The Avenger

CHAPTER II MR. SAMPSON LONGVALE CALLS

CHAPTER II

MR. SAMPSON LONGVALE CALLSAdele Leamington waited till the studio was almost empty before she came to where the white-haired man sat crouched in his canvas chair, his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, a malignant scowl on his forehead.

It was not a propitious moment to approach him: nobody knew that better than she.

“Mr. Knebworth, may I speak to you?”

He looked up slowly. Ordinarily he would have risen, for this middle-aged American in normal moments was the soul of courtesy. But just at that moment, his respect for womanhood was something below zero. His look was blank, though the director in him instinctively approved her values. She was pretty, with regular features, a mop of brown hair in which the sunshine of childhood still lingered. Her mouth firm, delicately shaped, her figure slim—perfect in many ways.

Jack had seen many beautiful extras in his career, and had passed through stages of enthusiasm and despair as he had seen them translated to the screen—pretty wooden figures without soul or expression, gauche of movement, hopeless. Too pretty to be clever, too conscious of their beauty to be natural. Dolls without intelligence or initiative—just “extras” who could wear clothes in a crowd, who could smile and dance mechanically, fit for extras and nothing else all the days of their lives.

“Well?” he asked brusquely.

“Is there a part I could play in this production, Mr. Knebworth?” she asked.

His shaven lips curled.

“Aren’t you playing a part, Miss—can’t remember your name—Leamington, is it?”

“I’m certainly playing—I’m one of the figures in the background,” she smiled. “I don’t want a big part, but I’m sure I could do better than I have done.”

“I’m mighty sure you couldn’t do worse than some people,” he growled. “No, there’s no part for you, friend. There’ll be no story to shoot unless things alter. That’s what!”

She was going away when he recalled her.

“Left a good home, I guess?” he said. “Thought picture-making meant a million dollars a year an’ a new automobile every Thursday? Or maybe you were holding down a good job as a stenographer and got it under your toque that you’d make Hollywood feel small if you got your chance? Go back home, kid, and tell the old man that a typewriter’s got a sunlight arc beaten to death as an instrument of commerce.”

The girl smiled faintly.

“I didn’t come into pictures because I was stage-struck, if that is what you mean, Mr. Knebworth. I came in knowing just how hard a life it might be. I have no parents.”

He looked up at her curiously.

“How do you live?” he asked. “There’s no money in ‘extra’ work—not on this lot, anyway. Might be if I was one of those billion dollar directors who did pictures with chariot races. But I don’t. My ideal picture has got five characters.”

“I have a little income from my mother, and I write,” said the girl.

She stopped as she saw him looking past her to the studio entrance, and, turning her head, saw a remarkable figure standing in the doorway. At first she thought it was an actor who had made up for a film test.

The newcomer was an old man, but his great height and erect carriage would not have conveyed that impression at a distance. The tight-fitting tail-coat, the trousers strapped to his boots, the high collar and black satin stock belonged to a past age, though they were newly made. The white linen bands that showed at his wrists were goffered, his double-breasted waistcoat of grey velvet was fastened by golden buttons. He might have stepped from a family portrait of one of those dandies of the ’fifties. He held a tall hat in one gloved hand, a hat with a curly brim, and in the other a gold-topped walking-stick. The face, deeply lined, was benevolent and kind, and he seemed unconscious of his complete baldness.

Jack Knebworth was out of his chair in a second and walked toward the stranger.

“Why, Mr. Longvale, I am glad to see you—did you get my letter? I can’t tell you how much obliged I am to you for the loan of your house.”

Sampson Longvale, of the Dower House! She remembered now. He was known in Chichester as “the old-fashioned gentleman,” and once, when she was out on location, somebody had pointed out the big, rambling house, with its weed-grown garden and crumbling walls, where he lived.

“I thought I would come over and see you,” said the big man.

His voice was rich and beautifully modulated. She did not remember having heard a voice quite as sweet, and she looked at the eccentric figure with a new interest.

“I can only hope that the house and grounds are suitable to your requirements. I am afraid they are in sad disorder, but I cannot afford to keep the estate in the same condition as my grandfather did.”

“Just what I want, Mr. Longvale. I was afraid you might be offended when I told you——”

The old gentleman interrupted him with a soft laugh.

