CHAPTER VII

      HE had expected the answer, and yet is came to him as a shock. She was regarding him with an expression half-defiant, half-appealing. His eyes wandered round the room. He had engaged a table that stood in a recess behind one of the marbled pillars, and they were thus separated from the general company in the room. Their voices had been low, but he was afraid they might have attracted attention. But no one seemed to have observed them, and he turned once more to her.

      Somehow she had repressed her weakness. He signalled to the waiter, and ordered a liquer. As she took it, he observed that her hand was perfectly steady. And yet but a moment before she had been on the verge of hysterics.

      ‘Tell me just what you like,’ he said simply. ‘Just as much or as little as you like. You can trust me.’

      ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you are very good. Let me think. To begin with, you must know my father was a very strange man. When I was quite a baby he quarrelled with my mother, and I was sent down into the country, where I lived with an old gentleman-farmer and his wife named Dinward. I always understood that I was their child until a few years ago—they never spoke of either my father or my mother. Once—just before I went to school—he came to see me. I, of course, did not know whom he was.

      ‘I was sent to a convent school at Bruges, where I was brought up, coming home for the holidays—home, of course, being in Sussex. Occasionally I was brought to London. I won’t go into all the details of my life until I left school—it wouldn’t interest you. All this time, remember, I had no knowledge of any relations but the Dinwards. When I left school, I learnt for the first time that I was not their daughter. Mr Pembroke, a solicitor, came over to Bruges and told me very nicely. But—acting on instructions, he said—he could give no clue to my parents. There would be three hundred a year—about fifteen hundred dollars in your currency—payable to me quarterly by his firm. I was no longer to look to the Dinwards for support.

      ‘Mr Pembroke was very nice, but he had his instructions. I asked him what I was expected to do. “I presume,” he said, “that your”—he could not think of a word at first—“benefactor intends that you shall have enough to support you respectably. Think over your plans tonight, my dear young lady, and we will talk it over in the morning.”

      ‘I did think it over, you may imagine. I slept little that night. I have a certain facility for painting, and that seemed to me to offer an outlet to ambition. I told Pembroke next day; he expressed neither approval nor disapproval. A cheque, he said, would be waiting for me at the offices of his firm on the first day of every quarter. He offered to give me introductions in London, but I answered that the only introduction I needed was to my parents. He shook his head a little doubtfully, and that ended the conversation.

      ‘I wanted to see the world a little before I settled down in London. I went to see the Dinwards, but no word could I get from them as to whom I really was. They were kindly people, but not simple. They would tell me nothing. Perhaps, if I had then been less of a raw child, if I had had more knowledge of the world, I might have got round them. Later on someone—but I am coming to that.

      ‘The Dinwards were troubled about me, naturally. Of course, I promised to keep in touch with them. I changed my name. I had been called Peggy Dinward; I became Lucy Olney. That, by the way, Mr Hallett, is the name I still keep.

      ‘The allowance I was to receive seemed a tremendous fortune to me. I went abroad—to study art, I told myself. I went to Paris, to Rome, to Venice, and other places; but the money did not prove so ample as I expected. Perhaps I was extravagant. Anyway, in about eight months I was in London, determined to make my fortune, and I still thought that my art pointed the way.

      ‘You will guess that I had some troubles. Art for art’s sake is one thing, but I am afraid I haven’t the true temperament. I wanted recognition, and, though I could have existed without the money, I wanted money as a proof that I was recognised. But no one seemed to appreciate me as a genius. It was difficult enough to get dealers to take my pictures at a price that barely paid for canvas and paint. Then I drifted into magazine and book illustration work, and at that I found my metier. I earned much more than I really needed, even without my allowance.’

      She fingered a serviette absently for a moment. There was an abstraction in her eyes. Hallett waited, without interruption, for her to resume.

      ‘I have not told you that I have a step-brother,’ she went on. ‘Indeed, I did not know it myself till two years ago. He is my mother’s son by her first marriage, and is much older than myself. He was sent abroad at the time that I was handed over to the Dinwards. As I say, two years ago he traced me out; I believe he got my adopted name and my address from the Dinwards. It was from him that I first learned who I was, who my father was, who my mother was. He told me the whole terrible story of Mr Greye-Stratton’s—I can’t call him my father—break with my mother. He swore that she was innocent, that it was a madman’s fit of jealousy that broke up the home. I—I—’

      Her throat worked, and it was some moments before she resumed.

      ‘My brother had only recently returned to England, and he told me that his first step had been to find me. He wanted me to go back with him to Canada. “You’re my baby sister,” he said, “I have a right to look after you. There’s only you and I now.”

      ‘I can’t express how I felt. My quick anger against my father was less intense than his long-nursed hatred. We talked long. I refused his offer to go back to Canada, and told him that I would never take another penny from my father. He was against that. He argued that it was the least Mr Greye-Stratton could do for me. When he saw I was determined, he pointed out the possibility that I might be Mr Greye-Stratton’s heiress, and that to refuse the allowance might embitter him against me.’ She flamed for a moment into passion. ‘As if I wanted anything—anything from that man!

      ‘When he left me I scarcely knew what to do, what action to take. I resolved to do nothing. After all, when I was in a colder mood, I could see nothing that I could do. I could not or would not attempt a reconciliation with my father. I could not attempt the vindication of my mother. I renounced the allowance, and things went on as they were before, except that I had my brother.

      ‘He went back to Canada and the United States. Now and again I had letters from him. He had a hard struggle to make ends meet.

      Hallett nodded mechanically. Something in her tone made him begin to see the brother in a less sympathetic light. He blurted out the question on the spur of the moment.

      ‘He bled—I mean, he wrote to you for money?’

      She winced.

      ‘Yes; he wrote to me for money. A little more than a year ago he was in England again.’ Her words came more slowly. ‘He has stayed here ever since. He called on Mr Greye-Stratton, and something happend. What, I don’t know. I suppose there were recriminations, but my brother told me little but that he was now entirely without resources. Mr Greye-Stratton’—Hallett noted that she persisted in the formal mode of reference—‘had cut off all help from him. I don’t know if Mr Menzies has said anything to you about my brother?’

      She flashed the question at him suddenly.

      ‘Not a word. This is the first I have heard of his existence.’

      ‘I ask because he questioned me closely about him. My brother is a hard man, Mr Hallett, and his outlook on life is different to that of the ordinary person. Circumstances have been against him. He was driven to find a living as best he could. I want you to remember that if he was desperate, he was driven to it. I helped as far as I could, but he had heavy expenses. He signed my father’s name to some cheques.’

      ‘He committed forgery?’