Читать книгу Envoy Extraordinary - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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Matresser threw himself into a battered easy chair before the fire in the gunroom, lit a cigarette and reflected for a moment. A few yards away from him Humphreys, the head keeper, was standing hat in hand. It was obvious from a certain air of tension and from the man’s solemn demeanour that the story which he had just finished concerned matters more serious than the mere arrangement of the day’s sport.

“This seems a queer sort of business, Humphreys,” his master observed. “Sit down whilst I ask you a few questions.”

The man established himself on the extreme edge of a cane chair, dropped his hat into position by his side and mumbled half to himself whilst awaiting his master’s interrogation.

“Such a thing has never happened before in my recollection. ’Tis a pity that we did leave off the barbed wire from they gates. ’Tis the wire that does more than anything else in this world to keep out trespassers.”

“Was there any vehicle left lying about?” Matresser asked.

“None as I did see, milord.”

“Not even a bicycle?”

“Nowt of any sort, milord. It seemed to me from a casual glance around like as though he were trying to reach the Great House by a short cut across they turnips by the side of Farmer Reynolds’ covert. A vexing thing 13 for him to do for we put nine to a dozen coveys of birds in before sundown and there they would have rested for sure.”

“Was he conscious when you found him?”

“His eyes were open and he mumbled summat,” the keeper acknowledged, “but what it was I couldna’ rightly say. Anyway, we put him in the game cart and took him along to the doctor’s. There he be now for all I know.”

“Sure he was not a poacher?” Matresser asked. “Some of those Norwich shoe hands who used to plague us so much always put on their Sunday clothes when they paid us a visit.”

“There’s one thing I can tell ’ee sure, milord. That ’un never snared fowl nor beast in his life nor had he worked at any of they machines which the shoe factories are chockablock with nowadays. His hands were as white as a lady’s and his shoes were made of that there patent leather that’s only worn by the gentry. He waren’t no poacher and he were a stranger to these parts. That I can tell you for sure.”

Matresser’s fingers toyed with the small closely clipped black moustache upon his upper lip.

“Yet you found this fellow lying in a field of wet roots with nothing in the world to show how he got there. Perhaps he was on his way to do a little burgling up here.”

“He didn’t look tough enough for any man’s job to me,” Humphreys pronounced. “What he did come to these parts for is right mysterious but if they birds as were lying so snug be all gone to-morrow morning it will be him as has done it. As to being a stranger there’s one thing sure, your lordship. He bain’t anyone who 14 dwells in these parts. There’s no one who don’t know that it is our big shoot to-morrow and not even Farmer Reynolds himself would set foot in any field of roots round the coverts after me and the lads has done our walking in. He be a stranger and a damn’ nuisance.”

Matresser rose to his feet.

“You had better look in at the doctor’s to-night, Humphreys,” he directed. “Ask him to step up and see me any time after half-past nine.”

“To-night, milord?”

“Yes, to-night. I should like to have his report. I never care about strangers hanging round the place.”

The man touched his forehead.

“The doctor he do be shooting with us come to-morrow,” he ventured. “He bain’t what you might call a fine shot like your lordship and the Colonel but he do know they outsides like a book and he’s a rare ’un for guessing which way the birds will break.”

Matresser frowned very slightly but impressively. No one belonging to the lands over which Matresser had rule cared to see that frown repeated.

“I will be round along with the doctor about half-past nine, milord,” the gamekeeper announced hastily.

The Countess of Matresser greeted her only son with a welcoming smile as he entered the drawing-room. She was wearing a black dress designed by the Rue de la Paix couturière whom she visited twice every season, the two rows of famous Matresser pearls her only ornament. She sat propped up by cushions in the centre of a high-backed divan and it was understood that an invitation to sit by her side was a rarely accorded honour. She possessed 15 the unusual distinction of having preserved her complexion as well as her figure, and Matresser’s bow was one of genuine admiration.

“You are the most wonderful woman in the world,” he declared. “I come home from my wanderings each time to find you younger.”

She smiled gaily up at him.

“You will have to keep your enthusiasms in future for another member of the family,” she told him. “You have seen Ann?”

“Not yet.”

“She will be the beauty of the family. Her picture in the Academy by that Hungarian man was the success of the season. Watch her now. She has just seen you.”

He turned round. His younger sister was coming towards him, her arms outstretched, moving with the swift, joyous speed of a young Atalanta.

“Ronald!” she cried. “At last!”

