Читать книгу The Man From Sing Sing - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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It was some hours before Argels was able to sleep, after his adventure upon the deck, and it seemed to him that he had scarcely closed his eyes when he was awakened by a disagreeable sense of stuffiness in the atmosphere. He soon understood the cause. His porthole had been closed and the encircling blue curtains drawn together over it. His light—the one remote from his bedside—was shining, his automatic pistol had been removed, and, exactly opposite to him, Andrew Pulwitter was seated upon a stool, staring at a metal-encased despatch box, which he had dragged out from underneath the bed. A second later, with a clumsiness which certainly suggested some lack of familiarity with firearms, Pulwitter had snatched the pistol from the carpet by his side and was brandishing it in his direction. Argels took particular care to make no further movement.

“You surprise me, Pulwitter,” he said reproachfully. “You told me that you left the rough stuff to others.”

“I am not pretending I’m fond of it,” the Scotchman replied, glancing fearfully down at the weapon in his hand. “Such an intrusion as this, for instance, to a man of my dignity and years, is painful. As for the gun, I was telling you the truth when I said that I didn’t own one. This is yours and a neat little weapon it seems to be, though it’s hard to believe that it would put away a man’s life. If you’d be passing me the keys of this box of yours, Argels, I could be getting on with the job.”

“I regret extremely that I find it impossible to humour you,” was the curt reply.

“And why not?”

“Because I don’t happen to have the keys in my possession.”

There was a little twitch of the Scotchman’s lips. His face seemed set in unusually hard lines.

“Reuben Argels,” he said, “you know very well that I am Moran Chambers’ friend. You knew it when you came on board and skulked for three days in your cabin. You were afraid of what I might do to you. You were afraid with good cause, too. Luckily for you, I’m a Scotchman, and Scotchmen are careful folk. I’d like to keep my own life, or I’d think nothing of putting a bullet into your heart as you sit there. Anything in the nature of a struggle might give me courage to take the risk, but so long as you stay quiet, I’ve not the opportunity to despatch you where you belong. Give me the keys or I’ll perhaps bring the struggle along myself.”

Reuben Argels sat patiently up in the bed. He was wearing mauve silk pyjamas of a fashionable cut, which his visitor had already eyed with disgust.

“My friend Pulwitter,” he remonstrated, “I was sound asleep when you arrived and I am still a little dazed, but when I tell you that I have not the keys of that box you are examining and that they are not to be found in this stateroom, I am telling you the truth.”

“It’s not credible,” the other demurred. “No man carries around with him a chest like this with four locks to it and no keys.”

“Upon the table to your left,” Argels pointed out, “you will notice a box of cigarettes and a briquet. If, without disturbing that dangerously poised revolver of yours, you could throw them to me with your left hand, I should, I believe, be able to take a more intelligent share in this conversation.”

The Scotchman stretched out his hand and threw the articles, one by one, on to the bed. Argels lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke down his nostrils with great satisfaction.

“You see, Andrew,” he explained, “the position was difficult. I boarded this steamer with a lot of documents which I knew you people needed badly and which might possibly get me into trouble. I had also with me a very large number of bonds which, for certain reasons, I preferred to cash on the other side. Now, as you have already appreciated, it takes a strong man to even lift that case, so it isn’t easily stolen. The only trouble, therefore, about its complete security, is the keys. Do you know what I did with them, Andrew?”

“You are going to tell me that they are in the purser’s office, I suppose,” the other grunted. “We will see about that.”

“I am going to tell you nothing of the sort,” Argels assured him. “I sent the keys across on the Levonia, which left twenty-four hours before us, and my agent will meet me at the customs shed at Marseilles with them, and two plain-clothes policemen promised me by the Chef de Sûreté.”

The Scotchman reflected for a few minutes.

“It was a bright scheme,” he admitted.

“Don’t pain me by doubting my word,” Argels begged. “You can put me on my parole, if you like, and search my belongings. They are exactly where I told you they were.”

“As a matter of fact,” Pulwitter decided, “I’ll turn out your things, but I have an idea that you’re telling me the truth.”

He made a laborious search. At the end of it he returned to his stool. Argels was toying with the bell pull.

“Yes,” his visitor observed, “there’s a night watchman all right. Some one would come if you rang. My story’s ready and I reckon my word’s as good as yours.”

“I should hate to do anything,” Argels said, “to disturb our present happy relations. Are you satisfied that I have not the keys with me?”

“If you have,” Andrew Pulwitter conceded, “they’re too cleverly hidden for me. On the subject of keys, I’ll give you best for the moment, Reuben Argels.”

