Читать книгу Danger Calling - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 7

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All that can be said of the days that followed is that, having dragged out their interminable hours, they did in the end pass and join themselves with other dead days. Strong emotion at its height has movement, colour, depth; but when the tide, ebbing, leaves one high and dry amidst the wreckage it has achieved, there comes the sordid business of picking up the bits and getting things straight again.

There was an announcement in the papers. “The marriage arranged ... will not take place.” People wrote and condoled. And Poole spent all his spare time packing up wedding presents.

Hamilton Raeburn suggested that Lindsay should take a fortnight, or more if he wanted it, and go off abroad. He was fond of Lindsay and went out of his way to be kind. Lindsay found his kindness a little oppressive. He wanted work at this juncture, not time on his hands. A solitary honeymoon lent itself rather too easily to ribald jesting. On the other hand, if he went away and came back again, perhaps people would stop treating him in the hushed, unnatural manner which made him feel like smashing the furniture.

He told Hamilton Raeburn he would think it over, and sat down to finish the proofs of his second book. Raeburn thought it a distinct advance on Golden Apples, and though at this moment Lindsay didn’t care whether it was published or not, he thought that later on his interest would probably revive. Anyhow, Raeburn wanted to get it out early in March, and he had promised him the proofs.

It was on Thursday afternoon that the letter came. Poole brought it in and put it down on the table. There was a registered packet as well as the letter.

Lindsay opened the packet first. It was either a wedding present, which would have to be sent back, or—— The ‘or’ met the case. Marian Rayne had sent him her engagement ring. It rolled out of the box and lay tipped up against the edge of his paper. Marian had a fancy for jade, and he had managed to pick up a really good bit. The green translucence, with its setting of tiny diamonds, caught the light and made it lovely.

He wondered what one did with a returned engagement ring, and he wished that she had not sent it back. After a while he locked it away in his dispatch-box and opened the letter.

It was from Mr Benbow Collingwood Horatio Smith. It began formally:

“Dear Mr Trevor——”

He read it through to the “Yours sincerely” and the signature, “Benbow Smith.” Then he read it again. Mr Smith wrote, in a beautiful clear hand:

“It has occurred to me that our conversation in the train might be resumed. If you can call at my house at nine o’clock this evening, we could discuss the matter in detail. It would be better not to ring me up on the telephone, and I should be glad if you would destroy this note as soon as you have read it.”

As he finished reading the letter for the second time, he experienced an extraordinary change of mood. He was not one of those mercurial people who is up on the heights one moment and down in the depths the next, but at this moment he experienced one of the sharpest changes of mood that he could ever remember. He could not really account for it, though he supposed the memory of having been stirred to a sense of excitement and adventure during that conversation in the train played its part. However that might be, there came over him a passionate impatience of his present situation, and an equally passionate desire to escape from it.

He burnt the letter and sat down to his proofs again.

At nine o’clock precisely he rang Mr Smith’s front door bell. He waited for the door to open with conflicting feelings. It was odd that Mr Smith should have written to him. An odd letter—a formal, disjointed, mysterious letter: “Dear Mr Trevor ... burn this ... it would be better not to telephone.” He must know of the broken engagement. He had said, “If you change your mind——” and Lindsay had said, “I wish I could.”

The door opened, and a neat elderly man-servant let him in. He took hat, coat, and scarf in a methodical, silent way. Then, with a measured ritual tread, he preceded Lindsay to the first door on the right, threw it open, and stood aside to let him pass in. Lindsay did not give his name, and the servant did not ask it. It was all rather hushed and impressive. There was therefore something incongruous in the peal of laughter which greeted him. It was coarse, side-shaking laughter of a vulgar, rollicking kind:

“Ha—ha—ha—ha! Oh, Lor! Ha—ha—I’ll bust my sides! Oh, Lor, I will! Oh mussy, mussy me!” And then more peals of laughter, in the midst of which he heard Mr Smith say in his gentle cultured tones,

“Good evening, Mr Trevor.”

Lindsay looked up the long book-lined room. It was soberly, handsomely furnished. There was some mahogany panelling above the mantelpiece and between the books. The carpet was Persian, the chairs a man’s chairs, deep, capacious, and comfortably shabby. A large table with claw feet held papers and periodicals. The lighting was in the ceiling. At the far end a grey and rose-coloured parrot on a tall perch flapped his wings and continued to laugh.

