Читать книгу The Strangers' Gate - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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Lord Portington met with several minor difficulties when, at the conclusion of a highly satisfactory meeting during which he flattered himself he had fulfilled the position of vice-chairman with tact and dignity, he went in search of this unusual young lady from Orlac. She was seated in an easy chair in the waiting room, a morning paper had slipped from her fingers onto the carpet, her eyes were inscrutably fixed upon a little patch of blue sky visible through the top of the tall window. She rose to her feet with obvious relief at his arrival. She looked over his shoulder towards the door.

“Where is Mr. Beverley?” she asked. “He is not coming?”

Portington shook his head.

“He has appointed me his deputy. You can tell me everything you choose about that most unprepossessing lump of rock and I will pass it on to him faithfully. I see that it is past one o’clock. It will give me great pleasure if you will lunch with me.”

“Mr. Beverley—he does not come, too?”

“Not much in Beverley’s line—festivals in the middle of the day,” Portington explained. “A brainy fellow but a dull dog sometimes. I have a car waiting. Where would you like to go?”

She hesitated.

“I am not sure. There are several more things I should like to have said to Mr. Beverley. The words come with such difficulty when I speak in your tongue.”

Portington’s fingers strayed to his upper lip. He had finished his military career as a Colonel in the Yeomanry and he rather fancied the remains of his scrubby but neatly kept little moustache.

“Won’t I do as well?” he asked with a smile. “I am not sure that you will not find me easier to get on with than Nigel Beverley.”

“He was rather rude to me,” she said, “but it was perhaps my fault that I did not explain myself properly.”

“You shall explain things to me,” he proposed, leading her towards the door. “Over a bottle of champagne, if you like. Not that I often take it myself in the middle of the day,” he went on, “but there must always be exceptions, of course. Where would you like to lunch?”

“I do not mind,” she replied, still a little doubtfully. “I cook my own meals always in my small apartment. I have never been to any other restaurant but the Germanic.”

Portington was somewhat startled. He hesitated as he handed her into his limousine. For a real critic of her sex—and he rather fancied himself in that direction—it was quite easy to appreciate the beauty of her slim but soft body underneath that shabby frock, the grace of her movements and indeed the perfection of every gesture. All the same, her hat would have been dear at anything more than half a sovereign and cleaned gloves are not often seen in the haunts which he patronized. After a moment’s consideration he decided upon Soho.

“An old-fashioned place just coming to life again,” he remarked. “We will go to Kettner’s.”

“To me it is the same thing,” she acknowledged. “I like very much good food but it must be simple. That is why I like to cook for myself.”

“How long have you been in this country?” he asked.

“Three weeks,” she told him. “At first I could not breathe. Now it is better but I do not like it. I wish the engagement I came to fill had been in Paris.”

“You girls are all the same,” he grumbled. “Paris! No other place is worth looking at.”

“But I do not know,” she confided, “because I have never been there.”

“Never been to Paris?” he repeated in astonishment.

She shook her head.

“I came from Orlac by the cheapest route,” she explained. “We travelled very slowly in a noisy, dirty train and we came through Belgium.”

“You never went to Paris to school?”

There was something a little grim about her gentle smile.

“I went to the convent school in Klast, our capital city,” she confided. “There I learnt very little. No one seemed to have any money to pay for me. They made my father a General in the war and he was killed and there was no pension. You must not think that I am rich because I am a Princess. My brother works for a Tourist Agency; my mother made dresses, before she died, for the ladies who could still afford to go to Court. The palace that was once ours has been made into flats and we are permitted by the proprietor to occupy the top one. Now I earn more than anyone else in the family has ever earned—and it is not much—playing the violin.”

“I think that you should earn a great deal,” he assured her. “You play the violin in a style of your own very beautifully. I was one of the first to hear you.”

She smiled—a wan little smile of acknowledgement.

“Sometimes,” she continued after a moment’s pause, “I sing a little song. Then they pay more. I put ‘Princess’ on my card because that is my title and the management made me do it or they would not have engaged me. English people seem so much to like titles that they sometimes behave as though they were not very accustomed to them. You are a Lord, are you not?”

