The Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie [71]
Nevertheless, Tommy was now certain of what he had before only suspected. Sir James’s presence in Manchester was not accidental. Far from abandoning the case, as Julius supposed, he had by some means of his own successfully run the missing girl to earth. The only thing that puzzled Tommy was the reason for all this secrecy? He concluded that it was a foible of the legal mind.
Julius was speaking.
‘After dinner,’ he announced, ‘I shall go right away and see Jane.’
‘That will be impossible, I fear,’ said Sir James. ‘It is very unlikely they would allow her to see visitors at this time of night. I should suggest tomorrow morning about ten o’clock.’
Julius flushed. There was something in Sir James which always stirred him to antagonism. It was a conflict of two masterful personalities.
‘All the same, I reckon I’ll go round there tonight and see if I can’t ginger them up to break through their silly rules.’
‘It will be quite useless, Mr Hersheimmer.’
The words came out like the crack of a pistol, and Tommy looked up with a start. Julius was nervous and excited. The hand with which he raised his glass to his lips shook slightly, but his eyes held Sir James’s defiantly. For a moment the hostility between the two seemed likely to burst into flame, but in the end Julius lowered his eyes, defeated.
‘For the moment, I reckon you’re the boss.’
‘Thank you,’ said the other. ‘We will say ten o’clock then?’ With consummate ease of manner he turned to Tommy. ‘I must confess, Mr Beresford, that it was something of a surprise to me to see you here this evening. The last I heard of you was that your friends were in grave anxiety on your behalf. Nothing had been heard of you for some days, and Miss Tuppence was inclined to think you had got into difficulties.’
‘I had, sir!’ Tommy grinned reminiscently. ‘I was never in a tighter place in my life.’
Helped out by questions from Sir James, he gave an abbreviated account of his adventures. The lawyer looked at him with renewed interest as he brought the tale to a close.
‘You got yourself out of a tight place very well,’ he said gravely. ‘I congratulate you. You displayed a great deal of ingenuity and carried your part through well.’
Tommy blushed, his face assuming a prawn-like hue at the praise.
‘I couldn’t have got away but for the girl, sir.’
‘No.’ Sir James smiled a little. ‘It was lucky for you she happened to–er–take a fancy to you.’ Tommy appeared about to protest, but Sir James went on. ‘There’s no doubt about her being one of the gang, I suppose?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir. I thought perhaps they were keeping her there by force, but the way she acted didn’t fit in with that. You see, she went back to them when she could have got away.’
Sir James nodded thoughtfully.
‘What did she say? Something about wanting to be taken to Marguerite?’
‘Yes, sir. I suppose she meant Mrs Vandemeyer.
‘She always signed herself Rita Vandemeyer. All her friends spoke of her as Rita. Still, I suppose the girl must have been in the habit of calling her by her full name. And, at the moment she was crying out to her, Mrs Vandemeyer was either dead or dying! Curious! There are one or two points that strike me as being obscure–their sudden change of attitude towards yourself, for instance. By the way, the house was raided, of course?’
‘Yes, sir, but they’d cleared out.’
‘Naturally,’ said Sir James dryly.
‘And not a clue left behind.’
‘I wonder–’ The lawyer tapped the table thoughtfully.
Something in his voice made Tommy look up. Would this man’s eyes have seen something where theirs had been blind? He spoke impulsively:
‘I wish you’d been there, sir, to go over the house!’
‘I wish I had,’ said Sir James quietly. He sat for a moment in silence. Then he looked up. ‘And since then? What have you been doing?’
For a moment, Tommy stared at him. Then it dawned on him that of course the lawyer did not know.
‘I forgot that you didn’t know about Tuppence,’ he said slowly. The sickening anxiety, forgotten for a while in the excitement of knowing Jane Finn found at last, swept