Читать книгу Envoy Extraordinary - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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A pipe, a final whisky and soda and a tête-à-tête in the gunroom at the Great House was the usual way of ending an evening during the shooting season when Matresser was at home and the doctor one of the guests. The latter threw himself into an easy chair and leaned back with a sigh of satisfaction as the door closed behind them.

“Cigar or cigarette?” his host enquired.

“I will smoke my pipe, if I may,” the doctor replied, producing it from his pocket. “I say, it is good to have you back again, Matresser.”

“I’m not sorry to be here myself, especially as I won a three-to-one bet that I would never reach Norfolk alive. Say when.”

“Just a splash more soda, please. Thanks.”

Andrews accepted his glass, lit his pipe and presented the appearance of a man thoroughly at ease with himself and the world.

“You will forgive me, won’t you, Matresser,” he begged, “but what do you mean about that bet? I never saw a man in my life who looked fitter than you do, and you can’t be more than—let me see—thirty-seven or thirty-eight. You were twenty-eight when you succeeded, weren’t you?”

“That’s right,” Matresser acquiesced, producing his own pipe and filling it gravely. “You must not take me too seriously, doctor,” he went on with a twinkle in his 28 eyes. “It was not exactly a matter of health. The fact of it is that I chose to interfere in a matter which my friend thought a little indiscreet and he was trying to bring me into a saner frame of mind.”

“Oh, that was it, was it?”

Matresser nodded.

“I honestly believe,” he continued, “that I am in as perfect health as any man of my age could hope to be. It was not that at all. When one has led the sort of life I have, knocking about all the time in foreign countries, and there’s a chance of real adventure, one is inclined to take risks which would seem appalling enough home here. Anyway, you see, I have won my bet. Here I am safe and sound and wondering whether I have forgotten how to swing a shotgun. I have carried nothing but a rifle for months.”

“It won’t make any difference to you,” the doctor sighed. “If I were in your place I should do nothing but poke at the birds for a week. You will bring them down with that lazy graceful sweep of yours with never a miss.”

“Wish I could believe it.”

There was a brief pause. Matresser pushed the tobacco a little further down into the bowl of his pipe.

“By the by, you are a great pal of my mother’s, Andrews,” he remarked. “Have you any idea why she suddenly decided that Ann needed a companion and what made her bring Mademoiselle Stamier down into this part of the world?”

The doctor smoked on in silence for several moments.

“Your mother does occasionally come to me for advice,” he admitted. “On this occasion she did not. We were none of us prepared for such a visitation.”

“Visitation?” Matresser queried thoughtfully.

“Can’t think of any other word for the moment,” Andrews confessed. “She has been here a little over a year and there’s not a man I know who hasn’t lost his heart to her.”

“Including yourself?”

“Including myself,” Andrews groaned. “It’s no good—I know that all right—but for the rest of my life I shall go on thinking that she is the most beautiful creature God ever created. I’d marry her to-morrow if she’d have me.”

Matresser, through half-closed eyes, looked across at his guest and took careful note of him. Samuel Andrews, M.D., was a very fair type of the country doctor—a short man, stockily built, with correct manners, narrow vision, sufficient knowledge of his craft to earn something of a reputation and absolutely content with his life.

“I should put her out of my mind, if I were you,” Matresser advised.

“I have never allowed myself to put her there,” was the mournful reply.

“What I cannot make out,” Matresser continued, “is why she consented to come. She strikes me as a young lady who has been used to a very different atmosphere.”

“I saw you look at her when she came in,” Andrews confessed. “To tell you the truth it put a queer idea into my head. I wondered whether you had ever met her before.”

“Hard to remember exactly,” was the careless reply. “One meets so many people. A month in the cities and a year or more in the wild spots of the world and you find that your memory is perforated—everything has 30 slipped away. All the same you can make sure of one thing. Whether I have ever seen her before or not it was a great surprise to me to see her established in this household.”

“I can’t understand how any man could ever have met Mademoiselle Stamier before and forgotten her,” the doctor said stubbornly.

“That might depend upon the life one was leading at the time. I do hope, Andrews,” his host continued, looking across at him earnestly, “that you are not taking this affair seriously?”

“I am not because I know that it is hopeless. I have nothing to offer a woman like that. All the same if I thought that there was the slightest chance of her saying yes I would ask her to marry me to-morrow.”

