Читать книгу Miss Brown of X. Y. O - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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Miss Brown remained demurely at the table to all appearance an interested spectator of the dancing and the general merriment. As a matter of fact her recent conversation had carried her back to a very different world. She felt a sudden shivering revulsion to the gaiety by which she was surrounded, the clamorous music, the hubbub of conversation, the continual popping of corks. Against her will her thoughts had been transported to those vivid and very different hours through which she had recently passed. The curtain rolled up before her. She was back again in the hard leather chair in the disordered room with the dead man behind the screen and the dying man confiding to her brain and fingers the achievement of his life. She heard the dry phrases recounting his day by day struggle, always the flame of his life flickering in the winds of death, a thousand menacing dangers against a single person whose sole weapons were courage, iron will, iron self-control. At that moment the whole adventure came back to her so vividly that she felt that word by word, page by page, she could have transcribed from memory scene after scene of that epic of secret history. She forgot entirely during that very brief lapse that she was Miss Brown, the modest little typist of Shepherd’s Market. Her feet were planted in a greater and more terrible world, the atmosphere she breathed seemed spiced with danger and to savour of life and death. And then it all faded away like a flash. She looked up with a start, suddenly aware that a man was standing by her table.

“Will you dance with me, please?” he begged.

For a moment, too surprised to answer, she found herself looking at him speechless. He was tall, thin, very pale, with a sad and thoughtful face which in those few seconds seemed somehow familiar to her. He was not a person of whom it seemed possible to be for a moment afraid, yet with her new-born suspicion of strangers, Miss Brown, when she found words, was uncompromising in her refusal.

“Thank you very much,” she said. “I do not dance often. I am quite content to wait for my friend.”

He made no movement to depart. His fingers were twitching. He leaned lower over the table.

“You need not mind dancing with me,” he confided. “I am a professional dancer here and I am paid to dance with ladies who have no partner, but it is not only that—I wish to speak to you.”

“You too!” she exclaimed curiously. “What do you wish to speak about? Is there something you want to buy or steal from me?”

He flushed a little. From his careful choice of words and a slight, unrecognisable accent, she realised that he must be a foreigner.

“What I should more naturally wish,” he told her, “would be to help you from those who desire to buy or steal your trust. Will you dance, please, then we might talk without being overheard?”

Miss Brown considered the matter. She had schooled herself not to trust to appearances, but if ever a young man looked honest, this one did. She rose hesitatingly to her feet, and from that moment his undoubted skill and the music took charge of affairs. She danced with a rare and ever increasing pleasure. When after two encores the music stopped, she was breathless. She glanced towards her table, realised that Frances had not returned, and suffered herself to be led to a recess of the room in which were several easy-chairs. She waited until they were both ensconced and then faced him squarely.

“Now tell me,” she insisted, “what you know about me and why you spoke to me as you did?”

“I know that you are Miss Edith Brown,” he said, “a stenographer living in Shepherd’s Market, and that you were with Colonel Dessiter for several hours last evening.”

She was frankly puzzled. It seemed to her that she had stumbled into a world in which strange things were always happening, but that this young man should have known of her adventure in Lombertson Square was a little more than ordinarily incomprehensible. She had arrived in a fog and left in a furniture van, and she could scarcely have been absolutely recognised from any description, even if there had been any one to describe her.

“You must tell me how you know that,” she begged.

He hesitated.

“I would rather not answer your question definitely. Will you let me tell you this? Colonel Dessiter has always been the friend of my family. I have had a message from him lately. I know, you see, that you have come into this great struggle, and there is something I want very much to say to you.”

She stole a glance up at him. He was very big and, but for the remains of his military training and a probably inherited ease of bearing, would have been a little clumsy. His eyes were as brown as hers were blue, his features irregular, his hair stubborn. He was distinctly pleasant to look at without being handsome according to any accepted standards.

“I am a Russian,” he announced.

She drew a little away.

“And therefore an exile and a bitter enemy of those who have destroyed my country,” he went on.

She flushed with a momentary self-consciousness. She had a feeling that he was sensitive and that her slight movement of revulsion had hurt him.

“I am like many other of my countrypeople,” he explained, “engaged in a struggle to earn my living. At night I dance here; in the daytime I serve at a restaurant. The hours which are my own I devote to another cause. It was that cause which once brought me into touch with Colonel Dessiter.”

