Читать книгу Danger Calling - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 11

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Lindsay stared about him incredulously. The hall was enormous; it did not seem as if a single house could contain it. And then he remembered that this was not a single house. Innumerable paragraphs had informed the public five years ago of Restow’s sensational purchase of a whole block of houses.

Lindsay searched his mind for details. Here and there one bobbed up to the surface. A fabulous sum of money had been spent. Restow had imported Italian workmen, had made a camp for them at Rillbourne, and run them up and down in a fleet of motor buses. Lindsay remembered the raging row that had broken out in the Labour press, and Restow’s extraordinary gesture in reply—for every pound paid to the Italians he would spend another in laying out a public park in Ledlington and endowing almshouses there.

Fragmentary echoes of the conflict beat against Lindsay’s mind as he looked about him. Lines of marble pillars rose from a marble floor to meet a golden roof. From the capitals gilded heads of dragons stared down with blazing electric eyes. Some of the eyes were red, and some were violet, and orange. All the marble was green—deep, smooth, polished green—floor, pillars and walls. High up on the wall was a frieze of rolling golden dragons intermixed with monstrous peacocks. The peacocks had golden feet and golden crests, and spreading tails in which every eye was a brilliant point of light. All the light in the hall came from these flaring tails and from the dragons’ eyes.

The hall seemed to grow larger as he looked at it. A wide double staircase of the same green marble rose from the far end. It had a massive gilded balustrade and newel posts wrought into golden nymphs. Lindsay found himself momentarily expecting the arrival of the corps-de-ballet. If this was not the Arabian Nights, it was the Russian Ballet. He felt that at any moment Karsavina might float down the stairs whilst a hundred damsels or so posed between the pillars. His imagination boggled at peopling this hall with ordinary human beings.

One of the footmen had passed him in the direction of the stair. Lindsay was just about to follow, when the door from the vestibule was thrown open. The footman stopped, turned, came back. Lindsay, who had begun to move, stopped and turned, and through the open doors, large, fur-coated and vigorous, strode Algerius Restow. Lindsay was irresistibly reminded of a mammoth. The huge bulk (“Good Lord! I should think he was too fat for polo!”), the height, the bull shoulders, the hairy coat, the little shrewd pig eyes with their restless questing look, the heavy jaw with its effect of jutting molars, the sheer brute power, the swinging stride with which he came into that amazing hall of his—all made up the unforgettable impression of something immense, portentous, pre-historic.

Restow advanced upon him, stripping his fur coat and flinging it to a footman. He spoke as he came, and his voice was the voice of quite a different person, soft and slightly husky.

“Well, Fothering—all right again?”

It was something to have been hailed as Fothering. Restow’s enormous hand came down on his shoulder as he said, “All right again?”

“Oh yes—quite.” Lindsay hoped his voice was high enough.

The hand on his shoulder gripped him, spun him round. The little pig eyes fixed themselves on his face.

“You look a bit dicky—how shall I say—off the colour.” He spoke with a strong accent, but it was impossible to tell what the accent was. “Tell me now—you had not any bones smashed? Oh no”—as Lindsay shook his head—“I remember—no bone-smash, no dislocation, no cut, or gash, or scratch to spoil my Fothering’s beauty.” He took his hand off Lindsay’s shoulder to make a schoolboy gesture, while his mouth stretched into a wide smile. “That would be a thing to weep over—nicht? And we have not to weep—aré! It is only a shock, a nerve—the fine susceptibilities of my Fothering jangled like sweet bells in a tune—or out of a tune.... Now—which? I have read it somewhere and I don’t know which.” He beat his brow, unwound an immensely long scarf of crimson silk from about his neck, and flung it passionately over his left shoulder. “I do not know which!” he reiterated. “Bells jangled in a tune—or out of a tune? Which is it, my Fothering—which?”

Lindsay felt perfectly certain that Froth had never read Hamlet or heard of sweet bells jangled out of tune. He hung his mouth down on one side and said,

“I don’t know.”

Restow had him by the lapel in a moment. He had a great pale hand with black hairs on it. The blunt fingers jerked at Lindsay’s coat.

“What is the good of a secretary who does not know? Hein? You have a most inferior education. It is your public schools which teach nothing, not even how to tell lies. And that is why the English politician makes his score. He looks down his English nose and he tells the truth—aha—yes!—but secretly—but as if he is ashamed of it—oh yes, and as if he is practising all those concealments which the other politicians think that he is practising. It is a great art to tell the truth in such a way that everyone must think you are telling a lie. Hein?”

He let go just as Lindsay was wondering if his lapel would bear the strain.

“Bon!” he said. “Bon! Your nerves are recovering—I see that for myself. And for your education—it is not past praying for. You shall go and pray for it with my good Drayton in my good library. It is a very good library, and it has all the works of Mr William Shakespeare, and you shall read in them until you find my jangled bells—because, though I am an ignoramus, I know they come from Shakespeare. For myself, I had no time to be educated—I had to fight day and night and every hour to keep myself from starving.” He made an expansive gesture. “I have starved in all the capitals of Europe. And that”—his voice deepened and swelled—“that, my Fothering, is a very liberal education.”

Lindsay followed a footman to his room. The marble stairs led to the first floor, on which the principal rooms were situated. He himself was shot up in a lift to the third floor, and found himself very comfortable, with a suite comprising bedroom, sitting-room and bathroom. The windows looked out at the back over what had been a courtyard. It was glazed in now to the height of the second floor with opaque glass tiles which allowed him to learn nothing of what was beneath. The house lay in a square on the four sides of this glazed-in court. Lindsay wondered how long it would take him to learn his way about it.

He thought about Restow. He had passed muster—yes, even with Restow’s hand shaking him. The man had the strength of a bull. He would be a bad enemy. But he wouldn’t be dull—life under Restow’s roof was not going to be dull.

He turned from the window with a laugh.