Читать книгу The Celestial City - Baroness Orczy - Страница 5

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The evening meeting took place in a private room at the “Bishop’s Apron” in Milsom Street. When Bill arrived, his friends were already there. “Well, how’s the kid?” one of them asked as soon as Bill had thrown down his hat and joined them at the table. He was tall, with sandy hair sprinkled with grey, clean-shaved crimson face, a snub nose, and very round pale blue eyes.

“Pretty fair,” Bill replied curtly.

“She seemed kind of quiet this morning,” another man remarked.

Before Bill spoke again, he poured himself out a mugful of ale from the huge jug that stood in the centre of the table, then having carefully wiped his mouth with the back of his hand he said slowly:

“Well, what can you expect? We did do the dirty on her, didn’t we?”

“It couldn’t be helped,” the sandy-haired giant retorted.

“Any one of us,” someone added, “would have got fourteen years. What’s eighteen months to a kid her age?”

“And you yourself, Bill——”

Bill brought down the palm of his hand with a bang upon the table.

“I didn’t say one way or the other, did I? Laddie said the kid seemed quiet. She was not likely to fall on our necks all at once, was she? after eighteen months she’s had—and Jim gone without her seeing him again. And one thing and another. Now, was she?” he went on, and cast a kind of defiant glance all round at the familiar faces before him.

“I never thought she cared much about Jim,” one man remarked.

“That’s not the point,” Bill retorted—“just part and parcel of the same thing. She’ll get over it presently, of course, but just now she feels a bit hipped, and that’s all about it.”

There was silence for a moment or two after that, and then one man, who seemed different from the rest of the party by reason of his tously brown hair and beard, his narrow almond-shaped eyes and parchment-coloured skin that gave him a distinctly foreign look, leaned forward, his arms on the table, and addressed the company in general.

“What exactly happened about the girl?” he asked. “I never knew really.”

At first nobody seemed inclined to embark on the story. “You tell him, Bill,” someone suggested.

“Not me,” Bill rejoined. “I want bygones to be bygones. I’d much rather not talk about it any more.”

But the others insisted.

“It’s only fair Paul should know,” one of them said.

“It’d best come from you,” added another.

And the one they called Paul clinched the matter with a persuasive:

“Come on, Bill.”

“It was over that affair at Deansthorpe close by here,” the sandy-haired man remarked, by way of setting the ball rolling.

“Well!” Bill broke in with a loud oath, “if Kilts is going to tell the story——”

“No, no, Bill; you go on!” was the universal comment in response.

“Well, then,” Bill resumed after a slight pause, “it was over that business at Deansthorpe, as Kilts says. We thought we were safe, because the people were all abroad, and we didn’t know that that swine of a caretaker was going to turn traitor. It wasn’t him either; it was his wife. He told her and she gave us away to the police. Anyway, we had come prepared for anything, you understand? The kid was with us, for she can climb like a cat and there’s no one like her for getting through a bit of an opening that you’d think couldn’t accommodate a mouse. Jim was along too; they’d called themselves engaged since the March previous and we had posted him down in the street below to give us warning in case of trouble coming. He was to give one whistle for ‘look out!’ two for ‘get away quick!’ and three for ‘run for your lives!’”

Like a true raconteur, Bill paused in his story in order to lubricate his throat. No one spoke, no one interrupted; they all sat round pulling away at their pipes or their cigars; for there was a box of choice Havanas upon the rough deal table and on a battered tin tray there was a bottle of green Chartreuse, evidently of the genuine, very expensive kind.

“We were up on the second floor,” Bill went on after a while, “and we had got the whole of the swag out of the safe. I must tell you that we’d been at work over three hours then; we had the pearls, and the rest of the jewellery, and a thousand or two in notes, and what’s more we’d got what we came for, all the letters from the German agent over in Holland which went to prove that Simeon Goldstein was doing a grand trade in the matter of selling information to the Germans. We reckoned on touching him for at least a hundred thousand for those letters, and we did too ultimately, didn’t we, mates?”

They all solemnly nodded assent.

The one they called Paul sat listening with his almond-shaped eyes fixed upon the speaker, whose every word evidently sank into his receptive brain.