There were so many questions she would have liked to ask, but, notwithstanding her conviction as to his honesty, she dared not. She remained, therefore, silent and unresponsive, and she could see that he was disappointed.

“It was chance,” he continued, after a brief pause, during which each had seemed to be listening to the music—“chance entirely which brought you, Miss Brown, from that very quiet life which I am sure that you led in Shepherd’s Market, into this ghastly struggle. To you the situation must be incredibly difficult. You do not know who are your friends and who are your enemies, but I want to ask you this: do you know who your companions of this evening are? Do you know the name of the man who sits now with your friend, and who he is?”

“Not before they came and asked us to dance,” Miss Brown replied hastily, a little flush of colour again mounting to her cheeks. “I feel that it was indiscreet that we should have allowed them to come to the table, but you must believe me, it was for my friend’s sake. She lives in the country and she is very lonely.”

“She is very beautiful,” the young man sighed.

“She is my dearest friend,” Miss Brown continued. “It is for her sake that we came here this evening. When this man asked her to dance she consented. Then the other came and sat down at my table. I could scarcely prevent him. He behaved very nicely and it was he who told me who they were.”

“The young man who talked to you,” he confided, “is worthy of all respect. He would be an honest enemy or an honest friend, and if ever the Communist Party—the respectable section of them, that is to say—attain any real power in this country it will be his Chief who leads. But the other man—I could find, Miss Brown, no good word to say of him.”

“How do you know so much about these things?” she asked curiously. “You are not an Englishman.”

“Miss Brown,” he explained, “it is not Englishmen alone who are concerned in the great upheaval which threatens, even though England should be chosen to be its theatre. I ask you, mind, for no confidences. I give you all of mine. We exiled Russians are banded together to work for our country’s restoration. We have formed a society with that object. We are, alas, not kindly considered by many of our race, especially that portion who have chosen France and the French Riviera for their homes, because we do not seek the restoration of Tzardom. We wish for our country sane and free government, very much after the fashion of your English government, but with a president, such a man as Kerensky might have become, instead of a monarch. This does not weary you?”

“It interests me very much indeed,” Miss Brown declared truthfully.

“In the great struggle which Colonel Dessiter had the genius to foresee, the scum of my country, those against whom our society is formed, are the leading movers. Therefore we are in spirit your allies. Where we are able to help, as I have helped Colonel Dessiter, is in private information from Russia. It is I who put into his hands certain facts concerning Frankland’s last visit to Moscow, certain agreements at which he arrived with the Soviet Government, which, if known to the world before the storm bursts, must mean the end of that very dreadful person. I may be telling you what lies locked in the cells of your brain.”

“In my transcription,” Miss Brown confided, “names were never mentioned, only numbers. Attached to my sheet is a key.”

“That is like Dessiter,” the young man acknowledged. “I have told you this, Miss Brown, because I wish you to understand that it was a shock to me to see this man at your table and to see him dancing with your very beautiful friend.”

She looked him in the face.

“Tell me your name, please,” she begged.

“My name is Paul,” he told her. “We who have lost our country have no further right to our names. You can call me Paul, or Mr. Paul, if you like.”

“Then Mr. Paul, please listen for a moment,” she went on, with a slight emphasis upon the “Mr.” “You seem to me honest—I have no doubt you are—and I thank you very much for your confidence. I do not think, however, that I wish to talk any more about these subjects. Therefore will you please take me back to my table and say good evening?”

He detained her gently.

“One moment, if you please,” he begged. “I do not ask for your trust yet, though some day you will be willing to give it to me, but this one question I must ask, otherwise I should know nothing for days. You must tell me because it means much to all sane people. Have you so far succeeded? Is your packet safe?”

She considered the matter of a reply for several seconds, and decided favourably.

“It is safe,” she confided, “and that is all I wish to say about it.”

There was a sudden immense relief in his face, a lessening of the strain. He drew a deep sigh.

“Wonderful Miss Brown!” he murmured.

“There is nothing wonderful about me at all,” she assured him.

“Any adventures?”

She showed him her wrist.

“There were three men in Shepherd’s Market,” she began—“but there, I would so much rather not talk about it.”

“Then you shall not,” he promised, trying to check her rising to her feet. “I will speak of something else. You have made enemies, you have already an army of enemies. There are friends waiting for you. I should be so happy if you would know my mother and father and sister who are all here in London. They were always friends of Colonel Dessiter.”