Matresser shook his head.

“Get it out of your head, old chap,” he begged. “Mademoiselle is charming to look at, wonderful to listen to, but I don’t think that she is intensely marriageable.”

“Are you sure that you have never met her before?” the doctor asked point-blank.

There followed a few moments of brief significant silence. The little doctor felt his cheek burning. He was afraid to meet the mildly questioning gaze of the man who lounged in the opposite chair. He was thinking of the days when he had been the willing fag and slave of the young Lord of Matresser, honoured by his notice, proud of each distinction which he collected with such facile effortless ease. The inferiority complex of years seemed suddenly to have returned. He would sooner have bitten his tongue out than have repeated that clumsy question.

“If I had,” Matresser answered, and though his voice 31 was raised scarcely above a whisper it seemed to Andrews that an icy chill had crept into the room, “it would not suit me just at the moment to divulge the fact. Have you your car outside?”

“Of course.”

“I should like to drive back with you and have a look at your patient. I should be perfectly within my province as chief magistrate for the district in asking him a few questions.”

The doctor removed his pipe from his mouth. He was frankly astonished.

“Do you mean to come down with me to-night to the surgery just to interrogate this fellow?”

“Why not? It is only a few minutes’ drive and the night is young. We all have our foibles, you know. I dislike strangers hanging about the place.”

The doctor rose to his feet.

“Well, you are the Lord of the Manor and the great man of the neighbourhood,” he acknowledged. “If you feel that it is worth your while, I am at your service. I will fetch my coat and hat.”

“You don’t need to,” his host replied, knocking out the ashes from his pipe. “You will find them in your car outside the private entrance here. I made up my mind soon after dinner that I should ask you to take me for this little spin. We don’t want to wake up anyone at the front.”

“What an organiser,” the doctor observed. “I forgot that you had a private entrance here.”

“We need one,” was the careless explanation. “Two of the keepers are up here every morning to get out the guns and fill the cartridge bags when there’s much doing. This way!”

It was about a mile and a half to the doctor’s house along an almost typical Norfolk lane. They had jogged along about half of the distance with only the side lights burning, when Andrews broke off in the middle of a thrilling account of the misdemeanours of a certain magistrate and, with a startled exclamation, jammed down his brakes, swung almost into the hedge on the left-hand side and blew his hooter furiously. The night was still a ragged one. The wind was blowing half a gale behind them from seawards and a scurry of black clouds blotted out the feeble light of the moon. Matresser had been conscious of nothing save a slight pushing against the side of the car but, like most men who have led a more or less adventurous life, he was leaning forward in his place, tense and expectant. The doctor threw open the door and sprang into the middle of the road. He stood there looking down the lane in the direction from which they had come, and his language was distinctly unprofessional. Matresser stepped lightly to his side.

“What on earth was that?” he asked.

“A car driven by a lunatic,” Andrews exclaimed furiously. “Curse the fellow! Not a single light showing. Not a thing to be heard with this accursed wind blowing and he must have been travelling at forty miles an hour. If I had not just managed that slight swing away we should have had him on top of us.”

Matresser stood looking for a moment earnestly into the pool of blackness and beyond on the right-hand side to the faintly shining harbour lamp.

“Let me see,” he reflected, “unless you have been building any new roads during the last two years, Andrews, this lane only leads to the Great House and the quay.”

“That’s all,” the doctor acquiesced. “I don’t know what you think, Matresser, but I am all for turning round and going after the fellow. He can’t get any further than the harbour and if he’s as mad as he seems to be he will drive straight into it.”

Matresser thrust his head inside the doctor’s coupé whilst he lit a cigarette.

“The fellow might go into hiding anywhere if he thinks he has done any damage,” he pointed out. “There are two lanes into the woods, you know. When you drive me back we could have a look for him.”

They started off again with a cautionary hoot or two and headlights blazing. There was no sign of any other traffic on the road, however, and the lights in the straggling village of Upper Matresser were all extinguished as the doctor brought his car to a standstill before a long house of ancient red brick fronting the street.

“The surgery entrance, if you don’t mind,” Andrews proposed. “I see my housekeeper has gone to bed so that means the patient is asleep. He is in the room I call my clinic just above the surgery. I’ll take you up there and you can have a word or two with him whilst I knock up the constable and tell him about that car.”

