Читать книгу The Man From Sing Sing - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 10

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For a day and a half, the four hundred and odd passengers on board the Fernanda were deprived of the spectacular vision of Ambouyna and her beautiful toilettes, her freely dispersed smiles, and the sound of her musical little torrents of laughter. She remained entrenched in her room and not one of the many invitations from Ned Belmore and his group provoked more than a curt and verbal refusal.

“Madame est fatiguée,” her maid announced to every one.

Madame refused almost to speak. She ate nothing and drank nothing. Another twenty-four hours and it would be an affair for the doctor. Andrew Pulwitter was the first to break through her isolation. After keeping him waiting for more than an hour, she came quietly and with languid footsteps into the little salon where he was seated with a sheaf of Marconigrams in his hand.

“Sorry to hear that you have been unwell, Ambouyna,” he said, rising to his feet at her entrance and studying her with curious eyes. “I’d not disturb you, but the matter is important.”

“I had to be disturbed some time, I suppose,” she remarked wearily. “We reach Marseilles the day after to-morrow, they tell me.”

“That’s so,” he assented. “If we are punctual, and I can get off the ship in the police or the doctor’s boat, I shall be trying to catch the Italian steamer back to New York.”

A flush of momentary interest lightened her face. She had denied herself the use of even the simplest of cosmetics. She had the appearance of one who has lain upon a sick bed for weeks.

“Is there any fresh word from the lawyers, then?” she demanded eagerly.

His bushy grey eyebrows contracted in a frown. He had the air of being worried.

“I have several messages I can’t quite get the hang of,” he admitted. “In any case, they can’t move till they have the documents. That’s why I’m thinking of hurrying straight back.”

“I think,” she decided, “that I shall come with you.”

“That you can’t do,” he dissented, shaking his head. “You have your contracts, your pictures in Germany and London to make, and I’m thinking that your work with Argels isn’t finished yet.”

“God,” she moaned, “how I hate that man!”

Andrew Pulwitter stroked his chin and regarded his companion thoughtfully.

“I’m not exactly fond of him myself,” he agreed, “but there are times when it’s best to hide your feelings. He hides his own passably well—no more than that, though.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

There was a reminiscent twinkle in his keen blue eyes.

“The man bluffs well,” he confided, “but I’ve caught his expression when he’s been down to lunch and dinner and found your place empty. He whistles to himself, and shakes out his napkin, and orders his meal cheerfully enough. Then the waiter goes away, and he looks across to where you ought to be sitting, and he sees ghosts. That’s what he sees, lassie—ghosts. I’ve watched him and I’ve chuckled.”

“He’s a beast,” she exclaimed passionately.

He studied her shrewdly, but in a measure covertly. He was a man who understood most things without difficulty, but some women—this woman in particular—defeated him. He had an uncomfortable feeling that he preferred not to allude for the moment to her share in the Reuben Argels adventure. He had no wish to know what lay behind that tortured expression.

“What might your plans be from Marseilles?” he enquired. “There’s a special train to London, you know.”

“I have made no plans,” she answered listlessly. “I have no heart for London. I ought to go home for a week or two, but it is a dreary journey alone. More than anything, I should like to break my promise and return to America.”

“I’d not be advising you to do that,” he warned her. “Moran was very firm about it. You gave your promise too. ‘You need not come to me,’ he said. ‘I shall come to you.’ He had courage.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Poor dear Moran!” she murmured.

“If you’d accept my recommendation,” he proposed, “I’d be making for London. You’d be well in touch with us all there, whether I go to the States or not, and you’ll hear the latest news. As for the man Argels, don’t you lose heart, lassie. I’m watching him and I’ll be telling you that he’s not the man he was. There’s no knowing when that sort won’t crumple up.”

She threw away her handkerchief with which she had been toying.

“Oh, I have not finished with Mr. Argels yet,” she declared. “The trouble of it is that he wears armour.”

Pulwitter was puzzled.

“I’m not quite understanding you,” he admitted.

“He is like that man a German poet wrote about,” she went on. “He is sheathed in a mighty ego. He wears a crust of selfishness so thick that his whole nature is encased in it.”

