Читать книгу The Memory Man - Coutts Brisbane - Страница 6

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"THIS is the lurking-place of England's greatest mathematician," said Miss Ellice Davison, with a mock dramatic flourish of slim fingers towards the windows of the third and topmost floor of a rather frowsy-looking building in Soho Square. "Since you're going to meet my only near relative, Billy, I must prepare you for a shock. Uncle Perry is a most amazing man with figures. He cleared up all the honours to be had at Cambridge, and then, somehow or other, secured a job at the Admiralty, and has remained its darling ever since."

"This sounds very mysterious," murmured Billy Harwood as the pair began to climb the stone stairs that led to Uncle Perry's eyrie. "But what exactly does he do? Add up accounts or audit 'em?"

"Billy, you must have something done to stimulate your imagination. Do you suppose that even our blessed Government would pay Nunky two thousand a year for clerks' work? No! I really know very little about it, but if the Admiralty want to discover how far a gun will shoot, or how much a battleship will weigh, or—or any little trifle that runs into millions, like that, they just send a man from the office round to Uncle Perry with the particulars."

"And he gets busy with a blackboard?" suggested Billy.

"No; this is where the most amazing part comes in, for he does it all in his head. Sometimes he takes a little walk, sometimes he just lies on the sofa and plays with the cat, but it works out in the same way in the end. He jots down the answer, and the messenger takes it away. Another odd thing is that he never gets mixed up, and never forgets anything that he has once seen or heard. Once he took me to see the house where he and dad were born. He hadn't been there for more than thirty years, but he described all sorts of little details beforehand, and they were all absolutely correct."

"Then he must be a sort of walking reference library or catalogue?" said Billy.

"He is. Dick Weston told me that when they want figures or details of some ship or gun, or anything he has ever had to do with, at the Admiralty, and are in a hurry, they simply phone up Uncle Perry. It's much quicker than digging through files. He reels off the particulars like an automaton."

"Very wonderful," agreed Billy; then, with a suggestion of jealousy in his voice, "Who's Dick Weston?"

"Oh, he's a dear, too, an old friend of Nunky's. He has some sort of billet in the F.O. or Ordnance. You'll like him. Coo-ee! Uncle Perry ahoy! Turn out!"

They had reached the topmost landing and halted before a door on which was pinned a card inscribed, "No Milk To-day." It opened as the girl knocked and yodelled. A thin man of middle age and medium height, with a large dome-like head and bald pate beamed benevolently upon her from a pair of mild brown eyes that seemed to be perpetually astonished.

"Uncle Perry Davison in person," announced Ellice. "Beloved Nunky, I've brought my very dearest friend to see you, Billy Harwood, who is also on the staff of the Evening Comet."

"Come in, my infants." Perry Davison's voice was unexpectedly deep. He boomed the words. "My place is not—er—palatial, Harwood. But perhaps my little girl has prepared you?

"No, Uncle Perry, I wanted him to realize it all at a glance. Billy, Uncle's dark secret is about to be exposed. He is not a tidy man. Behold the lion's den!"

With a chuckle of enjoyment at Billy's bewildered amazement, Ellice shoved him into Perry Davison's study. It was a fair-sized room, containing a desk set before a window, an ancient sofa set against the opposite wall, a bookcase containing a couple of rows of stately calf-bound volumes bearing the arms of Cambridge University, and wearing the desolate air of books that have never been opened, and about a thousand copies of paper-covered weeklies: Boys' Journal, The Adventurer, The Conqueror, Nick's Weekly, and such sugary-sweet productions as jenny's Own, Home and Fireside, and Lady Moira's Budget, which presumably catered for girls of all ages.

They filled the shelves, they overflowed upon the floor. There were stacks of them on the desk and beside it, around the sofa, on two of the three chairs. The things were everywhere, their gay colours killing the pattern of the carpet. Billy gazed, his mouth a little open. Even in the reporters' room of the Comet he had never seen anything approaching this litter of near-literature.

"Uncle Perry is not a highbrow reader," explained Ellice. "I believe he has read every story that ever was written for small boys or pin-headed girls in the last dozen years. Haven't you, Uncle?"

"Fourteen years, ten weeks, my dear," murmured Perry. "But I like them. They are so splendidly direct, and things happen with such amazing frequency in them. Why, Nick Nixon, the boy detective, can't leave his lodgings without crossing the path of his deadly enemy, Dr. Shenton, disguised as a street sweeper. And then we have action at once. I find them most absorbing."

Billy Harwood stared at him. For a moment he thought of the quotation about great wits being near akin to madness, but the brown eyes were steady and their utter innocence belied any suggestion that the smile curving the firm lips might be ironic. Besides, he was Ellice's uncle, and Ellice and Billy, though they chaffed each other continually, were already a great deal more than friends. It seemed, too, that the innocent eyes had already fathomed their open secret, for Perry's manner was almost paternal as he motioned them to the sofa.

"It's a bit late for tea, and I haven't any milk anyhow," he said. "I had to go out very early, and I've just got back. So you'd better come and have a little bite of dinner with me. Will—will it be a—er—a sort of celebration of something, my dears?" he asked, turning to Ellice.

"Yes, sir!" Billy plunged boldly. "Ellice and I love each other, and we hope you'll approve of our engagement."

"My dears, of course I do. I know Ellice well enough to be sure that she has chosen wisely. You're both very young, of course, but youth often has a wisdom denied to the purblind eyes of world-worn elders," murmured Perry dreamily. "You have my consent and my very best wishes."

"Where did you read that, Nunky?" Ellice came in like a chorus.

Perry blinked, passed a finger across his forehead, and stared at the pile of Jenny's Own Weekly.

"'Her Love Denied,' 9th February, 1938," he murmured, turned over the pile, and miraculously extracting the copy in question, flipped it open and ran a finger-nail along a passage. "There you are! It seemed to—er—fit the circumstances. I'm afraid I shouldn't have known what to say otherwise," he concluded apologetically.

"It fitted very nicely, Nunky!" said Ellice warmly. "There! We'll say no more about it! Where did you go to-day?"

"Oh, I hardly remember. Down by the sea. Fresh air is good sometimes, isn't it? And where are you two off to?"

"Which, being interpreted, means you aren't going to tell us," Ellice said. "Though I know you remember how many rocks stuck up out of the sand and there were twenty-two gulls sitting on them. We'll be more open. Billy has been told off to interview the great Hi Lo, the Chinese illusionist man at the Megatherium, and I'm going along to help supply atmosphere. Do you know him, Nunky?"

"Hi Lo?" repeated Perry. "The name seems a contradiction in terms. I have seen it in bills, though. A conjurer, isn't he?"

"Yes, a first-class one, sir, but his great stunt is his cabinet trick. He gets members of the audience to tie him up, handcuff him, or chain him. Then he's fastened in his cabinet and hoisted off the stage. A couple of minutes pass, and then the cabinet is lowered and found to be empty, while Hi Lo comes walking down the aisle carrying the handcuffs and things. It's a trick, of course, but it's wonderfully well done."

"Most interesting! I must go to see him one evening."

"Why not to-night, with us, sir? We'd have to leave you to interview him when he finishes his turn, but afterwards we might have a bite of supper. What about it?"

"I can't to-night. I have an engagement. But some other evening I should like to see him. Now, what about this bit of dinner? If you don't mind, we'll go to the Café des Deux Mondes. It's close by, and the cooking's fairly good. They know me there."

"All hands clear for action, then," cried Ellice gaily. "Let's get going!"