Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim

great eyes.

      “Daddy, you’ve heard something!”

      Lord Ashleigh pulled a bundle of letters from his pocket.

      “I have,” he admitted.

      “Quick!” Ella begged. “Tell us all about it? Don’t sit there, dad, looking so stolid. Can’t you see I am dying to hear? Quick, please!”

      Her father smiled, glanced for a moment at the plate which had been passed to him from the side table, approved of it and stretched out his hand for his cup.

      “I heard this morning,” he said, “from your friend Delarey. He went into the matter very fully. You shall read his letter presently. The sum and substance of it all, however, is that for the first year of your musical training he advises—where do you think?”

      “Dresden,” Lady Ashleigh suggested.

      “Munich? Paris?” Ella put in breathlessly.

      “All wrong,” Lord Ashleigh declared. “New York!”

      There was a momentary silence. Ella’s eyes were sparkling. Her mother’s face had fallen.

      “New York!” Ella murmured. “There is wonderful music there, and Mr. Delarey knows it so well.”

      Lord Ashleigh nodded portentously.

      “I have not finished yet. Mr. Delarey wound up his letter by promising to cable me his final decision in the course of a few days. This cablegram,” he went on, drawing a little slip of blue paper from his pocket, “was brought to me this morning whilst I was shaving. I found it a most inconvenient time, as the lather—”

      “Oh, bother the lather, father!” Ella exclaimed. “Read the cablegram, or let me.”

      Her father smoothed it out before him and read—

      “To Lord Ashleigh, Hamblin House, Dorset, England.

      “I find a magnificent programme arranged for at Metropolitan Opera House this year. Have taken box for your daughter, engaged the best professor in the world, and secured an apartment at the Leeland, our most select and comfortable residential hotel. Understand your brother is still in South America, returning early spring, but will do our best to make your daughter’s year of study as pleasant as possible. Advise her sail on Saturday by Mauretania.”

      “On Saturday?” Ella almost screamed.

      “New York!” Lady Ashleigh murmured disconsolately. “How impossible, George!”

      Her husband handed over the letter and cablegram, which Ella at once pounced upon. He then unfolded the local newspaper and proceeded to make an excellent breakfast. When he had quite finished, he lit a cigarette and rose a little abruptly to his feet as a car glided out of the stable yard and slowly approached the front door.

      “I shall now,” he said, “leave you to talk over and discuss this matter for the rest of the day. I believe you said, dear,” he added, turning to his wife, “that we were dining alone to-night?”

      “Quite alone, George,” Lady Ashleigh admitted. “We were to have gone to Annerley Castle, but the Duke is laid up somewhere in Scotland.”

      “I remember,” her husband assented. “Very well, then, at dinner-time to-night you can tell me your decision, or rather we will discuss it together. James,” he added, turning to the footman, “tell Robert I want my sixteen-bore guns put in the car, and tell him to be very careful about the cartridges.”

      He disappeared through the French windows. Lady Ashleigh was studying the letter stretched out before her, her brows a little knitted, her expression distressed. Ella had turned and was looking out westwards across the park, towards the sea. For a moment she dreamed of all the wonderful things that lay on the other side of that silver streak. She saw inside the crowded Opera House. She felt the tense hush, the thrill of excitement. She heard the low sobbing of the violins, she saw the stage-setting, she heard the low notes of music creeping and growing till every pulse in her body thrilled with her one great enthusiasm. When she turned back to the table, her eyes were bright and there was a little flush upon her cheeks.

      “You’re not sorry, mother?” she exclaimed.

      “Not really, dear,” Lady Ashleigh answered resignedly.

      2.

      Lord Ashleigh, who in many respects was a typical Englishman of his class, had a constitutional affection for small ceremonies, an affection nurtured by his position as Chairman of the County Magistrates and President of the local Unionist Association. After dinner that evening, a meal which was served in the smaller library, he cleared his throat and filled his glass with wine. His manner, as he addressed his wife and daughter, was almost official.

      “I am to take it, I believe,” he began, “that you have finally decided, Ella, to embrace our friend Delarey’s suggestion and to leave us on Saturday for New York?”

      “If you please,” Ella murmured, with glowing eyes. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you both for letting me go.”

      “It is naturally a wrench to us,” Lord Ashleigh confessed, “especially as circumstances which you already know of prevent either your mother or myself from being with you during the first few months of your stay there. You have very many friends in New York, however, and your mother tells me that there will be no difficulty about your chaperonage at the various social functions to which you will, of course, be bidden.”

      “I think that will be all right, dad,” Ella ventured.

      “You will take your own maid with you, of course,” Lord Ashleigh continued. “Lenora is a good girl and I am sure she will look after you quite well, but I have decided, although it is a somewhat unusual step, to supplement Lenora’s surveillance over your comfort by sending with you, also, as a sort of courier and general attendant—whom do you think? Well, Macdougal.”

      Lady Ashleigh looked across the table with knitted brows.

      “Macdougal, George? Why, however will you spare him?”

      “We can easily,” Lord Ashleigh declared, “find a temporary butler. Macdougal has lived in New York for some years, and you will doubtless find this a great advantage, Ella. I hope that my suggestion pleases you?”

      Ella glanced over her shoulder at the two servants who were standing discreetly in the background. Her eyes rested upon the pale, expressionless face of the man who during the last few years had enjoyed her father’s absolute confidence. Like many others of his class, there seemed to be so little upon which to comment in his appearance, so little room for surmise or analysis in his quiet, negative features, his studiously low voice, his unexceptionable deportment. Yet for a moment a queer sense of apprehension troubled her. Was it true, she wondered, that she did not like the man? She banished the thought almost as soon as it was conceived. The very idea was absurd! His manner towards her had always been perfectly respectful. He seemed equally devoid of sex or character. She withdrew her gaze and turned once more towards her father.

      “Do you think that you can really spare him, daddy,” she asked, “and that it will be necessary?”

      “Not altogether necessary, I dare say,” Lord Ashleigh admitted. “On the other hand, I feel sure that you will find him a comfort, and it would be rather a relief to me to know that there is some one in touch with you all the time in whom I place absolute confidence. I dare say I shall be very glad to see him back again at the end of the year, but that is neither here nor there. Mr. Delarey has sent me the name of some bankers in New York who will honour your cheques for whatever money you may require.”

      “You are spoiling me, daddy,” Ella sighed.

      Lord Ashleigh smiled. His hand had disappeared into the pocket of his dinner-coat.

      “If you think so now,” he remarked, “I do not know what you will