Читать книгу The Shakespeare Murders - A. G. Macdonell - Страница 7

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He read it again and then a third time, and then he replaced it in the envelope and sealed it up. He was faced with a pretty problem, and the more he considered it, the more difficult it became. If it was a serious, urgent message, worth fifty pounds to get sent off, then it was obviously in cipher and might mean anything. No one in their senses would entrust an important message to a total stranger without making certain that it was unintelligible to him. On the other hand, it might mean nothing at all, in which case Mr. Rubin must be trying to test the bona fides of the insurance agent. “That is to say,” thought Kerrigan, “if I am a good man and true, I will go and post the letter and earn my money; whereas if I am a police spy, I will tell Fleming, and 38 Edward Street, Battersea, will be watched for little Mary, and 150 Ladbroke Crescent will be searched, and Hilldrop K.—Good Lord! what a name!—will know where I stand. But then again! Is he likely to pay fifty pounds to know where I stand? If so—he’s up to no good, and that black-faced barrister isn’t far wrong.”

After half an hour’s earnest pondering he left the billiard-room, nodded good-night to the sleepy policeman who was on duty in the hall, and strolled down one of the long ground-floor corridors as if going to his bedroom. It was now just on midnight, and the house was very quiet. On reaching the door of the gun-room in which he had found the plan of the house, he glanced over his shoulder to make certain that he was not being followed, slipped in and shut the door and wedged a chair under the handle. Then, very cautiously, without turning on the light, he tiptoed to a corner in which he had seen a jumble of tennis racquets and shoes, found a rubber-soled pair that more or less fitted him, opened the window noiselessly and peered out. A policeman was standing on the lawn about three yards away, with his back to him, yawning heavily. Peter Kerrigan ducked down below the level of the sill, and then slowly hoisted himself up so that he could just see over it and reconnoitred the position. The solution to the problem was easy. Twenty yards to the left a small conservatory was joined on to the house, and with a dexterous flick, Kerrigan threw a tennis racquet through the glass. The policeman gasped, drew his truncheon, and made a gallant sprint to the scene of the crash, while Kerrigan hopped out of the window, pulled it down after him, and scuttled along the shadow of the wall of the house, round a corner, behind a shrubbery, and down a garden walk in the direction of the wood which screened Marsh Manor from the road.

Once in the shelter of the wood he was comparatively safe until he reached the walls of the park, which were, for all he knew, also being patrolled by guardians of the King’s Peace. He kept well away from the gates, and found himself confronted by the distinctly awkward obstacle of a twelve-foot brick wall, along the foot of which he groped in search of a foothold, until he suddenly came upon a ladder leaning against it. Without a moment’s hesitation he went up it like a lamplighter, down the rope-ladder which was hanging on the other side, and off down the road in the direction of Bicester.

“I’m not the only cat upon the tiles to-night,” he reflected, as he lolloped along at a steady six miles an hour into the town. He posted the letter, and then went into a day-and-night telephone-box which was outside the post office and rang up the quiet little club at the back of Grosvenor Square that he belonged to—a club where a little roulette could always be played—and asked for the secretary. The secretary, whose real work did not begin until about one a.m. when the club-rooms began to fill up, was promptly available, and Kerrigan asked him to find out what he could about Sir George Ilford, Captain Streatfield, and Lord Claydon, and let him have the information sent to Jessop Gaukrodger, Esq., C.B.E., c/o The Angel Hotel, Bicester, to be left till called for. The secretary, whose terms for inquiring into antecedents were five pounds per head, willingly undertook the commission, and Peter, well satisfied with his evening’s work so far, hung up the receiver, stepped out of the box, and collided with Miss Shackleford.

“Good evening, Mr. Kerrigan,” she said politely, and entered the box.

Peter Kerrigan walked very thoughtfully down the road for a couple of hundred yards and then, very thoughtfully, back again. The girl came out of the telephone-box as he came up.

“May I have the honour of escorting you back to the Manor?” he asked.

“Of two evils, I would sooner be escorted than spied upon,” she replied coldly.

“I wasn’t spying upon you,” protested Kerrigan.

“Let us call it simply a curious coincidence,” answered Miss Shackleford, falling into step beside him. “And how is the insurance business? Flourishing, I hope?”

“Fair to middling, thank you.”

“There are two rather queer things about you, Mr. Kerrigan—by the way, am I walking too fast for you?”

“I can manage to keep up,” he replied a little angrily. He made rather a speciality of self-possession and aplomb, but this girl seemed to be in the same line of business.

