Chapter 3 #2
“At least you must have some sort of dressing on your head.”
“And hands, dear,” said Lord Dalrymple.
“And hands. Let me see them.”
Reduced to a schoolboy, Phillip obediently held out his hands, himself examining them for the first time. They looked far worse than they felt. “I’m afraid I’m rather a mess,” he apologized.
Lady Dalrymple was too polite to agree, but she said, “I shall see to the dressings when you have bathed. Lowecroft, have Mr. Petrie shown to the Blue Bedroom, and a bath drawn immediately.” She glanced doubtfully from Phillip to her considerably shorter husband.
“I suppose you have a change of clothes at Malvern Grange, or in your motor, if it was not too badly damaged to retrieve your luggage?”
So she assumed he had pranged his car. Wondering for a moment what had become of the dearly loved Swift, Phillip seized his chance.
“At home, yes, but I don’t want to worry the mater by sending for clothes.
Any old thing will do for the present. But if you don’t mind, before I take a bath I’ll make a ’phone call. ”
“Yes, of course. Your parents will be worrying. Lowecroft, show Mr. Petrie to the telephone.”
Phillip didn’t explain that his parents, far from requiring notice of his visits, expected him when they saw him.
His eldest brother, with wife and children, and his youngest sister all lived at Malvern Grange.
One more in the house was neither here nor there. He had no intention of ringing them up.
The butler ushered him into Lord Dalrymple’s den. The deep leather chairs and red Turkey carpet were unchanged since the old days. Phillip had a vague, uncomfortable sense of being in a museum, though any major changes might have disturbed him equally.
“The instrument, sir.” Lowecroft crossed to the knee-hole desk, where the telephone still stood. Gravely he took a handkerchief from his pocket and spread it over the chair. “No offence, sir, but her ladyship is particular. Will that be all?”
“Yes, thank you, and I would like a bath as soon as I’m finished.”
Phillip knew the Abbey Hotel’s telephone number by heart. He had spent enough ’phoning there in the past few weeks to condemn him to lunch daily at the A.B.C. instead of the Piccadilly Grill. Lifting the earpiece, he waited impatiently for the operator to answer.
The hotel’s number was engaged. “Will you ring back later?” the girl asked him.
“No, I’ll hold on. Please put me through as soon as you can. It’s urgent.”
“If it’s an emergency, sir, I can ask the other party to get off the line.”
“N-no.…”
He was tempted, but the instinct which had stopped him blabbing the whole story to the Dalrymples took over. Claim an emergency and people would require explanations. It was up to Arbuckle and the police to decide whether the kidnapping should be broadcast or kept quiet.
Which raised another question: Should he notify the police while he waited to get hold of Arbuckle? And if so, who?
He didn’t have much faith in the local bobby’s ability to do much more than move on a tramp or catch boys scrumping cherries. Call in the county force and his father would have the news within the hour, whereas if Arbuckle notified them, Phillip might manage to keep his own name out of things.
The best man for the job would be Daisy’s friend, Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard.
Not that Phillip approved of the friendship.
Daisy had a genius for picking the wrong sort.
Just look at that conchie she’d been engaged to!
Agreed, the Friends’ Ambulances’ work was not to be sneezed at, and the fellow had the grace to get himself blown up by a mine, just like any soldier, but it was the principle of the thing.
And now Daisy had taken up with a middle-class copper, a widower with a child at that.
Still, he was no conscientious objector—he’d been an officer in the Royal Flying Corps—and there was no denying the man knew his stuff.
Clever was the word; he’d even gone to one of those new provincial universities where they only took swots.
He wasn’t a bad chap, either, when he wasn’t fixing one with an eye like an eagle’s, sharp as a bayonet, enough to convince a fellow of his own guilt.
But Phillip had a feeling there were all sorts of obstacles to bringing in Scotland Yard. Was it worth a try?
“Hullo, caller, I’m connecting you now.”
The hotel receptionist was not at all keen to fetch Mr. Arbuckle to the telephone. “It’s only just after eight,” she said crisply. “We don’t disturb our guests so early unless they request a call the night before.”
Phillip glanced at the brass clock on the mantlepiece. Five past eight it was. He was dashed lucky Dalrymple was an early riser or he might still be lying under that hedge.
But nothing was more certain than that, if Arbuckle had slept at all with his daughter in peril, he would want to be roused for news of her.
That was assuming he was actually there.
Phillip had assured Gloria her father must be safe.
It had seemed logical at the time, but kidnappers might not be logical.
There was only one way to find out. “I promise you,” Phillip asserted, “Mr. Arbuckle won’t kick up a dust if you wake him, but he’ll very likely have you shot out on your ear if you don’t.”
“I’ll take a message and give it to him when he comes down.”
“No soap. Just tell him my name and he’ll come running.”
The woman put up a fight but eventually was persuaded to send a page-boy for the American.
