Читать книгу The Battle of Basinghall Street - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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Lord Marsom, seated the next morning in a high-backed chair at the end of the long table in his library, had the air of a man very much in his element. He had a far more suitable apartment close at hand but one of his passions in life was for space. He liked large rooms and spacious surroundings. On his left-hand side Crooks, his private secretary, was taking down at lightning speed the thirtieth letter which had been given him without a pause. On his right Frances Moore was seated with a fat notebook in front of her, studying the many pages of instruction and direction which she had received that morning with regard to the press handling of the strange disaster at Tottenham. Marsom was smoking a long cigar, and an empty half-bottle of Veuve Clicquot, the contents of which had been poured into a silver tankard, stood by his side. One of the three telephone bells tinkled. Andrew Crooks stretched out his arm and answered it.

"Lord Sandbrook has called, sir," he announced.

"Sandbrook! What the hell does he want?"

Crooks coughed dubiously.

"I understand that he merely asked if you were at home, milord."

"I will see him," Marsom decided, without further hesitation.

Crooks gave instructions and rose to his feet. His employer waved him to the door.

"You can be getting on with what I've given you," he directed. "Come back in half an hour. No, you stay where you are, Miss Moore," he added, as she also rose. "There are mornings when I don't want you out of my sight. This is one of them. I have a great many ideas...."

Sandbrook brought with him a pleasant odour of the fresh air and the perfume of violets, a bunch of which he wore in the buttonhole of his blue serge coat. As usual, he was gracious, cheerful and inscrutable.

"Felt I must come and offer you a word of sympathy," he remarked, making himself comfortable in the chair which the butler had wheeled up, refusing the cigars but accepting a cigarette. "Most extraordinary thing, that fire last night. I have been reading about it in the Times."

"Lucky for us the factory was not built," Marsom grunted. "Lunt's wonderful machine has gone into thin air, though, I'm afraid, and they tell me there isn't a scrap left of the model."

"Any theories as to how the fire started?" Sandbrook enquired.

"Not the ghost of one."

"The police—" Sandbrook began.

Marsom snapped his fingers contemptuously.

"That for the police—" he scoffed. "They can't even make up their minds how the explosions were caused."

"The papers talk about bombs dropped from an aeroplane," Sandbrook ventured.

"Don't believe a word of it," Marsom scowled. "And look here—Miss Moore! Where are you, Miss Moore?"

"I'm here, Lord Marsom," Frances said quietly, from a few yards in the background.

"Show Lord Sandbrook that ridiculous communication. He's not a director yet, but he soon will be, so we may as well take him into our confidence."

Miss Moore handed a card across to the visitor. He adjusted his eyeglass and read the inscription with the utmost seriousness. A single sentence was beautifully printed in old English characters across the glossy surface.

"What the mischief does that mean?" Sandbrook enquired.

Marsom shrugged his shoulders.

"How can I tell?" he snarled, with a wicked twist of the lips. "How can anyone tell? All that we know is that one of the mills we took over in Nottinghamshire was called the Croylton mill, and that they had a machine there working on somewhat the same lines as Lunt's. It was a very inferior affair but it made the stuff, somehow or other. As to who sent this card or what the idea is, we cannot any of us imagine."

"Shown it to the police?"

"Not yet," was the gruff reply. "We don't want too much fuss in the papers."

"So far," Sandbrook remarked, with a glance towards Miss Moore, "they seem to have been singularly reticent about the affair."

"You think so, do you?" Marsom grunted. "Well, that's a feather in Miss Moore's cap. She's our publicity agent and her instructions to the newspapers were to cut it out as far as possible. We don't want sympathy from our rivals or the public. The loss of one machine can't do much harm to the firm of Woolito, however valuable it was."

There was a quality of very real admiration in Sandbrook's expression as he looked across at the scowling, contemptuous figure in the high-backed chair.

"You must allow me to congratulate you upon your attitude, sir," he said. "If this unfortunate incident, as one might surmise from the card, is really the result of malice on the part of anyone, or any group of people—"

"Why the hell should it be?" Marsom interrupted fiercely. "We are only an ordinary trading company. We do not wage war against our competitors. We do not cut their throats with prices, either. If anyone can sell cheaper than we do, let them try."

"If your fellow directors share your spirit," Sandbrook remarked, "no business opposition is likely to do you any harm."

