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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
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Then the fair man turned sharply to Miss
West. "Spell 'genwin'," he commanded.
Ann found life dull as governess to a millionaire's daughter,
not knowing a leading part in a sinister drama awaited
her.
THE essential part of this tale is that Ann Shelley was an Oxford M.A.
Unfortunately, so many other young women had the same idea of going to college and getting a degree that she found it difficult to harness her qualifications with a job. Therefore, she considered herself lucky, when she was engaged as resident governess to Stella Williams, aged 15—the only child of a millionaire manufacturer.
It was not until her final interview with Stella's mother, in a sun room which was a smother of luxury, that she understood the exact nature of her duties. Lady Williams—a beautiful porcelain person, with the brains of a butterfly—looked at her with appealing violet eyes.
"It's so difficult to explain, Miss Shelley. Of course, my husband considers education comes first, but what I want is some one to exercise a moral Influence on Stella. She—she's not normal."
"Thymus gland?" hinted Ann.
"O far worse. She won't wash."
Ann thought of the times she had been sent upstairs to remove a water mark, because she had overslept, or wanted to finish a thriller, and she began to laugh.
"That's normal, at her age," she explained. "School girls often scamp washing."
Lady Williams looked skeptical, but relieved.
"The trouble began," she said, "when she was too old for a nurse. Nannie used to wash and dress her, like a baby. But she refuses to let her maid do anything but impersonal things, like clothes. It's her idea of independence. She's terribly clever and socialistic. Shell try to catch you out."
"That sounds stimulating," smiled Ann.
All the same, she was not impressed pleasantly by her new pupil. Stella was unattractive, aggressive, and superior. Her sole recommendation to Ann's favor was her intelligence, which was far above the average.
On her first Saturday half holiday, Ann walked out to the grounds of Arlington Manor—the residence of the earl of Blankshire—to visit her old governess, Miss West. It was a May day of exciting weather, with concealed lightning bursting through a white windy sky. She thrilled with a sense of liberation, when she turned in to the road through the woods, where the opening beeches were an emerald filigree against the blue shadows of the undergrowth.
Miss West's cottage suggested a fairy tale, with its thatched roof and diamond-paned windows. It stood in a clearing, and was surrounded by a small garden, then purple with clumps of irises.
Ann's knock was answered by the maid, Maggie—a strapping country girl. She showed the visitor into the bed-sitting-room, where her mistress, who was crippled with rheumatism, was sitting up in bed. Miss West was an old woman, for she had also been a governess to Ann's mother. Her mouth and chin had assumed the nutcracker of age, so that she looked rather like an old witch, with her black blazing eyes and snowy hair.
Her dominant quality was her vitality. Ann could still feel it playing on her, like a battery, as they exchanged greetings.
"I love your little house," she remarked later, when Maggie had brought in tea. "But it's very lonely. Are you ever nervous?"
"Nervous of what?" asked Miss West. "There's nothing here to steal, and no money. Everyone knows that the earl is my banker."
This was her way of explaining that she was a penniless pensioner of the earl, whom she had taught in his nursery days.
"Every morning, some one comes down from the manor with the day's supplies," she said. "At night, a responsible person visits me for my orders and complaints ... O you needn't look down your nose. The earl is in my debt. He is prolonging my life at a thrilling expense to himself, but I saved his life, when he was a child, at the risk of my own."
Her deep voice throbbed as she added, "I still feel there is nothing so precious as life."
Later, in that small bewitched room, Ann was to remember her words.
"Life's big things appeal most to me," she confessed. "Oxford was wonderful—every minute of it. And I'm just living for my marriage with Kenneth. I told you I was engaged. He's a doctor on a ship, and we'll have to wait. In between, I'm just marking time."
"You have the important job of moulding character," Miss West reminded her. "How does your gilded pupil progress?"
"She's a gilded pill," Ann grimaced.
