Читать книгу Sir Adam Disappeared - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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The butler at Wrotton Park admitted Martin Mowbray with a deferential word of greeting.

"We are a very small company here just now, sir," he remarked as he took Mowbray's hat and coat from him. "Lady Tidswell has not been very well the last few days and is keeping to her room. Lady Diana is occupying the green suite in the west wing and she left word for you to be shown up there. The young gentlemen and Major Morton from the barracks have gone over to the cinema at Norchester."

"Lady Diana is expecting me, I believe," Mowbray observed.

"I received your telephone message myself," the man replied. "Lady Diana has been expecting you for the last hour. She has been a little upset by a message from Norchester, and she is anxious to consult you."

Mowbray remained silent. The man showed him into a very pleasant sitting room overlooking the park, and disappeared as soon as he had announced the visitor. Diana, who was lounging in an easy chair drawn up towards a log fire, greeted him with an air of relief.

"Hope I haven't kept you waiting?" he asked.

"So long as you've come that's all right," she answered. "Tell me--is there any news?"

"None whatever of Sir Adam. I suppose it is Sir Adam you are thinking of," he remarked as he drew up a chair to her side. "The other affair, too, remains a mystery and a very serious one."

"Do you know that I received, an hour or two ago, an official letter from the Chief Constable," she told him, "begging me to return to him the letter from home which I took possession of this afternoon?"

"Yes, I knew that," he admitted. "I was with Elmhurst up till a short time ago. He told me that, as the other affair had developed and was naturally connected with your uncle's disappearance, the police will have to attach all correspondence addressed to Sir Adam."

"I should have thought if anyone disappeared like my grandfather," the girl said, "that his lawyers--you and your uncle--would take charge of his affairs, together with the relatives. I don't see why the police want to interfere at all."

"Yes, that's all right," Mowbray agreed, "but there's a bigger tragedy even than your grandfather's disappearance to be dealt with and that is entirely a police matter. This fellow--whatever his name may be--met with his death on the bank premises within a few yards of Sir Adam's private office."

"Well, I didn't send the letter," she said a little stubbornly.

"Did you consult Lady Tidswell?" Mowbray asked.

The girl shook her head.

"We have not dared even to tell Aunt about Sir Adam yet," she confessed. "She really is very unwell indeed. She has not been out of her room all day."

"That leaves you, of course, the oldest member of the family on hand," Mowbray reflected. "Have you opened the letter?"

"Not yet. I waited until you came."

"I don't see any possible reason for not opening it," Mowbray declared. "It's a hundred-to-one chance, of course, but it might have happened that your mother was asking some young friend to call upon Sir Adam. There's always a chance that a letter arriving the same day as a tragedy like this might be concerned with it. In any case, if they wished to the police could take over all Sir Adam's correspondence. They would probably pass over nearly the whole of it to us to be dealt with, but they would examine every communication to be sure that there was nothing which might help them in establishing the identity of the murdered man."

Diana yawned slightly.

"You are being terribly legal," she complained.

He looked at her quickly. There was the same tantalising little smile upon her lips which had mocked him once before. Somehow, at that moment, it almost irritated him.

"Look here," she continued, "couldn't you for one second forget that you are Mr. Martin Mowbray of the firm of Mowbray and oh! half-a-dozen others? I forget their names. Couldn't you forget that you are my lawyer and just tell me what you think would be a reasonable thing for a young woman with a moderate moral sense, with a moderately just outlook on life, but not handicapped by any undue leaning towards principles, to do? I should like to read that letter but if I analyse my motives I am afraid they are chiefly motives of curiosity. You see, I know my mother pretty well. What would you do--as a man, mind, not a lawyer?"

The reappearance of the smile this time was effective.

"Well, honestly," he told her, "as a man I should throw away all those high moral scruples which make a lawyer so inhuman a person, I should open the letter, satisfy my curiosity, seal it up again and let Captain Elmhurst have it. He is only asking for what are his rights, but under the circumstances I don't see why you should not read it first, if you want to."

The door was quietly opened and the butler presented himself.

"Excuse me, if you please, milady," he said. "Captain Elmhurst is on the telephone and would like to speak to Mr. Mowbray."

Martin rose at once to his feet. Diana nodded acquiescence.

"There may be news!" she exclaimed eagerly. "You had better go."

