Читать книгу The Man Without Nerves - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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At Sandywayes, as usual, the four occupants of the Club Car all went their separate ways. The village itself stretched irregularly up a winding hill on the left-hand side of the railway—a village in which there were still some charming old Sussex houses and one very beautiful one, Sandywayes Court, a country seat of the Earl of Milhaven, Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county. The chief charm of the place, however, lay in the little stretch of country called the Oasis on the right-hand side. Here was an Old World Common, with a duck pond at one end, a cricket ground in the middle and lawn-tennis courts at the further extremity, the whole surrounded by a low, white rail and bordered on the right-hand side by a swiftly running stream. On the other side of the rail were long, irregular spinneys of pine trees, beyond which stretched the celebrated Paradise Golf Links, the most famous in the county for their perfect situation, their marvellous greens and magnificent clubhouse, once the Dower House of the Milhaven family. To the little colony who inhabited the Oasis, however, this was all unknown country. The Paradise Golf Links kept their perfection to themselves. A hundred guineas entrance fee and an impossible committee kept their gates barred more rigidly than the gates of Heaven itself.

Huitt, opening the gate almost opposite the station yard, crossed the sweet-smelling meadow and by an almost indistinguishable footpath unlocked a gate marked “Private” with a key attached to his chain and passed between two privet hedges to the open space in which several tennis courts had been laid out. From the verandah of a small pavilion he returned courteously the greetings of the players, ordered a cup of tea from the woman attendant and sat down to watch. It was a very peaceful scene. Sybil Cresset and Pauline Sarson were playing against the latter’s brother Anthony, a younger and even better-looking edition of his father, and the young man Tyssen, who had been a visitor at the bank in Aldwych that afternoon. On the farther of the two courts several other people, including the local doctor—Anderson by name—-and the curate of the village, Mr. Greatley, were engaged in making up a set. The latter, excusing himself for a few moments, came across and greeted the new arrival.

“I hope you think, Mr. Huitt, that we are doing right in playing this evening,” he remarked. “The vicar had an idea that we ought, perhaps, to close the courts for the day. I ventured to suggest, however, that we do so only on the day of the funeral. Mr. Jesson was never a great enthusiast. In fact, he seldom came near the place unless his daughter happened to be staying with them. I telephoned to the secretary of the Golf Club to ask his opinion. Scarcely a civil reply, I thought! He merely sent word that he had never heard of the gentleman in question and that the links were only closed in the event of the decease of Royalty or a member of the committee.”

“I think you decided quite rightly, Mr. Greatley,” the bank manager, who was president of the Tennis Club, pronounced. “If we close during the hours of the interment, I think that is all that is necessary.”

“A very shocking affair,” the curate went on lugubriously. “Quite inexplicable. I saw Mrs. Jesson for a few minutes but she was not in a fit condition to talk to any one. There is a great deal of gossip going on in the village.”

“Of what nature?” Huitt enquired.

The curate fingered his racquet as though he had detected a weak string.

“I have only heard scraps of it,” he confided. “Every one is waiting until after the inquest to-morrow. There is a sort of an idea, however, that there must have been some other cause besides the fear of poverty to induce the poor fellow to take his life. Excuse me, sir, I see that I am wanted.”

He hurried off and Mr. Huitt leaned back in his chair. From where he sat in the corner of the raised verandah, the view was a very pleasant one. Beyond the tennis courts the Common stretched away past the cricket ground to some pine woods, which appeared to afford a shelter for several pleasantly built bungalows almost hidden from sight amongst the trees. On the right-hand side of the Common was his own exceedingly pretty cottage, covered with Bougainvillæa and wisteria. On the left hand were most of the houses which made up the little settlement called the Oasis. There was the village police station, a creeper-covered building of ancient red brick, the post office—almost a twin building—and the rather more pretentious houses of Mr. Roland Martin, Mr. Timothy Sarson, Mr. Cresset and the victim of the last night’s tragedy—Mr. Samuel Jesson. All these residences were a trifle more modern, but the architect had been kind to a very pleasant location and the creeping vines and luxuriantly filled gardens had been kinder still. A dreamy little corner of the world it seemed to Mr. Huitt, as he sat there listening to the thump of the balls against the racquets and the laughing voices of the players.

“A sad thing about poor Mr. Jesson, sir,” the old lady who had made him his tea remarked, as she came out with the tray. “I seen him pass only yesterday morning. Cheerful as possible, he seemed.”

“A very sad affair, Mrs. Harris,” the president of the Lawn Tennis Club agreed.

“That there young gentleman as is come and is staying over yonder with Mrs. Foulds, he did seem struck all of a heap when he was told,” Mrs. Harris continued. “The young gentleman that’s playing tennis there now: a nicely spoken person, but nosey, and with queer wandering habits at night time.”

