Dark Mystery

CHAPTER ONE

FREDDIE

The door of the club-house opened and a large young man put his head into the room.

‘Anyone seen Freddie?’ he demanded in a deep voice.

‘Not since lunch,’ answered a middle-aged man sitting at the writing-desk. ‘Confound you, either come in or stay out!’ He grabbed at several sheets of paper which rose from the table as a gust of wind swept in. ‘There’s no peace in this place these days, I don’t know what you young fellows are coming to. You’ve no—’

The young man dropped on one knee. ‘My dear Speck, a thousand apologies.’ He picked up a sheet of paper half-covered with writing, and rubbed off a speck of dust. ‘As good as new—’

‘Give that to me!’ The man called Speck snatched at it.

The other stared at him, perplexed, then shrugged good-humouredly. ‘You haven’t seen Freddie, have you?’

‘No,’ declared the other shortly. ‘I have not seen Appleyard since lunch.’ He placed his hand on the half-written letter.

The young man turned away and approached the bar. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the elderly attendant, called at the Sola Tennis Club a stewardess, was deep in a book propped up on a whisky glass.

‘Bunny,’ said the young man, mildly, ‘how about half-a-pint?’

The stewardess, her eyes still on her book, said mechanically: ‘You know we can’t do anything like that, Mr. Gratton, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. Have a nice ginger beer.’

Gratton shuddered.

‘Do you wish to kill me?’ he asked plaintively. ‘By the way, have you seen Mr. Appleyard?’

‘Mr. who? Oh, Freddie. No I haven’t. Not since lunch that is.’ She sniffed. ‘Told me that he was going to play you this afternoon at half-past two.’

‘That was the original idea,’ agreed Gratton.

‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d dozed off in one of the armchairs. Can’t do a young man any good to be hanging around a dull old place like this half the day. Mark my words, that’s where you’ll find him, for sure,’ declared Bunny, her gaze straying back to her book.

Gratton strolled across the large room towards a door in the corner marked ‘Card Room’. The Sola was a large club, with twenty hard and a dozen grass courts. In the club room itself, cane chairs lined the walls and there were four writing-desks; why Speck chose the draughty one near the door Gratton could not imagine, unless it was to be purposefully uncomfortable and blame someone else for it.

No one glanced up as Gratton looked through once again to make sure that Freddie was not tucked away in some dark corner. No, he was not there. Gratton went through another doorway marked ‘Men’s Dressing Rooms’ and walked along a narrow passage past the baths and showers.

The main dressing-room was at the far end, a large chamber with locker-seats round the walls. No one was inside, but on a peg in the corner hung a dark grey lounge suit, and on the floor stood a pair of black shoes with socks tucked neatly into them. So Freddie had changed.

‘Where has the beggar got to?’ asked Gratton aloud. He lit a cigarette rather aimlessly. Pity he was late. The wind was getting up, and it would probably be almost impossible to play in an hour’s time.

This Spring holiday was proving a wash-out.

Toby Gratton, junior partner in a small firm of suburban solicitors, would have preferred to take it later in the year, but so, he discovered grimly, had his senior partners.

Where was the chap?

Curious business altogether. If he’d gone out on to the courts, surely one of the couples in the club-room would have noticed him. And there was only the one door from the dressing-room.

The windows were all closed.

‘Not that he would have gone out of a window,’ Gratton mused aloud.

A curious sound cut across his thoughts.

He stared about him. Nothing moved. Yet there was no doubt about the sound which had come from somewhere in the dressing-room. The lid of a locker, not properly fastened, might have slipped down.

There it was again. He stood quite still, listening. The noise came from the far corner, between two of the windows.

The lid of a locker moved up an inch, then dropped with a hollow thud—the same sound that he had heard before. Mystified, he strode towards it.

He couldn’t make head or tail of it. Was this Freddie’s idea of a joke? And if so, how could he have locked himself in? Gratton tried the padlock; it was securely fastened and he hadn’t a key—Bunny had a master-key.

‘Is that you, Freddie?’ he called anxiously.

The lid rose: bump!

‘Say something!’ snapped Gratton.

Bump!

‘This is crazy,’ said Gratton. ‘All right, I’ll be back in a moment,’ he promised, and turned and hurried towards the club-room. The best thing to do was to ask Bunny for the master-key, pretending he’d left his own behind; she wouldn’t refuse the request of a member of the committee. He entered the club-room, and Speck, who was looking towards the door, turned back to his writing. Bunny was crouching closely over her book.

‘Let me have the master-key, Bunny, I’ve left mine at home.’

She groped under the bar, found, and handed him the key, her mind bemused with the lurid romance she had been reading.

Gratton hurried back to the dressing-room. He pushed the key into the padlock, turned it, and pulled up the lid.

To his astonishment, all he saw was a crumpled bath towel!

Fantastic! He bent down and pushed his hands into the locker; he could feel Freddie’s body beneath it. What on earth—

It wasn’t easy to lift the man out of the locker, but he managed it slowly. Freddie—it could only be Freddie—was doubled up, legs nearly touching his chin. The towel was tied round at each end, with string, and the knot was too secure to be unpicked easily. Gratton took out a penknife and cut the string.

If this were a practical joke—

He pulled the towel aside; the first thing he saw was a tumbled mass of black hair.

