Читать книгу Tenant for Death - Alfred Alexander Gordon Clark - Страница 6

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Saturday, November 14th

A little before noon a cab drew up outside a small white villa on the outskirts of Passy, and there set down a thin middle-aged man. He was observed and recognized from a first-floor window by a dishevelled maid, who with a “Tiens!” of annoyance and surprise set down her feather duster and hastened to make herself presentable before admitting him.

“Bonjour, Eléonore,” said John Fanshawe on the threshold, when the door was at length opened to him.

“Monsieur! Mais, que cette arrivée est imprévue!”

“Unexpected, but not unwelcome, I hope,” said Fanshawe in French which a long lack of practice had made somewhat uncertain.

Oh, monsieur was joking! As if he could be unwelcome at any time! And had monsieur had a good journey? And was he well? But she could see for herself that he was well—only thin. Mon Dieu! How he was thin! She had hardly known him at first.

“And mademoiselle?” asked Fanshawe, as soon as he could make any headway through the flood of words. “How is she?”

Mademoiselle was well. It was a thousand pities that she was not there to greet her father. If monsieur had but let her know of his approach, how happy she would have been. But it was like monsieur to spring a surprise so happy upon her. And now mademoiselle was out and would not be returned until that afternoon, and nothing was prepared. Monsieur would excuse the confusion in the house, but mademoiselle would of course explain. But what was she—Eléonore—doing? Monsieur was hungry, of course, after his so long journey at this terrible season of the year. Monsieur must eat. There was not much in the house, but an omelette—monsieur would have an omelette aux fines herbes, would he not? And some of the Beaujolais wine that he always took with his déjeuner? If monsieur would wait but a little quarter of an hour he should be served.

With a final flurry of words she darted away to the kitchen, and Fanshawe with a sigh of relief made his way to the salon and sat down to await his meal. His face, which had lit up with pleasure at the well-remembered sound of Eléonore’s eloquence, now resumed the expression of wary cynicism that was habitual to him. A mistake, he reflected, to arrive anywhere without warning—even at your own daughter’s house. He was old enough to have known better. This was what happened when you had been marking time for years, waiting, concentrating on the one event which would bring you back to life again. You forgot that for the real, live world outside things didn’t stand still, as they did for you. He had so often in imagination arrived at this villa to find his daughter on the threshold ready to leap into his arms, that it had not occurred to him that any arrangements were necessary to ensure her being there. A luncheon engagement—an appointment at the hairdresser’s—and there was the great reunion scene manqué, and the prodigal parent left to eat his omelette alone.

Fanshawe shrugged his lean shoulders. He was making a great fuss about nothing, he told himself. A man comes out of prison a week or so before he is expected to. He visits his daughter in France without warning. Not unnaturally, she is out when he arrives. That was all. But the other half of his intelligence was not so easily satisfied. If that was all, why had Eléonore been so plainly upset at his first appearance? And now, as she appeared with the announcement, “Monsieur est servi!” was there not a trace of pity in the eager friendliness of her manner?

Fanshawe detained her in the dining-room while he ate his lunch. He had had enough of solitude during the last few years. She gossiped with him readily enough about all manner of past acquaintance and happenings, but was reticent on the one subject that interested him at the moment. Once, in a pause in the conversation, she remarked suddenly and apropos of nothing in particular: “Without doubt, mademoiselle will have many things to tell her father.”

“Evidemment,” said Fanshawe in curt agreement, and did not pursue the matter further.

The meal over, he returned to the salon, there to smoke and drink the excellent coffee which Eléonore brought him. Tired as he was, he would have slept in his chair, if some part of his consciousness had not remained ceaselessly on the alert, listening for the sound of the front door opening. The lines in his face grew deeper as he waited, and the expression of patient disillusionment more marked.

It was not long before he heard the unmistakable sound of a key being fitted to the door. He rose and took a step towards the hall, then as he heard footsteps hurrying from the interior of the house, returned quietly to his chair. So Eléonore had been on the watch too! The sounds of a whispered colloquy on the doorstep came to his ears, and without hearing what was being said, he realized that for some reason she found it necessary to break the news of his arrival to her mistress. The delay was but a short one, but it seemed long enough to Fanshawe before the door was flung open, and with a cry of “Father!” his daughter was in his arms again.

She quickly broke away from his embrace, and held him at arm’s length so that she could see his face, murmuring broken little phrases of concern at his pallor and grey hairs. He on his side looked at her narrowly. She too had changed, he remarked. She had lost some of the girlish charm that he remembered, but in its place had gained the poise and good looks of mature womanhood. “Just the type to attract a Frenchman,” he said to himself. Just now her cheeks were flushed, and there was an expression in her eyes which caused him to raise his brows in a mute question.

She noticed it, and by way of answer drew a little further away from him. “I didn’t think you would be—be free for another week,” she murmured. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I gathered so much from Eléonore.”

“Then you didn’t get my letter?”

“Evidently not, since I am here. That is, I presume that the letter was to tell me not to come?”

She looked away, in evident distress.

“Father—this is so horribly difficult....”

“Not at all.” Fanshawe’s dry, unemotional tones were not unkindly. “I am in the way here. That isn’t very surprising, is it?”

“Father, you mustn’t say that. It sounds so——”

“I can imagine a good many circumstances,” he went on, “in which the reappearance of an ex-convict might be embarrassing to his daughter. For example, it might be rather prejudicial to her prospects of a good marriage——”

She drew a sharp breath and looked him in the eyes. He read in her face all that he needed to know.

“We understand each other,” he said gravely. “On such occasions, it is the father’s duty to disappear as quietly as may be. Only, why didn’t you let me know before?”

“I—I tried to, often, but I hadn’t the courage. I was a coward, I know, but I kept on putting it off and off until the last moment—I felt so ashamed.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he assured her. “Who is the young man? That is, I hope he is young. He is a Frenchman, I suppose?”

“Yes. His name is Paillard—Roger Paillard. He——”

“Of the automobiles Paillard? I congratulate you. And his family, of course, know nothing about me?”

She shook her head. “I am on my way to stay with them for the first time,” she said. “He is an only son, and his mother, of course——”

“She, of course, thinks the world of him. And he is un jeune homme bien élevé, très comme il faut—and all the rest of it?”

He mimicked the precise accents of an elderly Frenchwoman so well that she laughed in spite of herself.

“Very good,” he went on. “I hope you will be happy, my dear. The family skeleton will now return to his cupboard and lock himself in. Where is Roger now, by the way?”

“Outside, in the car. We’ve been lunching, and I only came in to pick up my bag.”

“Then hurry, my dear, hurry. You mustn’t keep him waiting! He will be wondering what has become of you.”

He kissed her lightly, and she turned to go. At the threshold she stopped.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Father, you never said anything about—I mean, you must be terribly short of money. If I can help——”

“Money?” he echoed her gaily. “No, you needn’t worry on that score. We crooks, you know, have always a little nest egg put away somewhere.”

She winced at the ugly word, and the ironically defiant tone in which he uttered it.

“But what are you going to do?” she asked.

“Perhaps Eléonore will let me stay the night here,” he answered. “Even two nights, if I feel like it. I shall be gone before you return, in any case. Then I shall go back to London. Your aunt has kindly promised to put me up for as long as I please.”

“It will be very dull for you,” she murmured.

“I don’t expect so. And in any case, two lonely people are less dull together than apart. And now you must go. I insist. Good-bye and—good luck.”

She left him, and as she ran down the steps to the waiting car, the words “two lonely people” rang in her ears like a tolling bell.