"Is Oxford responsible for your idea of humor?" asked Miss West, who had a grudge against a university education.
"No, it's the result of living in a millionaire's family. Please, may I come to see you, every Saturday afternoon? You make me feel recharged."
Although Miss West had acted like a mental tonic, Ann was conscious of a period of stagnation, when she walked back through the wood. She taught, in order to live, and went to see an old woman, as recreation. Life was dull. It might not nave appeared so flat had she known that she was marked down already for a leading part in a sinister drama, and that she had been followed all the way to the cottage.
FOR the next few weeks life continued to be monotonous for
Ann, but it grew exciting for Stella, as, gradually, she felt the
pull of her governess' attraction. Ann had a charming appearance,
and definite personality. She made no attempt to rouse her
pupil's personal pride by shock tactics, but relied on the
contrast between her own manicured hands and the girl's neglected
nails.
Presently she was able to report progress to the young ship's doctor.
"My three years at Oxford have not been wasted," she wrote. "The gilded pupil has begun to wash."
In her turn, she became fonder of Stella, especially when she discovered that the girl's aggressive manner was a screen for an inferiority complex.
"I always feel people hate me," she confided to her governess, one day. "I'm ashamed of having a millionaire father. He didn't make his money. Others make it for him. He ought to pay them a real spending income, and, automatically, increase the demand, and create fresh employment."
Ann found these socialistic debates rather a trial of tact, but she enjoyed the hours of study. Stella was a genuine student, and always read up her subject beforehand, so that lessons took somewhat the form of discussions and explanations. Ann was spared the drudgery of correcting French exercises and problems in algebra.
But her gain was some one else's loss. She had no idea how seriously she was restricting the activities of another in the plot.
Doris—the schoolroom maid—hunted daily amid the fragments in the wastepaper basket for something which she had been ordered to procure. And she searched in vain.
WHEN Stella's devotion to the bathroom was deepening to
passion, she began to grow jealous of her governess' private
hours.
"Do you go to the pictures on Saturday?" she asked.
"No. I visit an old witch, in a cottage in the wood."
"Take me with you."
"You'd be bored. It's my old governess."
"Your governess? I'd love to see her. Please."
Ann had to promise a vague "some day." Although she was sorry to disappoint Stella, she could not allow her to encroach on her precious liberty.
By this time, however, her time-table was an established fact to the brains of the plot. Therefore, the next Saturday she visited Miss West she was followed by a new trailer.
She noticed him when she came out of the great gates of the millionaire's mansion, because he aroused a momentary sense or repugnance. He was fair and rather womanish in appearance, but his good looks were marred by a cruel red triangular mouth.
He kept pace with her on the opposite side of the street when she was going through the town, but she shook him off later on. Therefore it gave her quite a shock when she turned into the beech avenue—now a green tunnel—to hear his footsteps a little distance in the rear.
Although she was furious with herself, she hurried to reach the cottage, which was quite close. The door was opened before she could knock, because her arrival was the signal for Maggie's release. It was Ann herself, who had suggested the extra leisure for the maid while she kept the old lady company.
Miss West, whose bed faced the window, greeted her with a question.
"When did you lose your admirer?"
"Who?" asked Ann, in surprise.
"I refer to the weedy boy who always slouches past the minute after your knock."
"I've never noticed him ... But I thought I was followed here today by a specially unpleasant-looking man."
"Hum. We'd better assume that you were ... How much money have you in your bag?"
"More than I care to lose."
"Then leave all the notes with me. I'll get the manor folk to return them to you by registered post ... And, remember, if the man attacks you on your way home, don't resist. Give him your bag—and run."
"You're arranging a cheerful program for me," laughed Ann.
WHEN nine struck, Miss West told her to go.
"Maggie is due now any minute," she told her, "and so is the housekeeper from the manor. Good-by—and don't forget it means 'God be with you.'"
