Read Online Who Pays the Piper? by Patricia Wentworth - Free Book Online Page A

she do that? She crouched right down in that chair and hid her face when you began to turn it out.”
    â€œThere was a photograph there—a boy she’s fond of. She didn’t want anyone to know.”
    She saw him smile.
    â€œYou can’t really believe that—or if you can, I can’t. What does it matter whose photograph she’s got? What’s the use, Susan? She did it, and she’ll have to stand by it, unless——”
    Susan’s face burned.
    â€œBlackmail?” she said, and felt her heart stop with terror at the change in his face.
    He looked like murder as he jerked her out of her chair and held her facing him.
    â€œSay that again and there will be no unless! Do you want me to ring up the police—now, at once? Because I will if you like—you’ve only to say so. Well, what is it to be?” He was rough in voice and action. His hands bruised her with their hard strength. But she kept her eyes on his. If she died for it she wouldn’t look away.
    â€œLet me go, Mr. Dale.”
    He let go of her at once, walked to the writing-table, and reached for the telephone. With his hand on it he looked back at her and said,
    â€œWell—make up your mind.”
    Susan looked across to the recess where Cathy lay. She hadn’t moved. Perhaps she wouldn’t move for hours. She had had these turns before—when her kitten had been killed by a strange dog—when a tramp had frightened her. She had lain stunned and dazed for hours, and afterwards she had been ill. The doctors called it shock. They had said, “Leave it to time.” The word was in Susan’s mind as she turned to Lucas Dale. She heard herself saying it out loud,
    â€œI must have time.”
    He left the table and came back to her. The gust of anger was gone. He said,
    â€œHow much time? I could give you an hour.”
    â€œThat’s not enough. Cathy is ill. I can’t ask her anything until she’s well again. It may be days. And sometimes she doesn’t remember—she didn’t when her kitten was killed. It’s shock.”
    â€œI’m afraid I can’t give you days—you must see that. I couldn’t explain to the police why I had put off reporting the theft of the pearls. I can give you an hour. Would you like me to leave you alone here?”
    â€œYes, please.”
    â€œIs there anything you would like for yourself or for Cathy?”
    She said “No.”
    He went out and shut the door.

CHAPTER X
    That hour was the strangest one in Susan’s life. She could not have told how it went. It was like the time in a dream, when moments lengthen into ages or contract to a dizzy flash. She tried to rouse Cathy, to get an answer from her, but achieved nothing but a dull state of distress without coherent speech. Dr. Carrick had always told them to let her alone and she would sleep it off. In the midst of all that was so unreal she had the clearest picture of Bill’s father saying that in his warm, reassuring voice.
    She began to walk up and down in the long room. Two windows on to the terrace and the glass door between them. Everything grey and misty outside. The ray of sun had gone. She turned and walked back, leaving the windows behind her. The door on the right, Dale’s writing-table, the chimney-breast, the logs on the hearth fallen down in a bed of white ash. Above, on the panelling, Lazlo’s picture of Millicent and Laura Bourne. On the left the recess, Cathy’s writing-table. Cathy lying motionless on the window-seat very small and frail. She walked on to the end of the room. There was another door on the right. It led by a narrow passage to a back stair.
    Susan turned and came back again. Her eyes went to the picture. Millicent and Laura Bourne.… How lovely and serene they looked—Aunt Milly who was a fretful invalid—Laura who was dead.… She thought. “I’m twenty-two. I’m older than