Mr Smith, after shaking hands, turned and reproved him.

“Be quiet, Ananias! That is not the way to greet a guest.”

Ananias said “Ha!” very loudly, spread his wings to their full extent, and fixed the guest with a menacing eye.

“Now, Ananias,” said his master warningly.

“Awk!” said Ananias. He ended the word with a hissing escape of breath.

Mr Smith drifted over to him and scratched him behind the ear; but the parrot retreated to the opposite end of his perch, where he began to perform an elaborate toilet, spreading out his left wing and turning his back on the room.

Mr Smith walked aimlessly back again. After straying past the table, he returned to it and stood there fingering a magazine. Then,

“I am glad you have come,” he said.

He did not look at Lindsay, and his voice was quite expressionless. All at once he turned and moved to where the two largest chairs had been drawn in to the fire.

“Sit down,” he said, “and tell me why.”

Lindsay took this to be a continuation of his last remark, and answered it as such.

“Because you asked me.”

He nodded, sitting there rather upright. Without his glasses, his features had a fine Greek look, and his whole air was one of extreme distinction. He joined his fingers at the tips and gazed at a point above Lindsay’s head.

“In the train the other day,” he said, “I ventured to give you a description of yourself. If you will forgive the impertinence, I should like to add to the description a brief, a very brief, sketch of your career.”

Lindsay wondered what he was driving at.

He said, “I’m afraid it doesn’t amount to much,” and then felt that he had better have held his tongue.

At the sound of his master’s voice the parrot turned half round, but as soon as Lindsay began to speak he clapped his wings, rose on his toes, and screamed loudly and unmelodiously:

“Three jolly admirals, all of a row—

Collingwood, Nelson, and bold Benbow!”

Mr Smith got up languidly, went across, cuffed him, and returned without any change of countenance. As he sank into his chair, he resumed the conversation as if there had been no break in it.

“You will correct me if I am inaccurate—and there are one or two points which I find a little obscure—but the main outline is, I fancy, correct. You were at Harrow with my nephew Jack. You were, even then, an orphan with no near relatives. You were sixteen when the war broke out, and you served for rather over two years before the armistice, and for another two years after it. I am not quite clear as to why you resigned your commission. It was, I believe, a permanent and not a temporary one?”

“I wanted to take my degree. I had a very favourable opening offered to me by Hamilton Raeburn on condition that I did so. He was an old friend of my father’s.”

“Yes,” he said—“yes. Life in the Secret Service did not attract you?”

Lindsay was a little startled.

He said, “No”; and then added, “Not as a permanency.”

“In 1918,” said Mr Smith in his gentle voice, “you were taken prisoner. You escaped in company with Colonel Garratt. He reported on you afterwards as possessing ideal qualifications for the Secret Service.”

“That was only because I could speak the language. My guardian used to send me to spend all my holidays with some family abroad.”

“Colonel Garratt considered that you had other qualifications. He is a good judge. He asked for you specially, and you worked under him for two years after the armistice.”

“It’s a long time ago.”

“Your languages are rusty?”

He could not truthfully say that they were. He therefore said nothing. Mr Smith dropped suddenly into German.

“My reason for asking you to come here to-night is a serious one.”

“Yes, I suppose so.” Lindsay answered him in the same language.

Mr Smith continued:

“I would like to test your languages. You will find to-day’s Times on the table. Will you make a running translation of the first leading article?”

“Into German?”

“Yes—yes, I think so—German first.”

Lindsay brought the paper over and began. Mr Smith looked at the ceiling. When Lindsay had read about a third of a column, he stopped him.

“Now French, if you please.”

Lindsay repeated the same passage. It was really perfectly easy.

“Italian,” said the languid voice when he had reached the same place again.

“I could not pass as an Italian.”

He proceeded to prove this by rather a halting translation.

“Spanish?” said Mr Smith.

“The merest smattering.”

“Anything else?”

“I can understand and read Russian, and I can talk enough to get along. I couldn’t pass as a Russian in Russia.”

“But you could pass as a German in Germany?”

“Well, I have done so.”

“When your life depended upon it—yes. Could you pass as a Frenchman in France?”

“Not as an educated Frenchman. I can do a southern dialect that will pass in the north, and I think I could pass as a Breton in the south. It’s—it’s been a sort of hobby of mine.”

“Yes,” said Mr Smith—“a very useful hobby.” He relapsed into silence.