"I don't care whether they share it or not," Marsom continued obstinately. "I could do without the lot of them. Lunt is all smashed to pieces. Got some cock-and-bull story about having been dragged to a deserted house to watch the fire. They're taking him to a Nursing Home for a month. We don't do business on hand-to-mouth principles. We are prepared for anything that may turn up. I've already signed the contracts with half a dozen engineers for the rebuilding of the machine and we are laying the foundation stone for the larger part of the factory next week. The machine is a loss, of course, but we shall have another one in its place within two months, as near as possible like it. As for the model, that was only a plaything, anyway. Hurry and make up your mind, young man. I'll make better than a guinea pig of you, if you come on the board at once. You shall work if you have any fancy for it."

"I'll have to wait until the will is proved," Sandbrook insisted.

"We'll fix the shares."

"I'd rather come in on my own, thanks."

The telephone began to clatter. Crooks made discreet reëntrance and Sandbrook, feeling somehow the recurrence of the whirl of activity which his visit had interrupted, took swift and silent leave. In the hall he was escorted in the best Marsom manner by a small bodyguard towards the door. On the way he paused to admire a landscape of Turner's. The servants fell back respectfully. He felt a tap on his shoulder. Frances Moore was standing there, a little breathless.

"Lord Marsom wants to know whether you will dine with him to-night—just his daughter and himself?"

"Shall you be there?"

"Of course not."

"Sorry," Sandbrook replied. "Quite impossible. Thank his lordship all the same."

She lingered by his side.

"What did you really think of that extraordinary card he showed you?" she enquired.

"Some humorist at work, I should imagine."

"Perhaps," she answered doubtfully. "Lord Marsom chooses to believe so."

"Put on your hat and come for a spin with me," he invited. "You look pale."

"I am rather worried," she confided, "but of course, I couldn't leave the house, even if I wanted to. Come into this small room. There are three other Turners there."

She led the way into an annex of the hall.

"You can see the landscapes another day," she said. "I wish to speak to you."

They stood together in the shadows of the dimly lit recess. Apart from the faint expression of trouble upon her face, there was something in her eyes which puzzled him, something almost of suspicion.

"Why did you come to enquire for Lord Marsom?" she asked abruptly.

"It seemed to me a civil thing to do," he replied. "He was a friend of my father's."

"I should say not. Your father and he had disagreed. You look very like your father. You have that sort of aloof air about you sometimes. I should have thought that you would have shared his prejudices and outlook."

"Sorry if I'm dropping below form," he observed briefly. "After all, you know, my father was very much of the older generation."

She reflected for a moment.

"Well, I don't suppose it's up to me to interfere," she decided at last. "You seem to have the knack, every now and then, of making me suddenly curious."

"Change your mind and dine with me to-night," he invited, "and whatever curiosity you may have I'll do my best to satisfy."

"But you are engaged," she reminded him.

"It's an engagement which I could easily break."

"Very well, then, I accept," she replied promptly. "I don't go in for that sort of thing as a rule, but if you are really going to become a director of the Woolito Company, it might be just as well for us to be better acquainted."

"Do you mind coming to my little house in Hill Street? More intime, you know. I hate too much music and clatter if one wants to talk."

"Not before half-past eight, please. What number?"

"Eighteen, A," he told her.

She nodded and drifted away from him—a queer, but most attractive figure she seemed in her over-gorgeous surroundings. Sandbrook followed her slowly, with an occasional glance at the pictures. As he pushed back the curtains, he came face to face with a young woman of a very different type. They stared at each other for a moment in surprise. Then, with a little laugh, she dropped the skirt of her riding habit and held out her hand.

"You are Lord Sandbrook, aren't you? I believe we did meet somewhere once upon a time. I am Julia Pontifex."

"Of course we have met," he declared. "My father used to dine here often. I see you have been having some exercise."

She nodded.

"Isn't it old-fashioned of me to ride so late? I was at that terrible party of the Studleighs last night. Heaven knows what time I got home. You don't go out much, do you, Lord Sandbrook?"

"I have only been back in England a short time," he told her.

"We were all so sorry about your father," she continued. "He was a very popular person here."

"Bad luck on the old man," Sandbrook observed. "Just as he had found a new hobby in life too."

"Are you going to take his place on the board?"

"Lord Marsom has been kind enough to speak of it. We have not come to any definite arrangement yet. I must not keep you here, though. I expect you are dying for your bath."