Ann was not nervous, but when she walked down the garden path she could not help contrasting the dark Green twilight of the woods with the sun splashed beech avenue of the afternoon. Clumps of fox-gloves glimmered whitely through the gloom, and in the distance an owl hooted to his mate.
She passed close by the bushes where a man was hiding. He could have touched her, had he put out his hand. She was his quarry, whom he had followed to the cottage, so he looked at her intently.
Her expensive bag promised a rich haul. Yet he let her go by and waited, instead, for someone who was of only incidental interest to the plot.
A few minutes later Maggie charged down the avenue like a young elephant, for she was late. She had not a nerve in her body, and only three pence in her purse. As she passed the rhododendron thicket a shadow slipped out of it like an adder—a black object whirled round in the air—and Maggie fell down on the ground like a log.
THE mystery attack was a nine days' wonder, for bag-snatching
was unknown in the district. But while Maggie was recovering from
slight concussion, in the hospital, Ann had the unpleasant task
of mentally bludgeoning her pupil out of a "rave." After the
weekly visit of the hairdresser, Stella appeared in the
schoolroom with her hair cut and waved in the same fashion as
Ann's.
"Like it?" she asked self-consciously.
"It's charming." Ann had to be tender with the inferiority complex. "But I liked your old style better. That was you. Don't copy me, Stella. I should never forgive myself if I robbed you of your individuality."
Stella wilted, like a pimpernel in wet weather.
"I'm not going to have a crush on you," she declared. "Too definitely feeble. But we're friends aren't we? Let's have a sort of friend's charter, with a secret signature, when we write to each other. Like this." She scrawled a five fingered star on a piece of paper and explained it eagerly. "My name."
Ann was aware that Doris, the schoolroom maid, was listening with a half grin, and she decided to nip the nonsense in the bud.
"You'll want a secret society next, you baby," she said, as she crumpled up the paper. "Now, suppose we call it a day and go to the pictures."
Stella especially enjoyed that afternoon's entertainment, because the film was about a kidnapped girl, and she was excited by the personal implication.
"If a kidnapper ever got me, I'd say 'Good luck' to him. He'd deserve it," she boasted, as they drove home. "They wouldn't decoy me into a taxi with a fake message."
Ann's private feeling was that Stella's intelligence was not likely to be tested, since she ran no possible risk. Lady Williams was nervous on the score of her valuable jewelry, so the house was burglar proof, with flood-lit grounds and every kind of electric alarms.
Besides this, Stella either went out in the car, driven by a trusted chauffeur, or took her walks with a pack of large dogs.
So it was rather a shock to Ann when the girl lowered her voice.
"I'll tell you a secret. They've had a shot for me. They sent one of our own cars to the dancing class, but I noticed Hereford wasn't driving so I wouldn't get in. I wouldn't tell them at home because of mother."
Ann, who was still under the influence of the picture, was horrified.
"Stella," she cried, "I want you to promise me something. If ever you get a note signed by me take no notice of it."
"I promise. But if you signed it with our star, I'd know it was genuine. And if you were in danger nothing and no one would stop me from coming to your rescue."
"Single-handed, like the screen heroines who blunder into every trap?"
"Not me. I'll bring the police with me ... Isn't that our schoolroom maid coming down the drive? Isn't she gorgeous?"
Doris, transformed by a marine cap and generous lipstick, minced past the car. She had to be smart, because she was meeting a fashionable gentleman with a cruel red mouth.
When she saw him in the distance she anticipated his question by shaking her head.
"No good swearing at me," she told him. "I can't get what isn't there. But I've brought you something else."
She gave him a sheet of crumpled paper on which was the rough drawing of a star.
THE next time Ann went to the cottage in the wood the door was
opened by the new maid—an ice-cold competent brunette, in
immaculate livery. There was no doubt she was a domestic
treasure, and a great improvement on Maggie, but Ann was repelled
by the expression of her thin lipped mouth.