This was a girl!

CHAPTER TWO

THE DISTRESSED YOUNG LADY

She was breathing with difficulty, because of a scarf tied round her mouth, gagging her. Gratton fumbled with the knot of the scarf, prising it loose.

‘The foul brutes!’ he exclaimed.

The scarf had bitten into the girl’s cheeks, making the corners of her mouth white and ridged. She gasped for breath, keeping her mouth wide open.

‘All right,’ said Gratton in a strangled voice, ‘I’ll look after you.’ He put her down gently, cutting the cords which bound her. She flinched as they fell away.

‘Take it easy,’ he urged, ‘you’ll be all right.’ But it was infuriating to be so helpless; he knew how she felt; cramp was torturing her, and the hard wood of the locker wasn’t exactly a feather bed. He picked the girl up again and held her in his arms.

‘Take it easy,’ he repeated mechanically. Of course the thing to do was to carry her into the club-room, Bunny could take her into the women’s dressing-room and look after her; there would certainly be more comfort there. But the thought of the avid curiosity and inevitable publicity which this course would bring down on the girl, deterred him.

‘Any better?’ he asked, after a few minutes. She nodded. He went on: ‘I’m going to lay you on the lockers, you’re too cramped up here.’

This time she was able to stretch out her legs a little although she still kept her knees bent. He took off his coat to make a pillow.

‘Now just move about gently,’ he said, ‘and I’ll get you a drink.’

As he hurried to the wash-room, he tried in vain to make some sense out of the situation. To search for Freddie and find this girl—how fantastic! There was no other word that would describe it. How had she got into the dressing-room? Who had put her there?

Gratton hurried across with the glass of water, helped her to sit up, and held the glass to her lips. She drank slowly at first, letting the water fill her mouth before swallowing it. The ridges made by the scarf cut, sharp and dead white, across her cheeks.

‘Thank you,’ she muttered.

‘Splendid!’ said Gratton. ‘But I shouldn’t try to talk too much yet. I think I’d better help you along to the main room, the stewardess—’

‘No. No—’

She seemed very anxious to stay where she was, and Gratton had no wish to cause a sensation in the club-room. Soon she would be able to talk more freely, and in a few minutes he would ask for explanations. He was uneasy, in case Freddie was responsible for her plight; he was a friend of Freddie. Bunny and Old Speck would almost certainly connect the disappearance of Freddie with the remarkable misadventure of the girl. There was, too, a smaller, more nagging worry. If anyone came to the room he would be caught breaking one of the strictest rules of the club; no mixing in the dressing-rooms. But the wind was howling fiercely, and anyone who had considered tennis that day would surely have given it up.

He kept some vaseline in his locker, fetched it, smeared a little over his fingers and began to massage the girl’s cheeks. All the time he worked, she continued to move her arms and legs cautiously. Once or twice she flinched or grimaced at a spasm of pain, but her colour became more natural and her eyes much clearer.

She was quite young—in the early twenties, he imagined—attractive in a rather boyish way; her hair, long and dark, was really lovely.

After a while, she struggled feebly to get up.

He helped her from the locker. She was unsteady when she first rose to her feet, and he had to keep his arms round her. Then she insisted on trying to walk alone. Swaying a little she managed to reach the locker again without much difficulty. She smiled up at him.

‘You’ll be all right soon,’ said Gratton. He added, cautiously: ‘What happened?’

She said simply: ‘A fat man tied me up.’

‘Fat, eh?’ echoed Gratton, with a sigh of relief; no one in their senses could call Freddie fat.

‘I see,’ said Gratton. ‘Er—I don’t want to appear unduly curious, but I am, you know. Curious, I mean.’

‘Of course you are,’ she said. ‘But I’d rather tell you everything at one go. Just now, I’m a bit—shaky.’

‘Hardly surprising,’ commented Gratton. ‘There’s no hurry at all. On the other hand, we ought to find out more about it. You might have been suffocated.’

He realised as he spoke, that this girl had nearly been murdered. The realisation did something to his stomach; he felt queasy.

‘We’ll find out,’ said the girl, ‘but now I’m going to try to walk again. I’ll manage on my own this time,’ she added, when he started to help her.

He put a finger to his lips.

Two or three people were coming towards the club-house from the main gates; he could hear them talking, and did not want them to hear the girl’s voice. They passed the window, one very tall, powerful-looking fellow with a broken nose, whom Gratton had never seen before, and a tall, graceful woman, as well as young Plomley, a new member. They disappeared.

‘Sorry,’ said Gratton. ‘The responsibility of a committee man weighs heavily on me. Years ago, I thought it great fun to smuggle a girl in here. Now I have to put away childish amusements. Er—what I mean to say—’ He paused, feeling a little sheepish. ‘The truth is, we ought to go into the club-room, you’re not looking so bad now. Can you face it?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said the girl. ‘If I could have another glass of water first, I’d be grateful.’

He liked her spirit. Walking towards the wash-room, he reflected soberly that it was undoubtedly true that she had nearly been murdered. How long could a girl—or anyone—remain gagged like that and confined in a small, almost airless locker? Shuddering thought, that the owner of that locker might have opened it one day and found a corpse.

Gratton filled the glass and hurried back to the dressing-room. As he did so, he heard a car start up