Look to the Lady by Margery Allingham Read Free Book Online Page A

times for the old boy, but I wouldn’t see him. Rather a hopeless sort of tale, I’m afraid, but you can see how it happened. Women always seem to muck things up,’ he added a trifle self-consciously.
    Mr Campion considered. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, and then was silent.
    They had been so engrossed in their conversation that they had not noticed a certain commotion at the far end of the room as a woman entered and saluted one or two acquaintances as she passed to her table. It was only when her high strident voice had drowned the subdued conversation in the room that the young men in the secluded corner observed her.
    She was of a type not uncommon among the “landed gentry,” but mercifully rare elsewhere. Superbly self-possessed, she was slightly masculine in appearance, with square flat shoulders and narrow hips. Her hair was cut short under her mannish felt, her suit was perfectly tailored and the collar of her blouse fitted tightly at her throat.
    She managed to enter the room noisily and sat down so that her face was towards them. It was a handsome face, but one to which the epithet of “beautiful” would have seemed absurd. She was pale, with a strong prominent nose and hard closely-set blue-grey eyes. She hurled a miscellaneous collection of gloves, scarves, and papers into the chair in front of her and called loudly to the waiter.
    It was evident that she was a personage, and that vague sense of uneasiness which invariably steals upon a room full of people when a celebrity is present was apparent in the stolid dining-room. Val averted his face hastily.
    â€˜Oh, Lord!’ he said.
    Mr Campion raised his eyebrows. ‘Who is the rude lady?’ he inquired casually.
    Val lowered his voice. ‘Mrs Dick Shannon,’ he muttered. ‘Surely you’ve heard of her? She’s got a racing stable on Heronhoe Heath. One of these damn women with-a-personality. She knows me, too. Could you wriggle in front of me, old man? She’s got an eye like a hawk.’
    Mr Campion did his best, but as they rose to go, their path to the door led them directly past her table. His protégé was quick, but he was not quick enough.
    â€˜Val Gyrth!’ The name was bellowed through the room until Mrs Dick Shannon’s victim felt as though the entire township must have heard it. The woman caught the boy’s coat-sleeve and jerked him backward with a wrist like flexed steel.
    â€˜So you’re back, eh? I didn’t know you’d made friends with your father again.’ This piece of intimate information was also shouted. ‘When did this happen?’ She ignored Mr Campion with the studied rudeness which is the hall-mark of her type. He hovered for some moments ineffectually, and then drifted out into the corridor to settle the score.
    Left unprotected, Val faced his captor and strove to make his excuses. He was quite aware that every ear in the room was strained to catch his reply. Gyrth was a name to conjure with in that part of the country.
    Mrs Dick seemed both aware and contemptuous of her audience. ‘I’ve just come down from the Tower,’ she said. ‘I’m trying to make your father sell me two yearlings. What does he want with race-horses? I told him he hadn’t got the sense to train properly; and that man he’s got is a fool. I saw your aunt, too,’ she went on, not waiting for any comment from him. ‘She gets sillier every day.’
    Val gulped and murmured a few incoherent words of farewell. Mrs Dick gripped his hand and shook it vigorously.
    â€˜Well, good-bye. I shall see you again. You can tell your father I’m going to have those yearlings if I have to steal them. He’s not capable of training ’em.’
    The boy smiled politely and a little nervously, and turned away.
    â€˜I heard your wife was dead – so sorry,’ bawled Mrs Dick for the world to hear. Val fled.
    His forehead was