Читать книгу The Strange Vanguard - Arnold Bennett - Страница 8

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Mr. Sutherland walked about the deck; he made a complete circuit of the dark, deserted deck-houses, and met nobody save one deck-hand, who ignored him, and whom, from pride, he ignored, though he was hungering for information on a number of important points. He could not see the mast-head navigating lights because of the intervening upper-deck. But forward, he saw the green and the red glare of the starboard and port navigating lights, and they seemed to throw a baneful illumination upon the vast, vibrating, silent organism of the moving yacht. Never had Mr. Sutherland been caged in an environment so uncanny and oppressive.

At last he was once more in front of the cabin tenanted by his self-transporting baggage. He carefully inspected it and found therein every device of comfort and luxury; beyond it was a bathroom of equal merit. By way of experiment he turned on a tap marked ‘Hot,’ and the water which cascaded therefrom was more than scalding enough to satisfy the most exacting apostle of efficiency. He stood still, meditative, and falsely pretended to himself that he was not hurt by Miss Perkins’s inconsiderate and off-hand departure. He thought, besides, of all that had so inexplicably happened to him; he gazed at his luggage. He then said, aloud:

“Shall I take this business lying down?”

Now Mr. Sutherland, like many persons commonly supposed to be without a sense of humour, was capable on occasion of being most queerly and disturbingly humorous. He answered his own question:

“Yes, I shall take it lying down. I’ll go to bed.”

And he rang the bell by the bedside. A knock quickly followed, and the chief steward entered.

It seemed odd to Mr. Sutherland that the bell of an ordinary guest-cabin in so important a yacht should be answered by so stately and majestic an individual as the chief steward. Mr. Sutherland, who was still successfully maintaining his nerve, thus coldly addressed the chief steward:

“Apparently my things have not been laid out.”

“Sorry, sir.”

The chief steward proceeded, with a dignity comparable to Mr. Sutherland’s own, to unfasten the suitcase and lay out all necessary matters for the night: while the guest began to undress.

“Can I have something to drink?” asked Mr. Sutherland.

“Certainly, sir.”

“What can I have?”

“Anything you like, sir.”

“Well, I will have a cup of weak camomile-tea; very weak, not more than one flower to the cup—if it’s a breakfast cup.”

Mr. Sutherland often took camomile before retiring. It was in France that he had learnt the digestive and sedative qualities of properly infused camomile. People, especially relatives, had tried to laugh him out of camomile; but they had failed. He was not a man to be frightened by the absurd associations of the word ‘camomile.’

The chief steward, having departed, came back.

“Very sorry, sir. We have no camomile on board.”

“No consequence. No consequence,” said Mr. Sutherland blandly.

“Can I get you anything else, sir?”

Mr. Sutherland reflected.

“A tot of rum?” he suggested. Not that he had the least intention of drinking the rum, but the phrase ‘tot of rum’ struck him as excellently marine and in keeping with the aquatic situation.

“Certainly, sir.”

The chief steward disappeared and reappeared.

“Very sorry indeed, sir. We have no rum on board.”

“No consequence. No consequence,” said Mr. Sutherland blandly. “I regret to have troubled you. Might take that eiderdown off the bed. I think I shan’t need it.”

The chief steward did as he was told, and went away humbled.

It was a proud moment for Mr. Sutherland; but a moment does not last very long. Mr. Sutherland reflected with grief that he had lost his berth in the train de luxe, the costly price of which was not under any circumstances returnable, and that all his appointments in London would be broken. And when, in his white pyjamas, he had sunk down on the soft bed and turned out the lights and lay listening to the faint straining sound of elaborate woodwork due to the quivering of the yacht as her twin propellers urged her through the placid moonlit waters of the Mediterranean—then, Mr. Sutherland’s mood changed quickly to one of utter dismay and apprehension. True, by the superb calm of his demeanour, and by his magnificent inactivity, he would compel his enemies and captors sooner or later to explain themselves and thus to play the first revealing move in the game about to begin. True, his brilliant tactics must have astonished and perhaps momentarily baffled them. But his predicament was none the less monstrous, incredible, unthinkable. He could discover absolutely no clue to the absurd, nightmarish enigma of it. The affair was too big to be a practical joke. On the other hand, if the affair was serious, as it positively must be, to what end had it been undertaken? His common sense forbade him to believe that he had fallen into the hands of bandits who would hold him to ransom. Such adventures did not happen to big financiers—save of course in the film studios of California. Further, his knowledge of character forbade him to believe that airy Count Veruda had wits enough to conceive and execute the enterprise of which he, Septimius, was the victim. Hence, Count Veruda could only be the agent of mysterious and invisible brains as gigantically bold as they were recklessly unscrupulous. Mr. Sutherland had sufficient wisdom to be afraid. He was afraid of the mere spirited grandeur of the plot in which he found himself entangled. He had not spent twenty-five years in the City without hearing rumours, and indeed circumstantial stories, of strange, nefarious deeds attempted and accomplished for the purposes of what was called ‘big business.’ But he had never heard of anything at all comparable to the present prodigious matter. And he could think of none of his own financial schemes which might be prejudiced by the enforced absence of their author from London. As a fact, all his current schemes were completed, and the last one had been definitely completed that very morning in Naples.

Then there was the question of Miss Harriet Perkins. Was she among the conspirators? She unquestionably was. The people in authority knew that she was on board, and they knew her name; and she had answered quite calmly and obediently and shamelessly to her name. Without doubt she had been employed to keep him in the yacht while the rest of the company departed. With that aim she had inveigled him into the engine-room and by her wily arts had held him there. He had been her dupe. Men had been hoodwinked by their passions before, and he had been hoodwinked. That Harriet Perkins was a vampire was as clear as daylight to Mr. Sutherland. And yet Mr. Sutherland would not credit it. He would not because he simply could not. Harriet a vampire? Ridiculous! Harriet was the finest feminine creature he had ever seen, or would see, and she had not duped him. Still, she was plainly a vampire, an evil woman, and he was her dupe. So his thoughts ran round and monotonously round in his head, and never stopped and, therefore, never reached any conclusion.

The oddest thing of all was that he did not care whether Harriet was a vampire and a villainess or not. She might be anything she chose, provided she was the unique Harriet. It was unnecessary for her to make excuses for herself. He could make all the excuses for her. She could not sin in his eyes. Such was his principal mind. But in another of his minds he perceived dispassionately what was going on in his principal mind, and he was afraid, he was terrified, by the wonders therein. His happiness in the thought of Harriet Perkins frightened him as much as his astounding physical predicament. Awe filled him, and he trembled. Sleep was impossible ... Then he woke up with a start, for sleep is never impossible. His ears had heard a scream followed by an outburst of apparently hysterical laughter or sobs. Harriet’s scream! Harriet’s laughter or sobs—perhaps the laughter or sobs of a girl overwrought by the presence of acute danger! Mr. Sutherland jumped up, switched on the light, sprang to his scarlet dressing-gown (for nothing would have induced him to appear on deck in pyjamas), and opened the cabin-door.