Grey Mask Read Online Free PDF Page A

he had ever made one.”
    “Does it matter?” asked Margot indifferently.
    Mr. Hale frowned. “It matters a good deal to you, Miss Standing.”
    “Does it?”
    “I am afraid that it does.”
    “But I am his daughter anyway. Why should it matter about a will? There’s only me, isn’t there?” Her tone was still indifferent. Mr. Hale was an old fuss-pot. He wasn’t a man at all; he was just a suit of black clothes and a disapproving frown. She said with sudden irrelevance: “Please, I want some money. I haven’t got any. I bought the chocolates with my last bean. I made M’amselle stop the taxi whilst I rushed in and got them. Everything was so frightfully dismal I felt I should expire if I didn’t have chocs—it takes me that way, you know.”
    Mr. Hale took no notice of this. Instead, he asked, with a gravity that was almost severe.
    “Do you remember your mother at all?”
    “No—of course not. I was only two.”
    “When she died?”
    “I suppose so.”
    “Miss Standing, can you tell me your mother’s maiden name?”
    She shook her head.
    “Come! Surely you must know it!”
    “I don’t.” She hesitated and then added, “I think I was called after her.”
    “Yes? What are your names?”
    “I’ve only got one. I think I was christened Margaret, and I think perhaps it was my mother’s name. I’ve always been called Margot.”
    “Miss Standing, did your father never speak about your mother?”
    “No, he didn’t. I keep telling you he practically never spoke to me at all. He was always frightfully busy. He never talked to me.”
    “Then what makes you think you were called after your mother?”
    A slight blush made Miss Standing prettier than before.
    “There was a picture that he kept locked. You know—the sort with doors and a keyhole, and a miniature inside. I always wanted to know what was in it.”
    “Well?”
    Miss Standing shut her lips tightly.
    “I don’t know that I ought to tell you,” she said with an air of virtue.
    “I think you must tell me,” said Mr. Hale.
    Something in his voice frightened her. She drew back, looked at him out of startled eyes, and began to tell him in a hurrying, uncertain voice.
    “I wasn’t supposed to go into the study. But one evening I went because I thought he was out. And he wasn’t. And when I heard him coming I had only just time to get behind the curtains. It was frightful, because I thought he was never going to go away, and I thought I should be there all night.”
    “Yes? Go on.”
    “He wrote letters, and he walked up and down. And then he gave a sort of groan, and I was so frightened I looked out. And he was opening the picture. He opened it with a little key off his watch-chain. And when he’d opened it he went on looking at it for simply ages. And once he gave another groan, and he said ‘Margaret’ twice in a sort of whisper.”
    “Quite so,” said Mr. Hale.
    The colour rushed to Margot’s cheeks.
    “Why do you say that, just as if I was telling you about the weather, instead of a frightfully secret, romantic sort of thing like I was telling you about?”
    “My dear Miss Standing!”
    “It was frightfully thrilling.”
    “Did you see the picture?”
    “N-no. Well, I just got a peep at it—when he turned round you know.”
    “Yes?”
    “It was a miniature, and it had little diamonds all round it. They sparkled like anything, and I could just see that she was fair like me. And that’s all. I just saw her for a moment. She was awfully pretty.”
    Mr. Hale cleared his throat.
    “There is, of course, no evidence to show that the miniature was a portrait of your mother.”
    “Why, of course it was!”
    “It may have been. May I ask if the picture is in the house?”
    “He always took it away with him. Perhaps it’s on the yacht.”
    “I’m afraid it went overboard with him. The steward spoke of a portrait such as you describe; he said Mr. Standing carried it about with him. Now, Miss Standing, you are quite sure