Hue and Cry by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page B

recoiling from it, received a very hard, stinging slap in the face. The next instant the door had opened and banged again. Mally was gone.
    When she had reached her own room and locked the door, she told herself with some truth that she was a perfect little fool, and that it was all her own fault. Then she reflected with a good deal of pleasure upon the hardness of the slap which she had administered. Mr. Craddock had a good sort of face to slap—the sort that feels soft.
    â€œOuf!” said Mally. “Slug! Pink slug!” She spread out her fingers and looked at them. Then she went to the washstand and washed them very carefully.
    Downstairs Mr. Craddock had passed from incoherent soliloquy into a dangerous silence. He stood for some time with his elbow on the mantelpiece, looking down into the fire. From time to time he thrust savagely at the embers with his foot and stirred them into a blaze.
    When about half an hour had gone by, he slipped his left hand into his waistcoat pocket and took out something which he laid in the palm of his other hand. The light dazzled on a heart-shaped wreath of diamond leaves from which hung pendant-wise a very large and brilliant diamond.
    Mr. Craddock stared at the diamond. Then he said, “I wonder,” and slipped it back into the pocket from which he had taken it.

CHAPTER VIII
    Mally overslept herself next morning, and Barbara got no story. This cast a gloom over the breakfast table, where Barbara behaved very badly indeed, becoming ruder and less tractable with each of Mrs. Craddock’s rather plaintive reproofs.
    After breakfast Barbara disappeared. Mally searched the house for her in vain, and arrived reluctantly at the conclusion that the naughty little thing had taken refuge in the study. To the study she therefore went, knocked, and, receiving no answer, opened the door.
    Sir George was not there, but Paul Craddock was standing by Sir George’s table, holding the table telephone in one hand and the receiver in the other. His own writing-table, littered with papers, was behind him. The safe beside it stood open.
    Mally had begun to draw back, when something moved by the window. Barbara’s head looked round the corner of the curtain, Barbara’s eyes glowered at her, and Barbara’s tongue shot out defiantly. Instead of running away, Mally ran into the room and pulled the curtain back.
    Paul Craddock scowled at her entrance and then rather ostentatiously turned his back.
    â€œAh yes, Jenkinson,” he was saying. “Well, Sir George would like a reply. Yes, that’s the message he left with me—he would like a reply by the end of the week without fail. No, I don’t think it would be any use your ringing up again. No, he’s not in the house—I can’t say when he’ll be back. He left a very definite message, and nothing would be gained by your calling up again.”
    â€œBarbara!” said Mally while this was going on. “How could you? Come quick, before he stops telephoning.” She had her lips against Barbara’s ear, and spoke in an almost soundless whisper.
    Barbara twisted away, put out her tongue again, freed herself with a jerk from the folds of the curtain, and ran across the room and out at the door. Her feet made no sound on the thick carpet. Paul Craddock had not seen or heard her go.
    Mally straightened the curtain and followed Barbara out of the room. By the time she reached the foot of the stair, Barbara was already out of sight. As Mally took the marble steps three at a time, she thought of quite a number of pungent things to say to the little wretch later on.
    She was running along the corridor, when the door of Mrs. Craddock’s sitting-room was opened and Mrs. Craddock’s worried face looked out.
    â€œHave you found her? Where was she?”
    â€œYes. She’s run upstairs. She was in the study.”
    Mrs. Craddock came out of the door and caught her by the arm.
    â€œOh,