Читать книгу Gabriel Samara, Peacemaker - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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"I'm Brown, the hotel detective," the newcomer announced sharply. "What's wrong here?"

The pseudo Mr. Pride shrugged his shoulders resignedly.

"I'm a free-lance journalist," he declared; "got connections with half a dozen New York papers. I wanted Mr. Samara's news and I tried to bluff him into giving it to me."

"A little more than that, I fancy," Samara observed. "There wasn't much bluff about your automatic."

"Are you carrying firearms?" the detective asked.

The man who called himself Pride handed over his gun.

"I'm through," he confessed. "If I could have bluffed Mr. Samara into giving me a report of his interview in Washington yesterday it would have been worth fifty thousand dollars to me. I failed and I guess it's up to me to take the consequences."

The detective was impressed but noncommittal. He appealed to Samara.

"Is this all there is to it?" he enquired.

Samara shook his head.

"The man threatened to assassinate me and appeared to be in earnest," he replied. "If the young lady there had not withdrawn the cartridges from his automatic pistol, he would probably have done so. I do not believe that he is a journalist at all. It is, I imagine, a political affair."

The detective turned to Catherine. Her deep brown eyes were filled with what appeared to be amazement. She shook her head.

"Mr. Samara was naturally alarmed," she said, "but I do not believe that he was in any actual danger."

The detective looked quickly from one to the other of the three people in the little tableau. Their faces were an interesting study. Both Samara and his would-be assassin were obviously surprised; the latter, however, quickly concealed his emotion.

"You don't think that he meant business, then?" the detective asked.

"My impression is that he was only bluffing," was the confident reply.

"Then why did you blow that whistle?" her questioner persisted.

"I am rather a nervous person," she confided. "I hated the thought that there might be trouble while I was in the room."

Samara's amazement was genuine and sincere. He came a little farther into the centre of the apartment and stood looking down at Catherine.

"You didn't hear the click, then, when he pulled the trigger of his gun?"

"Did he pull it?" she asked. "Well, after all, it wasn't loaded."

He pointed to the roll of cartridges.

"But you admitted yourself that you took those out of his gun."

She smiled enigmatically.

"This has been rather a shock to you, hasn't it?" she said. "I was quite worked up myself. I think we probably took the whole matter too seriously."

The self-styled journalist who, during the last few moments, had been suffering from an amazement equal to Samara's, recovered himself and played up to his cue.

"Of course," he declared, "it is ridiculous to imagine that the whole thing was more than a bluff. I wanted the news and I failed. Well, there you are! Fine or prison, it's all the same to me. I'll pay the price!"

"Have you any charge to offer, sir?" the detective enquired of Samara.

The latter considered the matter under its new aspect.

"If you will undertake," he stipulated, "to keep that man under surveillance until I am out of the country, that will satisfy me. I am convinced, however, that he is a dangerous person and, notwithstanding all that has been said, I am also convinced that he is capable of making a deliberate attempt upon my life. Under the circumstances, however, I can make no charge. If you take my advice, you will enquire into his antecedents and his connection with journalism. You may experience some surprises."

The detective was inclined to be disappointed at this tame conclusion to the affair.

"I guess we'll take you to police headquarters," he decided, turning to Bromley Pride's impersonator. "The clerk can ask you a few questions and we'll have you held. I'll take care of your gun, if you don't mind, and you can hand me over those cartridges, young lady. Will you step across with us to police headquarters, Mr. Samara, and state your case?"

Samara shook his head.

"In the face of the young lady's statements," he observed drily, "I don't think that my evidence is necessary. Do what you will about the man. I have told you the truth about him."

The detective and his charge left the room. As the latter neared the threshold he looked curiously back at Catherine. Her face, however, was inscrutable. The door closed upon them. Samara and his temporary secretary were alone. The former took a cigarette and lit it.