“Petrie?” The tense, slightly breathless voice came over the wire so soon, either Arbuckle had run downstairs in his dressing-gown or he had been already dressed. “Is she okay? Where in all tarnation are you?” He sounded worried, but not as frantic as Phillip had expected.
“She was all right when I last saw her. At least, not hurt. Sir, I’d have given anything to…”
“Not on the telephone. There’s no knowing who’s got an ear to the wire. She’s not with you?”
“No.” Phillip swallowed the lump in his throat. “I don’t know where she is.”
“Then just tell me where you are.”
“At Fairacres. Lord Dalrymple’s place. I expect his chauffeur would run me into Great Malvern.”
“This here lord, what have you told him?”
“Nothing. He didn’t ask any questions, though, believe me, a few would have been justified.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“Of course!” The idea of the kindly but stuffy ex-schoolmaster getting mixed up in any shady business, let alone kidnapping, boggled Phillip’s imagination.
“You know the guy? He won’t spill the beans?” Arbuckle persisted.
“Oh, that!” Discretion must go with schoolmastering, he thought vaguely. Not upsetting the parents and all that. And he hadn’t mentioned Phillip’s bonds to his wife. “No, I should think he’s pretty good at keeping mum.”
“Then I’ll come to you. How do I get to this place?”
Phillip gave directions. “I’ll tell them to expect you.”
“Don’t tell ’em why,” Arbuckle said sharply. “Okay, I’ll be right over.”
A click as the line disconnected left Phillip with his mouth open, about to ask what he should say.
He had to give his host—and still more his hostess—some explanation for the imminent arrival of an American businessman at an ungodly hour of the morning.
Hanging up, he cudgelled his brains for some story to satisfy the Dalrymples without saying more than Arbuckle would like.
Come to think of it, all this secrecy twaddle was dashed queer. Shouldn’t they be rousing the countryside to hunt for Gloria? Yet he himself had instinctively held his tongue when he could already have had search parties sent out.
His head was too muzzy still to work out his own reasons. Heaving himself to his feet, he returned to the front hall, where a youthful footman awaited him.
“Lor,” gasped the stripling, all agog at the sight of the battered gentleman. “Your motor must be smashed all to bits.” Recollecting himself, he straightened into rigidity. “If you’ll please to come this way, sir, your bath’ll be ready by now.”
“Look here,” Phillip said, following him up the stairs, “an American gentleman by the name of Arbuckle is going to be popping in to see me in about half an hour. We don’t want to disturb anyone, so just park him somewhere out of the way and drop me the word, will you?”
The footman glanced back, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “You can count on me, sir,” he whispered. “I’ll tip you the wink.”
What the deuce did he think was going on? Phillip wondered.
Wallowing in the bath was bliss but, regretfully, he made it a quick wallow.
He didn’t want Arbuckle to arrive and be left fuming and fretting.
When he got out, he hurried, wrapped in a borrowed dressing-gown of startling buttercup hue, to the assigned bedroom.
Clean clothes awaited him there, laid out on the bed and emitting a pungent odour of mothballs.
The grey flannel bags and white shirt could have belonged to anyone, but he recognized the lightweight blue and grey herring-bone tweed jacket. It was Gervaise’s, no doubt resurrected from a trunk in boxroom or attic. Phillip’s soul revolted against donning his dead friend’s clothes.
He forced himself to be practical. He was no good to Gloria lounging about in a bright yellow dressing-gown. His nose revolting against the stink of naphtha, he dressed.
Adjusting the navy, grey-striped tie in the looking glass, he regarded his reflection and winced.
The clothes hung loose, exposing wrists and a good deal of sock.
Gervaise, though taller than the present Lord Dalrymple, had been somewhat shorter and broader than Phillip.
Phillip liked to consider himself a natty dresser, except when delving into motor-engines, of course.
At present he looked, and smelt, like an overgrown orphan clothed by the Salvation Army.
A shock of damp blond hair usually confined by pomade didn’t improve the picture.
Nor did the trickle of blood seeping from his head wound.
The hot water of the bath must have started it up again.
Luckily someone had thought to provide a large white handkerchief.
Clamping it to his head with one hand, the other holding a hairbrush, Phillip endeavoured to subdue his rebellious locks.
The young footman, Ernest, brought his cleaned shoes. “Brilliantine, that’s what you wants,” he observed sagely.
“Can you get me some?”
“Yes, sir, but her ladyship’s waiting to bandage you up. Looks like you need that worser nor hair stuff,” he added, kneeling to tie the shoelaces so that Phillip didn’t have to let go the red-stained handkerchief. “She’s in her sitting room, an’ not to worry, the Yankee gent didn’t turn up yet.”
Phillip wasn’t sure whether he was glad or sorry that Arbuckle hadn’t yet arrived.
On the one hand, he was impatient to set about rescuing Gloria.
On the other, he was beginning to think he must be an absolute duffer not to have rescued her while he was actually with her.
A cleverer chap would surely have found a way.
How was he to explain his failure to her father?