Читать книгу Matorni's Vineyard - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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Mervyn Amory, some hours later, awoke from a sound sleep with that acute yet subconscious start which is the presage of undefined danger. He lay quite still for a moment, trying to collect himself. The carriage was in complete darkness, and through the half-opened window he could hear the roar of the locomotive as the heavy train rumbled and jolted through the night. Yet he knew quite well that there was some fainter noise which had disturbed him, something close at hand. He turned slightly on his pillow and switched on the shaded lamp above his head. By his watch, which hung underneath, he saw that it was half-past three. Then, as he leaned over and turned on the other switch, he suddenly realised that the door, which he had carefully bolted, stood half open. He looked at it in amazement. Before he could obey his first impulse and spring out of bed, some one who was clutching the frame work of the door swayed into the gap, and he heard a voice almost in his ear.

“Can I speak to you, please?”

He was out in a moment, holding the door wide open. In the gloom of the corridor he could see the shape and features of his visitor indistinctly, but he realised at once that it was the Italian girl who stood there, and that, for some reason, she was afraid.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Something has happened, I am sure,” she faltered, 14 “in the next compartment to yours. I heard a noise soon after we left Lyons—a groan. I have knocked at the door, but there is no answer.”

“I’ll call the attendant,” Mervyn proposed, hurrying into his dressing gown.

“I’m afraid you will find it difficult,” was the tremulous reply. “I have tried to wake him up. I cannot.”

She moved down the corridor, and Mervyn followed her. After a few steps, however, she suddenly gripped his arm. They both came to a standstill. She pointed downwards, to the narrow carpeted way. Almost at their feet there was a thin stream of something which seemed to be coming from under the door.

“It was from there I heard the cry,” she told him. “It is the compartment of the man who sat at your table at dinner time.”

They listened for a moment, whilst Mervyn tapped first gently, and then louder, on the door. There was no response, no sound inside. He tried the handle, but the bolt was evidently drawn. They hurried down to the farther end of the corridor. In the last compartment, with the door wide open, the conductor was lying at full length.

“Wake up!” Mervyn called out.

There was no reply. The man was breathing heavily, and made no response to a second summons. Mervyn stooped over him and listened for a moment.

“Drugged!” he exclaimed. “Wait here, and I will get the attendant from the next voiture.”

The girl nodded. Mervyn stepped over the swaying platform, but instead of at once completing his mission, he paused for a moment, cautiously retraced his steps, and looked down the corridor which he had left. His heart gave a little jump as he saw that the girl had already half disappeared through the doorway of his own compartment. He hesitated, then turned around and completed his errand, returning with a dazed attendant from the next voiture. The man, half asleep, was plainly terrified. He looked down at his heavily slumbering confrère, whom several hearty kicks failed to awaken, gazed with horror at the stream of blood growing longer inch by inch across the carpet, and seemed on the point of collapse.

“There is only one thing to be done,” Mervyn told him sharply. “You must stop the train. Do it at once, or I shall.”

The man, with trembling fingers, pulled the signal. The girl drew Mervyn inside one of the empty compartments.

“Please sit with me,” she begged. “I am feeling faint. This is terrible.”

“It must have been a shock for you,” he sympathised.

“I was fast asleep,” she went on. “I woke. I heard people moving about. I think that there must have been a struggle.”

“But which was your compartment?” he enquired curiously.

“The one next to his on the other side,” she confided, with a shiver.

Mervyn turned and faced her.

“But when we came back together,” he said, “every compartment was empty. He told me that he had engaged every one in his own name, except mine.”

“That was probably the truth,” she admitted. “Mine was in the next voiture, but I had my back to the engine, and it was impossible for me to sleep. I persuaded the attendant to change me. He grumbled, but I tipped him well. I wish—oh, I wish so much that I had stayed where I was!”

The train was slackening speed. She looked out of the window. Unsteadied by the rapid application of the brakes, they were rocking from side to side.

“We are stopping,” she whispered. “Will they ask us questions?”

“Naturally,” he replied, “but not many here, I should think. There is one I should very much like to ask you, however.”

She looked at him, and suddenly he wondered whether she were so much afraid as she seemed.

“What is it?” she asked.

“How you managed to open the door of my compartment?”

Her fine silky eyebrows were a little upraised.

“But it was so easy,” she answered. “I just turned the handle.”

“The door was bolted.”

She shook her head.

“I knocked first. Then I just turned the handle. The door opened at once. You may have thought that you bolted it, but you must have forgotten.”

The train had come to a standstill. There was the sound of voices on the line, the dimly seen figures of men swinging lanterns. Presently a uniformed official, followed by the attendant from the further voiture, came to the door of their compartment.

“What have Monsieur and Madame to report?” he demanded. “The attendant says that he stopped the train at your orders.”

“I heard what sounded like a scuffle in the next compartment,” the girl recounted. “I rang for the attendant but there was no answer. I got up and went to find him. He was sleeping so heavily that I could not wake him. Then I walked along the corridor, and saw blood coming from underneath the door next to mine. You can see it, if you look. Afterwards I found Monsieur. I woke him up, and he stopped the train.”

The official retreated. They heard him try the door of the compartment in which the tragedy had happened. Then he left the voiture, climbed on to the footboard outside, and peered in through the window. Presently he returned.

“There is a man in there who appears to be dead,” he announced.

“Where are we?” Mervyn enquired.

“Not far from Valence. I shall telegraph to the Chef de Sûreté at Marseilles. There is no one here who can deal with such a matter. I myself shall remain on guard.”

“What about the attendant?” Mervyn asked.

“As yet he remembers nothing. He is awake, but too ill to be questioned.”

