Читать книгу Find This Man - Aidan de Brune - Страница 5

Table of Contents

"WHAT on earth for. Ivy stared down at the photograph of the young man in her hand. Even in her astonishment she saw that the pictured man was exceedingly good looking. A slight smile dawned on her lips.

"Humph!" The old lawyer had taken the photograph and was examining it curiously. "Rather a good-looking young fellow. Wavy hair, I should think brown; aand eyes, that's hard to guess for a photograph, but I'll chance brown again. Good complexion, unless the photographer's retoucher is a cleverer one than my man employs. Good shoulders—have to guess the rest. Of course, some men have shoulders fit for a giant, and nothing but spindles underneath."

"Mr. Kithner!"

"Well, why not, my dear. We men have the advantage over girls. We know what sort of legs we're marrying, but trousers—well, a clever tailor with a good cut can work wondcrs."

"A girl doesn't marry a man for his legs," Ivy flashed.

"Humph! Perhaps not." A slight smile broke on the grim lips. "Though I've heard of girls who got quite a swell husband on the strength of classic knees."

Ivy laughed. "But why have I got to find him?"

"To marry?"

"Absurd!" The girl gurgled, delightedly. "Do you, or did dear old god-dad, think I'm going to chase about the world looking for a man to marry me? No, he—"

"He will have to do the chasing." Kithner's smile broadened into a chuckle. "Quite right, m'dear. Now to find him and set him on the right track."

"What track?"

"The chasing." The solicitor's eyes twinkled. "No, dear, that was only my joke. Still—" he paused.

The girl looked at him, inquisitively.

"What are you going to do?" Kithner asked.

"I don't know." Ivy had picked up her god-father's letter again and was reading the few lines, attentively. "God-dad wants me to find him."

"That's not going to be easy." The lawyer walked around the desk and sank into Basil Sixsmith's armed chair. "There's not a single clue. The photograph's mounted on plain card, not an imprint, not a mark on it. He may be in the heart of Australia, for all we know."

"And I am supposed to go and fetch him out? That's comforting!" Ivy perched herself on the corner or the desk, a twinkle of mischief in her green-grey eyes. "Still, he's got to be found."

"Why?"

"Because god-dad wants him found." Ivy spoke as if she had given the final reason. Now, Mr Kithner, how do I go about it?'

"Advertise?"

"Of course!" The girl was sarcastic. Will this do? "Wanted. A young man. photograph in the possession of a young lady who is looking for a job."

"Looks to me as if you've taken on quite a 'job' in this search."

"And with only two hundred and fifty pounds to finance it."

"Then you have relinquished the idea of handing over that money to Mrs. Western?"

The girl nodded. "Now, be sensible. How am I to go about this task?"

For some time there was silence. Ivy tried to consider the matter from all points of view. It was rather embarrarassing. She was to find an unknown young man—and that without the slightest clue to where he was likely to be.

Where had Basil Sixsmith found that photograph? Had he known the young man whose picture it was? What had been the relations between the young and the old man. And above all, what was to happen when she found him—if she succeeded in her search?

The girl had not much doubt in the matter. She would find the man, if only that the finding of him was the last injunction placed on her by the god-father she had loved so dearly. She would find him—and then?

Had the old man thought to provide for her future by a marriage between her and this man? The rich colour flooded her face at the thought. That would be just like a man! To provide for her future! As if she was incapable of working?

No, her godfather would not have acted like that. Ivy knew him too well to allow that thought to linger. Her god-father had been too wise to try so palpable a trick. There was—there must be—a reason behind the somewhat peremptory instruction that accompanied the photograph.

Could she couple the instruction regarding this man with the disappearance of the wealth her god-dad had been credited with possessing. But, in that case, what relation could this man be to him? Or—

Ivy jumped from the desk and took to pacing the room. Had this unknown man, she had been instructed to find, anything to do with herself or her history?