He followed the butler to a telephone cabinet in the hall. By some means the connection had been interfered with and it was five minutes or so before he heard Elmhurst's voice.

"This is Mowbray. What is it, Elmhurst?" he asked.

"Since you left," the latter confided, "my sergeant of police has returned. Lady Diana declines to give up the letter for the moment."

"Well, she's a self-willed young woman, I should say," Mowbray admitted. "I have not been here very long but I've gone so far as to tell her that whether it is opened or not you have a right to see the letter and I think she had better hand it over. Can't do more, can I?"

There was a moment's silence.

"No, I don't see that you can," Elmhurst replied, "but the more I think of the ugly side of this business the less I like it. You know what time counts for in these matters. Clues of every sort which are wide open at the beginning have the knack of closing up if there is any delay. I have almost made up my mind to send for Scotland Yard to-morrow. That new fellow they have there--Snell--is just the man for a job of this sort. In any case, I want the letter. Will you just hammer that into the young lady, please? You don't need to threaten her, but between you and me if she hesitates any longer I shall come over myself to-morrow and demand it. If she makes any difficulty I shall apply to the Court. Wrap it up as much as you like but let her know that."

"I will. Is that all?"

"Quite enough for you, young fellow," Elmhurst told him. "I know Lady Pengwill is the wife of a coming Lord Chief Justice and that the family influence is enough to blow me into the North Sea, but I want that letter. Au revoir, Martin. I shall be expecting you some time before midnight--in fact, I shall sit up for you. Good night."

Elmhurst rang off. Mowbray made his way back again to Diana's sitting room. He was not greatly disturbed by the Chief Constable's insistence. Diana, he felt, showed every sign of reasonableness. She would, without a doubt, hand over the letter even if she insisted on reading it first. As a matter of fact, his own curiosity on the subject had begun to work and he was not at all displeased at the idea of learning what Lady Pengwill had to say to her father. He entered the sitting room. He thought at first that it was empty, for Diana had deserted her seat. A young woman dressed in black, however, who had evidently been waiting for him, came from a distant corner.

"You are Mr. Mowbray, are you not?" she asked.

"I am," he admitted.

"I am Lady Diana's maid," the girl said. "She asked me to wait here until your return and give you this note."

She handed him a square envelope addressed in large characteristic writing. With a curious sense of apprehension he tore open the flap and read the few lines.

Dear Mr. Mowbray,

I am terribly sorry but I have a sudden violent headache and I must ask you to excuse me. I have taken some aspirin and gone to bed. We can speak again of the matter we were talking about some time to-morrow when I shall go into Norchester. Please excuse me: I am really feeling very ill.

Sincerely yours,

Diana Pengwill.

Mowbray hesitated only for a moment. He walked over to the writing table, drew out some notepaper and scrawled a few words across a half-sheet of it. He wrote in smothered anger but with restraint.

Dear Lady Diana,

I earnestly beg of you not to make so fatal, I even venture to add so undignified a gesture. As your legal adviser and as your friend--if you will permit me to imagine myself as holding that position--I assure you most earnestly that the police have the right to see the letter and under those circumstances you can do no possible good by withholding it from them, and your continued refusal to do so would involve the use of measures which I am sure would be distasteful to Captain Elmhurst and undignified for you.

Please come down and speak with me again.

Yours,

M.M.

He folded up the letter and addressed it. The maid was looking distressed.

"Lady Diana begged me not to disturb her again under any circumstances, sir," she said.

"You must take her this letter," Mowbray insisted. "It is important."

The girl left him unwillingly. It was a quarter of an hour before she returned. She handed him another large square envelope, this time not even addressed. One single line--no more:--

The letter is destroyed.

The curtness of those four words, the ugly suggestiveness which lay underneath them, kept Mowbray for several moments passionately seeking for some other form of protest. Then he realised the impossibility of it all. He thrust the note into his pocket and opened the door. The butler was waiting in the hall. The lights of his car were already lit. The man leaned forward in explanation.

"I thought I'd better turn your lamps on, sir, as the other car is out to-night. You will find the gates on the north side of the park open."

Mowbray drove off with a mechanically uttered farewell. He was by no means an impressionable young man and at that time he was unable fully to understand his own peculiar sense of disquietude.