"I don't like your new maid's face," she said to her old governess when Coles had carried out the tea table.
"Neither do I," remarked Miss West calmly. "She's far too good for my situation—yet she's no fool. My opinion is she's wanted by the police and has come here to hide. It's an ideal spot."
"But you won't keep her?"
"Why not? She's an excellent maid. There's no reason why I should not benefit by the special circumstances, if any. After all, it's only my suspicion."
"What about her references?"
"Superlative. Probably forged. The housekeeper hadn't time to inquire too closely. The place isn't popular, after the attack on Maggie."
"But I don't like to think of you alone, at her mercy."
"Don't worry about me. She's been to the cupboard and found out it's bare. I've nothing to lose."
Ann realized the sense of Miss West's argument, especially as she was in constant touch with the manor. Not long afterwards she wondered whether she had misjudged the woman, for she received a letter, by the next morning's post, which indicated that she was not altogether callous.
Its address was the cottage in the wood.
Dear Madam, it ran,
Pardon the liberty of my writing to you, but I feel responsible for Miss West in case anything happens to her and there's an inquest. I would be obliged if you would tell me is her heart bad and what to do in case of a sudden attack. I don't like to trouble her ladyship as I am a stranger to her and Miss West bites my head off if I ask her. I could not ask you today because she is suspicious of whispering. Will you kindly drop me a line in return and oblige.
Yours respectfully,
Marion Coles.
Ann hastily wrote the maid a brief note, saying that Miss West had good health—apart from the crippling rheumatism—but recommending a bottle of brandy, in case of emergency. She posted it and forgot the matter.
MEANWHILE, Miss West was finding Coles' competency a pleasant
change. On the following Saturday, when she carried in her
mistress' lunch, Miss West looked, with approval, at her spotless
apron and muslin collar.
After she had finished her well-cooked cutlet and custard, she lay back and closed her eyes, in order to be fresh for Ann's visit.
She had begun to doze when she heard the opening of the front door. Her visitor was before her usual time.
"Ann," she called.
Instead of her old pupil, a strange woman entered the bedroom. Her fashionably thin figure was defined by a tight black suit and a halo hat revealed a sharp rouged face.
As Miss West stared at her she gave a cry of recognition.
"Coles!"
The woman sneered at her.
"Here's two gentlemen come to see you," she announced.
As she spoke, two men, dressed with flashy smartness, sauntered into the room. One was blond and handsome, except for a red triangular mouth; the other had the small cunning eyes and low set ears of an elementary criminal type.
"Go out of my room," ordered Miss West. "Coles you are discharged."
The men only laughed as they advanced to the bed.
"We're only going to make you safer, old lady." said the fair man. "You might fall out of bed and hurt yourself. See?"
Miss West did not condescend to struggle while her feet and hands were secured with cords. Her wits told her that she would need to conserve every ounce of strength.
"Aren't you taking an unnecessary precaution with a bedridden woman?" she asked scornfully.
"Nothing too good for you, sweetheart," the fair man told her.
"Why have you come here? My former maid has told you that there is nothing of value in my cottage."
"Nothing but you, beautiful."
"How dare you be insolent to me? Take off your hats in a lady's presence."
The men only laughed. They sat and smoked cigarettes in silence, until a knock on the front door made them spring to their feet.
"Let her in," ordered the ringleader.
Miss West strained at her cords as Coles went out of the room. Her black eyes glared with helpless fury when Ann entered, and stood—horror stricken—in the doorway.
"Don't dare touch her," she cried.
The men merely laughed again, as they seized the struggling girl, forced her down on a bedroom chair and began to bind her ankles.
"Ann," commended the old governess. "Keep still. They're three to one. An elementary knowledge of arithmetic should tell you resistance is useless."
The pedantic old voice steadied Ann's nerves.
"Are you all right, Miss West?" she asked coolly.
"Quite comfortable, thanks."
