Chapter 9 #2
Daisy flagged before they finished the list. “It’s tea-time,” she pointed out to Binkie, “and very likely the shops in the next place will be closed before we get there anyway.”
“You want to head back to Fairacres?”
“If we don’t,” she said frankly, “you may have to carry me home, and my bike too.”
Binkie grinned. “Dashed if I don’t think we’ve done our duty for the day. Wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy’s dragged Phil home by now.”
They were the first back, but only by a few minutes.
Geraldine had people to tea on the terrace.
The weary searchers, four of them far too grimy to join the party, collapsed on the grass under a wide-spreading chestnut.
Ernest, obviously bemused by the curious habits of the gentry who exhausted themselves for fun, brought them tea.
All reported equal lack of results. Five pairs of eyes turned to Daisy.
“It’s hopeless, isn’t it?” Phillip blurted out.
Daisy rallied herself. “Not at all, old dear. We’ve barely scratched the surface.
Only I think tomorrow we’d better each go out on our own—is that grammatical?
You know what I mean. We’ll cover much more ground that way, and it’ll be ground where Phil and I have no advantage.
Tommy and Madge will go together, of course.
You made it about half-way round your circle? ”
“Just about,” Tommy confirmed, “but Madge is finding it pretty tiring even by car, don’t y’know. I think she ought to stay behind tomorrow.”
“Oh no,” cried Madge, “I’ll be perfectly all right after a night’s sleep. You must admit, Tommy, people talk more to me than to you, and I want to do my bit.”
“You can,” Daisy said quickly, “without stirring a step. I’ve been thinking,” she lied, “we ought to have someone here to sort of coordinate things. Each of us will ring up periodically, so if someone finds out something the others can all be told right away. We’ll work out some kind of code.”
“Good tactics,” said Tommy with a grateful glance. “Definitely the best use of available troops.”
“I hate to be a wet blanket,” Lucy drawled, “but while people talk to Tommy, if less readily than to Madge, is anyone going to say a word to Binkie? Did you open your mouth to anyone but Daisy today, darling?”
“No,” Binkie confessed, blushing.
Daisy hurried to rescue the embarrassed young man.
“In any case, Lucy, you don’t look at all the sort who’d be buzzing about on a bicycle without a man at your side.
Binkie had better escort you. His moment will come when we find Miss Arbuckle and have to storm the castle, if we decide that’s the best thing to do. Pass the cake, Madge, I’m starving.”
Well fortified with Victoria sponge and Shrewsbury biscuits, Daisy spent the next couple of hours poring over maps and plotting new courses for the morrow.
Knowing what had been covered today, she was dismayed to see how long it was going to take to survey even a ten-mile-radius circle.
Before she went up to bathe and change, she cornered Phillip.
“You know, old thing,” she said, “we’ll find Gloria, but I’m dead certain the police could find her sooner. I do wish you’d let me consult Alec.”
Phillip stubbornly shook his head. “They’d find out.”
“With the local chaps, I expect so, but Alec will know how to keep things hushed up.”
“Fletcher’s a good chap,” he said unexpectedly. “If I hadn’t given Arbuckle my word, I’d consider putting it to him as a hyp … hypno … what’s the dashed word I want?”
“Hypothetical case?”
“That’s it. But I can’t. You’d have to persuade Arbuckle. He should be in touch,” Phillip added, his brow creased with worry. “You don’t suppose he’s having trouble collecting the money?”
“It just takes time,” Daisy soothed him. “He’d have let you know if there was any difficulty.”
Phillip accepted that, and Daisy went off to take her long-overdue bath.
After dinner she went over the next day’s plans with the others. Then they joined her cousins in the drawing-room, the terrace being ruled out by Geraldine, who was sure it was about to rain. Somnolent after an excess of exercise, they were settling down to a quiet evening when Ernest appeared.
“Telephone, Mr. Petrie, sir.”
Phillip dashed off, to return a few moments later and beckon urgently to Daisy.
Joining him, she asked in a low voice, “Mr. Arbuckle?”