He led the way after a few minutes’ fumbling for the key through the surgery across a small oak-panelled hall of irregular shape and dimensions to a flight of crazy stairs. Arrived on the first floor, he paused to listen for a moment outside one of the rooms.

“Quite all right,” he whispered, opening the door. “Not a sound. The fellow’s asleep. I gave him a mild dose of bromidia before I went out—just enough to keep him quiet.”

Matresser passed on into the sleeping chamber, a pleasant 34 airy room with old-fashioned furniture and chintz hangings. A motionless figure was lying humped up underneath the coverlet of a small four-poster bed. The room was a picture of neatness except for a disordered mass of garments which seemed to have been thrown at random upon the floor. The doctor glanced at them with a puzzled frown and hurried to the bedside. He pulled down the coverlet and examined his patient briefly. When he turned away he was clearly puzzled.

“Anything wrong?” Matresser asked.

Andrews shook his head.

“Not actually wrong,” he replied. “A trifle confusing—that’s all. There’s only my old housekeeper, Anna Foulds, in the place and she’s a model of neatness. This fellow has not been out of bed since I left. I can tell, because I arranged the pillow and blankets myself. His clothes were all neatly folded up and laid out on that sofa. Now, as you can see, it looks as though an earthquake had struck them.”

“How do you account for it?” Matresser asked quietly.

The doctor had learnt his lesson for the evening and he knew enough to keep the irritation out of his tone as he replied: “I can’t.”

“Do you suggest that a third person has been here—a nonresident of the house?”

“It seems absurd,” the doctor replied, “but what else is there to think? Mrs. Foulds would never have left his clothes in that condition and I’ll wager my patient hasn’t left the bed.”

“She may have let in a caller during your absence,” Matresser suggested.

“Anything like this is possible, of course,” Andrews admitted. “Anyhow, it is not worth while making a mystery of it. You can wake him up quite safely, Matresser, and ask him any questions you want. I will just step across to the police station, then I’ll come back and bandage his head up for the night.”

Matresser acquiesced silently. He waited until Andrews had descended, until in fact he heard his footsteps in the street below, then he moved over to the bedside and laid his fingers upon the sleeping man’s shoulder.

“Fergus,” he cried softly. “Wake up! Do you hear? Wake up!”

The man opened his eyes. He stared hard at Matresser, with only a troubled sort of recognition.

“Pull yourself together, Fergus. You seem to have been in the wars but you are all right now. You recognise me?”

The sick man raised himself a little.

“You are Matresser, aren’t you?” he asked in a puzzled tone. “Where on earth am I and how did I get here? Did I reach the Great House after all?”

“You were picked up in a field within half a mile of the Great House,” his visitor told him. “They brought you to the local doctor’s. You will be all right in a day or two but you have had a nasty blow. Remember how you came by it?”

The man raised himself a little further in the bed. He was still pale but there was a livid spot of colour in each cheek. It was obvious that he was only making troubled progress towards recovery.

“I remember perfectly well,” he confided. “It all came back to me in a sort of dream about an hour or so ago. 36 Ever since then I have been lying here kicking myself. I deserve to be thrown out of the service. I probably shall.”

“Tell me about it, anyway,” Matresser persisted.

“I was motoring down,” he recounted, “in a small government car—a Morris, as a matter of fact—and just as I was mounting the hill to Cley, someone on a motor bicycle passed me, wheeled round and stood with his hand up in the air. I thought he wanted to ask the way, or something, and I pulled up, too.”

“On government service,” Matresser reminded him quietly.

“No use rubbing it in, sir,” the man replied. “I would not have stopped anywhere, in any other country, but here I was in one of the quietest corners of England and very near the end of my journey and, frankly, it never entered into my head that this was anything but an ordinary request for help of some sort. No use making excuses, I know. I did it. The person who had descended asked me if I could oblige him with a spanner. He had left his while tightening up a joint on Newmarket Heath. I went round the back of my car to unstrap the toolbox and whilst I was doing it I got a blow on the back of my head which almost knocked me out.”

“And after that?”