He nodded.

“Just an Earl,” he told her. “The lowest thing but one in the peerage. Recent creation, too. I am only the third.”

“My brother is the thirtieth Prince of Mauranesco—and he is in prison for stealing. He has been in prison before, too,” she went on thoughtfully. “He is not, I am afraid, very honest. What is he to do? I hope there will be no more Mauranescos or they will die of starvation.”

“That sounds very sad,” Portington remarked. “I think we must try and be a little kinder to you over here than the world has been so far.”

“What do you mean?” she asked curiously. “You find me a husband—yes?”

Lord Portington coughed. He felt that such suggestions as to her future were a little premature.

“Well, we shall see,” he replied. “Here we are.”

They descended at the restaurant and an eager maître d’hôtel conducted them to a quiet corner table. Marya approved of the luncheon he ordered—grilled sole and lamb cutlets—but declined champagne.

“A glass of red wine, if you like—Carlowitz, if they have it, or a French claret not heavy.”

“Cocktail?”

She hesitated but finally shook her head.

“You will be sorry you brought me out,” she warned him. “I know so little about the things one should eat and drink.”

“How old are you?” he asked.

She drew her passport from her bag and handed it to him. He read it with interest.

“Eighteen and a half!” he exclaimed. “And you are travelling about alone?”

“Not that,” she told him. “I have a serving-maid only because she has been with the family for thirty years and if she did not live with me she would starve. She speaks not a word of English and she is terrified of the streets. I pay her no wages and I am sometimes very unhappy about her as well as myself. She is the only thing that loves me in my life, and she is the only person except Sister Georgina at the convent whom I love.”

“You will soon make friends here,” he assured her. “They told me at the Germanic the other night that you were filling the place for them.”

“I am very glad,” she said, replacing the little mirror she had been using in her very worn vanity case and closing the latter with a snap. “I thought that they did not very much like me. The people applaud and they all send wine to the musicians and to me, but because I cannot drink unless I eat, I refuse, and Monsieur Berthou, the leader of the orchestra, he does not approve. I think this is the best food I have had to eat or wine to drink,” she went on, “since I have been in England.... Tell me about Mr. Beverley. He has such a pleasant face but he was not very kind to me this morning.”

“He is rather a rough diamond, anyway,” Portington observed. “Thoroughly decent chap—good family, makes heaps of money, fine sportsman and all that—but not much of a ladies’ man, I should think. Never so surprised in my life as when he told me he wanted to marry my daughter.”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“He is the fiancé of your daughter?” she exclaimed.

Portington nodded.

“They’ve been engaged for nearly a year now. Neither of them seems to be in any hurry to get married.”

Marya was silent for several moments.

“Is she very beautiful, your daughter?” she asked at last with apparent irrelevance.

“The illustrated papers always say so,” he replied. “She is good-looking, I suppose. Nigel isn’t a bad-looking fellow himself, if only he would look at life more kindly.”

“I do not like him,” she declared a little sadly. “And he does not like me. I think perhaps I said things wrongly. It is difficult to explain in a foreign language.”

“That reminds me,” Portington said. “You had not finished all that you wished to say.”

She nodded.

“Of course,” she admitted, “I do not understand business. It is quite strange to me. Does everyone treat everyone else as though they never spoke the truth?”

“I would not go so far as that,” he answered, “but you must remember that you started off by confessing that your brother was in prison for theft.”

“That is true,” she acknowledged, “and because it was true I was not ashamed of it. One cannot live without money. Poor Rudolph, he is very often hungry and he did want the money so badly for those few shares. He did want to be at the meeting to-day.”

“But what good would that have done him?”

“What good? Ah, but then,” she went on, tapping the table with her very delicately-shaped forefinger, “I do not say things properly. It was not that he wanted to be unpleasant. He wanted to show Mr. Beverley his shares and to say to him: ‘If you do not buy these from me and give me a great deal of money for them, I will tell your shareholders what I know about there being bauxite somewhere else in Orlac. It does not all belong to your mine as you told the newspaper man.’ ”

“I see,” Lord Portington murmured. “Blackmail.”

