditation; then she turned her head. “That? There’s a cellar beyond that. It used to be for coal, then my father had an outhouse made for it. In consequence that door, on the other side, drops down into a dangerous well—so it’s sealed up. You may have noticed how the house juts on one side. That’s the empty area behind that door.”
“Oh, I get it,” Clive acknowledged, resuming eating—but he rather wondered, deep down, if he really did. The passion Elsa Farraday’s father seemed to have had for screwing up doors had had something of the quality of a mania.
“There, I think that’s everything,” Elsa said finally, considering the list she had made and tapping her teeth with the pencil. “Typewriter, manuscripts, blank paper, clothes and other necessities, of course— Yes, that’s the lot.”
Clive looked at her and then glanced sideways at the list.
“There’s far more on that sheet than just those items,” he remarked in surprise. “What else is there?”
“Oh, just odds and ends.” For some reason she coloured hotly and a defensive light glinted in her grey eyes. With a quiet possessiveness Clive ignored her obvious emotion and took the list from her.
“What’s this?” he asked, frowning. “The entire contents of the small room over the hall to be kept intact and stored until you give further instructions....”
“It’s private,” she said, her mouth very firm.
“Okay, I don’t want to pry, but it’s hard to find flats these days and a whole extra room full of stuff is going to be a tough proposition. What’s in the room?”
“Oh, things. Personal.”
“Furniture, you mean?”
“Well, yes,” Elsa admitted.
Clive got to his feet. “We’d better see,” he decided. “I want to be knowing what I’m doing. Lead the way.”
She rose, shaking her head.
“I don’t want you to see those things,” she said earnestly. “In that room is something which is very dear to me. You’d just call it junk and probably laugh at me too. Please, Clive—don’t ask me to explain. If it comes to it I’ll find an extra room somewhere myself for them. I don’t want it to be your responsibility.”
He hesitated, driven by the masculine urge to demand a better reaction from his wife-to-be; then his good nature settled the issue.
“All right, if you want to have secrets, have ’em! I wouldn’t spoil your fun for worlds! Come to think of it, I have a secret too.”
“You have?” Her eyes were startled. “What?”
“Oh, nothing very terrible,” he assured her, laughing. “Gosh, what a nervy girl you are sometimes! My secret is a slit in the bathroom wall of my flat into which I push my old razor blades. Ssssh! Don’t tell a soul!”
“Oh, you—you idiot!” she exclaimed, laughing somewhat uncomfortably. “I thought for a moment it was going to be something really important.”
“Like your mysterious furniture?” he asked dryly. “And how are you going to do about your various things? Pity I didn’t bring the car.”
“It doesn’t signify,” she answered. “Ted Husting, the estate agent, knows me well enough, and he’s an auctioneer, real estate agent, remover, and heaven knows what else. I’ll simply tell him what I want done and where to send everything, and that will be that. He’ll find storage space for the stuff in—that room.”
“Uh-huh,” Clive agreed, and they were both silent for a moment.
Clive, indeed, was conscious of a grim impasse. Though he had tossed the matter off lightly his mind was still drifting in vague perplexity to whatever “secret” the girl had.
“I take it that everything can go to your flat except the furniture?” she asked, picking up her handbag.
“Surely— Which reminds me, you haven’t even seen it yet!” Clive gave a start. “Hmm—we’ll remedy that the moment we get back to the city. The address is Grant Apartments, 18a, Marton Street, West Central.”
“I’ll remember,” Elsa said; then after a final glance about her she added, “Well, that’s all for now. Let’s be going. Tomorrow I’ll telephone my bank and have them transfer my account to the nearest London branch.”
Clive followed, her out of the room and across the hall. She made sure the front door was securely locked and together they went down the pathway.
“I still like this district,” Clive said, giving his head a little admiring shake as he glanced about the hot countryside. “All except the swamp, of course.... Anybody ever get lost in it?”
“Plenty of people,” the girl answered quietly. “Strangers as a rule who lost their way in the mist which settles at night around these low-lying parts. Far as I know about a dozen people have gone down at different times. Once, even, I heard one of them scream as he sank. It was in the winter— I never quite forgot it,” she finished, with a little shudder.
Clive glanced at her and gripped her arm reassuringly.
“This is daylight, and summertime,” he said gently. “There’s no earthly good can come of remembering those kind of happenings. Candidly, Elsa, I think you let your mind brood far too much on the unpleasant things of life. Maybe that’s why your thrillers are so horrific.”
“No, that isn’t the reason,” she answered, with a strange little smile. “It’s because—”
She stopped, glancing up, and Clive drew her to the side of the road as a two-seater open car came into view round the bend. The driver sounded the horn once and then applied the brakes. A dark, homely-looking young man with brown eyes, a soft hat pushed up on his forehead, contemplated the two seriously.
“Clem!” Elsa exclaimed, and for some reason there was look of consternation on her face. “Where on earth did you spring from?”
“Not a matter of springing. I was just coming along to take you out in the ordinary way. It’s Thursday evening, remember—and that’s my usual time for calling.”
“Thursday?” Elsa repeated vaguely. Then she seemed to remember. She glanced at her watch. It was ten minutes to six.
“At six o’clock on Thursdays I always call,” the young man said, a harshness in his deliberate voice. “Why should this Thursday be any different?”
“I’d—forgotten,” Elsa said, making an effort to get herself in hand. She turned to Clive. “This is Clem Hargraves, Clive, a very good friend of mine. This is Clive Hexley, Clem....”
“Also a very good friend of yours?” Clem Hargraves asked.
“As a matter of fact I am,” Clive responded, his jaw hardening. “I can’t say I altogether like your attitude towards my fiancée, either.”
“Your what?” Clem Hargraves gave a start, and Elsa gave an anxious glance from one man to the other.
“Fiancée,” Clive repeated deliberately.
“That,” Clem Hargraves said, “definitely does it! Of all the cheap, low-down tricks! I’d never have thought it of you, Elsa.... Oh, congratulations,” he added sourly, and raised his soft hat to a needless height. Then reversing the car swiftly, he aped back up the lane and vanished in clouds of dust.
“Who