Читать книгу The Deductions of Colonel Gore - Lynn Brock - Страница 10

THE fog had grown so dense that, glancing across towards Aberdeen Place as he went on towards the pillar-box, Gore could distinguish nothing of the house to which his eyes had turned instinctively save the blurred illumination of its fanlight. Afterwards he recalled sardonically that his imagination had busied itself then for some moments with a charming, enviable picture of the happiness of the man of whose honourable, useful, contenting work that blurred light was the signal. Oddly enough, the figure which came out of the fog to meet him, just as he dropped his letters into the box, proved to be that of the very man of whose felicities, conjugal and otherwise, he had just been thinking.

‘Hallo, doctor,’ he said cheerily. ‘No rest for the wicked then, tonight again?’

‘No.’

‘You getting back now—or just starting out?’

‘Getting back,’ Melhuish replied, as Gore, having turned about, fell into step beside him. ‘A Mrs MacArthur rang me up to go and see her little boy. I’ve been attending him for a mild attack of gastritis. You don’t know the MacArthurs, do you? They’ve only recently come to live here in Linwood.’

‘MacArthur? No. Filthy sort of night, isn’t it? Sort of night I should simply hate to be dragged out of bed if I’d once succeeded in getting there, personally. But I suppose you doctor-men get hardened to it. Why … that’s Cecil Arndale, isn’t it?’

The eyes of both men had converged to a tall figure in a light-coloured raincoat which had emerged hurriedly from a house some twenty yards ahead of them, and, after a quick glance in their direction, had set off at a sharp pace towards the Riverside, growing rapidly indistinct as it receded into the fog.

‘It was Arndale, wasn’t it?’ Melhuish asked abstractedly. ‘His wife’s brother has a flat in one of these houses—Challoner. You probably remember him?’

‘Bertie Challoner? Oh, yes. I remember Bertie very well indeed. An ingenuous youth. Yes. Mrs Arndale told me this evening that he had a flat somewhere along here. Seventy-three, she said, I think.’

The hall door from which Arndale had issued reopened as they reached it, and a large young man emerged from it so hastily that Gore and his companion only escaped collision with his formidable bulk by a fraction of a second. Recognising Melhuish, he laughed shortly and irritably.

‘Hallo, doctor. That you? Where’s that brother-in-law of mine got to? Oh—there he is. Hi! Cecil …’

But Arndale had now reached the end of Selkirk Place and was visible there for a moment in the light of the arc-lamp over the bar, before he turned to his right hand up the lane and disappeared. Bertie Challoner replaced his pipe between his teeth resentfully and turned to regard Melhuish’s companion with an indifferent curiosity which changed abruptly to enthusiasm.

‘Why … Great Scott!’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s—’

He held out expansively an immense hand which Gore, recalling in time the trials of strength of other days, took very cautiously.

‘It is,’ he said. ‘How are you, young fellah?’

‘Fit. Come in and have a little drink. You must. I only heard tonight that you’d come home. I’ve been away for a few days. Come in and have a little drink, doctor, won’t you?’

‘Thanks, no, Challoner. I don’t think so. Good-night. Good-night again, Colonel.’

‘Good-night, doctor.’

Challoner’s gaze followed Melhuish’s retreat for a moment or two before he turned to conduct Gore into his elaborately-equipped bachelor quarters on the ground floor—one of the flats into which Number 73, like many others of the big houses in Selkirk Place, had been divided since the war.

‘Stiff old stick,’ he muttered, with a grimace. ‘Can’t think why Pickles married him. You dined with the Melhuishs tonight, Arndale told me. That’s a comfortable chair. I couldn’t believe Arndale when he told me you had come home. Cigarettes? You look fit. How’s things? Come back for good?’

‘Not sure,’ smiled Gore. ‘England on a night like this is not alluring.’

‘Filthy, isn’t it? Enough to make a chap commit murder or suicide or anything, to look out there into that mouldy Green in a fog like this. You’re staying at the Riverside, I hear. You look fit.’

‘Thank you, Bertie. As that is the second time you have made that remark in sixty seconds, I presume I must regard it as deserved. As a matter of fact, you will be glad to learn, I am perfectly fit.’