She smiled happily.

“Very likely that is the word,” she admitted. “What my brother wished was that Mr. Beverley should give him a great deal of money for not telling the people what he knew. Is that blackmail?”

Portington concealed a smile behind his napkin.

“Something of the sort,” he acknowledged.

“Well, that was what was in his mind,” she said. “Now I must write to tell him that Mr. Beverley does not wish to buy his shares and that he does not believe his story. After that I suppose we shall write to the Germans.”

Her companion looked up a little startled.

“Oh, there are some Germans in this, are there?” he asked.

“Of course there are,” she told him. “I was coming to that if Mr. Beverley would have given me time to tell my story. There is a man called Treyer. If the King had not disliked him so much he would have given him the concession that he gave to Mr. Beverley, and your mine at Klast would have belonged to him. Now I am to let Mr. Treyer know that there is more bauxite in Orlac and I suppose he will try to buy that instead.”

“Why not sell it to us?” Portington asked.

She leaned a little forward in her chair.

“I believe that was my brother’s idea,” she confided. “It is all very unfortunate, you see. Mr. Beverley disliked me so much that he did not even come after the meeting to hear what I had to say.”

“But he sent me instead,” her companion reminded her. “I am a director of the company.”

“He should have come himself,” she decided. “He had no faith in me. He would not believe me.”

“But my dear young lady,” Portington remonstrated, “you should consider this. The present company has spent thousands of pounds in having the country surveyed. The finest metallurgists and geologists in Europe have been over the place in sections and we have their signed report that nowhere else in the kingdom of Orlac are there any traces of the existence of bauxite.”

“Then your men of science were all wrong,” she said indignantly. “My brother knows. I think that I myself shall go to Nicolas, the King, and ask him if he will give permission to Mr. Treyer to dig for bauxite in the place where the piece in my bag was found.”

“And ruin our company.”

“Is Mr. Beverley the sort of man who cares whether he ruins others when he does business?” she demanded. “I do not think so.”

“I have heard of this Mr. Treyer,” Portington said thoughtfully. “Shifty devil they call him and as stingy as they make ’em.”

“Do forgive,” she begged, “I do not understand.”

“He would grab the concession in his own name and you would get nothing for it. You know nothing of business. How could you deal with it—a little musician who can barely speak our language, as beautiful as an angel, a stranger in the country! How could you hold your own against Treyer?”

She reopened her vanity case and looked in the mirror speculatively.

“You think that I am beautiful, or is it that you just say foolish things?” she asked.

“On my honour I do think so. I never flatter.”

“And attractive?”

“Devastatingly,” he assured her.

She frowned.

“Why do you use words you know I shall not understand?” she complained. “If I am attractive, why did your Mr. Beverley not look at me twice? Why did he hurry me out of the place? Why did he not wish to see me again?”

“Perhaps because he is one of those unfortunate Englishmen,” Portington suggested, “who can only see one woman at a time. I am rather like that myself.”

“You mean that he thinks of no one but your daughter? Well then, he had better think a little of me. I do not like men who look at me as he did.... I do not like men who look at me the other way, either,” she added, with a faint tinge of reproof in her tone.

“It seems to me that you are a little difficult to please, anyway,” he observed peevishly.

“How clever of you,” she murmured. “Let us not talk much more. It is noisy here. Everyone seems so interested in life and one another and they all have so much to talk about. I am lonely and I am disappointed.”

“Too bad,” he murmured sympathetically.

He patted her hand. She withdrew her fingers quite slowly, with even a graceful little gesture, but there was something quite definite in their removal. Lord Portington had had a great deal of experience, however, of shy young ladies, and he was not easily discouraged.

“You want cheering-up,” he suggested. “I think I must take you shopping after lunch.”

“Shopping?” she repeated. “What is that?”

“Take you to the big establishments here where they sell pretty things—say frocks, hats, jewellery.”

“I have no money,” she sighed.

