Читать книгу Miss Brown of X. Y. O - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Miss Brown, although securely established in her bed-sitting-room, spent an uneasy night in the new world which lay hidden amongst the cabalistic signs of her notebook. Once or twice she woke with a start and listened. An approaching footstep which paused beneath her window brought her left hand to the precious packet under her pillow, and her right to that unfamiliar little weapon upon the table by her side. Always the footsteps passed on, however; the rumble of distant traffic became less distinct and the early morning stillness soothed her once more to slumber. When she awoke it was past eight o’clock and a pale gleam of unexpected sunshine was shining through the window. She lay quite still for a few minutes, realising little by little this strange thing which had happened to her. As soon as it was all there in her mind, and her brain as well as her body was fully awake, she rose, wrapped herself in a blue dressing gown, which was almost her only vanity, made her way to a room at the end of the dingy hall, deposited a coin in a meter, and enjoyed a warm bath with the packet upon the shelf in front of her. Afterwards, with it still tucked under her arm, she returned to her room, lit a small gas stove and boiled a kettle whilst she dressed. As a rule, she stepped out to the baker’s adjoining for a roll, but this morning she was filled with the one consuming desire to deposit her precious volume in safety without running the slightest risk. At ten o’clock she placed it in her satchel which she carefully and elaborately strapped up after a method of her own, discarded her mackintosh in favour of an, alas, very cheap fur coat, unfastened the door and stepped hesitatingly out into the street. There was no one who seemed to be taking the least interest in her movements, and she hurried with beating heart along the narrow thoroughfare towards the passage leading into Curzon Street. As she neared the entrance, however, she slackened her pace. She tried to tell herself that she was developing a new trick of nervousness. Nevertheless, the apprehension had seized her that she was being followed. She was certain of it. Ahead of her there was a man loitering in front of a stationer’s shop, apparently studying the row of placards. At the sound of her light footsteps he looked up and she felt his eyes travel beyond her to some one in the rear conveying a message—or was it a warning? She swung suddenly round. A man who might have been a clerk on his way to work or a small shopkeeper, an insignificant-looking person with a stubborn, evil expression in his pallid face, was barely a yard behind her. She stood on one side to let him pass, taking care to keep the satchel she was carrying between herself and the wall. The man at once divined that her suspicions were aroused and made a plunge forward, waving a signal at the same time to the loiterer in front. He secured the satchel, but he secured at the same time Miss Brown herself—Miss Brown lying upon her side on the pavement, dragged almost into the gutter, with an intolerable pain in her wrist to which she had tightly strapped her precious burden before she had left her room. The man, realising what had happened, stooped down to deal with the strap, but intervention, almost dramatically unexpected, had arrived. A tall, shabbily dressed young man, whom Miss Brown had not previously noticed, had suddenly appeared upon the scene. A word of tardy warning flashed from the loiterer, but her assailant was already lying upon his back in the gutter. There was the sound of hasty footsteps, and Miss Brown, very muddy, very shaken and with a deep red mark upon her wrist, struggled to her feet almost to fall into the arms of a hurrying policeman.

“What’s the matter, Miss?” he demanded.

“A man tried to rob me,” she explained. “I have something quite valuable in this satchel. You see one of them tried to snatch it away, only he pulled me down too, and then when he was trying to cut the strap some one knocked him down.”

The policeman looked around in every direction; Miss Brown’s assailant had disappeared, also her deliverer.

“Which way did they go, Miss?” he enquired.

“I can’t tell,” she answered impatiently. “Don’t bother about them, please. Take me to a taxi.”

“Any one see this affair?” the policeman persisted, addressing the small crowd of stragglers who had hurried up.

“They went through to Curzon Street,” one person declared.

“No, they didn’t. The man who snatched the young lady’s bag bolted back down Chapel Street,” another contradicted.

The policeman shrugged his shoulders. He marched off with Miss Brown, summoned a taxicab and waited until she got into it. She gave the address of the bank in South Audley Street which she had looked up in the telephone book.

“You couldn’t come with me?” she asked the policeman, a little hesitatingly.

“Off my beat, Miss,” he replied. “Nothing won’t happen to you between here and the bank. Name and address, please. I’m going back to see if I can hear anything of those fellows.”