"Good." Ann turned to the men. "What do you want?"
They did not answer, but nodded to Coles, who placed a small table before Ann. With the deft movements of a well trained maid she arranged stationery—stamped with Miss West's address and writing materials.
Then the fair man explained the situation.
"The Williams' kid wot you teach is always pestering you to come here and see the old lady. Now, you're going to write her a nice little note, inviting her to tea this afternoon."
Ann's heart hammered as she realized she had walked into a trap. The very simplicity of the scheme was its safeguard. She was the decoy bird. The kidnappers had only to install a spy in the Williams' household, to study the habits of the governess.
Unfortunately she had led them to an ideal rendezvous—the cottage in the wood.
"No," she said.
The next second she shivered as something cold was pressed to her temple.
"We'll give you five minutes to make up your mind," said the fair man, glancing at the grandfather's clock. "Then we shoot."
Ann gritted her teeth. In that moment her reason told her that she was probably acting from false sentiment and a confused sense of values. But logic was of no avail. She could not betray her trust.
"No," she said again.
The second man crossed to the bed and pressed his revolver to Miss West's head.
"Her, too," he said.
Ann looked at her old governess in an agony, imploring her forgiveness.
"She's only fifteen," she said piteously, as though in excuse.
"And I'm an old woman," grunted Miss West. "Your reasoning is sound. But you forget someone younger than your pupil. Your unborn son."
Ann's face quivered, but she shook her head. Then the old governess spoke with the rasp of authority in her voice.
"Ann, I'm ashamed of you. What is money, compared with two valuable lives, not to mention those still to come? I understand these—gentlemen do not wish to injure your pupil. They only want to collect a ransom."
"That's right, lady," agreed the fair man. "We won't do her no harm. This will tell the old man all hell want to know."
He laid down a typewritten demand note on the table and added a direction to Ann.
"When we've gone off with the kid, nip off to the old man as fast as you can go and give him this."
"With her legs tied to a chair?" asked the deep sarcastic voice of the old woman.
"She's got her hands free, ain't she? Them knots will take some undoing, but it's up to her, ain't it?"
"True. No doubt she will manage to free herself ... But suppose she writes this note and the young lady does not accept the invitation? What then?"
The fair man winked at his companion.
"Then you'll both be unlucky," he replied.
ANN listened in dull misery. She could not understand the
drift of Miss West's questions. They only prolonged the agony.
Both of them knew they could place no reliance on the promise of
the kidnappers. The men looked a pair of merciless beasts.
If she wrote that note she would lure her poor little gilded pupil to her death.
She started as her governess spoke sharply to her.
"Ann, you've heard what these gentlemen have said." She added in bitter mockery of their speech. "They wouldn't never break their word. Write that note."
Ann could not believe her ears. Yet she could feel the whole force of her vitality playing on her like an electric battery. It reminded her of a former experience, when she was a child. Her uncle, was paid for her education, was an Oxford don and he raised an objection against Miss West because she was unqualified.
In the end he consented to give his niece a viva-voce examination, on the result of which depended the governess' fate.
Ann passed the test triumphantly, but she always felt, privately, that Miss West supplied the right answers, as she sat staring at her pupil with hypnotic black eyes.
Now she knew that the old magic was at work again. Miss West was trying to tell her something without the aid of words.
Suddenly the knowledge came. Her old governess was playing for time. Probably she was expecting some male visitors from the manor, as the earl and his sons often came to the cottage. What she, herself, had to do was to stave off the five minute sentence of death by writing a note to Stella, which was hallmarked as a forgery so that the girl would not come.
As she hesitated she remembered that she had extracted a promise from her pupil to disregard any message. The question was, whether it would be obeyed, for she knew the strength of her fatal attraction, and that Stella was eager to visit the cottage.
Hoping for the best, she began to write, disguising her handwriting by a backward slant.