“No, no, I wasn’t offended, I was amused. You needed a haunted house: I could even supply that quality, though I will not promise you that my family ghost will walk. The Dower House has been haunted for hundreds of years. A former occupant in a fit of frenzy murdered his daughter there, and the unhappy lady is supposed to walk. I have never seen her, though many years ago one of my servants did. Fortunately, I am relieved of that form of annoyance: I no longer keep servants in the house,” he smiled, “though, if you care to stay the night, I shall be honoured to entertain five or six of your company.”

Knebworth heaved a sigh of relief. He had made diligent inquiries and found that it was almost impossible to secure lodgings in the neighbourhood, and he was most anxious to take night pictures, and for one scene he particularly desired the peculiar light value which he could only obtain in the early hours of the morning.

“I’m afraid that would give you a lot of trouble, Mr. Longvale,” he said. “And here and now I think we might discuss that delicate subject of——”

The old man stopped him with a gesture.

“If you are going to speak of money, please don’t,” he said firmly. “I am interested in cinematography; in fact, I am interested in most modern things. We old men are usually prone to decry modernity, but I find my chiefest pleasure in the study of those scientific wonders which this new age has revealed to us.”

He looked at the director quizzically.

“Some day you shall take a picture of me in the one rôle in which I think I should have no peer—a picture of me in the rôle of my illustrious ancestor.”

Jack Knebworth stared, half amused, half startled. It was no unusual experience to find people who wished to see themselves on the screen, but he never expected that little piece of vanity from Mr. Sampson Longvale.

“I should be glad,” he said formally. “Your people were pretty well known, I guess?”

Mr. Longvale sighed.

“It is my regret that I do not come from the direct line that included Charles Henry, the most historic member of my family. He was my great-uncle. I come from the Bordeaux branch of Longvales, which has made history, sir.” He shook his head regretfully.

“Are you French, Mr. Longvale?” asked Jack.

Apparently the old man did not hear him. He was staring into space. Then, with a start:

“Yes, yes, we were French. My great-grandfather married an English lady whom he met in peculiar circumstances. We came to England in the days of the directorate.”

Then, for the first time, he seemed aware of Adele’s presence, and bowed toward her.

“I think I must go,” he said, taking a huge gold watch from his fob pocket.

The girl watched them as they passed out of the hall, and presently she saw the “old-fashioned gentleman” pass the window, driving the oldest-fashioned car she had ever seen. It must have been one of the first motor-cars ever introduced into the country, a great, upstanding, cumbersome machine, that passed with a thunderous sound and at no great speed down the gravel drive out of sight.

Presently Jack Knebworth came slowly back.

“This craze for being screened certainly gets ’em—old or young,” he said. “Good night, Miss—forget your name—Leamington, ain’t it? Good night.”

She was half-way home before she realized that the conversation that she had plucked up such courage to initiate had ended unsatisfactorily for her, and she was as far away from her small part as ever.

CHAPTER III

THE NIECE

Adele Leamington occupied a small room in a small house, and there were moments when she wished it were smaller, that she might be justified in plucking up her courage to ask from the stout and unbending Mrs. Watson, her landlady, a reduction of rent. The extras on Jack Knebworth’s lot were well paid but infrequently employed; for Jack was one of those clever directors who specialized in domestic stories.

She was dressing when Mrs. Watson brought in her morning cup of tea.

“There’s a young fellow been hanging round outside since I got up,” said Mrs. Watson. “I saw him when I took in the milk. Very polite he was, but I told him you weren’t awake.”

“Did he want to see me?” asked the astonished girl.

“That’s what he said,” said Mrs. Watson grimly. “I asked him if he came from Knebworth, and he said no. If you want to see him, you can have the use of the parlour, though I don’t like young men calling on young girls. I’ve never let theatrical lodgings before, and you can’t be too careful. I’ve always had a name for respectability and I want to keep it.”

Adele smiled.

“I cannot imagine anything more respectable than an early morning caller, Mrs. Watson,” she said.

She went downstairs and opened the door. The young man was standing on the side-walk with his back to her, but at the sound of the door opening he turned. He was good-looking and well-dressed, and his smile was quick and appealing.