“You would not need any,” he assured her.

“You mean that they would give me the things I admired?”

“Not exactly,” he smiled. “Someone would pay, of course.”

“You mean that you would?”

“Naturally.”

She shook her head.

“I should not like that,” she objected coldly.

“Why not?”

“You are not my father or my brother or any sort of relative,” she said, looking at him steadily. “I meet you in a business office this morning. You are a stranger. Why should you give me presents?”

“Because I like you,” he answered. “Because I have money and you have not.”

“It is not a good reason, that,” she objected. “You cannot like me very much. One gives presents because one is very generous or because—one loves somebody. I do not think there is any love in your heart for me.”

“That might very easily come,” he told her, leaning across the table impressively.

She shook her head again.

“Some day you would expect to be paid,” she said. “You see, there is no way in which I could pay you.”

She dabbled her fingers for a moment in the rose-scented bowl which the waiter had placed before her, glanced at a worn silver watch and pushed back her chair.

“Do you mind,” she asked, “if we go? I must think a little and rest a little before I begin work this evening.”

“And what about this fellow Treyer?” Portington asked as he summoned the waiter and paid the bill.

“I may write to him,” she replied, “or I may write to the King. They say that he is in Paris.”

“The place where your fragment of rock came from may not be on Crown Lands,” he reminded her.

“That I know nothing about,” she admitted. “If I write to the King, however, he will help to get Rudolph out of prison. That would be better, I think.”

“You will let me drive you home, at any rate,” he begged as they left the restaurant.

“That would be very kind of you,” she consented gratefully. “I know the way from Chelsea to the Germanic. Nowhere else. I lose myself and people are not polite.”

A woman with a flower-basket accosted them as they stood upon the pavement waiting for the car. Marya gave a little cry of delight.

“If you please,” she implored, looking up at her companion, “instead of taking me shopping, will you give me that bunch of daffodils and a bunch of violets, too? That would give me great pleasure.”

“Why, of course.”

He filled her arms with the blossoms and left the flower-seller almost speechless with surprise and gratitude.

“That was the greatest kindness which anyone has offered me since I left Orlac,” Marya said. “I have not smelt a flower since I left home. Thank you very much. If you are really driving me home it is Number 114, Chappell Court, Chappell Street, Chelsea. I have it written down here.”

He handed her into the car and they drove off together. The girl’s whole attention seemed to be taken up by her flowers.

“Look here,” Portington began. “We can’t part like this, Princess.”

She raised her face from the cool caress of the flowers. Her beautiful eyes were once more cold.

“Why not?”

“The matter of the bauxite,” he explained hastily. “I have been thinking it over, and in the interests of our company the affair had better be cleared up.”

“I think,” she decided, “that I shall write to Mr. Treyer.”

“You will do nothing of the sort,” he insisted. “Supposing I fetch you, will you come down and see us to-morrow?”

She shook her head.

“I have been to your office once,” she said. “I have done, or tried to do, what my brother wished. Mr. Beverley was not polite to me. He did not believe that I was honest. I could see it in his eyes. Very well, I go somewhere else.”

“It was only Nigel’s manner,” he assured her. “It would do us a great deal of harm if anyone suspected a German had got a second concession in Orlac and it turned out that there was really bauxite there. Please do as I suggest.”

She considered the matter for a moment. A whiff of perfume from the violets seemed suddenly to attract her. She stooped down to smell them. When she looked up, the queer little suggestion of anger had left her expression. It was the face of a child again.

“You know my address for letters,” she said. “You know where I am to be found in the evening. If Mr. Beverley wishes to see me he can do so. Thank you very much for the lunch, Lord Portington,” she added as the car came to a standstill, “and with all my heart I thank you for the flowers. They will keep me happy for days.”

She stepped lightly on to the pavement, hugging the two nosegays, and took leave of him with a foreign but not ungracious nod. Portington waved his hand, replaced his hat upon his head, and resumed his seat in the car with a grimace. He was by no means an inexperienced boulevardier, but the ways of this little lady from Orlac were strange to him.