Patricia Wentworth - The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith

Pictures of the Eiffel Tower and New York skyscrapers flitted through Jane’s mind. She also remembered interesting paragraphs about how many million pennies placed on end would reach to the moon. And at long, long last the escape ended at a window-sill with a parapet-enclosed space beneath it.

Jane sat down on the window-sill and shut her eyes tight. She had a horrid feeling that the building was rocking a little. After a moment Arnold crawled over the edge of the coping, dragging his plank. He was panting.

“This,” he said, with his mouth close to Jane’s ear—“this window only leads to the landing where the lift shaft ends. We’ve got to get across to the next one, which is inside Molloy’s flat. That’s what the plank is for.”

“You’re blowing down my neck,” said Jane.

Arnold Todhunter felt that he had never met a girl whom he disliked so much. Extraordinary that she should look so like Renata and be so different.

He knelt just inside the parapet, and pushed the board slowly out into the dark until it rested on the parapet of the next window.

“Will you go first, or shall I?” he whispered.

“I will.”

Jane felt sure that, if she had to watch Arnold balancing on that plank miles above the ground, she would never be able to cross it herself.

The reflection that it was Renata, and not she, who would have to make the descent fortified her considerably. Even so, she never quite knew how she crossed to the other window. It was an affair of clenched teeth and a mind that shut out resolutely everything except the next groping clutch of the hand—the next carefully taken step.

She sank against the window-sill and heard Arnold follow her. Just at the end he slipped; he seemed to change his feet, and then with a heavy thud pitched down on the top of Jane.

She thought he said “Damn!” and she was quite sure that she said “Idiot!”

There was an awful moment while they listened for the fall of the plank, but it held to the coping by a bare half-inch.

“Thank goodness I’m not Renata!” said Jane, with heartfelt sincerity. And—

“Thank goodness, you’re not!” returned Mr. Todhunter, with equal fervour, and at that moment the window opened.

There was a little sobbing gasp, and a girl was clinging to Arnold Todhunter and whispering:

“Darling—darling, I thought you’d never come.”

Arnold crawled through the open window, and from the pitch-black hall there came the sounds of demonstrative affection.

“Good gracious me, there’s no accounting for tastes!” said Jane, under her breath. And she too climbed down into the darkness.

Arnold appeared to be trying to explain Jane to Renata, whilst Renata alternated between sobs and kisses.

Jane lost her temper, suddenly and completely.

“For goodness’ sake, you two, come where there’s a light, and where we can talk sense. Every minute you waste is just asking for trouble. What’s that room with the light?”

It is difficult to be impressive in a low whisper, but Renata did stop kissing Arnold.

“My bedroom,” she said—“I’m supposed to be locked in.”

Jane groped in the dark and got Renata by the arm.

“Come along in there and talk to me. We’ve got to talk. Arnold can wait outside the window. I don’t want him in the least. You’re going to spend the rest of your life with him in Bolivia, so you needn’t worry. I simply won’t have him whilst we are talking.”

Arnold loathed Jane a little more, but Renata allowed herself to be detached from him with a sob.

Inside the lighted bedroom the two girls looked at one another in an amazed silence.

In height and contour, feature and colouring, the likeness was without a flaw.

Facing them was a small wardrobe of painted wood. A narrow panel of looking-glass formed the door. The two figures were reflected in it, and Jane, tossing her hat on to the bed, studied them there with a long, careful scrutiny.

The same brown hair, growing in the same odd peak upon the forehead, the same arch to the brow, the same greenish-hazel eyes. Renata’s face was tear-stained, her eyelids red and swollen—“but that’s exactly how I look when I cry,” said Jane. She set her hand by Renata’s hand, her foot by Renata’s foot. The same to a shade.

The other girl watched her with bewildered eyes.

“Speak—say something,” said Jane.

“What shall I say?”

“Anything—the multiplication table, the days of the week—I want to hear your voice.”

“Oh, Jane, what an odd girl you are!” said Renata—“and don’t you think Arnold had better come in? It must be awfully cold out there.”

“Presently,” said Jane. “It’s very hard to tell, but I believe that our voices are as much alike as the rest of us.”

She opened her bag, and took out The List and a pencil.

“Now, write something—I don’t care what.”

Renata wrote her own name, and then, after a pause, “It is a fine day.”

“Quite like,” said Jane, “but nearly all girls do write the same hand now. I can manage that. Now, tell me, where were you at school?”

“Miss Bazing’s, Ilfracombe.”

“When did you leave?”

“Two months ago.”

“Have you been in America?”

“Not since I was five.”

“Anywhere else out of England?”

“No.”

“What languages do you know?”

“French—I’m not good at it.”

“Well, that’s that. Now, Arnold tells me you heard them say you were to go to Luttrell Marches?”

Renata looked terrified.

“Yes, yes, I did.”

“You’re not supposed to know? They haven’t told you officially?”

“No—no, they haven’t told me anything.”

“Your father goes away to-morrow. Have they told you that?”

“I can’t remember,” said Renata, bursting into tears. “Oh, Jane, you don’t know what it’s like!—to be locked in here—to have them come and ask questions until I don’t know what I’m saying—and to know, to know all the time that if I make one slip I’m lost.”

“Yes, yes, but it’s going to be all right,” said Jane.

“I can’t sleep,” sobbed Renata, “and I can’t eat.” She held up her wrist and looked at it with interest. “I’ve got ever so much thinner.”

Jane could have slapped her. She reflected with thankfulness that Bolivia was a good long way off.

“Now, look here,” she said, “you talk about ‘they’—who are ‘they’?”

“There’s a man in a fur coat,” faltered Renata—“that is to say, he generally has on a fur coat; he always seems to be cold. He’s the worst; I don’t know his name, but they call him Number Two. He’s English. Then there’s Number Four. He’s a foreigner of some sort, and he’s dreadful—dreadful. I think—I think”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“my father is Number Three.” Then almost inaudibly, “Number One is at Luttrell Marches. It’s Number One who will decide about me—about me. Oh, Jane, I’m so dreadfully frightened!”

Renata’s eyes, wide and terrified, stared past Jane into vacancy.

“You needn’t be in the least frightened; you’re going to Bolivia,” said Jane briskly.

“I must tell some one,” said Renata, still in that whispering voice—still staring. “I didn’t tell them, I wouldn’t tell them, but I must tell some one. Jane, I must tell you what I heard.”

Quick as lightning Jane put her hand over the other girl’s mouth.

“Wait!” she said, and in the pause that followed two things stood out in her mind clear and sharp. If Renata told her secret, Jane’s danger would be doubled. If Renata did not tell it, the crime these men were planning might ripen undisturbed. Jane had a high courage, but she hesitated.