The Yellow Streak by Williams, Valentine

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THE YELLOW STREAK

BY VALENTINE WILLIAMS

CONTENTS

I. THE MASTER OF HARKINGS

II. AT TWILIGHT

III. A DISCOVERY

IV. BETWEEN THE DESK AND THE WINDOW

V. IN WHICH BUDE LOOKS AT ROBIN GREVE

VI. THE LETTER

VII. VOICES IN THE LIBRARY

VIII. ROBIN GOES TO MARY

IX. MR. MANDERTON

X. A SMOKING CHIMNEY

XI. "... SPEED THE PARTING GUEST!"

XII. MR. MANDERTON is NONPLUSSED

XIII. JEEKES

XIV. A SHEET OF BLUE PAPER

XV. SHADOWS

XVI. THE INTRUDER

XVII. A FRESH CLUE

XVIII. THE SILENT SHOT

XIX. MR. MANDERTON LAYS HIS CARDS ON THE TABLE

XX. THE CODE KING

XXI. A WORD WITH MR. JEEKES

XXII. THE MAN WITH THE YELLOW FACE

XXIII. TWO'S COMPANY

XXIV. THE METAMORPHOSIS OF MR. SCHULZ

XXV. THE READING OF THE RIDDLE

XXVI. THE FIGURE IN THE DOORWAY

XXVII. AN INTERRUPTION FROM BEYOND

XXVIII. THE DEATH OF HARTLEY PARRISH

THE YELLOW STREAK

CHAPTER I

THE MASTER OF HARKINGS

Of all the luxuries of which Hartley Parrish's sudden rise to wealth
gave him possession, Bude, his butler, was the acquisition in which he
took the greatest delight and pride. Bude was a large and comfortable-
looking person, triple-chinned like an archdeacon, bald-headed except for
a respectable and saving edging of dark down, clean-shaven, benign of
countenance, with a bold nose which to the psychologist bespoke both
ambition and inborn cleverness. He had a thin, tight mouth which in
itself alone was a symbol of discreet reticence, the hall-mark of the
trusted family retainer.

Bude had spent his life in the service of the English aristocracy. The
Earl of Tipperary, Major-General Lord Bannister, the Dowager Marchioness
of Wiltshire, and Sir Herbert Marcobrunner, Bart., had in turn watched
his gradual progress from pantry-boy to butler. Bude was a man whose
maxim had been the French saying, "_Je prends mon bien ou je le
trouve_."

In his thirty years' service he had always sought to discover and draw
from those sources of knowledge which were at his disposal. From
MacTavish, who had supervised Lord Tipperary's world-famous gardens, he
had learnt a great deal about flowers, so that the arrangement of the
floral decorations was always one of the features at Hartley Parrish's
_soigne_ dinner-parties. From Brun, the unsurpassed _chef_, whom Lord
Bannister had picked up when serving with the Guards in Egypt, he had
gathered sufficient knowledge of the higher branches of the cuisine to
enable Hartley Parrish to leave the arrangement of the menu in his
butler's hands.

Bude would have been the first to admit that, socially speaking, his
present situation was not the equal of the positions he had held. There
was none of the staid dignity about his present employer which was
inborn in men like Lord Tipperary or Lord Bannister, and which Sir
Herbert Marcobrunner, with the easy assimilative faculty of his race,
had very successfully acquired. Below middle height, thick-set and
powerfully built, with a big head, narrow eyes, and a massive chin,
Hartley Parrish, in his absorbed concentration on his business, had no
time for the acquisition or practice of the Eton manner.

It was characteristic of Parrish that, seeing Bude at a dinner-party at
Marcobruaner's, he should have engaged him on the spot. It took Bude a
week to get over his shock at the manner in which the offer was made.
Parrish had approached him as he was supervising the departure of the
guests. Waving aside the footman who offered to help him into his
overcoat, Parrish had asked Bude point-blank what wages he was getting.
Bude mentioned the generous remuneration he was receiving from Sir
Herbert Marcobrunner, whereupon Parrish had remarked:

"Come to me and I'll double it. I'll give you a week to think it over.
Let my secretary know!"

