"I'm sorry, sir," the secretary replied. "Mr. Marsh is not at the office." (Holden's heart sank.) "He phoned that he would be at home all day. You could reach him there, if the matter is urgent. Is there anything I can do?"
Warrender cleared his throat
"I believe," he said, tapping his fountain pen on the desk to emphasize each word, "I believe Mr. Marsh has a sister-in-law named Miss Celia Devereux." Whereupon, officialdom being what it is, he could not help rapping out: "Have you any data on Miss Devereux?"
"Data, sir?"
"Precisely."
So great has become our terror of regulations in this free age that the secretary was clearly confusing the War Office with the Home Office, perhaps even with Scotland Yard, and wondering who was in trouble.
"During the war, sir, Miss Devereux was parliamentary secretary to Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore. The M.P., you know. I—I don't think she is employed at present If you could give me a little more information as to the sort of—er— data you want?"
"I mean," said Warrender, in a startlingly more human tone, "is she married?"
The secretary's voice seemed to jump. Holden, who was bending forward to catch each word out of the telephone, gripped the edge of the desk.
"Married, sir? Not to my knowledge."
"Ah!" observed Warrender. "Or engaged?"
The voice hedged. "I believe, sir, there has been some talk of an engagement to Mr. Hurst-Gore. But whether anything has been officially announced. . . ."
"Thank you," said Warrender, and hung up. His official face relaxed.
"The only thing for you to do, old boy," Warrender added, "is to send a long telegram to this Thorley What's-it, at his home address. Even if it falls into the wrong hands, it’ll break things gently. You hang about until the telegram's certain to have been delivered, and then just go out and see the girl. And . . . well, you know. Good luck."
Now there was an end of hanging about.
Over the Park, over Number 1 Gloucester Gate, warm dusk deepened. Distantly a taxi honked; otherwise it was so still that you might have been at Caswall in the country. Holden heard his own footsteps ring on asphalt as he walked into the little crescent of the drive. A short distance, only a short distance from the flight of stone steps leading up to the front door, he stopped again.
Perhaps the unlighted windows daunted him, the sense that nobody was there. But that couldn't be. Perhaps the front door would be opened by fat Obey, the old nurse. Perhaps it would be opened by Celia herself.
"Mr. Derek Hurst-Gore. M.P."
At the right-hand side of the house, a little stone-flagged path, enclosed by a rose trellis on the other side, led to a ack garden surrounded by a high brick wall. Holden, hesitating, made for that path. He told himself (at least, on the surface of his mind) that it was past dinnertime; that they would probably all be in the drawing room; and that the drawing room was at the back of the house, up one floor from the ground with its little iron balcony and staircase. So, of course, it would be best to go straight there.
And, as he walked down that path, a rush of memories returned bittersweet. In that back garden he had often had tea with Celia. He could see Margot there, too; in a deck chair, with a fashion magazine or else (her only kind of reading matter) a thriller or a book of trials. In that same garden, during the blitz days which now seemed so far off as to be prewar, Mammy Two—wrinkled-white of face, insatiably curious, her shawl round her shoulders—had stood night after night, watching the raiders under a sky white with gunfire.
Since their part of Wiltshire was a safe area, Thorley had thought it only prudent to take Margot to Caswall during the blitz. But Mammy Two refused to go.
"My dear child," Holden could hear her husky indomitable voice saying, in an utterly bewildered tone, "it's so silly of them to think they can browbeat us with this nonsense." (Bam went a battery of three-point-nines in Regent's Park; and the glass lusters of the chandelier jumped and clanked and tingled.) "It makes me really angry. That's why I'm here. I hate London otherwise, y'know."
And again:
"Die?" said Mammy Two. "Well, my dear child, I only hope when my time comes they'll have finished the new vault in Caswall churchyard. The old one is so crowded if s a sin and a shame." Her old eyes, pale blue in a white face, hardened and grew apprehensive. "But I don't want to die yet I've got to look out for—things."
"Things?"
"There's a funny streak in our family, /know. One of my granddaughters is all right, but I've been worried about the other ever since she was a little child. No, I don't want to be taken yet"
And so, in the bitter winter of '41, when high explosives showered down amid drifting snowflakes, she stayed too long in that garden watching the searchlights, and she died of pneumonia within a week. Celia, they said, had cried for days. Celia wouldn't leave town either.
Celia....
Pushing away these memories, which brought a lump into his throat in spite of himself, Holden hurried past scratching tendrils of rose trees into the garden. Again the utter stillness oppressed him. The cropped lawn, the sundial, the plum trees against the east wall, swam in a thin whitish dusk which made outlines just visible.
And there were no lights at the back of the house, either.
But this wasn't possible! There must be somebody at home! Besides, the full-length windows of the drawing room were standing wide open.
Holden stared at the back of the house. Across it, about fifteen feet above the ground, ran a narrow balcony with a wrought-iron balustrade; a flight of iron stairs led down into the garden. On the left were the tall door-windows of the drawing room; on the right, if he remembered correctly, a similar pair of door-windows led to the dining room. No sign of life anywhere. The ground-floor windows, even, were shuttered; the back door was closed.
Holden, now so puzzled that his self-assurance was returning, ran quickly up the iron stairs. It was as though, in the vividness of those memories, he had never been away. The balcony still rattled underfoot, just as it used to do. Fishing out his pocket lighter, he walked to the nearer of the open drawing-room windows. He put his head inside, and snapped on the flame of the lighter.
"Hullol" he called. "Is anybody at home? I. .."
Inside the room, a woman screamed.
That scream went piercing up with such suddenness, out of the dim drawing room, that in the shock of it the lighter slipped through Holden's fingers and clattered on the polished hardwood floor. At the same time the realization flooded his wits—ass! fool! Imbecile! that he had done precisely the thing he had been trying so hard to avoid.
It was the same drawing room, very large and lofty, its walls painted dark green, the arabesque gold of the Venetian mirror above a white marble mantelpiece, the white slip covers on the furniture showing ghostly against dusk. Not a single glass prism seemed missing from its chandelier. And the room was very much occupied.
Holden could make out the shadowy figure of Thorley Marsh, and of a girl who—thank God!—certainly wasn't either Celia or Margot. They appeared to have been standing rather close together, but they had jumped apart Holden's brain seemed to ring with the intensity of that moment of silence.
"I'm Don Holden, Thorley! I'm alive! I . . . Didn't you get my telegram?"
Thorley's voice, usually full throated, quavered out of gloom.
"Who—?"
"I tell you, Thorley, I'm Don Holden! It was all a mistake about my being lolled! Or at least . . . Didn't you get my telegram?"
"Tele . . ." began Thorley, and stopped. His hand moved toward the side pocket of his coat. Then, clearing his throat, he enunciated very slowly and clearly, but still shakily: 'Telegram."