“It’s just finding the right spot,” the Scotchman surmised. “He was made to suffer like other men. Is there anything more I can do for you, young lady?”

“I want to speak to Julian Franks for a moment,” she confided.

Pulwitter looked grave.

“Is it wise to bring him to this end of the ship, do you think?” he asked. “It seems to me to be fairly probable that Argels might recognise him.”

“What would be the harm if he did? The man inflicted no injury—just shook his nerve a little. I want to speak to him, Andrew. I have a message for him to take back to New York.”

“I’ll send him along, without delay,” Pulwitter promised.

He rose to take his leave. Her wan face and the rims under her eyes moved him to sudden pity.

“You mustn’t fret too much, lassie,” he enjoined. “You’ve got big work before you, remember. It’s been a troublesome voyage for all of us.”

“You have been successful enough,” she said bitterly. “You have done your part, all right.”

“And I’m not convinced that you haven’t done yours,” he reassured her, as he patted her slender fingers. “Reuben Argels hasn’t the air of a man any too well content. He smiles too much and he is in the bar too often. When a man is bred a hypocrite,” he concluded, “you can never be sure of him.”

He took his leave, pausing outside on the deck to light his beloved pipe. Ambouyna rang for her maid. There was a sudden change in her. She was full of life. Her eyes shone.

“Suzette,” she announced, “I am well again. Send up the coiffeur—my hair has no gloss—and the manicurist—my nails are terrible. I will wear the black crêpe-de-chine to-night—the dress that Monsieur Simon himself said was designed by a satyr for a Venus.”

“Madame will dine in the saloon?”

“But that is what I am trying to tell you,” Ambouyna replied. “Hurry! If a little man from the second class comes to speak to me, admit him. Don’t let him go away on any account.”

“As Madame desires,” the woman murmured.

Ambouyna was in the hands of the coiffeur when Julian Franks arrived. She threw her dressing gown around her shoulders and went out at once to see him. He was a young man of ordinary appearance, except that, for his size, the muscles of his arms and legs were unusually well developed. He was neatly enough dressed, but his expression was repellent, almost repulsive. During the last twelve months he had turned his evil profession to good account by playing the part of a thug in a film of the New York underworld.

“Well, Julian,” Ambouyna enquired, “how are you enjoying the voyage?”

He made a grimace. One felt that in other surroundings, he would have spat.

“It’s like going back to the nursery,” he confided. “Never herded up with such a lot of milksops in my life. Not even a game of craps going.”

“To-night,” she told him, “is the last night but one.”

“Good job,” he declared heartily.

“Have you any orders—how do you call it—up your sleeve?” she asked.

“Not one,” he replied discontentedly. “I was to give that guy Argels a start at the beginning of the voyage and come to you at the end if you needed me. I am sick of this make-believe business, though.”

“So am I,” Ambouyna agreed, looking at him steadily.

There was a moment’s pause. A slow grin, revealing several yellow teeth, enhanced the natural ugliness of the young man’s expression.

“Maybe you’ve an idea of your own, miss,” he suggested. “I’m all for the boss—he’s knows that. He got me away from Geeney’s gang when they meant having me. Laid two of them out, he did, and drove me home to his apartment in Fifth Avenue as though I’d been one of his own pals. He’s bought me, body and soul. I’d do what he told me, even if it were to walk up on the bridge and do in the captain.”

“Reuben Argels,” she confided quietly—“the man whose shoulder you pricked—is Mr. Chambers’ worst enemy.”

“Don’t I know it!” the young man exclaimed. “Blew the gaff on him in court. Got him fixed for fifteen years. You ain’t going to let him go free after that, are you? Why don’t you let me tip him off? He walks the deck every night. I can get up those ropes quicker than a monkey and send him overboard with a knife in his shoulder to make sure. It’s coming to him too. Say the word, lady.”

Julian Franks, the thug, was the sole witness of a strange expression on the great actress’ face which, if ever it had registered, would have held men and women spellbound in the great cinema palaces of the world. He paid her, perhaps, a compliment as great as would have been the acclamation of millions. He picked up his cap and, without waiting for the word, he stole away.