After a few discreet enquiries, Bude, faithful to his maxim, had
accepted Parrish's offer. Marcobrunner was furiously angry, but, being
anxious to interest Parrish in a deal, sagely kept his feelings to
himself. And Bude had never regretted the change. He found Parrish an
exacting, but withal a just and a generous master, and he was not long
in realizing that, as long as he kept Harkings, Parrish's country place
where he spent the greater part of his time, running smoothly according
to Parrish's schedule, he could count on a life situation.

The polish of manner, the sober dignity of dress, acquired from years of
acute observation in the service of the nobility, were to be seen as, at
the hour of five, in the twilight of this bleak autumn afternoon, Bude
moved majestically into the lounge-hall of Harkings and leisurely
pounded the gong for tea.

The muffled notes of the gong swelled out brazenly through the silent
house. They echoed down the softly carpeted corridors to the library
where the master of the house sat at his desk. For days he had been
immersed in the figures of the new issue which Hornaway's, the vast
engineering business of his creation, was about to put on the market.
They reverberated up the fine old oak staircase to the luxurious Louis
XV bedroom, where Lady Margaret Trevert lay on her bed idly smiling
through an amusing novel. They crashed through the thickly padded baize
doors leading to the servants' hall, where, at sixpence a hundred,
Parrish's man, Jay, was partnering Lady Margaret's maid against Mrs.
Heever, the housekeeper, and Robert, the chauffeur, at a friendly game
of bridge. And they even boomed distantly into the far-away
billiard-room and broke into the talk which Robin Greve was having with
Mary Trevert.

"Damn!" exclaimed Greve savagely, as the distant gonging came to his
ears.

"It's the gong for tea," said Mary demurely.

She was sitting on one of the big leather sofas lining the long room.
Robin, as he gazed down at her from where he stood with his back against
the edge of the billiard-table, thought what an attractive picture she
made in the half-light.

The lamps over the table were lit, but the rest of the room was almost
dark. In that lighting the thickly waving dark hair brought out the fine
whiteness of the girl's skin. There was love, and a great desire for
love, in her large dark eyes, but the clear-cut features, the
well-shaped chin, and the firm mouth, the lips a little full, spoke of
ambition and the love of power.

"I've been here three whole days," said Robin, "and I've not had two
words with you alone, Mary. And hardly have I got you to myself for a
quiet game of pills when that rotten gong goes ..."

"I'm sorry you're disappointed at missing your game," the girl replied
mischievously, "but I expect you will be able to get a game with Horace
or one of the others after tea ..."

Robin kicked the carpet savagely.

"You know perfectly well I don't want to play billiards ..."

He looked up and caught the girl's eye. For a fraction of a second he
saw in it the expression which every man at least once in his life looks
to see in the eyes of one particular woman. In the girl's dark-blue eyes
fringed with long black lashes he saw the dumb appeal, the mute
surrender, which, as surely as the white flag on the battlements in war,
is the signal of capitulation in woman.

But the expression was gone on the instant. It passed so swiftly that,
for a second, Robin, seeing the gently mocking glance that succeeded it,
wondered whether he had been mistaken.

But he was a man of action--a glance at his long, well-moulded head, his
quick, wide-open eye, and his square jaw would have told you that--and
he spoke.

"It's no use beating about the bush," he said. "Mary, I've got so fond
of you that I'm just miserable when you're away from me ..."

"Oh, Robin, please ..."

Mary Trevert stood up and remained standing, her head turned a little
away from him, a charming silhouette in her heather-blue shooting-suit.

The young man took her listless hand.