“I was not quite unconscious,” the other went on, “and when I came to I was lying on my back in the road, my mackintosh and overcoat had been torn open and the man was feeling in my inner pocket where, as a matter of fact, the letter I was bringing to you is concealed. I gave myself another ten seconds whilst the fellow fumbled—he did not seem much of an expert—and then I made my effort. I rolled over on my side, 37 kicked him on the shin and staggered to my feet. Then we had something of a set-to. I suppose he would have laid me out in time but just at first it seemed to me that I was getting the better of him. I had a revolver in the car pocket and I tried all the time to struggle near to the door which was left open. Then we both fell away for a moment—we saw some motor lights flashing down the hill and knew that a car was coming. He jumped on his motor bicycle and started off straight for the coast. I wasted a few seconds taking out my revolver. I let fly the moment I had it out but his lamp went out, he rode away slap into the darkness and I don’t think I ever came near him.”

“And then?”

“More bungling, I suppose,” the man in bed groaned. “The motor van—it was too large for an ordinary car—turned at right angles at the top of the hill back to Blakeney. The storm was so bad that I don’t think I could ever have turned round and caught him up and it seemed to me that I’d better make a dash for Matresser. When I tried to drive the car, however, I found that my head was going round so that I could scarcely steer. I got some water and bathed my head and tried again but after a mile or two I went straight into the ditch. I was close here then but it was no good my trying to drive the car. I tried to get here on foot and I was within sight of the house when I had to climb a gate. That’s the last thing I remember.”

“Tell me, what were you bringing to me?”

“A document of some sort. It was wrapped up in a piece of oilcloth.”

“Did the man on the road get away with it?”

“He did not,” was the fervent answer. “You will find 38 the letter in my inside pocket. I am only praying that you will take it away with you.”

“I will do that,” Matresser promised. “After all,” he added a little more kindly, “the final test—especially in our sort of work—is whether you bring it off or not. Your job was to bring that letter to me and so long as you have done it the few little slips you seem to have made can be forgotten.”

The man smiled gravely.

“Would you mind?” he begged. “The doctor said I might have a drink if I woke up. It is on the table there.”

Matresser poured some water into a glass. The patient sipped it greedily.

“That’s better, sir,” he sighed. “I am beginning to see things more clearly. You are Lord Matresser, aren’t you?”

“Quite right.”

“I wonder, would you mind going over to my coat and helping yourself to the letter. It’s in the inner pocket.”

“You’re in a hurry to get rid of it,” Matresser remarked good-humouredly.

The man on the bed raised himself slightly and clasped his head with both hands.

“Of course,” he acknowledged, “I am half crazy. I know that. But everything seems to have gone so queerly with me since I got that knock on the head. This evening I was sleeping quite peacefully and I seemed to have a sort of dream. . . . There was a woman—not the old lady who put me to bed and sponged me when I was brought here, but a younger woman—dark. I thought I saw her lean over the coat and I suppose I made a noise. . . . She came over to the bed and I . . . It’s awfully hard to explain! One moment the woman was 39 looking down at me with great angry eyes and then she seemed to float away. . . . I felt a prick in my arm. . . . I opened my eyes and she was still there, then I slept again or dozed until just now when you came in. God! How the room swims!”

“Don’t talk any more,” Matresser enjoined.

It seemed a needless command, for the man had closed his eyes and was breathing heavily. Matresser crossed the room, picked up the Norfolk jacket and thrust his hand into the pocket which Fergus had indicated. He brought out two strips of cardboard cut through the middle and a sheet of oilcloth cut into four squares. The place where the letter had been was clearly indicated. But there was no letter!

Matresser stole back on tiptoe to the bed. Fergus had closed his eyes and seemed to be still dozing heavily. Cautiously his visitor stretched out his hand, stooped, picked up from the carpet a sinister-looking small object which seemed to have rolled an inch or two under the bed. He turned it over between his fingers. It was a clinical syringe, curiously shaped. He looked at it more closely. After all, it might be harmless. Suddenly Fergus spoke—thickly, eagerly—but there was a sort of film over his eyes and his voice was indistinct.

“You have it all right, sir?”

Matresser thrust the oilcloth, the cardboard and the syringe into his pocket.

“Everything all right, Fergus,” he said. “Try and drop off to sleep if you can.”

The man on the bed drew a sigh of relief. His breathing became more regular. He slept.