Who was she? Where had she come from? Ivy shrugged. She knew so little of herself. Her godfather had carefully avoided any mention of her birth and parentage. She had asked some questions, but he had always been evasive in his replies. Once she had pressed for an answer—to be asked if she was not entirely happy with him? What could she answer to that? She had known that she was happy; that had she not possessed a native spirit of independence she would have been thoroughly spoilt by the old man.

Something of herself and her parents she had gathered, partly from what her godfather had told her, partly from the answers to the few questions she had asked and he had answered, from time to time. She had learned that she was the daughter of an old, close friend. He had told her that he had travelled to Queensland, when she was a baby, to receive her as a trust from her dying father. Her father? She remembered him so slightly. A tall grave man who hardly ever smiled; a man whose furrowed brow told of a world pressing hard on him.

She could not remember her mother. Once she had questioned the old man regarding her mother, and he had told her to go and look in the glass. She had stood on tip-toe before the old-fashioned mirror, trying to picture herself twenty years older, a mother with a daughter of her own age.

And that was all she knew—except that she was entirely dependent on the man who had taken her and given her a home; at first for the sake of the friend he had loved, then for own self. Had her father and mother had other children?

Was this man, whose photograph she had found in the buhl box, her brother? That might be. She always wanted a brother, someone to look up to—a nice, strong, elder brother who would bully her a bit. She knew that she could not love a brother who gave way to her; the woman in her revolted at the thought. She might love a husband who lived in a state of passionate adoration and acquiescence to her demands; but a brother—he had always to be superior, masterful, to call out the best in the adolescent woman that she had instinctively known was in her. Ivy laughed, suddenly.

"Well?" Kithner looked up, inquiringly.

"I was wondering if that was a photograph of my brother."

"And I was wondering how you were going to find this man."

"You suggested advertising."

"Good Lord! You never took that seriously?" The lawyer threw up his hands. "Why, every man in the Commonwealth would think that [was] his photograph, especially if he thought that he would be a gainer, if he claimed resemblance to it. Why, girl, your money would melt in a staff of secretaries to deal with the correspondence; you would have to get police protection to prevent the doors of this house being thrown down in the rush. No, advertising is no good!"

"Then, what do you suggest?"

"I don't know. I don't suggest—anything." A little smile lurked around the straight lips. "Remember, young lady, I'm only your adviser, that means, I have to carry out the instructions you give me after I have advised you whether, in my opinion, they are good or bad. The onus is entirely on you."

Ivy looked at him, suspiciously. A sudden thought was born in her mind.

"Exactly, what do you mean?"

"My meaning is carried in my exact words, m'dear." Kithner laughed, slightly. "The chase is to you. All I will promise is, that I will carry out your instructions carefully and faithfully."

Ivy went and sat on the arm of the lawyer's chair.

"That means you know something."

"I know nothing, at the moment."

"And—if you learn anything in the future?"

"Anything I shall learn will be through carrying out the instructions you honour me with. That information will, of course, be always at your service. But—"

"But—"

"What?"

"I was wondering what god-dad did with his money?"

"You think he had money—more money than there was in the bank when he died?"

"I think so." Ivy spoke doubtfully. "How could he have kept up this house, this establishment, if he had not had money?"

"That's a point, certainly." The lawyer smiled.

"He borrowed five hundred pounds from Mr. Patterson, lately."

Kithner laughed. "I know the time when Basil Sixsmith laid on my desk share certificates and bonds worth over a hundred thousand pounds."

"One hundred thousand pounds?" The girl gasped. "What did he do with it? Why, he must have speculated to have lost all that."

"If Basil Sixsmith speculated, then it was the other man who lost." The lawyer laughed, broadly. "Well, my dear, the problem is yours. Let me know what you think—what you intend to do."

"I can tell you now." Ivy spoke as Kithner rose to his feet. "I am going to find that man."

"The man of the photograph?"

"Yes!"

"And—then?"