"My dear," he said, "you and I have been pals all our lives. It was
only at the front that I began to realize just how much you meant to me.
And now I know I can't do without you. I've never met any one who has
been to me just what you are. And, Mary, I must have you as my wife ..."

The girl remained motionless. She kept her face averted. The room seemed
very still.

"Oh, Robin, please ..." she murmured again.

Resolutely the young man put an arm about her and drew her to him.
Slowly, reluctantly, she let him have his way. But she would not look at
him.

"Oh, my dear," he whispered, kissing her hair, "don't you care a
little?"

She remained silent.

"Won't you look at me, Mary?"

There was a hint of huskiness in his voice. He raised her face to his.

"I saw in your eyes just now that you cared for me," he whispered; "oh,
my Mary, say that you do!"

Then he bent down and kissed her. For a brief instant their lips met and
he felt the caress of the girl's arm about his neck.

"Oh, Robin!" she said.

That was all.

But then she drew away.

Reluctantly the man let her go. The colour had faded from his cheeks
when she looked at him again as he stood facing her in the twilight of
the billiard-room.

"Robin, dear," she said, "I'm going to hurt you."

The young man seemed to have had a premonition of what was coming, for
he betrayed no sign of surprise, but remained motionless, very erect,
very pale.

"Dear," said the girl with a little despairing shrug, "it's hopeless! We
can't afford to marry!"

"Not yet, I know," said Robin, "but I'm getting on well, Mary, and in
another year or two ..."

The girl looked down at the point of her little brogue shoe.

"I don't know what you will think of me," she said, "but I can't
accept ... I can't face ... I ..."

"You can't face the idea of being the wife of a man who has his way to
make. Is that it?"

The voice was rather stern.

The girl looked up impulsively.

"I can't, Robin. I should never make you happy. Mother and I are as poor
as church-mice. All the money in the family goes to keep Horace in the
Army and pay for my clothes."

She looked disdainfully at her pretty suit.

"All this," she went on with a little hopeless gesture indicating her
tailor-made, "is Mother's investment. No, no, it's true ... I can tell
you as a friend, Robin, dear, we are living on our capital until I have
caught a rich husband ..."

"Oh, my dear," said Robin softly, "don't say things like that ..."

The girl laughed a little defiantly.

"But it's true," she answered. "The war has halved Mother's income and
there's nothing between us and bankruptcy but a year or so ... unless I
get married!"

Her voice trembled a little and she turned away.

"Mary," said the young man hoarsely, "for God's sake, don't do that!"

He moved a step towards her, but she drew back.

"It's all right," she said with the tears glistening wet on her face,
and dabbed at her eyes with her tiny handkerchief, "but, oh, Robin boy,
why couldn't you have held your tongue?"

"I suppose I had no right to speak ..." the young man began.

The girl sighed.

"I oughtn't to say it ... now," she said slowly, and looked across at
Robin with shining eyes, "but, Robin dear, I'm ... I'm glad you did!"

She paused a moment as though turning something over in her mind.

"I've ... I've got something to tell you, Robin," she began. "No, stay
where you are! We must be sensible now."

She paused and looked at him.

"Robin," she said slowly, "I've promised to marry somebody else ..."

There was a moment's silence.

"Who is it?" Robin asked in a hard voice.

The girl made no answer.

"Who is it? Do I know him?"

Still the girl was silent, but she gave a hardly perceptible nod.

"Not ...? No, no, Mary, it isn't true? It can't be true?"

The girl nodded, her eyes to the ground.

"It's a secret still," she said. "No one knows but Mother. Hartley
doesn't want it announced yet!"

The sound of the Christian name suddenly seemed to infuriate Greve.

"By God!" he cried, "it shan't be! You must be mad, Mary, to think of
marrying a man like Hartley Parrish. A fellow who's years older than
you, who thinks of nothing but money, who stood out of the war and made
a fortune while men of his own age were doing the fighting for him! It's
unthinkable ... it's ... it's damnable to think of a gross, ill-bred
creature like Parrish ..."