Challoner smiled vaguely—indeed he had made no pretence whatever of listening—threw, considering the hour, a surprisingly large quantity of coal on the fire, stirred it noisily, sighed, and subsided into a big chair and a silence which became at length embarrassing. His healthy, brick-red face, good-looking in a rather massive, heavy way, boyish still in repose despite its owner’s thirty years, assumed an expression of gloomy anxiety as its smile faded. Something had occurred to upset Master Bertie Challoner recently, Gore decided. He looked most unmistakably peeved and worried of mind.

‘Look here, my dear chap,’ said the visitor, preparing to take his departure. ‘I’m sure you’re wanting to get down to it, aren’t you? I’ll run in tomorrow morning sometime—’

But Challoner was visibly distressed by this reflection upon his hospitality.

‘Not at all, not at all. I’m simply delighted to see you, Wick—you know I am. Go on—sit down again, old chap. I’m—I’m just a bit worried about something, that’s all. Don’t you bother about me. I shouldn’t turn in for another good hour or so, anyhow. What sort of an evening did you have at the Melhuishs’? Pretty deadly, eh? Old Jimmy Wellmore, I hear—and the gashly Angela. I say, isn’t she a weird old thing? I simply can’t stick her. I’ll swear she drinks or dopes or something.’

‘You have a bad mind, young fellah,’ grinned Gore. ‘You always had. What a shocking thing to think of a lady who—well, she couldn’t be your mother, I suppose, but at any rate she is sufficiently mature to claim your respect.’

Challoner laid aside the extinct pipe which he had been regarding for some moments with intense displeasure, selected another from a crowded rack, and blew into it exhaustively and morosely.

‘I bet the old thing dopes,’ he said doggedly. ‘She’s as yellow as a Chink. Weird old frump … Gets up at three o’clock in the day, Sylvia says, and floats round in a dressing-gown until she goes to bed again, playing with those filthy little yapping dogs of hers—things like that ought to be put into a lethal chamber … How d’you think Pickles looks?’

He replaced the pipe in the rack, lighted a cigarette, and flopped into his chair again disconsolately. ‘This,’ Gore reflected, ‘is a little trying. I must get away before he unburdens his soul. A woman, of course—one of these fair creatures he’s got in a row on his mantelpiece, I suppose.’

Aloud, he said, with decision, ‘Very nice indeed. Quite the nicest person to look at I’ve seen since—well, since I saw her last, I believe. You got a game leg now, old chap?’

Challoner nodded absently.

‘Bit. Had a baddish crash in nineteen-eighteen … What’d you think of Melhuish?’

Now a young man of Bertie Challoner’s type must indeed be disturbed of soul, Gore told himself, if he declined an opportunity of dilating upon a game leg attributable to his share in the greatest of wars. Why this persistent desire to return to the Melhuishs’ and their dinner party?

‘Melhuish? Very nice. Very nice indeed. Not precisely … er … gushing. But a topping good chap, I should say.’

‘Oh, he’s all right, I suppose. Damn supercilious smile. Gets on my nerves. Sort of “You poor unfortunate ass, what are you alive for?” sort of smile. Not that I pretend to be exactly one of your brainy kind. I’m not.’

‘No,’ murmured the guest sympathetically.

‘Still, just because he’s a bit of a dab with a stethoscope, I don’t see that he need treat every one who isn’t as a worm. I bet Pickles often wishes she’d married old Cecil, after all.’

Gore deposited the ash of his cigarette in an ash-tray very, very carefully.

‘Yes?’ he said encouragingly. ‘For a moment it had occurred to me to think of another substitute for her actual choice … Yes?’

‘I suppose you know that Arndale was deadly keen about her, don’t you?’

‘Well, no. I can’t say that I had known that. Though I suppose one may assume fairly safely that most of the young fellahs—and old fellahs, for that matter—in this part of the world—’

‘Oh, yes. But old Arndale went all out for her, you know, until he found he hadn’t a show. He was absolutely silly about her. You ask Sylvia. Sylvia knows jolly well that he only married her because she was such a pal of Pickles’s. It’s a fact. She’ll tell you so herself without a blink. Of course Sylvia’s my sister, and all that—and she and Arndale get on all right, as it has turned out—I mean, everything considered. But if you ask me, if it came to picking Sylvia or Pickles out of the water, tomorrow—well, I bet old Sylvia would feed the fishes.’