“You are very kind,” she acknowledged, “but I have no time for friendships.”

He smiled a little wistfully. He had a very big mouth but somehow or other the smile was a pleasant thing.

“It is not much I should ask,” he pleaded. “My mother and father keep a restaurant not very far from here. Would you come and lunch one day, and bring your beautiful friend? You would get plain food which I should serve to you myself, but it is a place you might like, and you would be amongst those who are anxious to become your friends.”

“You are sure,” she asked him ruthlessly, “that there is nothing more you want to find out from me?”

He smiled again into her blue eyes.

“My dear Miss Brown,” he assured her, “it is we who could tell you a great deal more than you could tell us. I am convinced that there are many things which you do not even now understand and which I could explain. It is better though that you remain ignorant. The time might come at any moment when one of us might be of help to you. I should speak to you like this in any case,” he went on—“I know that if Colonel Dessiter were here he would approve—but apart from it all I shall make a confession. It would give me great pleasure to meet your beautiful companion of this evening.”

Miss Brown nodded sympathetically. Notwithstanding the wall of reserve which she had built up and the suspicions she had tried to foster, she liked this young man and she was always pleased when any one admired Frances.

“Very well then,” she promised, “we will come to lunch one day.”

He drew a card from his pocket, scribbled an address upon it and handed it to her.

“Come not later than one o’clock, if you can,” he begged. “Sometimes we run out of food and we have not much capital to buy more than we are sure of selling. When will you come?”

“Whenever you like.”

“To-morrow?”

“I think that I could come to-morrow,” she assented. “I am not sure about Frances.”

He stood up.

“We will dance once more, yes?” he suggested.

It had been a wonderful evening, the two girls decided in the taxicab on the way home—a final extravagance upon which Miss Brown had insisted. Mr. Noel Frankland towards the end had become just a little too noisy and persistent, and Frances had suddenly tired of him. Nevertheless she leaned back in her corner with an air of content as they left the place.

“It’s been great fun,” she murmured lazily. “I’m glad I came up. What were you and that big Russian talking about for so long, Edith?”

“How did you know that he was a Russian?”

“Mr. Frankland told me. He is a professional dancer. You knew that, I suppose.”

“Naturally. He told me so when he asked me to dance.”

“Whatever did you find to talk about all the time?” Frances persisted.

Miss Brown hesitated.

“I found him interesting,” she said. “His father and mother keep a restaurant and I have promised to take you there for lunch.”

“Why me?”

“Because I think the most personal thing he said was that he found you very lovely, and he didn’t like to see you dancing with Mr. Noel Frankland.”

Frances laughed softly.

“They must hate one another, those two, for some reason or other. Mr. Frankland wasn’t very polite about him.”

“I should think politeness, in any case, was not one of Mr. Frankland’s strong points,” Miss Brown remarked a little drily.

Frances was silent for a moment.

“I should say he had no manners,” she declared—“a rough, ill-bred, domineering person. I shivered when he tried to kiss me in the lounge. I have hated myself ever since because I wasn’t sure what sort of a shiver it was.”

“You are talking rubbish, Frances,” was her friend’s severe admonition. “You know perfectly well that you would never allow a man like that to touch you.”

Frances made no reply. She was looking out of the window, watching the thin stream of people hurrying along Piccadilly.

Arrived in their little room, Miss Brown, who was developing watchful habits, looked around searchingly. They had locked everything up when they left, but somehow or other the arrangement of the furniture seemed slightly altered, a vase of flowers upon the small typewriting desk had certainly been moved. Miss Brown hurriedly unlocked the drawer in which she kept her few valuables and where she had left the manuscript which she was transcribing for the young man in Hampstead. It was still there, but turned upon its face and doubled up as though by some impatient hand. Underneath it, dragged out from a hidden corner where she had secreted them, were her cheque book and pass book. She gave a little shiver. They would know now for certain, these people, whoever they might be, where the treasure lay. She crossed the room and drew the bolt which fortune had provided.

“What’s wrong?” Frances asked, yawning as she sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes.

Miss Brown was the last person in the world whom one would have associated with a life of deceit or the telling of untruths. Nevertheless her reply was perfectly natural.

“I couldn’t remember for a moment,” she confided, “where I had left my young Hampstead novelist’s manuscript.”