"Robin!" the girl cried, "you seem to forget that we're staying in his
house. In spite of all you say he seems to be good enough for you to
come and stay with ..."

"I only came because you were to be here. You know that perfectly well.
I admit one oughtn't to blackguard one's host, but, Mary, you must see
that this marriage is absolutely out of the question!"

The girl began to bridle up,

"Why?" she asked loftily.

"Because ... because Parrish is not the sort of man who will make you
happy ..."

"And why not, may I ask? He's very kind and very generous, and I believe
he likes me ..."

Robin Greve made a gesture of despair.

"My dear girl," he said, trying to control himself to speak quietly,
"what do you know about this man? Nothing. But there are beastly stories
circulating about his life ..."

Mary Trevert laughed cynically.

"My dear old Robin," she said, "they tell stories about every bachelor.
And I hardly think you are an unbiassed judge ..."

Robin Greve was pacing up and down the floor.

"You're crazy, Mary," he said, stopping in front of her, "to dream you
can ever be happy with a man like Hartley Parrish. The man's a ruthless
egoist. He thinks of nothing but money and he's out to buy you just
exactly as you ..."

"As I am ready to sell myself!" the girl echoed. "And I _am_ ready,
Robin. It's all very well for you to stand there and preach ideals at
me, but I'm sick and disgusted at the life we've been leading for the
past three years, hovering on the verge of ruin all the time, dunned by
tradesmen and having to borrow even from servants ... yes, from old
servants of the family ... to pay Mother's bridge debts. Mother's a good
sort. Father spent all her money for her and she was brought up in
exactly the same helpless way as she brought up me. I can do absolutely
nothing except the sort of elementary nursing which we all learnt in the
war, and if I don't marry well Mother will have to keep a boarding-house
or do something ghastly like that. I'm not going to pretend that I'm
thinking only of her, because I'm not. I can't face a long engagement
with no prospects except castles in Spain. I don't mean to be callous,
Robin, but I expect I am naturally hard. Hartley Parrish is a good sort.
He's very fond of me, and he will see that Mother lives comfortably for
the rest of her life. I've promised to marry him because I like him and
he's a suitable match. And I don't see by what right you try and run him
down to me behind his back! If it's jealousy, then it shows a very petty
spirit!"

Robin Greve stepped close up to Mary Trevert. His eyes were very angry
and his jaw was set very square.

"If you are determined to sell yourself to the highest bidder," he said,
"I suppose there's no stopping you. But you're making a mistake. If
Parrish were all you claim for him, you might not repent of his marriage
so long as you did not care for somebody else. But I know you love me,
and it breaks my heart to see you blundering into everlasting
unhappiness ..."

"At least Hartley will be able to keep me," the girl flashed out.
Directly she had spoken she regretted her words.

A red flush spread slowly over Robin Greve's face.

Then he laughed drily.

"You won't be the first woman he's kept!" be retorted, and stamped out
of the billiard-room.

The girl gave a little gasp. Then she reddened with anger.

"How dare he?" she cried, stamping her foot; "how dare he?"

She sank on the lounge and, burying her face in her hands, burst into
tears.

"Oh, Robin, Robin, dear!" she sobbed--incomprehensibly, for she was a
woman.

CHAPTER II

AT TWILIGHT

There is a delicious snugness, a charming lack of formality, about the
ceremony of afternoon tea in an English country-house--it is much too
indefinite a rite to dignify it by the name of meal--which makes it the
most pleasant reunion of the day. For English country-house parties
consist, for the most part, of a succession of meals to which the guests
flock the more congenially as, in the interval, they have contrived to
avoid one another's companionship.

And so, scarcely had the last reverberation of Bude's measured gonging
died away than the French window leading from the lounge-hall on to the
terrace was pushed open and two of Hartley Parrish's guests emerged from
the falling darkness without into the pleasant comfort of the firelit
room.