"I am dying for a cocktail a great deal more," she replied. "Come into my sitting-room and I will give you one."

He strolled by her side across the very fine hall, which was a feature of the house. She gave an order to one of the men-servants, who hurried swiftly away. Another opened the door of a very charmingly furnished, but homelike, apartment on the sunny side of the house. She threw down the jade-handled crop she had been carrying and her bowler hat and smoothed her hair in front of the glass.

"Looking rather nice this morning, aren't you?" he remarked cheerfully, from the hearthrug.

"How do you know?" she laughed, happily conscious of the truth of his words. "Notwithstanding our little bluff, I don't think we have ever met before in our lives. I have seen you once or twice playing polo, and years ago at Lords', but I was only one of thousands."

"To show you how wrong you are," he replied, accepting a cigarette from the box she offered him, "you were pointed out to me once at Ranelagh. You were with Janet Studleigh then—one of the leaders of the Bright Young People, I was told."

"You were badly informed," she declared. "We are all as dull as we can be in London nowadays. The people who ought to be staying at home and amusing us spend their time in Abyssinia."

"Wonderful country," he assured her.

She indulged in a slight grimace.

"I find all travelling in foreign countries a bore," she confided. "I like London, Melton, Argyllshire and Paris. I like to be in touch with my own kind. Foreigners, even civilised foreigners, get on my nerves."

"Aren't you afraid of becoming a trifle insular?" he asked.

She flashed a sudden glance at him out of her really very beautiful brown eyes.

"I am afraid of nothing in the world," she told him, "except of being bored."

It was a pity, Sandbrook thought, that the cocktail was served in a priceless Venetian glass and that the shaker should have the appearance, at any rate, of being fashioned out of solid gold. Otherwise it was excellently made and the dry salted biscuits an agreeable accompaniment.

"Stay to lunch," she invited. "Father isn't going down to the City until afterwards, I know, if that's any inducement."

"I have just seen your father," he told her. "I couldn't stay anyhow, thanks. I am lunching at Sunningdale and playing a round of golf. Like you, I have to keep myself fit."

"Do you ever ride in town?" she asked.

"Never. Except for a week or two at hunting now and then, I keep off a horse when I am in England."

She refilled his glass.

"Melton was great fun this year," she reflected.

"So I heard. I missed that, of course. I was searching for a lost tribe in Mesopotamia."

"That sounds Biblical," she remarked.

"Nothing Biblical about those fellows," he assured her. "They have ugly habits with strangers, as a rule. Anyway, I have to leave them alone now and settle down at home."

"You lost your father and your mother whilst you were away this time, didn't you?" she asked, a little more gently.

He nodded.

"My mother had been ill for a very long time," he said. "My father's death was a great shock, though."

"We are both only children," she told him, leaning over and lighting a cigarette.

"How do you know that?" he asked.

"Debrett. My father rather dislikes me for not having been a boy. I think he's lucky. I have no head for business and I am far too fond of the unusual. I like, so far as I can, to live my life differently than anybody else."

"How do you succeed in doing that?" he asked.

She smiled. She had a frankness of manner when she looked him in the eyes which he rather liked, although behind it all there lurked a sort of eagerness which puzzled him, a touch perhaps of her mixed origin.

"I have known you for half an hour," she said, "but that is scarcely long enough for me to tell you all my secrets. Cultivate me and you will find them out easily. I am voluble—especially when I talk about myself—and I like people who are interested in me."

"I shall make you the study of my life," he promised her. "To show you how quick of understanding I am, I know that you are dying for your bath."

"Your first mistake," she told him. "I am dying for you to stay a little longer."

He held out his hand.

"I will take my leave," he said, "before I make any more mistakes. As a matter of fact, I shall be late for lunch as it is, and it gets dark so early."

She touched the bell.

"Come and see me again," she invited. "I am at home, as a rule, from six till eight—except opera nights—and twelve to one. If you take the trouble to let me know when you are coming, I shall be sure to have no one interesting here to distract your attention."

"A telephone message?"

"I have a number of my own," she confided. "It is not in the book. 37-70 Mayfair. There are just six people who know it. You make the seventh."

The door was thrown open, the procession outside was reformed. She indulged in a little grimace as they parted in the hall.

"Sorry about this sort of thing," she remarked, with a wave of the hand. "Dad is so Oriental and it pleases him."