Lindsay wondered where all this was leading to. He had had some exciting times with Garratt. The thought of stepping out of his present circumstances into the byways of adventure had its lure. This on the surface. But beneath the surface he was aware of currents that ran strongly. That there was something desperately serious in question became momentarily plainer.

Ananias broke the silence. He began in a piercing yet cautious whisper:

“What shall we do with the drunken sailor,

What shall we do with the drunken sailor,

What shall we do with the drunken sailor,

So early in the morning?”

Each line was a little louder than the last.

Mr Smith looked over his shoulder and said,

“No—no, Ananias!”

Then he spoke to Lindsay.

“When I asked you if you would like to die for your country, I was serious.”

“That is not the usual way of baiting the trap, sir,” said Lindsay with a laugh.

“Danger is not always such a bad bait.”

“What do you want me to do, sir?”

“A little difficult to answer that comprehensively at this stage of the proceedings.”

“And why me? Any experience I have had is ten years old and out of date. I am a peaceful publisher. What’s wrong with the men who are up to date in the game?”

“Most of them are too well known,” said Mr Smith. “This”—he looked straight at Lindsay for a moment, and his eyes were not dreamy any more—“this is a very big thing.” He let the words fall slowly and heavily.

“What is it?” said Lindsay.

Mr Smith said, “Presently,” and looked at his own hands.

In a rapid whisper, Ananias recited:

“Put him in the long-boat until he’s sober,

Put him in the long-boat until he’s sober,

Put him in the long-boat until he’s sober——”

“No, Ananias!”

Ananias said “Awk!” and turned his back.

“Take—” said Mr Smith in a dreamy voice—“take a hypothetical case. There are suspicious circumstances—things small in themselves but cumulative. In the ordinary course of official routine A is detailed to make investigations and to report. He reports that he has not found out anything. Then he reports that he is on the brink of finding out something. Then he does not report at all.”

“Why?”

“The department asks why. It gets no answer—from A. A good many months afterwards a rumour trickles in to the effect that A’s wife, who is known to have been much attached to him, has gone out to Peru and married again out there. Her husband is said to be extremely well-to-do. His hair is black, whereas A’s hair was a lightish brown—but for a well-to-do man the price of a good hair-dye is not prohibitive.”

With his back to the room, Ananias whispered malignantly:

“Pull out the plug and wet him all over!”

“So much for A,” said Lindsay.

Mr Smith was lying back, his head against the worn crimson leather, an arm stretched full length on either arm of his chair.

“Yes,” he said—“yes. And that brings us to B—a man of a different type—not quite so clever as A, but more solid. At first he is up against a stone wall, and he is very discouraged. Later he forms the opinion that there is nothing to find but a mare’s nest—he writes and says so. And then he disappears.” He paused. “He did not go to Peru—he went into the river.”

“But why—if he had found nothing?”

“The department asked that question too. B was not married, but he had a girl. They asked her why, and she gave them a reason. B came to see her on the evening of the day that he disappeared. He had been going to take her to the pictures, but he looked in to say that he wouldn’t be able to go. She was angry and disappointed, and to pacify her he said, ‘If you only knew why I couldn’t come, you’d be as pleased as I am. Why, if I pull this off, we shall be able to marry right away. It will be the most tremendous feather in my cap’.”

“Tie him to the taffrail when she’s yard-arm under!”

shrieked Ananias with vindictive suddenness.

Mr Smith said, “Hush!”

Ananias did not hush. He rose on his toes and poured out a flood of Spanish oaths. Then, as Mr Smith made a movement to rise, he stopped in midstream and plunged again into his toilet.

“I don’t know why I keep a parrot,” said Mr Smith. “He never forgets anything he has ever learned—which is a pity. Well, that was what happened to B. C came back to the department and said he couldn’t find out anything. I don’t think he was telling the truth. The matter was then put into D’s hands.” He paused.

Lindsay said nothing.

Ananias combed his feathers.

Mr Smith said nothing.

Lindsay had the feeling that it was Mr Smith’s silence, and that it was up to him to break it.

He did break it at last, rather unexpectedly.

“The question is—do I tell you about D’s case, or do I not?”

“That is for you to say.”

“Not at all. That is quite a mistake on your part, because D’s case is irrelevant unless——” He paused again.

“Unless?”

“Oh, unless you are E,” said Mr Smith in his dreamiest voice.