Читать книгу The Murders at Madlands - Aidan de Brune - Страница 3

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"'LO, Bobby. Got everything you want?"

Bobby Trayne looked up with a start. Although every sense had been on the alert from the moment he had entered the room, the question had caught his attention wandering. He nodded vaguely to the small table, set close beside his solitary chair.

"Smokes, drinks of all patterns—all that the soul of a journalist covets, except—"

"Well?" Gerald Preston, private secretary to Sir Rupert Haffervale, spoke almost impatiently. He glanced nervously towards the dark, grim-visaged man seated at the far end of the long dining table. "Anything I can get you?"

"No one better!" Bobby spoke very quickly. "To make the surroundings perfect I want just one thing—Why am I here?"

"You don't know?" Almost involuntarily the man glanced again at his employer.

"I don't." Very deliberately Bobby squirted from the siphon half a glass of soda water and sipped it slowly "I know I was telephoned by the office to come in this morning. When I arrived I found Alan Reeves, the respected chief of staff, of the Daily Mirror, already at his desk. That alone was a suspicious circumstance."

"How?" Although Preston spoke eagerly he still stared up the room to where his employer sat.

"Merely that to get Alan Reeves out of bed before mid-day is, or should be, recorded as one of the seven wonders of the world. Yet he was there, bright and worried, at nine-fifteen, Ack Emma."

"Well?" Some signal, imperceptible to the onlooker, must have passed between Sir Rupert and his secretary, for the latter turned and pulled a chair close to Bobby's side, sitting with his back half-turned to the group at the other end of the long room.

"Well?" Bobby echoed the word with exasperating slowness.

"You were telling me what took place between yourself and Mr. Reeves." Rupert Preston lifted one of the decanters and poured a liberal allowance of whisky into a glass.

"Very little took place." A wide, boyish grin came on the newspaperman's lips. "Alan Reeves instructed me to go down into the street at ten-thirty. There I should find a private car, driven by a chauffeur in Sir Rupert Haffervale's livery. I was to enter that car—and not ask questions."

"Yet you are asking them?" Preston shrugged his narrow shoulders.

"I took the prohibition to apply to the chauffeur."

For some moments there was silence. Once Preston half-turned and glanced up the room, but Bobby sat silent, and almost motionless. His keen brain was probing possibilities. He knew he was being used as a pawn in some secret game. But, what was that game? The experience was original and not altogether to his liking.

"Newspapermen are sent out by their employers on all kinds of assignments." Preston spoke slowly. "To report—or discover."

Bobby lifted a cigarette from the open box on the table and lit it.

"I am not to write a line on what I see, hear—or discover."

"Is that unusual?"

"For me." There was no conceit in the journalist's tones. "I believe any Australian newspaper is anxious to publish anything I write."

Again a long silence. Suddenly Gerald Preston raised his glass to his lips and gulped the contents at a draught.

"Sir Rupert encourages that?" Bobby drawled the words, lazily.

"What?"

"His secretary drinking raw whisky by the half-glass." The newspaper man tensed, "Come, Gerald, what's the story."

"You talk like a policeman." A slight frown puckered the light brows.

"Seems like I'm doing policeman's duty." Bobby lowered his voice, speaking rapidly. "Listen! I get in the car, quite a luxurious affair, and it drives away. We go through Bondi and out into the open country. A couple of miles and the road curves in towards Barrabarra Bay. I'm deposited, gently, on the doorstep of one of the oldest houses in the State—a house dating back to the first days of the Colony of New South Wales."

"One of Sir Rupert Haffervale's residences." Preston smiled.

"I beg your pardon?"

"You're picking points." The secretary spoke angrily. "Nominally the house belongs to Sir Rupert. Of course if you want to be absolutely exact—"

"The House belongs to Sir Rupert's niece, Miss Myrtle Haffervale. I am only guessing but I believe that Miss Haffervale comes of age today."

Gerald Preston nodded, shortly. The frown on his face had deepened.

"And I am asked to witness the handing over of the young lady's fortune." Bobby's tone was bland.

"Not exactly." The secretary laughed, irritatedly. "You are correct in assuming that Miss Haffervale comes of age today, and gains control of the income of her fortune. But the principal—"

"Remains under the control of her trustees until—"

"Until she marries or attains the age of thirty." Preston supplied the information reluctantly. "You understand, Bobby, this is not for publication. Sir Haffervale will give the Mirror what it is to publish."

"While the Mirror's star man sits and drinks his—or Miss Haffervale's—whisky—The ethics of journalism are fully served!"