Mr. Huitt looked speculatively across at Tyssen—the young man in question. He appeared to no more advantage here in the country than in the City. He was powerfully built enough, but his flannels were ill-fitting and his tennis was nothing wonderful.

“He was interested, was he?” the bank manager remarked. “I wonder why. He has scarcely had time to get to know any of us yet. Let me see—his name is Tyssen, isn’t it?”

“Tyssen it is, sir. They do say that he writes books and bits of things in magazines.”

“Holiday making?”

“Maybe, sir. He is not one of those who talk much about themselves. He’s got secret ways with him too, that I’m not altogether fond of.”

“You are a woman of observation, Mrs. Harris,” her companion remarked.

“I notice things more than most,” was the self-satisfied assent. “What I have noticed about that young man is that he seems more interested in every one else’s business than in his own. I am a poor sleeper myself and I have seen him more than once wandering around at three or four o’clock in the morning.”

There was a brief silence. A very close observer, however, might have remarked that so far as Mr. Huitt was concerned, it was not altogether a silence of indifference.

“Wandering around where?” he asked quietly.

“Well, all the houses, so to speak. Last night I saw him cross the Common and walk almost to your gate. A dark night it was, too.”

“So I remember. I am wondering how you saw him.”

Mrs. Harris smiled.

“It was one of those nights with sheet lightning opening the skies pretty well all the time, sir,” she told him. “I seen him on the Common. I saw him pass the cows and the next flash that came I saw him stepping over the railing, just opposite your gate. I could even see the queer sort of stick he was carrying.”

“Well, I think this is very observant of you, Mrs. Harris,” her patron said pleasantly. “It is always useful to have some one who watches what is going on, even in a quiet neighbourhood like this. However, I daresay this young man means no harm. Have you seen him wandering about the Wilderness at all?”

“I can’t say I’ve noticed him in that direction particularly,” Mrs. Harris admitted. “Not at night, anyway. But what I say is—why not stay in his bed like a Christian at nights, instead of trapesing all over the place? What does he want to do it for? That’s what I ask myself.”

“Writers are supposed to have queer habits, you know, Mrs. Harris,” the bank manager reminded her, with a reassuring smile. “There’s not much mischief he can get into around here.”

“In a way of speaking, that’s true, sir,” the woman agreed, “but when things happen like that poor gentleman killing himself last night—well, then I don’t like things about that we don’t rightly understand. What’s he doing here? Tennis? Why, Mr. Anthony could give him three quarters of the game and beat him left-handed! He’s not a great one for talking to the young ladies, either.”

“It appears to me,” her companion warned her, lowering his tone, “that the young man is coming over this way.”

Mrs. Harris took the hint and disappeared just as Mr. Greatley, the curate, arrived with the person whom they had been discussing.

“Mr. President,” the former said, “this is Mr. Tyssen, who is spending a week or two down here. He would like to join the club as a monthly member. He met you this afternoon, it appears, but only on business.”

Mr. Huitt rose to his feet and held out his hand. The young man did the same. His fingers were very bony. So were Mr. Huitt’s. His apparently weak eyes had a hard spot in the middle. So had Mr. Huitt’s, although his glasses partially concealed it. A very close observer might have wondered whether there was not some unexpressed significance in this introduction.

“We shall be very pleased to have Mr. Tyssen as a temporary member,” the president declared. “Our standard of play is not particularly high, Mr. Tyssen. I daresay you have already discovered that.”

“Quite good enough for me,” was the modest reply. “I am only a rabbit myself but I like the exercise.”

“I hope that you like the neighbourhood?” Huitt enquired. “I wonder how you chanced to find us out. It’s very seldom that we have strangers here.”

“Just accident,” the young man confided. “Sheer accident. I am a curious sort of person about new places. I take a railway ticket to some village I have never heard of before and just wander round.”

“You are lodging with Mrs. Foulds, I understand, at the post office?”

“For the present. I rather had my eye on one of those bungalows up in the wood there.”

Mr. Huitt shook his head.

“I am afraid that you would have no chance in that direction,” he said. “The water supply is bad and Lord Milhaven, who owns most of the land round here, has decided not to build any more.”

“There’s one that doesn’t seem to be occupied,” Tyssen persisted.

“That one is being kept for the servants of the lady who is already in residence,” Mr. Huitt explained.

“The foreign lady?”

“I am not aware of the lady’s nationality,” the bank manager said, resuming his seat as a hint that the conversation might be considered over.

“I can tell you what it is, if you want to know,” the young man observed.

“Thank you,” was the stiff reply. “I am not interested.”

Tyssen, with no further excuse to linger, passed on. The Reverend Greatley, who was an observant person, found himself a trifle puzzled. He could almost have fancied that in this very ordinary meeting of a village visitor with a local magnate some unanalysable disturbance had made itself felt.