“Yes. He’s back in Malvern and he wants to come over. Is that all right? He’s holding the line.” Phillip started back to the telephone in the front hall and Daisy followed.
“Can’t we go there?” she proposed.
“He doesn’t want anyone to see me with him while Gloria’s supposed to be away visiting friends.”
“Oh yes, I forgot. He’s right, people would talk. We must see him, and it’s less conspicuous for him to come here.”
“It’s frightful cheek to invite him.”
“I’ll think of something to tell Geraldine.”
“She thinks he ran me off the road.”
“Right-o, how’s this: You discovered he has pull with a publisher—a big investment or something—so you invited him to meet me. That will give us an excuse to talk to him privately, too. Warn him,” she advised as Phillip picked up the telephone.
He spoke briefly to Arbuckle, then hung up. “He’ll be here in half an hour.”
“I’ll ask Edgar if we can use his den. That will circumvent Geraldine nicely.”
As they reached the drawing-room, Edgar was saying, “And then I spotted a Chinese character.”
Startled, Daisy wondered if a Chinaman had somehow got mixed up in the kidnapping. Could “the Yank” be a deliberately misleading nickname? Didn’t Chinese criminals favour the white slave trade rather than abductions for ransom?
“Cilix glaucata, you know,” Edgar continued. “At rest, with its wings folded, the adult moth looks remarkably like a bird dropping.”
“Really, Edgar!” exclaimed Geraldine.
Phillip chose that moment to announce, “I say, that was Arbuckle on the ’phone. The American chappie, you remember, Lady Dalrymple?”
“Oh yes. Edgar, I wish you would not…”
“I discovered he’s a publisher, or has influence in a publishing company, or something of the sort. Investments, what? So it seemed a good idea to introduce him to Daisy.”
“… discuss the revolting habits of your insects…”
“So I’ve asked him to pop over this evening. I hope you don’t mind.”
“… in mixed company. By all means, Mr. Petrie. It’s really most improper.”
“There’s nothing improper about it,” Edgar argued. “It’s a matter of scientific observation.”
“Would you mind if we used your den, sir? Business matter, and all that.”
Edgar waved permission. “Don’t you see, dear, one must be able to describe the appearance accurately but in layman’s language. And the Chinese Character looks like a bird dropping.” He repeated the phrase with a defiant air. “Camouflage, you see.”
“Spiffing,” said Daisy, stifling a giggle as she caught Lucy’s sardonic eye. “We’ll wait for him there so as not to disturb you all when he arrives.”
She hustled Phillip out before Geraldine’s attention left the indecorous behaviour of moths and moved to the indecorous behaviour of a guest who invited a guest of his own.
They went to the den. Daisy, her legs still tired from bicycling, flopped into one of the vast leather-covered chairs. Phillip was too restless to relax. He went out again to pace the front hall.
Daisy’s eyelids were drooping when he stuck his head back in a few minutes later to say, “I’m going to walk down the drive to meet him.”
Shaking herself awake, Daisy set her mind to marshalling her arguments for calling in the police.
Her thoughts on Alec, she started wondering if her mother was going to treat him with the sort of icy politeness which was in effect a form of insult.
That reminded her that she’d promised to pop in to see the dowager today and hadn’t.
“Oh blast!” she said aloud.
“Pardon me?”
The American voice sounded infinitely weary. Daisy looked round. Arbuckle was not at all what she had expected of an American millionaire, that is large, overfed, and exuding a slightly false bonhomie.
About her own height, he was lean to the point of boniness. She guessed he had lost weight recently, for his charcoal suit, though of unmistakable Savile Row cut, hung on him as on a scarecrow. His long, gaunt face had a greyish cast to match his receding hair.
Mr. Arbuckle, she realized with a rush of sympathy, had no faith in his daughter’s safety.
His desolate eyes brought home to her with a jolt that she and her friends were not engaged for fun in a treasure-hunt with which she was already rather bored. Their efforts might mean the difference between life and death.