One swift glance of admiration and then a queer stoppage of all sensation. His eyes seemed to pass her, to be fastened upon the girl who had entered the room by her side but who was lingering now in the background. Of himself Matresser used always to say that he had not a pictorially retentive mind, that reminiscences with him were always of a fragmentary type. Yet in those few seconds the world seemed to fall away. The stately, exquisitely proportioned room with its carved ceilings and mantelpieces, its air of somehow Victorian comprehensiveness seemed suddenly to dissolve into the mists. He was back again in the wilder spots of the world. The perfume of the night flowers was in his nostrils, the hubbub of strange voices speaking in a strange tongue 16 sounding in his ears, a few minutes of half-forgotten madness—and there were very few in the life of Ronald Matresser—stealing into his pulses.

“Am I a ghost, Ronnie?” his sister laughed, as she threw herself into his arms. “Why do you look through me? Have I lost substance in your eyes?”

Danger! That was what had been at the bottom of that sudden shock. A sense of danger mingled with the tinkling of music, the breathlessness, the tropical air, the sound of those faint shots in the distance and the nearer growl of an angry people. He laughed it all into the background as he embraced his sister.

“My dear Ann!” he exclaimed. “I never dreamed that you were to become the beauty of the family.”

“I’m not really,” she laughed, holding his arm tightly. “I am a whim, the result of one of those little tricks of dress or pose or something which a great artist catches up and immortalises. Lazlo himself says that it is not I whom he has painted. He has immortalised one of his own fancies and chosen me as the medium. It is very rude of him to say so and it is awfully hard to live up to.”

The girl in white was standing now only a few feet away. She was tall but not very tall, her complexion was pale but might more adequately be described as creamy, and her hair was either a very pleasant shade of light brown or golden according to the lights that played upon it. Her eyes, which at that moment were looking searchingly into his, were a curious shade of hazel—soft and promising.

“I was so excited seeing you again I quite forgot,” Ann apologised. “This is my brother, Lord Matresser—Mademoiselle Stamier.”

Matresser was himself again—the same kindly, half-cynical smile upon his lips, the same air of a man who has travelled far ahead of his years looking back down the too familiar avenues of time.

“I am very happy to welcome my sister’s friend.”

“It has been arranged,” his mother confided, “that Mademoiselle Stamier is to be Ann’s companion for a time. It was very fortunate that she was able to come to us.”

Then there was a sudden influx of the remaining guests. Alice, the elder daughter of the house, a comely woman of early middle age, married to Stephen Hennerley, a barrister and rising Member of Parliament, first made her appearance. Her husband followed with the Dean. The local doctor, a good sportsman but of the rougher type, brought up the rear. During the few minutes’ general conversation, Matresser found opportunity to carry his cocktail over to where the doctor was standing on the outside of a little circle.

“Tell me about the fellow who was picked up in the field of turnips,” he begged, after they had shaken hands. “What’s wrong with him? Who is he and how did he come to be wandering about there on foot? I didn’t know that you were dining to-night so I told Humphreys to call round and bring you up after dinner if you could manage it.”

“I can soon tell you all I know,” the doctor replied. “What he is suffering from is slight concussion and superexhaustion. I had to pump adrenalin into him before I could get him to mumble even a word. I left him asleep. He should be able to talk all right by the time I get back.”

“Is he English?”

“I really cannot tell you a thing about him,” Andrews admitted frankly. “We didn’t go through his pockets, naturally, when we took his clothes off. It didn’t seem necessary so long as we were pumping the life back into him and there seemed no complications.”

Matresser finished his cocktail and then set the glass down.

“Well,” he remarked, “I don’t think I am a person cursed with the vice of undue curiosity, but when a man who is a stranger to everyone is picked up in one of my root fields, through which there is no right of way or anything of that sort, wearing patent-leather shoes, I must confess that I feel inquisitive.”

The doctor refused to take the matter seriously.

“I expect we shall find in the morning,” he said, “that it is a case of temporary lapse of memory or something of that sort.”

“Well, don’t let him go in the morning until you have communicated with me. I shall exercise my privileges as a magistrate in any case.”

“I think you are quite right,” the doctor agreed. “I certainly won’t let him go. In any case you have the right to help yourself to his name and address. . . . You are looking wonderfully fit, Matresser. Irresponsible travel seems to agree with you.”

Matresser smiled. There was something so boyish about that smile that it might almost have been called a grin. It was followed by a few seconds of gravity.

“Yes, I am fit enough, Andrews,” he declared. “I suppose, after all, that a really lazy life with no responsibilities is the healthiest. Come on, we have to make our way in to dinner. Forty of us to-morrow, I’m told, but only 19 ourselves to-night. I’m for the Dean’s wife. You will bring in Lady Alice, I expect. We will have our usual pipe together before you go. I may have a few more words with you about your patient.”