The Cinema Murder Part 6

"I have never been in business," he answered quickly. "My name is Romilly, but I am not Romilly the manufacturer. For the last eight years I have lived in a garret in London, teaching false art in a third-rate school some of the time, doing penny-a-line journalistic work when I got the chance; clerk for a month or two in a brewer's office and sacked for incapacity--those are a few of the real threads in my life."

"At the present moment, then," she observed, "you are an impostor."

"Exactly," he admitted, "and I should probably have been repenting it by now but for your words last night."

She smiled at him and the sun shone once more. It wasn't an ordinary smile at all. It was just as though she were letting him into the light of her understanding, as though some one from the world, entrance into which he had craved, had stooped down to understand and was telling him that all was well. He drew his chair a little closer to hers.

"We are all more or less impostors," she said. "Does any one, I wonder, go about the world telling everybody what they really are, how they really live? Dear me, how unpleasant and uncomfortable it would be! You are so wise, my new friend. You know the value of impulses. You tell me the truth, and I am your friend. I do not need facts, because facts count for little. I judge by what lies behind, and I understand. Do not weary me with explanations. I like what you have told me. Only, of course, your work must have suffered from surroundings like that. Will it be better for you now?"

"I shall land in New York," he told her, "with at least a thousand pounds. That is about as much as I have spent in ten years. There is the possibility of other money. Concerning that--well, I can't make up my mind. The thousand pounds, of course, is stolen."

"So I gathered," she remarked. "Do you continue, may I ask, to be Douglas Romilly, the manufacturer?"

He shook his head a little vaguely.

"I haven't thought," he confessed. "But of course I don't. I have risked everything for the chance of a new life. I shall start it in a new way and under a new name."

He was suddenly conscious of her pity, of a moistness in her eyes as she looked at him.

"I think," she said, "that you must have been very miserable. Above all things, now, whatever you may have done for your liberty, don't be fainthearted. If you are in trouble or danger you must come to me. You promise?"

"If I may," he a.s.sented fervently.

"Now I must hear the play as it stood in your thoughts when you wrote it," she insisted. "I have a fancy that it will sound a little gloomy. Am I right?"

He laughed.

"Of course you are! How could I write in any other way except through the darkened spectacles? However, there's a way out--of altering it, I mean.

I feel flashes of it already. Listen."

The story expanded with relation. He no longer felt confined to its established lines. Every now and then he paused to tell her that this or that was new, and she nodded appreciatively. They walked for a time, watched the seagulls, and bade their farewell to the Irish coast.

"You will have to re-write that play for me," she said, a little abruptly, as she paused before the companionway. "I am going down to my room for a few minutes before lunch now. Afterwards I shall bring up a pencil and paper. We will make some notes together."

Philip walked on to the smoking room. He could scarcely believe that the planks he trod were of solid wood. Raymond Greene met him at the entrance and slapped him on the back:

"Just in time for a c.o.c.ktail before lunch!" he exclaimed. "I was looking everywhere for a pal. Two Martinis, dry as you like, Jim," he added, turning round to the smoking room steward. "Sure you won't join us, Lawton?"

"Daren't!" was the laconic answer from the man whom he had addressed.

"By-the-bye," Mr. Raymond Greene went on, "let me make you two acquainted. This is Mr. Douglas Romilly, an English boot manufacturer--Mr. Paul Lawton of Brockton. Mr. Lawton owns one of the largest boot and shoe plants in the States," the introducer went on. "You two ought to find something to talk about."

Philip held out his hand without a single moment's hesitation. He was filled with a new confidence.

"I should be delighted to talk with Mr. Lawton on any subject in the world," he declared, "except our respective businesses."

"I am very glad to meet you, sir," the other replied, shaking hands heartily. "I don't follow that last stipulation of yours, though."

"It simply means that I am taking seven days' holiday," Philip explained gaily, "seven days during which I have pa.s.sed my word to myself to neither talk business nor think business. Your very good health, Mr.

Raymond Greene," he went on, drinking his c.o.c.ktail with relish. "If we meet on the other side, Mr. Lawton, we'll compare notes as much as you like."

"That's all right, sir," the other agreed. "I don't know as you're not right. We Americans do hang round our businesses, and that's a fact.

Still, there's a little matter of lasts I should like to have a word or two with you about some time."

"A little matter of what?" Philip asked vaguely.

"Lasts," the other repeated. "That's where your people and ours look different ways chiefly, that and a little matter of manipulation of our machinery."

"Just so," Philip a.s.sented, swallowing the rest of his c.o.c.ktail. "What about luncheon? There's nothing in the world to give you an appet.i.te like this sea air."

"I'm with you," Mr. Raymond Greene chimed in. "You two can have your trade talk later on."

He took his young friend's arm, and they descended the stairs together.

"What the mischief is a last?" he inquired.

"I haven't the least idea," Philip replied carelessly. "Something to do with boots and shoes, isn't it?"

His questioner stared at him for a moment and then laughed.

"Say, you're a young man of your word!" he remarked appreciatively.

CHAPTER VII

Philip Romilly was accosted, late that afternoon, by two young women whose presence on board he had noticed with a certain amount of disapproval. They were obviously of the chorus-girl type, a fact which they seemed to lack the ambition to conceal. After several would-be ingratiating giggles, they finally pulled up in front of him whilst he was promenading the deck.

"You are Mr. Romilly, aren't you?" one of them asked. "Bob Millet told us you were going to be on this steamer. You know Bob, don't you?"

Philip for a moment was taken aback.

"Bob Millet," he repeated thoughtfully.

"Of course! Good old Bob! I don't mind confessing," the young woman went on, "that though we were all out one night together--Trocadero, Empire, and Murray's afterwards--I should never have recognised you. Seems to me you've got thinner and more serious-looking."

"I am afraid my own memory is also at fault," Philip remarked, a little stiffly.

"I am Violet Fox," the young woman who had accosted him continued. "This my friend, Hilda Mason. She's a dear girl but a little shy, aren't you, Hilda?"

"That's just because I told her that we ought to wait until you remembered us," the slighter young woman, with the very obvious peroxidised hair, protested.

"Didn't seem to be any use waiting for that," her friend retorted briskly. "Hilda and I are dying for a c.o.c.ktail, Mr. Romilly."

He led them with an unwillingness of which they seemed frankly unaware, towards the lounge. They drank two c.o.c.ktails and found themselves unfortunately devoid of cigarettes, a misfortune which it became his privilege to remedy. They were very friendly young ladies, if a little slangy, invited him around to their staterooms, and offered to show him the runs around New York. Philip escaped after about an hour and made his way to where Elizabeth was reclining in her deck chair.

"That fellow Romilly," he declared irritably, "the other one, I mean, seems to have had the vilest tastes. If I am to be landed with any more of his ridiculous indiscretions, I think I shall have to go overboard.

There was an enterprising gentleman named Gayes in Liverpool, who nearly drove me crazy, then there's this Mr. Lawton who wants to talk about lasts, and finally it seems that I dined at the Trocadero and spent the evening at the Empire and Murray's with the two very obvious-looking young ladies who accosted me just now. I am beginning to believe that Douglas' life was not above suspicion."