They were an oddly matched pair. The one was a tubby little man with
short bristly grey hair and a short bristly grey moustache to match. His
stumpy legs looked ridiculous in his baggy golf knickers of rough tweed,
which he wore with gaiters extending half-way up his short, stout
calves. As he came in, he slung off the heavy tweed shooting-cloak he
had been wearing and placed it with his Homburg hat on a chair.

This was Dr. Romain, whose name thus written seems indecently naked
without the string of complementary initials indicative of the honours
and degrees which years of bacteriological research had heaped upon him.
His companion was a tall, slim, fair-haired young man, about as good a
specimen of the young Englishman turned out by the English public school
as one could find. He was extremely good-looking with a proud eye and
finely chiselled features, but the suggestion of youth in his face and
figure was countered by a certain poise, a kind of latent seriousness
which contrasted strangely with the general cheery _insouciance_ of his
type.

A soldier would have spotted the symptoms at once, "Five years of war!"
would have been his verdict--that long and strange entry into life of so
many thousands of England's manhood which impressed the stamp of
premature seriousness on all those who came through. And Captain Sir
Horace Trevert, Bart., D.S.O., had gone from his famous school straight
into a famous regiment, had won his decoration before he was twenty-one,
and been twice wounded into the bargain.

"Where's everybody?" queried the doctor, rubbing his hands at the
blazing log-fire.

"Robin and Mary went off to play billiards," said the young man, "and I
left old Parrish after lunch settling down for an afternoon's work in
the library ..."

He crossed the room to the fire and stood with his back to the flame.

"What a worker that man is!" ejaculated the doctor. "He had one of his
secretaries down this morning with a car full of portfolios,
blue-prints, specifications, and God knows what else. Parrish polished
the whole lot off and packed the fellow back to London before mid-day.
Some of Hornaway's people who were waiting went in next, and he was
through with them by lunch-time!"

Trevert wagged his head in admiration.

"And he told me he wanted to have a quiet week-end!" he said. "That's
why he has no secretary living in the house."

"A quiet week-end!" repeated Romain drily. "Ye gods!"

"He's a marvel for work," said the young man.

"He certainly is," replied the doctor. "He's done wonders with
Hornaway's. When he took the place over at the beginning of the war,
they were telling me, it was a little potty concern making toy air guns
or lead soldiers or something of the sort. And they never stop coining
money now, it seems. Parrish must be worth millions ..."

"Lucky devil!" said Trevert genially.

"Ah!" observed the doctor sententiously, "but he's had to work for it,
mark you! He's had the most extraordinary life, they tell me. He was at
one period of his career a bartender on the Rand, a man was saying at
the club the other day. But most of his life he's lived in Canada, I
gather. He was telling us the other evening, before you and Mary came
down, that he was once a brakeman on the Canadian Pacific Railway. He
said he invested all his savings in books on engineering and read them
in his brakeman's van on his trips across the Dominion. Ah! he's a fine
fellow!"

He lowered his voice discreetly.

"And a devilish good match, eh, Horace?"

The young man flushed slightly.

"Yes," he said unwillingly.

"A dam' good match for somebody," urged the doctor with a malicious
twinkle in his eye.

"Here, Doc," said Horace, suddenly turning on him, "you stick to your
bugs and germs. What do you know about matchmaking, anyway?"

Dr. Romain chuckled.

"We bacteriologists are trained observers. One learns a lot watching the
life and habits of the bacillus, Horace, my boy. And between ourselves,
Parrish would be a lucky fellow if ..."

Trevert turned to him. His face was quite serious, and there was a
little touch of hauteur in his voice. He was the 17th Baronet.

"My dear Doc," he said, "aren't you going a bit fast? Parrish is a very
good chap, but one knows nothing about him ..."

Sagely the doctor nodded his grizzled head.