"Sir Rupert controls the Mirror," The secretary answered quickly.

"Sir Rupert controls—but Miss Haffervale holds!" The newspaper-man laughed gently. "If the Registrar General is correctly informed the late Matthew Haffervale owned three shares in the newspaper to Sir Rupert's one."

"Sir Rupert is managing director of the Company."

"By the grace of Matthew Haffervale—and his will." Bobby paused. "So you, see nothing strange in the Mirror's star reporter being called in from his just and due rest to attend the handling over to Miss Haffervale of the income from her fortune—while instructed not to write a line on the subject for publication?

"Then let me continue my theories." The journalist was enjoying himself. "On arrival at Madlands—by the way the name of the house quite fits my story—I was welcomed by Sir Rupert and his niece. I was escorted to the grand old dining-room and given a seat opposite the long windows opening on to the balcony. My chair was placed so that, while I commanded the windows and balcony, I had one of the doors close to my hand and the other wall well within sight. I was instructed not to let anyone in at the door, and to raise an alarm if I saw anyone, or anything suspicious on the balcony. And you wonder when I say I have fallen to a John's job."

"Sir Rupert might not have cared to call the police."

"So he uses a man to whom the Mirror pays two thousand a year, when he could have obtained the eyes of a second-year cadet! Rather expensive, isn't that?"

"Sir Rupert may have reasons."

"To explain them, let me continue." Bobby spoke imperturbably. "I should have said Sir Rupert, himself, brought me to this seat before he left me; he placed in my hands, this:"

With a quick motion Bobby produced a small but serviceable automatic, and dropped it on the table, yet keeping his hand in close proximity to it.

"Just the handing over of a wealthy young lady's income!" the journalist jeered. "It can't be otherwise or—" he glanced significantly at the group at the end of the long table.

"You know them?"

Preston shifted his chair so that he could watch up the room towards his employer.

"Certainly. Sir Rupert is seated at the head of the table. On his right is Miss Myrtle Haffervale. Next to her is an empty seat—occupied by you, until you took pity on my loneliness and came to interest and instruct me. Next to that chair sits Adam Ibbotson, controlling, I believe, not only newspaper but tobacco interests. On Sir Rupert's left is Mark Parsons, senior partner in Parsons, Parsons, Myers and Parsons, solicitors to Sir Rupert Haffervale, the late Matthew Haffervale, Miss Myrtle Haffervale, and the Daily Mirror Newspaper Publishing Company, Limited. Next to him is Fred Frazer, Mr. Parsons' managing clerk—really he knows more about the family and the newspaper than his chief, but of course has not the standing to guide so important a gathering of notabilities. Next to Mr. Frazer is Godfrey Mackenzie, chain store controller, and nearest us is Lord Carriday. I believe his holdings form quite a kingdom in the north lands of Australia. What they are in South America no one but himself and his personal accountant has yet fathomed."

"You seem to have it all, pal."

Again Gerald flashed a quick glance up the table—as if asking for instruction or aid. "What of it? It seems you are making a mountain out of a molehill."

"Nothing! Just nothing, Gerald, dear!" Bobby rose to his feet, and stretched himself. "I see our friends have finished. So my newest and most novel assignment is drawing to a close. Never again will I accuse the new South Wales Police Department of incompetence, if much of their duty approximates this they must sleep serene lives. A word with Sir Rupert and—"

"What?" Preston jumped from his chair, involuntarily following the journalist's lead. He glanced quickly towards the group at the end of the long table.

Sir Rupert had risen to his feet and, standing with his knuckles resting on the table-top, was addressing the girl, half-humorously, half-formally. As he concluded his little speech with a bow, the girl, smilingly, pushed back her chair and made to rise.

A sudden shout from the newspaperman drew all eyes to him. With a sweep of his arm he thrust Preston from his path, throwing him onto the small table, which collapsed under the sudden burden. In a couple of bounds he was at the girl's side, kneeling beside her chair and holding her down with an iron grip.

"Look out, Sir Rupert, jump!"

The sudden cry brought the other men to their feet.

For the space in which a man could count five, Sir Rupert stood at the head of the table, a strange look of wonder on his face. Slowly he leaned forward, bowing until his forehead rested on the polished surface of the table. A shudder shook his frame and he collapsed, a mass of quivering flesh and clothes.

"Hands up, everyone."

Bobby had caught up the girl and backed into the corner beside the windows. "Hands up, I say. The man who moves, I'll shoot."