“Laddie here put us up to the job about those letters,” Bill resumed, and then added with a touch of grim humour: “It was that information that gave him the entrée into our exclusive circle. He’s been one of us ever since, and it was the least we could do, to admit him into partnership just as we admitted you, Paul, for the information you gave us in the autumn. Laddie had been valet to old Goldstein, and had found out about the letters. Then one day he had the good fortune to meet me, we became pals, and there you are! Laddie is a rich man now, ain’t you, Laddie? Well, to resume. We’d got our swag comfortably tucked away, when we heard Jim’s whistle—once, twice—three times! It meant ‘fly for your lives.’ The kid—she’s a wonderful girl, I tell yer—peeps out of the window, and sees the cops all down below; and whilst we all say, ‘What’s to be done?’ she has already got a plan ready in her head. ‘Slip some of the goods into my pockets, Dad,’ she says to me. Just then that fool Spinks—the caretaker of the place, you understand—comes running in like a scared hen. You should have seen the kid how she turned on him. ‘While Jim and me have a little conversation with the police,’ she says to him, ‘you see that Dad and the others get away by the back door. If you don’t,’ she says, ‘or if they get caught, you are a dead man to-morrow.’ And he could see that she meant it too. I guessed, of course, what she meant to do, and so did the others as I say, and we did the dirty on her—that is, we let her get copped and saved ourselves. She just climbed out of the window and let herself down by the gutter, and fell straight into the arms of half a dozen police, who already had got Jim. She screamed and she fought like a little cat, all in order to give us time to get away.”

“She is a splendid girl, and no mistake,” Paul remarked with quiet enthusiasm.

“And of course they found some swag on her,” Bill continued, “and she got eighteen months for burglary and housebreaking. She wouldn’t have got so much only it wasn’t a first conviction, see? She had spent six months in a reformatory when she was fourteen, for helping me in a little bit of business, and then another year when she was sixteen. But all the same, if any of us had been caught that time, each with an automatic in our hip pocket, it would have been fourteen years for us. Jim was collared for the army and got killed a month later, and the kid got eighteen months; but, after all, what’s that in life when you are young?”

“And we shouldn’t have had the letters,” one of the others remarked sententiously.

“Oh! aye! the letters!” Kilts rejoined with a light laugh. “They were the principal swag, and we’d got them all right.”

“We sold them to Sir Simeon Goldstein for one hundred thousand pounds, and cheap at the price. He daren’t prosecute, and declared that the swag which was found in the kid’s pockets was all that was stolen from him that night. He never said anything about the safe having been tampered with. Of course not; on the contrary, he was in a mortal funk that the police should get one of us before he had completed the transaction about the letters and paid over the money, which he had to do bit by bit, so as not to arouse his banker’s suspicions. And even now we’ve kept one letter back in case he should think of doing the dirty on us. And we’ve got the money,” Bill concluded, once more striking the table with the palm of his hand, so that glasses and mugs rattled in chorus, “ten thousand solid pounds each of us, six men, and forty thousand I’ve got put by for the kid, and jolly well she deserves it, too. But for her, where would we all be, I’d like to know?”

He took a long drink: the story had been told, and Paul still hung, quietly enthusiastic, upon his lips. The others continued to smoke in silence; each appeared buried in his own thoughts.

“What’s the girl doing now?” Paul asked after a while.

“I left her,” Bill replied, “just playing with her jewellery. I got her some pearls, you know, and diamond ear-rings from that place in Bond Street. None of you mates wanted to join me in that game; but I made a good haul all the same. I wanted the kid to have some nice things when she came out; and women love that sort of thing. She hardly looked at the draft I gave her for forty thousand quid.”

Paul gave a prolonged whistle.

“Forty thousand!” he exclaimed. “Jerusalem!”

“Price of eighteen months in quod,” Bill retorted curtly, “and keeping us out of it. Cheap, I call it.”

“And so do I,” one of the others asserted emphatically.

Apparently it was the general opinion. But for the kid they could not have got that pretty little bit of blackmail going with Sir Simeon Goldstein. Most of them would be doing their fourteen years’ penal servitude instead. Blackmailers, forgers, thieves—potential murderers probably—but they weren’t going to do the dirty on the kid over the money. (Try to explain that to your own satisfaction, Messrs. Psycho-Analysts!)

The conversation now drifted away from the main subject. Only Paul remained thoughtful. He had never come across anything of the sort in all his life. But the others soon broke in on his meditations. He was a new recruit admitted into this little army of international, not altogether uneducated criminals by reason of his connection with some of those wealthy Russians who had managed to get away from their country with most of their valuables. Plans, therefore, had to be made whereby Paul’s knowledge and connections could most profitably be utilised. Thus the evening wore on.