"I am going to ask him why god-dad set me so ridiculous a quest."

The solicitor went to the door, shaking his head. laughingly. Ivy accompanied him. As he passed out of the house he was smiling, secretly. Some yards down the road he turned and looked back, shaking his head again.

Ivy closed the door on the solicitor and went back into the house. It seemed very lonely and deserted now that her godfather had been carried out of it to his last long rest. Almost she thought she could hear the "thud-thud" of his heavy stick, as he passed from room to room. She looked in at the library, now filled with the long evening shadows, picturing him in his armed-chair before the great desk. She visioned the quick upward motion of his head with which he had always greeted her entry into the room, tinged with a hint of inquiry regarding her errand there.

He had loved her and she had loved him. Now he had gone and behind him had left a puzzle—a mystery. Ivy laughed, as remembrance came to her. Her god-dad had always reacted to mysteries. Together they had puzzled over many problems. Now he had set her a problem—and he was not there to help her solve it.

A problem, a mystery. Were the two things related? Was the problem the mystery and the mystery but part of the problem? The lawyer had spoken of her godfather's wealth—about a hundred thousand pounds and he had died with but the house and a few pounds in the bank; died in debt, leaving a dispute to the relatives, who flocked to his funeral as vultures to a feast on the dead.

She would solve that problem, probe that mystery. She knew now that the problem and mystery were one. She turned to face the big armchair, drawn before the empty grate. There the old man had sat evening after evening, conning some mystery story, perhaps to put the book down and discuss with her the solution. They had laughed together when they had found that the author had baffled, deceived them. In spite of that they had tackled the next mystery in a new spirit of optimism.

The old man had declared that the mystery-mongers were all wrong. They had dealt with crime—murder, abduction and theft. He had claimed that there were still more baffling mysteries in the honest light of the world. Had he framed one for her benefit; trusting to her native wit to search out the solution?

Again she read the note she had taken from the buhl box. Was there some secret to be read in that? She looked down at the photograph, lying on the desk. He looked nice—he would he a nice brother to some girl; a nice—

The lawyer had suggested that, more by his manner than through his words. Ivy threw back her head. If that was the solution of the problem, then she had a word to say in the matter.

She would solve the mystery, and without help. Help? What had the solicitor meant by his words? He would take her instructions, only. That meant that he would take no active part in the search for the man of the photograph. Well, she needed no assistance—no help from him!

But where, and how, was she to start her quest. Again she turned to the letter and the photograph. She could discover no help there. She turned from the room and in the hall switched on the lights.

Something lay on the hall-mat. She went to it. An envelope! She picked it up, starting down at the superscription. It was addressed to her. She tore the envelope and pulled out a card. On it were the words: "At the telephone—seven to-night."

She glanced at her watch. It wanted five minutes to the hour. Hastily, she turned and went to the library, seating herself in the armed chair before the desk, the telephone before her.

A tinge of excitement swept over her as the minute hand slowly came to the hour. Who had dropped the envelope, containing the card, through the letter box? Who was to speak to her on the telephone at the hour named? Had that person anything to do with the mystery that was surrounding her?

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked gaily on. Ivy turned and watched the hands. She knew that the clock was exactly right—that it had been one of the foibles of her godfather. Every clock in the house had to keep time to the minute.

Then, on the first stroke of the hour the telephone bell rang shrilly, compellingly.

"Miss Breton?" A man's voice came across the wire. "Is that Miss Ivy speaking?"

"Yes." The girl was surprised how faint her voice sounded. "I am Miss Breton—Ivy Breton."

"There is no one with you in the room?" The voice was hard.

"I am alone in the room." The girl answered with some hesitation.

"Good!" For a moment the voice paused. "Let me say how sorry I was to read of the death of my old friend. Basil Sixsmith."

"Why are you?" asked the girl.

"I?" The man at the other end of the wire, laughed. "I am one of your godfather's creditors. He owes me five thousand pounds."