Gore smiled pleasantly and still more encouragingly upon this most candid of brothers.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is most interesting. May I ask when this tragedy of unrequited love … came to a head, as it were?’

Challoner considered.

‘When? Oh … it was going on for a couple of years before Arndale married Sylvia. Nineteen-thirteen-fourteen-fifteen … just before the war and during the first year or so of it. I remember Sylvia used to tell me about it in her letters when I went to France first. Both she and Pickles were rather fed up with Cecil because he hadn’t joined up, I remember.’

Gore examined one of his host’s cigarettes critically.

‘These look about eighteen bob a hundred.’

‘A quid,’ said Challoner laconically. His guest sighed enviously and replaced the cigarette in the miniature silver trunk from which he had incautiously taken it.

‘In another, better world, perhaps. In this, not for me. I’ll smoke my old dhudeen, if I may.’

As he filled his pipe his eyes strayed again to the photographs on the mantelpiece—most of them feminine and picturesque, he noted appreciatively—and rested for a moment on that of a pretty if rather dejected-looking young woman in riding-kit which occupied a place of honour.

‘I recognise some old friends among your little picture-gallery,’ he said casually. ‘That’s little Ethel Melville in breeches, isn’t it?—I beg her pardon … Mrs Barrington, I should say. Trying things, breeches, you know, Bertie. Very few of ’em can stand ’em. By the way, I met her husband this evening at the Melhuishs’.’

Challoner’s big flaxen head swung round towards him sharply; his face had flushed a deeper shade of brick-red.

‘Barrington?’

‘Yes. Extraordinary good-looking fellah. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a handsomer man in my life. Comes from Jamaica, doesn’t he?’

‘So he says.’

The visitor surveyed his host’s profile thoughtfully. It was at that moment a profile of remarkable expressiveness.

‘Yes? You think … er … that he doesn’t?’

‘I think,’ said Challoner surlily, ‘that if Barrington says he comes from Jamaica the chances are ten to one he doesn’t. I think that. And I’ll tell you another thing I think about Mr Barrington.’

He had risen to his feet again and was gesturing with a vehement hand.

‘I think he’s a damn scoundrel, Mr Barrington. I know he’s one. I’m not going to tell you how I know it—or just what I know of him. All I say to you is this, Wick—and it’s straight from the horse’s mouth—don’t you be taken in by that smarmy swine. Don’t you have any truck with him, if you can help it. Keep clear of him. I tell you he’s a real rotten bad ’un.’

Challoner’s blue eyes were aglitter with anger now. His big blond head thrust forward, as he spoke, with a threatening belligerence. It was very clearly evident that he disapproved of Mr Barrington for some reason utterly and entirely.

‘What does he do?’ Gore inquired, after a moment. Quite unconsciously his eyes had strayed again to that large photograph which occupied the place of honour in the collection on the mantelpiece. A possible explanation of Master Bertie’s vehement depreciation of Barrington had occurred to him.

‘Do? Nothing. Nobody knows who he is, where he comes from, or anything about him. He was down at Barhams, at the Remount Depot, for a bit during the war—and then he turned up here again afterwards—managed to screw himself into the Arndales’ set somehow. You can see for yourself what a plausible, come-hither sort of swine the beggar is—got to know every one here in Linwood—through the Arndales—got hold of Miss Melville somehow, and persuaded her to marry him—after her money, I needn’t tell you. Though he got a bad drop there … And now … well … there he is—the kind of vermin no decent person would touch with a forty-foot pole if they knew what he really was—and yet, because he’s been clever enough to bluff ’em he’s a pukka sahib—and because he swindled Miss Melville into marrying him … all these silly asses here—people like the Arndales and the Melhuishs and the Wellmores, and so on—they all have him in their houses—allow him to run round with their womenfolk—golf with him, and play bridge with him at the club—and other little games afterwards—at his house. I could tell you a thing or two about that little sideline of his … If he asks you to drop in one night at Hatfield Place for a little game, Wick, my boy … you just go home to bed. You’ll find it cheaper.’

‘Dear me,’ sighed Gore, ‘I do hope that if I ever have a wife, no bad-minded young man will fall in love with her.’