“You are much too well dressed to be an insurance agent, and much too foolish—after losing all that money to Sir George—to be anything except what you obviously are.”

“And what is that, please?”

She laughed; a gay laugh which rippled away over the fields, and said:

“You’re so obviously a society journalist. Tell me, are you Melisande, or Man About Town, or Cicerone?”

“As a matter of fact, I’m Lord Beaverbrook.”

“Then will you give me a photograph and a couple of paragraphs in the Express?”

Peter Kerrigan changed the subject abruptly.

“Miss Shackleford, what is the trouble at Marsh Manor? There’s no use telling me that there isn’t any trouble, because it’s so obvious.”

“Do you suppose I would tell anything important to a gossip-writer?”

“Then there is something important?”

“Only to the people concerned. Not to you or your ‘public.’ ” She threw an infinity of scorn into the last word. Kerrigan tried a new line.

“What sort of a man is Sir George Ilford?”

“Ask no questions and you’ll get no lies.”

“Oh! He’s as bad as that, is he?”

“I didn’t say so.”

“And Captain Streatfield? He looks nice.”

“He is nice.”

“I suppose the truth is that Lord Claydon has made some sort of bloomer or other and Ilford is blackmailing him.” Kerrigan spoke in jest, but he was immediately conscious that the girl’s cheerful bantering defence had changed into a wary caution. There was a perceptible pause before she replied:

“That would make a good paragraph, wouldn’t it? I expect you’d get seven-and-sixpence for that, and your boss would get a nice libel action.”

“Ilford doesn’t look as if he would stick at anything,” Kerrigan reflected aloud. “Not the sort of man I’d care to come up against.”

“Considering he was a heavy-weight boxing champion and is still in first-class condition, I don’t advise you to come up against him, mon cher petit. What are you, five feet two, or five feet three?”

“Five feet ten,” said Kerrigan indignantly.

“You don’t look it,” the girl replied with a maliciously bland smile. “I’m rather good at ju-jitsu and I believe I could take you on myself.”

Kerrigan ignored this insult.

“What about the Treasure?” he asked, and this time she replied seriously:

“Ah! the Treasure. If only that could be found, it would solve everything.”

“Are there so many things to be solved?”

“A good many,” she sighed involuntarily.

“Such as?”

She recovered at once.

“Ah! That’s asking. You stick to the Treasure hunt and the murder, and leave our private affairs to ourselves.”

They trudged on in silence for a bit and then Kerrigan said:

“If I found the Treasure for you, it would be a help to you all, I understand?”

“If you found it after I’ve failed, it would be a miracle,” retorted Miss Shackleford.

“Oh! So you’ve looked for it?”

“Every one has looked for it.”

“Except me.”

She laughed derisively.

“Except, O most intelligent insurance agent, you!”

“Do you happen to know what it consists of?”

“Nobody knows for certain. But it oughtn’t to be very hard to make a guess, when you remember that the mad Lord Claydon went in 1819 to stay with his friend the Maharajah of Futtiwalla; that while he was there he succeeded in persuading his cousin, the Governor-General, not to annex Futtiwalla; that the Maharajah was very grateful to him; that the Maharajah owned the finest collection of diamonds in India—which means the world—and that Lord Claydon came back from India with no more baggage than he took out.”

“You mean you think the famous Treasure is a wad of diamonds?”

“I mean,” she replied with mock gravity, “that I think the famous Treasure is a wad of diamonds. How exceptionally brilliant of you to guess my meaning like that!”

“It’s my exceptional brilliance,” murmured Kerrigan, “that has brought me to my present journalistic eminence. And now what about those ladders? They are yours, I presume?”

She nodded.

“Yes, I pinched them from the tool-shed.”

They got over the wall and threaded their way through the park till they reached the garden, where the girl halted.

“This is where we part,” she whispered.

“Mayn’t I help you to get in?” he whispered back. She shook her head decisively.

“If it was a question of gate-crashing, I would trust myself to your expert guidance. But I don’t fancy you’re cut out for desperate enterprises. Good-night.” She nodded and vanished swiftly behind a huge rhododendron.

Kerrigan waited breathlessly for the challenge of a policeman, but nothing happened to break the stillness of the night. After five minutes he concluded that by some means or other the girl had managed to get into the house unobserved, and he crept round towards the gun-room. The policeman was no longer visible, and five minutes later Kerrigan was safely in bed.