"In the first place, young lady," he began, "will you permit me to thank you for having saved my life? In the second place, unless you wish me to die of curiosity, will you tell me at once why you gave false evidence to the detective and placed me in a rather absurd position?"

Catherine continued her task of collecting her belongings.

"If you have no more work for me," she said, "the office will be expecting me to report. They will charge you for this extra half an hour as it is."

"I engage you for the day," he declared, frowning.

"You must arrange that with Miss Loyes," she replied coldly. "I have an appointment at three o'clock."

He took up the telephone receiver.

"Typewriting Bureau—urgent," he demanded. "Good. Mr. Samara speaking. Can I secure the services of the young lady who is with me now for the rest of the day? Good! Certainly."

He replaced the receiver and turned round with a faint smile of triumph.

"You belong to me for the day," he announced.

Her fingers strayed over the keys of her machine.

"My secretarial accomplishments," she reminded him. "Not my confidence."

Samara had never been more than a casual observer of women, had never studied them intimately, had certainly never appreciated them. Other passions had lain more closely intertwined with his life. He scrutinised Catherine for the first time with half-reluctant interest, realising the finer qualities of her, the delicate femininity, coupled with an amazing self-reliance. He realised, too, that in the subtlest of all ways she was beautiful.

"Did you know that assassin whose cause you suddenly espoused with such vigour?" he asked a little abruptly.

"I never saw him before in my life," she declared.

"Then in the name of wonder," he begged, "tell me why you chose to sit there and tell deliberate falsehoods for his sake?"

"It happened to amuse me," she observed, smiling. "After all, you have nothing to complain of. I saved your life and subsequently I prevented your taking vengeance upon your would-be murderer. We might call it quits, I think."

Samara was immensely puzzled. He frowned down at her moodily.

"Sheer sentimentality," he muttered. "I hate cut-throats. It's a dirty business shooting at unarmed men."

"He wasn't a pleasant person," she agreed. "I disliked his moustache and the colour of his tie. Shall we decide to forget him? I am at your disposal for the rest of the day. Have you letters to give me?"

He shrugged his shoulders. It was a novelty, this, to find a woman with a will as strong as his own. Then he glanced at his watch.

"I have to go out for half an hour," he announced. "I shall be glad if you will arrange the typewritten sheets I gave you and pin in the pages I wrote by hand in the proper order."

She looked at him in surprise.

"But this is the document all the trouble has been about!" she exclaimed. "I might read it!"

He crossed the room to the desk where he had been writing, collected the sheets and brought them over to her.

"My dear young lady," he said, "you are welcome to read my little contribution—if you can."

She studied the closely written pages with an apparently puzzled air.

"So that is Russian," she remarked.

He nodded. "Looks terrible, doesn't it? Here is my servant back again. Ivan, bring me my coat and hat and watch over this young lady whilst I am away. With Ivan Rortz about the place," he continued, "no one will be likely to disturb you. I shall give orders outside, too, that no visitors are permitted to enter."

She was still gazing at those sheets filled with strange-looking words.

"Very well," she assented, "I will have this all in order by the time you get back."

To all appearance nothing had happened when Samara returned from his visit to a great banking house in Wall Street. He gave his coat and hat to Ivan who was sitting—a grim, silent figure—in the little hall. Then he passed into the inner room where Catherine, having apparently completed her task, was leaning back in her chair, turning over the pages of the document which she had pinned together.

"Well?" he asked with sardonic pleasantry. "Did you make anything of it?"

She laid it down and glanced up at him.

"Naturally," she replied. "I read it."

"But the Russian part?"

"The Russian part, of course. It was the most interesting."

He stared at her. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "You can't read Russian?"

She laughed. "What an accusation!"

For a moment he looked at her. All the time he had been troubled by a sense of a vague likeness; not, perhaps, to any particular person, but to a type.

"Surely you told me that you were an American?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Oh, no," she replied. "I told you that I had lived in America for twenty-three years."

"Then what are you?"

"As much a Russian as you are," she assured him, smiling.