Challoner flushed again—a fine, deep warm crimson, this time. Touched.

‘You think I’m piling it on, Wick, because I don’t like the chap.’

‘Great Heavens, no.’

‘Yes, you do. I can see you do. But by God I’ll, tell you this much—if you knew what I know about Barrington—if he had tried to do to you what he has tried to do to me—if you had even an idea of the kind of blackguard that fellow is—you’d take a chance and do him in. I’m not joking. I’m not joking, Wick. I give you my solemn word—if I had the chance now, this moment, to blot him out—safely—to rid that dear little girl whose life with him is—’

He broke off abruptly, let the big clenched hand which he had shaken angrily, drop to his side, walked to the door of the room and came back.

‘I’m talking a lot, old chap,’ he said, with an unsuccessful attempt at a smile. ‘Too much. I know what I’ve said won’t go beyond you. It isn’t that I should be afraid to say anything I’ve said to you now to Barrington’s face any time—if it was merely a question of thinking of myself. But … he’d take it out of other people—if he heard. Just wash out what I’ve said. I’m a bit on the raw edge tonight.’

Gore rose.

‘I believe you’ve known me for some little time, young fellah,’ he said with mild reproach. ‘Now, get to bed. You’ve been thinking too much, young Bertie. You were never meant for that sort of thing. Night-night.’

Challoner eyed him moodily for a moment.

‘Well, I’m damn glad to see you again, anyhow,’ he said at length. ‘I’ll walk down to the end of the road with you.’

They sauntered down Selkirk Place in the fog, arranging a morning’s golf. Challoner’s two-seater had gone into dock that afternoon with a big-end gone, he explained; but any of the boys would run them out the three miles to Flax ways.

‘Thursday, then. I’ll pick you up at the Riverside. There—’ He took a hand from a trousers-pocket to wave it resentfully towards the red-brick building in front of them. ‘Just to give you an idea of the sort of swine Barrington is. There’s a little girl who looks after that bar down there. You may have seen her about the Riverside … Rather a pretty little thing—?’

‘Miss Rodney?’

‘Yes. That’s her name. Betty Rodney. Brains of a chicken, but not a bad little thing if chaps like Barrington would leave her alone. Well … mind, this is quite between ourselves. I just happen to know. He has got that poor little kid into trouble. That’s the sort of cur he is. I used to notice him hanging about round here late at night … I noticed his car first. He used to leave it just about here—I wondered what the devil he was up to at first, until one night, about a month ago, I heard him whistling up at her window. She sleeps over the bar, you see. And she came to that side-door and let him in. Silly little idiot. I believe she was to have been married to some chap or other, before Barrington came along and cut in. Now—well, I expect that’s off now. Suppose they’ll fire her from the Riverside, too, when they find out.’

‘Oh,’ said Gore, ‘so that’s the sort of gentleman Mr Barrington is. That’s very interesting. You’re quite sure about this girl, Bertie?’

Challoner laughed impatiently.

‘Sure? I bet she’s expecting him now. That’s her window where the light is. It’s always lighted up the nights he comes along.’ He laughed sardonically. ‘Though she won’t see him tonight, I fancy. Oh, yes. I’ve been keeping a pretty close eye on Mr Barrington lately. I know what I’m talking about. Look here. If you don’t believe me—I’ll whistle under that window now. You’ll see what happens. I know what I’m talking about, believe me.’

‘My dear Bertie, I’ll take your word for it—’

‘No. I just want you to see for yourself. Get out of sight though. She’ll look out of the window when she hears the whistle. I want her to come down to the door. Let’s stand here. She can’t see us here from the window.’

His big hands urged the reluctant Gore into the angle formed by the railings of the section of the Green abutting on the hotel-grounds and one of the pillars of the gates admitting to them. Then he whistled softly. A large, very wet drop fell from an overhanging branch upon the nape of Gore’s neck and descended inside his collar. The dead leaves collected under the trees inside the railings and in the angle of the roadway by the gates emitted an odour of dismal dankness. The trunks of the trees looked disagreeably slimy. The fog smelt and tasted of decaying vegetation. One of Gore’s still new evening-shoes had pinched him a good deal during the evening and was pinching him quite uncomfortably now. Its toe stirred a little mound of leaves collected against the foot of the gate-pillar with some impatience.