She waited whilst he wrote it down, and then the taxicab rattled off. Outside the bank she was in the act of descending when she saw a man step out of a following vehicle as though himself about to enter the building. She called the taxi driver from his seat and offered him five shillings with her left hand.

“Will you walk across to the bank door with me, please?” she begged. “I am sure that man has been following us, and I have something valuable with me.”

“That’s all right, Miss,” the chauffeur assured her cheerfully. “They know me all right, these chaps. I’m a bit of a bruiser. They won’t touch you as long as I’m about.”

He glanced curiously at the satchel and at the mark upon her wrist, and gently guided her across the pavement. The man who had seemed about to enter the bank, hesitated, and returned to his taxicab. With a breath of relief she crossed the threshold of the building, and made her way to the counter upon which she laid her satchel. A young man with flaxen hair and pince-nez, who had been engaged in the task of counting a pile of treasury notes, looked at her in surprise.

“Will you unfasten this, please, and lock it up at once in your vaults?” she begged.

He unfastened the strap and started as he saw the condition of her wrist.

“Some one tried to snatch it away from me just now,” she explained. “I have five hundred pounds here to open an account with you, and a card from Colonel Dessiter, but first of all, will you please put that satchel somewhere safe?”

The young man smiled and placed it on a rack behind him. The manager, who had been walking round, strolled up, glanced at the single line written on Dessiter’s card, and passed the bundle of notes which Miss Brown had produced to the clerk. He looked at Miss Brown curiously.

“We shall be delighted to open an account with you,” he assured her. “Do you wish to put this five hundred pounds to a current or a deposit account?”

“A current account, if you please,” Miss Brown decided. “But first of all will you lock up that satchel and give me a receipt for it?”

The young man, at a word from the manager, took it away and disappeared through a trap door behind the last of the three counters. Miss Brown gave a sigh of relief and sat down. She began to realise that her wrist was hurting.

“Have you any instructions about this precious packet of yours?” the manager enquired, with a smile.

“It is to be given up to no one except myself,” she replied with emphasis. “No written order for it is to be accepted, even if the receipt is produced. When I want it I shall come for it.”

The manager himself wrote out a slip which Miss Brown signed. She drew a long breath of relief.

“It’s down in the vaults by this time, isn’t it?” she asked.

“In a steel compartment,” he assured her, with his eyes fixed upon her wrist. “It’s just as safe as it would be in the Bank of England, and it will be there until you fetch it away yourself. In the meantime, please let my clerk have two specimen signatures, and he will give you a cheque book and a pass book. By the bye,” he added, leaning over the counter, “is Colonel Dessiter a friend of yours?”

“Scarcely that,” she replied cautiously. “I have done some work for him.”

“You have heard of his illness?”

She looked at him for a moment in silence. The manager thought that he had never seen such simple and ingenuous blue eyes. All the time she was wondering how much she had better know.

“I heard something about it,” she admitted. “I hope it isn’t serious.”

“I wasn’t sure whether you had heard,” he answered gravely. “Colonel Dessiter died early this morning.”

Miss Brown made her way out into a street of gloom with a curious and altogether new pain at her heart. That gleam of unusual sunshine which had greeted her waking moments had long since passed away, threatening clouds were hanging low down and a slight, drizzling rain was falling. It was already so dark that one or two of the electric lamps were lit. After a moment’s hesitation she decided to walk back to her rooms. There was some work on hand to be dealt with. She remembered Dessiter’s injunction to continue as far as possible her ordinary life until the message came. She walked along wrapped in her thoughts, quite heedless of the fact that the rain was falling upon her fur coat. Once or twice she fancied that she was being followed, but the fact scarcely disturbed her now. She had succeeded in the first part of her trust, and for herself personally she had no fear. Her sedate progress was, as a matter of fact, a very sad one. There was a lump in her throat, the unshed tears were dimming the light of her eyes. It seemed such a terrible anticlimax to the new wonder of her life to think that those lips from which had flowed that amazing story had spoken their last word, that the man who had escaped death a hundred times, in a hundred dangerous places, should have come to his end in his own room in the centre of the most police-sheltered city in the world. A little sob finally did escape her, which, however, she promptly checked. She called at the newspaper shop, gave an order for the Times to be sent to her every morning, made her way back to her room and locked the door. The next hour or so was no concern of any one except Miss Brown.