SHE FADED INTO AIR (A Thriller). Ethel Lina White
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Both girls were held in allegiance to the lure of the profession. Viola had studied at an academy of dramatic art, while Marlene had toured the provinces as a glamour girl in a cheap revue. Total lack of success had forced them into uncongenial jobs, but their thwarted instincts drew them together to discuss the stars of stage and screen with passionate interest.
On this occasion, Viola only wanted to hear the scenario of the drama on the first-floor landing.
"So what?" she asked, with an economy of language familiar to Marlene.
She listened to the story with wide-eyed open-mouthed interest, but at its end she made the requisite ribald comment.
"Well, I've heard of people wanting to reduce quickly, but that's overdoing it...Was she kidnapped?"
"That's what it looks like to me," replied the ornamental typist. "I saw her go up and I was mucking about in the hall all the time afterwards. But she never came down, unless she's the Invisible Man."
"What's your guess?" asked Viola.
"I believe Goya stunned and gagged her. She'd about ten minutes to play with. Then she hid her in a cubby-hole behind the panelling. There might be one behind the mirror or at the back of the clothes closet. But the blonde's father swears he won't go until she is found, so he'll soon scoop her out...Oh boy, you should see father--hundred per cent Aryan and like an earthquake. He's got that look in his eye that tells you he knows all the answers."
Viola, who was growing bored, distracted her attention.
"Your telephone's been ringing for ages," she said.
"Yes, I heard it," commented Marlene. "Sounds quite profane. I seem to recognize my master's voice. Perhaps I'd better listen to his little trouble. See you later. Bye-bye."
She mounted the stairs in a leisurely fashion while Viola stood and gazed down into the hall. About this time, when dusk blurred its modern improvements, the old mansion had power to fascinate her. She did not recall the patched and powdered ghosts of Berkeley Square but only the lately receded tide of the last century, as she thought of the families who had lived private lives within those walls.
In those spacious days, the offices had been double drawing rooms where parties were held. Girls in white tulle frocks had sat on the stairs and flirted with their partners behind feather fans. Children had peeped down enviously from between the banisters.
But now the clocks were stopped and the music stilled. Sighing at the thought, she limped across to the tall windows at the end of the landing. Outside, the Square Garden was spectral with misted shadows and tremulous with tattered leaves shaking from the plane trees. In the distance a sports car hooted through the darkness.
It was driven by Alan Foam, who was on his way to investigate the alleged disappearance of Evelyn Cross.
Viola was still gripped by the story, although her common sense rejected it as nonsense. At that time she was yearning after her old gods and suffering from histrionic starvation. Unable to resist the chance of dramatizing herself, she stretched out her hands and groped in the air. "Lost girl," she whispered. "Where are you?"
As she waited, the lights were turned on throughout the building. She heard the faint tapping of typewriters and the distant ringing of telephone bells. The atmosphere of Pomerania House was entirely normal--commercial and financial.
There was no warning wave from the future to tell her that this was a prelude to a moment charged with horror, when she would cry out in anguish to someone who was not there and get no answer from the empty air.
CHAPTER TWO--NUMBER SIXTEEN
When Alan Foam was asked why he had become a private detective he explained that he liked solving riddles and wanted an occupation which would take him out-of-doors. His original ambition had been the secret service, but circumstances forced him to accept his father's compromise of a share in the firm of Girdlestone & Gribble.
On the whole he was disappointed with the work. Instead of adventures, his main activities were protecting people from blackmail and aiding them to procure divorce. In the course of a few years he became tough and cynical, with no illusions as to the fragrance of hotel bedrooms and with a conviction that the human species had evolved the most deadly type of blood-sucking parasite.
At times when his mind rebelled against its storage of gross details, he considered the antidote suggested by his mother.
"Why don't you marry, Alan?"
"Waiting for the right girl," he told her. 'I've checked too many hotel registers."
"Well, hurry up and find her." She added inconsequently, "You used to be such a dear little boy." There were times, however, when he was keenly interested in his work, especially when his enterprise had been recognized by his superiors. It was after one of these rare occasions that he leaped to the telephone and tried to disentangle the statement from Major Pomeroy's secretary.
It appeared so unlike the routine case of disappearance that he was afraid it was too good to be true.
"You say she's gone--but she never left the building?" he queried.
"Well, it sounded like that when they were both shouting at me," replied the girl doubtfully. "But it doesn't make sense. I suppose I got it wrong."
"Never mind. I'm on my way."
As Foam scorched through the dun shadows of the Square, he was struck by its derelict appearance. It seemed darkened by a pall of antiquity and decay. The old houses might have been barnacled hulks of vessels stranded in a dry-dock by the receded tide of fashion.
When he approached Pomerania House, it suddenly glowed with lighted windows. A large and powerful car was parked outside, while the porter stood on the pavement, fraternally scanning the stop press in the chauffeur's paper.
Following his custom, Foam looked keenly at both men. The chauffeur was a clumsy Hercules, showing a section of standardized glum face below his goggles. The porter appealed more to Foam as a type of labour. He was elderly, with a square, sensible face and steady blue eyes.
He did not return Foam's approval, for he looked at him sourly. The detective understood the reason for his instinctive antipathy. He knew that he was regarded as a by-product of the police force and consequently to be avoided like a mild form of plague.
The porter stiffened as he spoke to the chauffeur in his official voice.
"Your guv'nor says not to wait for him. He may be kept here till midnight."
"Am I to come back and fetch Miss Evelyn?" asked the chauffeur.
His voice was tinctured with curiosity, but the porter was not to be drawn.
"I've given you the message," he said. After the car had driven on, he spoke to Foam. "From the agency? You're expected. This way." Foam followed him through the lobby and into the hall of Pomerania House. As he looked around him he had partly the sensation of being in a museum. Its proportions were fine, although some of its space had been encroached on by offices. Most of the panelling on the walls had been preserved and also a large oval portrait in a tarnished gilt frame, which hung over the original carved mantelpiece. This was a painting of a former owner of the house by Sir Joshua Reynolds and depicted a Georgian buck with full ripe cheeks and a powdered wig.
The old crystal chandelier--long disused--was still suspended from the ceiling. The statue of a nymph, posed on a pedestal, gazed reproachfully at all who used the telephone booth, as though it were the bathing hut where she had left her clothes and to which they denied her re-entry.
He with these relics of the eighteenth century, the flagged marble floor, as well as the shallow treads of the curving mahogany staircase, was covered with the thick rubber flooring of commerce. The radiators were not concealed and the panel lighting was modern, to correspond with the low painted