LADY MAXELL yawned and put down the magazine she was reading. She looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock. At such an hour Paris would be beginning to wake up. The best people would still be in the midst of their dinner, and Marie de Montdidier (born Hopkins) would be putting the final dabs of powder on her nose in her dressing-room at the Folies Bergères before making her first and her final appearance. The boulevards would be bright with light, and there would be lines of twinkling autos in the Bois for the late diners at the Aromonville. She looked across at the girl sitting under a big lamp in a window recess, a book on her knees, but her mind and eyes elsewhere.
“Mary,” she said, and the girl, with a start, woke from her reverie.
“Do you want me, Lady Maxell?”
“What is the matter with Sir John? You know him better than I do.”
The girl shook her head.
“I hardly know, Lady Maxell——”
“For heaven’s sake don’t call me ‘Lady Maxell,’?” said the other irritably. “I’ve told you to call me Sadie if you want to.” There was a silence. “Evidently you don’t want,” snapped the woman. “You’re what I call a fine, sociable family. You seem to get your manners from your new friend.”
The girl went red.
“My new friend?” she asked, and Lady Maxell turned her back to her with some resolution and resumed for a moment the reading of her magazine.
“I don’t mind if you find any pleasure in talking to that kind of insect,” she said, putting the periodical down again. “Why, the world’s full of those do-nothing boys. I suppose he knows there’s money coming to you.”
The girl smiled.
“Very little, Lady Maxell,” she said.
“A little’s a lot to a man like that,” said the other. “You mustn’t think I am prejudiced because I was—er—annoyed the other day. That is temperament.”
Again the girl smiled, but it was a different kind of smile, and Lady Maxell observed it.
“You can marry him as far as I am concerned,” she said. “These sneaking meetings are not exactly complimentary to Sir John, that’s all.”
The girl closed her book, walked across to the shelf and put it away before she spoke.
“I suppose you’re speaking of Mr. Anderson,” she said. “Yes, I have met him, but there has been nothing furtive in the meetings. He stopped me in the park and apologised for having been responsible for the scene—for your temperament, you know.”
Lady Maxell looked up sharply, but the girl met her eyes without wavering.
“I hope you aren’t trying to be sarcastic,” complained the older woman. “One never knows how deep you are. But I can tell you this, that sarcasm is wasted on me.”
“I’m sure of that,” said the girl.
Lady Maxell looked again, but apparently the girl was innocent of offensive design.
“I say I met Mr. Anderson. He was very polite and very nice. Then I met him again—in fact, I have met him several times,” she said thoughtfully. “So far from his being a do-nothing, Lady Maxell, I think you are doing him an injustice. He is working at the Parade Drug Store.”
“He will make a fine match for you,” said the woman. “Sir John will just love having a shop-walker in the family!”
That ended the conversation for both of them, and they sat reading for a quarter of an hour before Lady Maxell threw her magazine on the floor and got up.
“Sir John had a telegram yesterday that worried him,” she said. “Do you know what it was about?”
“Honestly I do not know, Lady Maxell,” said the girl. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
“Because he would tell me a lie,” said the woman coolly, and the girl winced.
“He brought all his money and securities from the Dawlish and County Bank to-day and put them in his safe and he had the chief constable with him for half an hour this morning.”
This was news to the girl, and she was interested in spite of herself.
“Now, Mary,” said Lady Maxell, “I’m going to be frank with you—frankness pays sometimes. They called my marriage a romance of the screen. Every newspaper said as much and I suppose that is true. But the most romantic part of the marriage was my estate in Honolulu, my big house in Paris and my bank balance. Ellsberger’s publicity man put all that stuff about, and I’ve an idea that Sir John was highly disappointed when he found he’d married me for myself alone. That’s how it strikes me.”
Here was a marriage which had shocked Society and had upset the smooth current of the girl’s life, placed in an entirely new light.
“Aren’t you very rich?” she asked slowly, and Sadie laughed.
“Rich! There was a tram fare between me and the workhouse the day I married Sir John,” she said. “I don’t blame him for being disappointed. Lots of these cinema stars are worth millions—I wasn’t one of them. I married because I thought I was going to have a good time—lots of money and plenty of travel—and I chose with my eyes shut.”
The girl was silent. For once Sadie Maxell’s complaint had justification. Sir John Maxell was not a spending man. He lived well, but never outside the circle of necessity.
The girl was about to speak, when there came a dramatic interruption.
There was a “whang!” a splintering of glass and something thudded against the wall. Lady Maxell stood up as white as death.
“What was that?” she gasped.
The girl was pale, but she did not lose her nerve.
“Somebody fired a shot. Look!”
She pulled aside the curtain. “The bullet went through the window.”
“Keep away from the window, you fool!” screamed the woman. “Turn out the light! Ring the bell!”
Mary moved across the room and turned the switch. They waited in silence, but no other shot was fired. Perhaps it was an accident. Somebody had been firing at a target. . . .
“Go and tell my husband!” said Sadie. “Quickly!”
The girl passed through the lighted hall upstairs and knocked at Sir John’s door. There was no answer. She tried the door, but found it locked. This was not unusual. He had a separate entrance to his study, communicating by a balcony and a flight of stairs with the garden. A wild fear seized her. Possibly Sir John had been in the garden when the shot was fired; it may have been intended for him. She knocked again louder, and this time she heard his step and the door was opened.
“Did you knock before?” he asked. “I was writing——”
Then he saw her face.
“What has happened?” he demanded.
The girl told him, and he made his way downstairs slowly, as was his wont. He entered the drawing-room, switched on the lights, and without a glance at his wife walked to the window and examined the shattered pane.
“I imagined I heard a noise, but thought somebody had dropped something. When did this happen? Just before you came up?”
The girl nodded.
Maxell looked from one to the other. His wife was almost speechless with terror, and Mary Maxell alone was calm.
“It has come already,” he said musingly. “I did not think that this would happen so soon.”
He walked down to the hall where the telephone hung and rang through to the police station, and the girl heard all he said.
“Yes, it is Sir John Maxell speaking. A shot has just been fired through my window. No, not at me—I was in my study. Apparently a rifle shot. Yes, I was right——”
Presently he came back.
“The police will be here in a few moments to make a search of the grounds,” he said, “but I doubt whether they will catch the miscreant.”
“Is it possible that it was an accident?” asked the girl.
“Accident?” He smiled. “I think not,” he said dryly. “That kind of accident is liable to happen again. You had better come up to my study, both of you, till the police arrive,” he said and led the way up the stairs.
He did not attempt to support his wife, though her nerve was obviously shaken. Possibly he did not observe this fact until they were in the room, for after a glance at her face he pushed a chair forward.
“Sit down,” he said.
The study was the one room to which his wife was seldom admitted. Dominated as he was by her in other matters, he was firm on this point. It was perhaps something of a novelty for her—a novelty which will still the whimper of the crying chi............