I don’t say you instigated anything, but you’ve been jolly helpful, Maurice. Some day I’ll make you a rich man.”
The dark, sloe-like eyes turned slowly in his direction. At any other time this patronage of the younger man would have infuriated Meister; now he was only piqued.
“My young friend,” he said precisely, “you are a little overconfident. Robbery with or without violence is not so simple a matter as you imagine. You think you’re clever—”
“I’m a little bit smarter than Wembury,” said Johnny complacently.
Maurice Meister concealed a smile.
It was not to the rosery that Mary led her visitor but to the sunken garden, with its crazy paving and battered statuary. There was a cracked marble bench overlooking a still pool where water-lilies grew, and she allowed him to dust a place for her before she sat down.
“Alan, I’m going to tell you something. I’m talking to Alan Wembury, not to Inspector Wembury,” she warned him, and he showed his astonishment.
“Why, of course…” He stopped; he had been on the point of calling her by name. “I’ve never had the courage to call you Mary, but I feel — old enough!”
This claim of age was a cowardly expedient, he told himself, but at least it was successful. There was real pleasure in her voice when she replied: “I’m glad you do. ‘Miss Mary’ would sound horribly unreal. In you it would sound almost unfriendly.”
“What is the trouble?” he asked, as he sat down by her side.
She hesitated only a second.
“Johnny,” she said. “He talks so oddly about things. It’s a terrible thing to say, Alan, but it almost seems as though he’s forgotten the distinction between right and wrong. Sometimes I think he only says these things in a spirit of perversity. At other times I feel that he means them. He talks harshly about poor, dear father, too. I find that difficult to forgive. Poor daddy was very careless and extravagant, but he was a good father to Johnny — and to me,” she said, her voice breaking.
“What do you mean when you say Johnny talks oddly?”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t only that: he has such strange friends. We had a man here last week — I only saw him, I did not speak to him — named Hackitt. Do you know him?”
“Hackitt? Sam Hackitt?” said Wembury in surprise. “Good Lord, yes! Sam and I are old acquaintances!”
“What is he?” she asked.
“He’s a burglar,” was the calm reply. “Probably Johnny was interested in the man and had him down—”
She shook her head.
“No, it wasn’t for that.” She bit her lip. “Johnny told me a lie; he said that this man was an artisan who was going to Australia. You’re sure this is your Sam Hackitt?”
Alan gave a very vivid, if brief, description of the little thief.
“That is he,” she nodded. “And, of course, I know he was an unpleasant sort of man. Alan, you don’t think that Johnny is bad, do you?”
He had never thought of Johnny as a possible subject for police observation. “Of course not!”
“But these peculiar friends of his — ?”
It was an opportunity not to be passed.
“I’m afraid, Mary, you’re going to meet a lot of people like Hackitt, and worse than Hackitt, who isn’t a bad soul if he could keep his fingers to himself.”
“Why?” she asked in amazement.
“You think of becoming Meister’s secretary — Mary, I wish you wouldn’t.”
She drew away a little, the better to observe him.
“Why on earth, Alan…? Of course, I understand what you mean. Maurice has a large number of clients, and I’m pretty sure to see them, but they won’t corrupt my young mind!”
“I’m not afraid of his clients,” said Alan quietly. “I’m afraid of Maurice Meister.”
She stared at him as though he were suddenly bereft of his senses.
“Afraid of Maurice?” She could hardly believe her ears. “Why, Maurice is the dearest thing! He has been kindness itself to Johnny and me, and we’ve known him all our lives.”
“I’ve known you all your life, too, Mary,” said Alan gently, but she interrupted him.
“But, tell me why?” she persisted. “What do you know against Maurice?”
Here, confronted with the concrete question, he lost ground.
“I know nothing about turn,” he admitted frankly. “I only know that Scotland Yard doesn’t like him.”
She laughed a low, amused laugh.
“Because he manages to keep these poor, wretched criminals out of prison! It’s professional jealousy! Oh, Alan,” she bantered him, “I didn’t believe it of you!”
No good purpose could be served by repeating his warning. There was one gleam of comfort in the situation; if she was to work for Meister she would be living in his division. He told her this.
“It will be rather dreadful, won’t it, after Lenley Court?” She made a little face at the thought. “It will mean that for a year or two I shall have no parties, no dances — Alan, I shall die an old maid!”
“I doubt that,” he smiled, “but the chances of meeting eligible young men in Deptford are slightly remote,” and they laughed together.
Chapter 5
Maurice Meister stood at the ragged end of a yew hedge and watched them. Strange, he mused, that never before had he realised the beauty of Mary Lenley. It needed, he told himself, the visible worship of this policeman to stimulate his interest in the girl, whom in a moment of impulse, which later he regretted, he had promised to employ. A bud, opening into glorious flower. Unobserved, he watched her; the contour of her cheek, the poise of her dark head, the supple line of her figure as she turned to rally Alan Wembury. Mr. Meister licked his dry lips. Queer that he had never thought that way about Mary Lenley. And yet…
He liked fair women. Gwenda Milton was fair, with a shingled, golden head. A stupid girl, who had become rather a bore. And from a bore she had developed into a sordid tragedy. Maurice shuddered as he remembered that grey day in the coroner’s court when he had stood on the witness stand and had lied and lied and lied.
Turning her head, Mary saw him and beckoned him, and he went slowly towards them.
“Where