Bill was the first to break up the party.

“I was up early this morning,” he remarked with a grin, “and want to go bye-byes.”

It was about a quarter of an hour before closing time. Arrangements were made for meeting the next day, after which Bill made his way back to his home in Pierson Street where he might still have the chance of giving the kid a good-night kiss before she went to sleep. Bill gave a sudden sigh of content. It was nice having the kid home again. He had no idea how he would miss her, when she went.

The others sat on smoking until the barman came to warn them that he was putting up the shutters:

“Closing time, gentlemen.”

They all turned out into the street and walked away together for a little distance until they felt no longer disturbed by either the lights of the “Bishop’s Apron” or by that of one of the rare street-lamps. In the gloom they came to a halt, continued an interrupted discussion for a minute or two, and were just nodding curt “good-nights” to one another, when Kilts suddenly exclaimed:

“Hello! here’s Bill back again!”

“What on earth——?” ejaculated one of the others.

No wonder the rest of the sentence died unuttered in his throat. Bill came running down the street, hatless, his arms waving, his loose hair flying about his face. He fell like a dead weight against Kilts, who had to stand firm, or he would have fallen under the impact and the pair of them would have rolled over in the mud.

“My God!” Bill cried hoarsely. “The kid!” A shower of anxious queries and a vigorous shaking from Kilts brought him out of his state of semi-consciousness.

“She’s gone!”

“Gone?” Kilts exclaimed. “Nonsense!”

“I tell you she’s gone,” Bill retorted with a rough oath. “Left me a letter to say she’d gone.”

With a hand that shook like a tree in a gale, he fumbled in his pocket and brought out a crumpled scrap of paper.

“Let’s see it,” Paul said, and took the paper out of Bill’s trembling hand.

“Not here; come to my place,” Bill murmured, suddenly sobered at sight of a passer-by who had eyed the group with an obvious air of suspicion. The advice was sound. They did not look the sort of men whom any bobby would pass unconcernedly by, and though this quarter of Yeominster is lonely enough and dark enough to suit any night-bird, there were occasional belated pedestrians who might prove in the way, as well as a point policeman not two hundred yards away. Anyway, they all decided to follow Bill’s advice and to adjourn to his place, there to hear the details of this unexpected adventure. They parted company and, each going his own way, they met again ten minutes later in the basement of the house in Pierson Street where they had so heartily welcomed the kid that very morning.

As soon as they were all assembled, Bill spread the paper in front of him on the table and with his moist palm smoothed out its creases.

“This is what she says,” he began; then he read out the contents of the letter.

“I am going away for a bit, father. I feel I couldn’t stand the life here. Not just yet. I want to get out of it all, be free to lead my own life for a while. Don’t try to find me. If you leave me quite alone I’ll come back to you some day—probably very soon, as I dare say I shall get as sick of my new life as I am of the old. But if you try to get me back before I am ready for you, then I’ll never come. So leave me alone, and like Bo-Peep’s sheep I’ll come home all right. I am,

“Yr dutiful and loving daughter.”

“There now,” Bill said when he had finished reading, “what do you think of that?”

“Has she got any money?” queried the practical Kilts.

“She’s got the draft, hasn’t she?” Bill retorted curtly.

“Draft?” put in Paul with a slight uplift of his straight dark brows.

“On a banker in Amsterdam,” Bill replied—“forty thousand pounds. I gave it to her to-day, and the pearls and the diamonds. She took away the lot.”

“You could wire to the bank in Amsterdam to stop payment of the draft until you come. She’d have to wait then.”

“Yes,” nodded one or two of the others, “you could do that.”

“I could,” Bill remarked curtly. Slowly, deliberately he smoothed and folded the fateful letter and slipped it into his breast pocket. Then only he said quietly: “But I won’t.”

“You won’t?” Paul exclaimed. “But surely you want her back?”

“I do. God knows I do. But I won’t do the dirty on her again. Not about the money. If the kid wants to have her fling with it, let her. She’ll come home one day, when she’s sick of it all. But let her have her fling. We’ve done the dirty on her once, I won’t do it again. She’ll be all right, and one day, perhaps, she’ll come home.”