"Dear Stella—"
With an oath the man snatched up the paper and threw it on the floor in a crumpled ball.
"None of them monkey tricks." he snarled. "We know your proper writing. And sign it with this."
Ann's hope died as the man produced the letter which she had written to Coles about Miss West's health and also Stella's rough drawing of a star.
She was defeated by the evidence—a specimen of her handwriting—for which Doris, the schoolroom maid had searched in vain—and the secret signature.
"I—can't," she said, feebly pushing away the paper.
Again the pistol was pressed to her head.
"Don't waste no time," growled the fair man.
"Don't waste no time," echoed Miss West. "Ann, write."
There was a spark in the old woman's eyes and the flash of wireless. Impelled to take up the pen, Ann wrote quickly, in a firm hand, and signed her note with a faithful copy of the star.
The men hung over her, watching every stroke and comparing the writing with Coles' letter.
"Don't put no dots," snarled the fair man, who plainly suspected a cypher, when Ann inserted a period.
He read the note again when it was finished and then passed it to his companion, who pointed to a word suspiciously. The old woman and the girl looked at each other in an agony of suspense as they waited for the blow to fall.
Then the fair man turned sharply to Miss West.
"Spell 'genwin'." he commanded.
As she reeled off the correct spelling he glanced doubtfully at his companion, who nodded.
"O.K." he said.
Miss West's grim face did not relax and Ann guessed the reason. She was nerving herself for the second ordeal of Coles' inspection.
Fortunately, however, the men did not want their female confederate's opinion. The job was done and they wanted to rush it forward to its next stage. The fair man sealed the note and whistled on his fingers.
Instantly the weedy youth who had followed Ann to the cottage appeared from behind a clump of laurels in the drive, wheeling a bicycle. He snatched the letter from Coles and scorched away round the bend of the road.
Ann slumped back in her chair, feeling unstrung in every fiber. Nothing remained but to wait—wait—and pray Stella would not come.
The time seemed to pass very slowly inside the room. The men smoked in silence until the carpet was littered with cigarette-stubs and the air veiled with smoke. Miss West watched the clock as though she would galvanize the minute hand.
"Don't come," agonized Ann. "Stella, don't come."
But absent treatment proved a failure for Coles, who was hiding behind a curtain, gave a sudden hoot of triumph.
"The car's come."
"Push the girl to the front," commanded the fair man.
He helped to lift Ann's chair to the window so that she saw the Williams' Lanchester waiting in front of the cottage. Stella stood on the drive and the chauffeur, Hereford, was in the act of shutting the door. He sprang back to his seat, backed, saluted, and drove swiftly away.
Ann watched the car disappear with despairing eyes. She could not scream because fingers were gripping her windpipe, nearly choking her. But Stella could distinguish the pale blue of her frock behind the diamond paned window and she waved her hand as she ran eagerly up the garden path.
Had Ann been normal she might have guessed the truth from Stella's reaction to the scene when she burst into the room. Instead of appearing surprised, she dashed to Ann and threw her arms around her.
"They didn't fool me," she whispered.
Then she began to fight like a boxing kangaroo, in order to create the necessary distraction, while the police car came round the bend of the drive.
The prelude to a successful raid was Mr. Williams' call for prompt action, when his daughter brought him Ann's note.
"It's her writing and our private star," she told him. "But—read it."
He glanced at the few lines and laughed.
"An impudent forgery," he said.
"No, it's an S.O.S. It looks like a second try for me."
After she had told her father about the first unsuccessful attempt to kidnap her, he realized the importance of nipping the gang's activities in the bud.
This seems the place to print the note, which was the alleged composition of an Oxford M.A.
Dear Stella,
Miss West will be pleased if you will come to tea this afternoon. Don't waste no time and don't run no risks. Let Hereford drive you in the car. To prove this is genuine I'm signing it with our star, same as you done, one day in the schoolroom.
Yours,
Ann Shelley.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.