Читать книгу Run! - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 6

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It took James one solid hour to feel and grope his way as far as Staling. He got there in the end more by luck than good management, having first crawled down the drive into what proved to be a widish lane, and then continued along the lane at a snail’s pace until it brought him out upon the road. The road ultimately brought him to Staling, and just as he came to the first house of the village, he ran out of the worst of the fog.

He knew where he was now, and the road was drivable. The local pub would certainly not have any accommodation for a Rolls. He decided to go on, and in half an hour was clear of the fog and making up for lost time on the long straight stretch over Wilder’s Heath.

His mind was now free to consider the whole adventure. The Aspidistra girl was certainly a most unblushing liar. Only impudence of the first water would have produced a name like that. It was, of course, arguable that it could hardly have been intended to deceive, but this only added to his just annoyance, to be offered a completely unbelievable lie being a gross insult to one’s intelligence.

He wondered a good deal about the shooting. There was something very odd about it. The shot might have been a random one intended to scare an intruder off the premises, but not meant to hit. This theory would have made everything much easier. James felt obliged to reject it. The shot had passed too close to him at a moment when his torch was affording a mark. It would have been perfectly easy for the person unknown to fire wide, and he hadn’t fired wide, he had had a jolly good shot at either James or the girl. The torch had spilled a little pool of light between them. It must have been quite obvious that there were two people in the hall. James had an unpleasant conviction that the person unknown had aimed at one of them. He couldn’t possibly have wanted to kill James, who was a total stranger. Then he must have been aiming at the girl.

One fact emerged quite plainly from the confusion, and that was that the girl could make a pretty good guess at who had fired the shot. She had rushed out with “He’s not a homicidal maniac,” and how could she possibly say that if she didn’t know who he was? No, she knew—she knew jolly well.

But she wouldn’t go to the police. Why wouldn’t she?

Two reasons suggested themselves. She might be mixed up in whatever it was that he had butted into, in which case she wasn’t in a position to denounce a fellow-criminal. Or—she might be afraid—

James thought about this.

He gave her marks for courage. Most girls would have screamed if they had been shot at in the dark, and most girls would have cried in the hayloft. Girls could be extraordinarily brave, but they nearly always cried afterwards. This girl hadn’t—at least not as far as he knew. And she had cut her foot pretty badly too. He found himself admiring the presence of mind with which she had grabbed him and said “Run!”

He only just stopped himself on the edge of reflecting that she had a very pretty voice. On the other hand, she was the most infernal little liar. All that bunk about her Aunt Clementa and a diamond necklace—whoever heard of a name like Clementa? The girl just couldn’t speak the truth. She couldn’t even produce a reasonable, plausible lie. If the aunt had had any of the names which aunts do have, he might—no, not he, but some more gullible man might have believed her. James was not gullible. His fourteen cousins had taught him a lot about the general untruthfulness of girls. His Cousin Daphne, with whom he had once been in love, had considerably undermined his faith in women by getting engaged to three separate men during three successive dances at her coming-out ball. James was one of the three, and though he now regarded Daphne as a Lucky Escape, the incident had added considerably to his native caution. His native caution told him not to believe a single word the girl had said. It added with no uncertain voice that he had better put the whole thing out of his mind and keep it out.

He had a good quick run back to town, with only one more belt of fog, and that not very thick. He bought a paper in the Fullham Road whilst he was held up in a traffic block. He thought the names of the Scottish Rugger team might be out. He hoped they were going to play Lind. Just as he was going to look and see, the block broke and a woman in a baby Austin behind him hooted in the most annoying manner. After that there wouldn’t be any chance of opening the paper until he got back to his rooms. He put away the Rolls, and was glad to have a walk to stretch his legs.

He was, for the moment, occupying his cousin Gertrude Lushington’s studio in Simpson’s Mews, Gertrude being on a walking tour somewhere in Eastern Europe. She might turn up at any time, preferably in the middle of the night, or she might stay away for a year, strolling in in a casual manner just when the family had decided that she had definitely got herself murdered this time and they had better see about going into mourning. She refused to take any rent, but James determined to contest this point when she returned. Meanwhile he cooked his own breakfast and supper on her gas stove, and paid the rates when the demands came in. As Gertrude was considerably in arrears, he did not feel under too much of an obligation.

There were two rooms, and a place which had been a loose-box and now contained a gas stove, a sink, and a bath. The bath was served by a geyser. James turned it on, and went up a steep stair into the studio, where he switched on an overhead light and took a look at the football news. The names weren’t out yet.

The geyser took twenty minutes to produce a decent bath. He stood there skimming through the paper. Mussolini had made a speech. Monsieur Laval had made a speech. Mr. Eden had made a speech. James thanked heaven that he did not have to make speeches. He supposed some people liked doing it. There was no accounting for tastes.

He turned to another column and cocked an eyebrow at a highly decorative picture of Ambrose Sylvester. The famous novelist’s famous profile was displayed. James, who had stuck in the middle of Links in the Chain, wondered why some novelists were famous and some were not. Everyone raved about Ambrose Sylvester—that is to say, all the women did. Daphne, Kitty, Chloe, Linda, and Susan all declared that his profile was simply divine. He supposed they also read his books. He didn’t seem to have written very much—three novels—nothing for the last five years or so. The legend under the photograph said, “When are we to have another link in the Chain?”

He left Ambrose Sylvester, and read without interest the odds that were being offered at Hollywood on a popular film-star’s matrimonial chances. He was just going to turn over the page, when his eye was caught by a small paragraph tucked away in the right-hand corner. It was headed Windfall for our Dumb Friends. But that wasn’t what had caught his eye, it was the name immediately below it—Lady Clementa Tolhache.

James stared at it as he might have stared at a fiery disc, or a blue dragon, or a luminous snake, or any other product of a disordered imagination. Not much more than an hour ago he had decided that there was no such name as Clementa. He did not find it at all easy to reverse this decision. He preferred to disbelieve the evidence of his senses. After all, if you see fiery spots floating in the air, you don’t believe they are really there—not unless you are very far gone.

He looked away from the paragraph and gazed fixedly at one of Gertrude’s pictures which hung on the farther wall. It depicted a greyish female with an enormous body and a very small head in the act of eating a bright green apple with red spots on it. There was a huge lobster in the foreground, and a thing like a bright blue tadpole in the right-hand top corner. This work was called Eve, and James thought it was the most frightful thing he had ever seen. The fact that he now remained looking at it for some moments showed how much he had been thrown off his balance. As a matter of fact, he was not seeing it at all, he was seeing that ridiculous name, and when after blinking rapidly several times he looked back at the paragraph he saw it still—Clementa—Lady Clementa Tolhache. There it was, in print. He read it three times, and then finished the paragraph: “Lady Clementa Tolhache has made a generous bequest to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. There are a number of other legacies, but the bulk of her estate passes to her great-nephew Mr. John Jernyngham West, at present with his regiment in India.”

James felt exasperated to the last degree. Without the slightest warning life had become completely mad. He had had an unbelievable adventure with an impossibly named girl who pitched him an incredible tale about her Aunt Clementa, and here was a paragraph featuring Aunt Clementa’s will. And as if that wasn’t enough, it also featured Jack West—old J.J. It couldn’t be anyone else. There weren’t two John Jernyngham Wests in the Army, he’d take his oath on that. No, it was J.J. who had fagged for him at Wellington, and he was Lady Clementa Tolhache’s great-nephew and heir. The paragraph said so. He was surprised at its moderation in the matter of the diamond necklace. It might have insisted on his believing in that too.

He went down to his bath obstinately determined to go on regarding the necklace as a myth.