“I hope your landlady did not bother to wake you up? I could have waited. You are Miss Adele Leamington, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“Will you come in, please?” she asked, and took him into the stuffy little front parlour, and, closing the door behind her, waited.

“I am a reporter,” he said untruthfully, and her face fell.

“You’ve come about Uncle Francis? Is anything really wrong? They sent a detective to see me a week ago. Have they found him?”

“No, they haven’t found him,” he said carefully. “You knew him very well, of course, Miss Leamington?”

She shook her head.

“No, I have only seen him twice in my life. My dear father and he quarrelled before I was born, and I only saw him once after daddy died, and once before mother was taken with her fatal illness.”

She heard him sigh, and sensed his relief, though why he should be relieved that her uncle was almost a stranger to her, she could not fathom.

“You saw him at Chichester, though?” he said.

She nodded.

“Yes, I saw him. I was on my way to Goodwood Park—a whole party of us in a char-à-banc—and I saw him for a moment walking along the side-walk. He looked desperately ill and worried. He was just coming out of a stationer’s shop when I saw him; he had a newspaper under his arm and a letter in his hand.”

“Where was the store?” he asked quickly.

She gave him the address, and he jotted it down.

“You didn’t see him again?”

She shook her head.

“Is anything really very badly wrong?” she asked anxiously. “I’ve often heard mother say that Uncle Francis was very extravagant, and a little unscrupulous. Has he been in trouble?”

“Yes,” admitted Michael, “he has been in trouble, but nothing that you need worry about. You’re a great film actress, aren’t you?”

In spite of her anxiety she laughed.

“The only chance I have of being a great film actress is for you to say so in your paper.”

“My what?” he asked, momentarily puzzled. “Oh yes, my newspaper, of course!”

“I don’t believe you’re a reporter at all,” she said with sudden suspicion.

“Indeed I am,” he said glibly, and dared to pronounce the name of that widely-circulated sheet upon which the sun seldom sets.

“Though I’m not a great actress, and fear I never shall be, I like to believe it is because I’ve never had a chance—I’ve a horrible suspicion that Mr. Knebworth knows instinctively that I am no good.”

Mike Brixan had found a new interest in the case, an interest which, he was honest enough to confess to himself, was not dissociated from the niece of Francis Elmer. He had never met anybody quite so pretty and quite so unsophisticated and natural.

“You’re going to the studio, I suppose?”

She nodded.

“I wonder if Mr. Knebworth would mind my calling to see you?”

She hesitated.

“Mr. Knebworth doesn’t like callers.”

“Then maybe I’ll call on him,” said Michael, nodding. “It doesn’t matter whom I call on, does it?”

“It certainly doesn’t matter to me,” said the girl coldly.

“In the vulgar language of the masses,” thought Mike as he strode down the street, “I have had the bird!”

His inquiries did not occupy very much of his time. He found the little news shop, and the proprietor, by good fortune, remembered the coming of Mr. Francis Elmer.

“He came for a letter, though it wasn’t addressed to Elmer,” said the shopkeeper. “A lot of people have their letters addressed here. I make a little extra money that way.”

“Did he buy a newspaper?”

“No, sir, he did not buy a newspaper; he had one under his arm—the Morning Telegram. I remember that, because I noticed that he’d put a blue pencil mark round one of the agony advertisements on the front page, and I was wondering what it was all about. I kept a copy of that day’s Morning Telegram: I’ve got it now.”

He went into the little parlour at the back of the shop and returned with a dingy newspaper, which he laid on the counter.

“There are six there, but I don’t know which one it was.”

Michael examined the agony advertisements. There was one frantic message from a mother to her son, asking him to return and saying that “all would be forgiven.” There was a cryptogram message, which he had not time to decipher. A third, which was obviously the notice of an assignation. The fourth was a thinly veiled advertisement for a new hair-waver, and at the fifth he stopped. It ran:

“Troubled. Final directions at address I

gave you. Courage. Benefactor.”

“Some ‘benefactor,’ ” said Mike Brixan. “What was he like—the man who called? Was he worried?”

“Yes, sir: he looked upset—all distracted like. He seemed like a chap who’d lost his head.”

“That seems a fair description,” said Mike.