‘Gone to bed and forgotten to switch off her light, old chap,’ he said. ‘Serve us right. Let’s get to bed.’

A small glistening object, revealed by the disturbance of the leaves at his feet, had attracted his attention—the vague attention of a sleepy man awaiting against his will the dénouement of a rather silly practical joke. As he stooped idly to pick it up, he heard the door beside the bar open cautiously and straightened himself again as Miss Rodney came into sight round the angle of the wall and halted abruptly upon perceiving him and his companion.

Challoner smiled at her grimly.

‘Good-night, Miss Rodney. Not in bed yet?’

She hesitated, plainly disconcerted; then decided upon haughty flippancy.

‘Looks like it, doesn’t it, Mr Challoner?’ she said tartly, and disappeared, remembering, however, to close the door as softly as she had opened it.

‘You see,’ said Challoner.

‘I see,’ said Gore. ‘Though I’m bound to say that Miss Rodney’s little amoors leave me cold.’

He yawned without the faintest attempt at concealment as he stooped and picked up the little glistening object which had attracted his attention amongst the leaves, and twiddled it between his fingers. Challoner however, displayed no resentment of his indifference nor any eagerness to adopt his advice as to getting to bed.

He stood frowning, apparently lost in thought, until Gore turned to leave him.

‘I say, old chap,’ he asked abruptly, ‘what time was it when you broke up at the Melhuishs’?’

‘About a quarter to twelve.’

‘Barrington left then—at a quarter to twelve?’

‘Yes. He and I came away together. Why?’

‘Nothing. I just wanted to know. Was he walking, or driving?’

‘Walking. At least I saw no car about, when I left him in Aberdeen Place.’

‘Oh,’ Challoner said musingly, ‘then he must have gone home on foot from the Melhuishs’—and taken his car out then … It was after one when Arndale said he saw it in Aberdeen Place.’

Despite his sleepiness and his aching toes, Gore’s interest in Mr Barrington’s nocturnal wanderings revived sharply.

‘In Aberdeen Place?’ he repeated.

‘Yes. Arndale told me he saw it there then—somewhere near the Melhuishs’ door. He must have gone home and taken it out—if you’re sure you didn’t see it there when he went away from the Melhuishs’ with you.’

Gore was to discover subsequently the reason for which the hour at which Barrington had reached home that night and taken out his car was of such interest to his companion. For him, at the moment, the point possessed no interest whatever beside the information that Barrington’s car had been in the neighbourhood of the Melhuishs’ hall door at the hour at which Arndale apparently had seen it there … after one o’clock. So he had gone, then—and found the door open, presumably … Left his car near the door, too, to advertise the affair to anyone who might happen to see it and recognise it … as Arndale had done—

‘Well, good-night, Bertie,’ he said curtly, and turned so that his companion might not see his face.

‘Good-night, Wick. Mind—mum’s the word, old chap.’

Gore crossed the hotel-grounds, and, finding the door of the annexe still open, gained his own quarters that way. Before he took off his overcoat one of the hands which explored its pockets mechanically drew out the small object which he had picked up near the gates. He stared at it in astonishment. It was a little hide knife-sheath, thickly ornamented with coloured beads—exactly like the sheaths of those two little Masai knives which had been included in his wedding-present to Pickles, and which he had seen a couple of hours before hanging in Melhuish’s hall.

He examined the thing carefully. Obviously it had not lain for any length of time amongst the damp leaves in which he had discovered it. It appeared to him too improbable a conjecture to surmise that chance should have brought to that spot—a bare hundred yards from the other two—a third such sheath. Common sense assured him that there was no third sheath—that this was one of the two which he had touched with a finger to draw the attention of Melhuish and Barrington to it.

How, then, had the blessed thing got out of Melhuish’s hall, across the road, and into that heap of leaves in the corner by the gates?

And the knife that should, for all prudence sake, have been in the sheath—where was that?

For a little while he pondered over the matter drowsily, half-minded to go out again and look about for the knife. But it was now getting towards half-past two. He smoked a final cigarette before his dying fire cheerlessly, and went to bed.