"That's true," he agreed. "He appears to have no relatives and nobody
over here seems to have heard of him before the war. A man was saying at
the Athenaeum the other day ..."

Trevert touched his elbow. Bude had appeared, portly, imperturbable,
bearing a silver tray set out with the appliances for tea.

"Bude," cried Trevert, "don't tell me there are no tea-cakes again!"

"On the contrairey, sir," answered the butler in the richly sonorous
voice pitched a little below the normal register which he employed
abovestairs, "the cook has had her attention drawn to it. There are
tea-cakes, sir!"

With a certain dramatic effect--for Bude was a trifle theatrical in
everything he did--he whipped the cover off a dish and displayed a
smoking pile of deliciously browned scones.

"Bude," said Trevert, "when I'm a Field Marshal, I'll see you get the
O.B.E. for this!"

The butler smiled a nicely regulated three-by-one smile, a little
deprecatory as was his wont. Then, like a tank taking a corner, he
wheeled majestically and turned to cross the lounge. To reach the green
baize door leading to the servants' quarters he had to cross the outer
hall from which led corridors on the right and left. That on the right
led to the billiard-room; that on the left to the big drawing-room with
the library beyond.

As Bude reached the great screen of tooled Spanish leather which
separated a corner of the lounge from the outer hall, Robin Greve came
hastily through the glass door of the corridor leading from the
billiard-room. The butler with a pleasant smile drew back a little to
allow the young man to pass, thinking he was going into the lounge for
tea.

"Tea is ..." he began, but abruptly ended the sentence on catching sight
of the young man's face. For Robin, habitually so self-possessed, looked
positively haggard. His face was set and there was a weary look in his
eyes. The young man appeared so utterly different from his wonted self
that Bude fairly stared at him.

But Robin, without paying the least attention either to the butler or to
the sound of voices in the lounge, strode across the outer hall and
disappeared through the glass door of the corridor leading to the great
drawing-room and the library.

Bude stood an instant gazing after him in perplexity, then moved across
the hall to the servants' quarters.

In the meantime in the lounge the little doctor snapped the case of his
watch and opined that he wanted his tea.

"Where on earth has everybody got to? What's become of Lady Margaret? I
haven't seen her since lunch...."

That lady answered his question by appearing in person.

Lady Margaret was tall and hard and glittering. Like so many
Englishwomen of good family, she was so saturated with the traditions of
her class that her manner was almost indistinguishable from that of a
man. Well-mannered, broadminded, wholly cynical, and absolutely
fearless, she went through life exactly as though she were following a
path carefully taped out for her by a suitably instructed Providence.
Somewhere beneath the mask of smiling indifference she presented so
bravely to a difficult world, she had a heart, but so carefully did she
hide it that Horace had only discovered it on a certain grey November
morning when he had started out for the first time on active service.
For ever afterwards a certain weighing-machine at Waterloo Station, by
which he had had a startling vision of his mother standing with heaving
bosom and tear-stained face, possessed in his mind the attributes of
some secret and sacred shrine.

But now she was cool and well-gowned and self-contained as ever.

"What a perfectly dreadful day!" she exclaimed in her pleasant,
well-bred voice. "Horace, you must positively go and see Henry
What's-his-name in the Foreign Office and get me a passport for Cannes.
The weather in England in the winter is incredibly exaggerated!"

"At least," said the doctor, rubbing his back as he warmed himself at
the fire, "we have fuel in England. Give me England, climate and all,
but don't take away my fire. The sun doesn't shine on the Riviera at
night, you know!"

Lady Margaret busied herself at the tea-table with its fine Queen Anne
silver and dainty yellow cups. It was the custom at Harkings to serve
tea in the winter without other illumination than the light of the
great log-fire that spat and leaped in the open hearth. Beyond the
semi-circle of ruddy light the great lounge was all in darkness, and
beyond that again was the absolute stillness of the English country on a
winter's evening.

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