The official disappeared, and presently the train with its freight of men and women rumbled on into the darkness. Mervyn pointed out of the corridor window to where a faint streak of white light seemed to have split the black clouds.

“It will be dawn in half an hour,” he said. “Hadn’t you better go back to your compartment and lie down?”

She shivered, and then suddenly clutched at his hands. Her fingers were icy cold, till he chafed them gently in his.

“I am afraid,” she confessed. “All the time I think of what may be next door to me.”

“I should try to forget it,” he advised. “I wish you would let me bring you a rug or something. You are shivering.”

She rose to her feet.

“I will take your advice, and go back,” she decided, “but you must come with me. You must stay until it is light. The convenances count for nothing at a time like this. It is impossible for me to be alone.”

He followed her along the corridor, and they entered 19 the compartment next to where the official remained on guard. They sat down on the edge of the bed, and he wrapped a fur rug, which was hanging behind the door, around her.

“You must not leave me,” she insisted. “You will find cigarettes upon the table there. Please light one. Light one for me, too. My fingers tremble so, I cannot.”

A magnificent dressing case with fittings of green jade stood upon the table, and he noticed the coronet upon the cigarette case as he opened it and struck a match.

“Go on talking to me, please,” she begged, as she puffed feverishly at the cigarette. “Tell me about yourself. Say anything you like, only talk. Tell me who you are, what is your name, and where you are going? I noticed you in the dining car. You were at the same table with—that man.”

“My name is Mervyn Amory,” he confided, “and I am going to Monte Carlo.”

“To gamble?”

“No, to play tennis chiefly.”

She repeated his name thoughtfully.

“It is true then, what you are telling me?” she asked. “You are Mervyn Amory, the tennis player?”

“Of course I am,” he assured her. “Why should I not tell you the truth? In the restaurant car I thought that you were Italian, but you speak English wonderfully. What is your name?”

“My name is Rosetta di Maureatti,” she told him. 20 “I speak English because, although my father was an Italian, my mother was an American. I have lived in New York, and in London. This is the first time I have ever taken a long journey alone, and it is terrible to have this thing happen.”

His lingering mistrust of her was beginning to vanish. He made a bold effort to rid himself of it altogether.

“Tell me,” he ventured, “when I went to the next voiture to find the attendant, why did you go into my compartment?”

She looked at him with wide-open eyes, in which there lurked no expression save a faint surprise.

“But did I?” she reflected. “I don’t remember. I was content to just stumble in anywhere to get away—Oh, I remember now. I hurried out again as soon as I saw your things about. I was not there when you returned. Why do you ask me that question?”

“I don’t know,” he answered, a little ashamed of himself. “I just happened to see you, and I wondered. Let us try to forget all this for a few minutes. Shall we talk about London? I used to know Savola, the Italian Ambassador.”

They discovered mutual acquaintances, and discussed them for some time. The shaft of light in the east grew gradually wider, and suddenly, with scarcely any warning, the fiery preface of the sun threw an orange-coloured film of watery light upon the landscape. The vineyards and fields began to take shape, the cypresses were no longer like dark statues 21 upon the land. They rushed onwards, towards the far-stretching environs of Marseilles. Some slight remark of hers brought them back to the subject of the tragedy near at hand.

“Tell me,” he asked, “I saw that unfortunate man turning around to look at you as though your face was familiar, as though he at least knew who you were. I suppose you did not recognise him?”

She shook her head.

“I thought he was simply being impertinent,” she said. “I am well known by sight to many Italians, but he did not seem to me to be the sort of person likely to be amongst my acquaintances. Why do you ask me this? Did he suggest that he knew me?”

“Not at all,” Mervyn assured her.

“You talked to him for some time.”

“I did my best, being at the same table. He wasn’t particularly sociable.”

“Did he seem odd to you?” she persisted. “Like a man who was nervous, or who fancied that he was in trouble?”

“He did not take me into his confidence at all,” Mervyn replied.

She looked at him curiously for a moment, and then away out of the window. They were progressing more steadily now. The sky was becoming bluer, and flowers were distinguishable in the gardens of the little villas.

“Poor man!” she reflected. “It is terrible that such things happen! It makes one wonder, too. There is 22 a great deal of unrest in our country. This poor fellow may be one who was plotting against the Government. I am sure that he was an Italian.”

“He was an Italian, all right,” Mervyn agreed. “He told me so.”

“He was perhaps one of the new faction who have become so strong,” she ruminated. “You have heard of them, I suppose. The Red Shirts, they call them. Years ago, they were all Communists and Anarchists, the riffraff of the country. Matorni had them shot down like rabbits, whenever there was a rising or riot. No one seemed to mind, because they were really terrible people. Now it is different. Men of education—a great many professional men—have begun to join the party. They say that soon there will be a great struggle, that the rule of Matorni may be questioned. You must hear of these things, Mr. Amory. What do they think of them in England?”

“There is no one in the world,” he confessed, “more ignorant of Italian internal politics than I.”

“It is tennis which takes all your time then?” she asked, with a faint note of scorn in her tone.

He smiled good-naturedly.

“You must remember,” he said, “that politics in our country have become entirely impossible. Ours is the one government to which Matorni points, when he seeks to justify himself. Nothing is done with us except by compromise, and therefore nothing is fully done, no laws are adequately made, every measure that is passed is clipped of a portion of its utility. 23 I might be more serious-minded if it were worth while; as it is, I pay half my income in taxes, and try to enjoy myself as well as I can with the rest.”

The train began to slacken speed. She drew a little closer to him.

“Again I am afraid,” she confided.