“Capital! And now, will you tell me this? Am I to look upon your visitation as a serious effort at burglary, or as a jest?”

The Scotchman was obviously puzzled. He shook his lean head.

“There’s no jest about the matter, my lad,” he declared. “I came here to rob you in a good cause. I’m perhaps a trifle deficient in my sense of humour, but I see no jest in not being able to find your keys.”

Argels held his head for a moment. Then he drew himself a little farther up in the bed.

“Listen, my friend,” he recounted, “this is my second adventure of the sort within the last few hours. I was leaning over the side of the ship just before midnight and I felt a prick on my shoulder. Some one had stolen up behind me and, with a small poniard, stabbed me just enough to break the skin. I tried to catch the fellow, but he must have gone over the rails and down into the second class, for when I got to the cross deck, he had disappeared.”

“The story is most interesting,” Pulwitter admitted. “I am bound to acknowledge that I had no share in it, though. My legs may be long, but I have passed that time of life when one can get about the decks like a cat.”

“I suppose it’s damned funny,” Argels answered lugubriously. “An attempt at assassination which ends in a pinprick and a comic burglary by a respectable Scotchman who can’t find the keys.”

Pulwitter placed the automatic well out of reach.

“There’s no call now for this little plaything, I’m thinking,” he remarked. “We’re talking like two sensible men. My opinion about your adventure of this evening is that your assassin was just obeying orders when he let you off with a pinprick. Moran Chambers was never a man for hasty vengeance. He may be trying to break your nerve.”

“Let him try,” Argels muttered defiantly. “I’m not such a weakling as all that.”

“Nevertheless,” the Scotchman meditated, “there’s many a time I’ve heard Moran say that to kill a man outright was no sort of punishment at all. He may have another scheme in his head.”

“It will take more than bodkins, and burglars of your type, to frighten me,” Argels scoffed.

Pulwitter nodded sympathetically.

“I’m not doubting but that you’re full of courage, Reuben Argels,” he acknowledged, “yet, as I warned you when you spoke to me of a partnership, you may yet be in a dangerous position at times. You’re like a man with a price set on his head, and, though I think I have the courage of an ordinary man, I’ve a trifle of discretion as well, and I’d not willingly be in your shoes.”

Argels thrust a pillow behind his back and sat a little higher up in bed.

“For all your long-winded talk, Andrew,” he said, “and your respectable appearance, I’m inclined to place you in the same category as the rascal who pricked my shoulder.”

“Comic performers, both of us,” the Scotchman chuckled.

“What about Ambouyna Kotinzi?” Argels asked.

“You’d best be having a care,” Pulwitter warned him. “I was a startled man, I can tell you, when I saw her having speech with you on the verandah.”

Argels’ fingers played with his moustache for a moment.

“These ladies from the stage and the film world are all pretty much the same,” he declared. “When one man’s away, another has to do. If you would push that automatic of mine a little farther out of reach,” he went on persuasively, “there’s a bottle of whisky and a syphon, and a few glasses behind you.”

The Scotchman hesitated. Then he extracted the cartridges from the automatic and pocketed it.

“We’ve nothing to gain by plugging holes in one another,” he reflected. “Stay where you are and I’ll deal with the refreshments.”

He served two whiskies and sodas with admirable care and gravity. Argels accepted his and the conference began to assume an entirely friendly attitude.

“I’m a disappointed man, Reuben,” his visitor admitted.

“You mean that you don’t like the whisky?”

“The whisky is fine,” was the prompt reassurance. “It’s the brand I always ask for myself when I’m out of the country where God meant the stuff to be drunk in. I came here to look through that box, though. It’s not your bonds I’m after. I want the letter referring to the Wells Estate business and the agreement with Hooper, the Detroit man who died last month. There are documents in there which might almost get our friend out of Sing Sing.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Argels chuckled, “but they’re as far out of your reach as though they were in the vaults of the Federal Bank.”

Pulwitter scratched his head.

“I’m thinking that it’s a burglar-proof box, that,” he observed.

Argels, now quite at his ease, lit a cigarette and leaned forward. The blue wisp of smoke curled around his over-manicured finger nails.

“Andrew,” he proposed, “chuck in your hand. Join up with me. Chambers played for a big stake and lost. I won. Join the winning side. You’ll make all the money you want. I’ll promise you that, and we’d work together wonderfully. In London we don’t need to run any risks.”

The Scotchman shook his head.

“When I take a partner,” he confided, “I like to feel that there are a few years of life still before him. If you see six months out, you’ll be lucky.”

“You and Ambouyna, and the amiable gentleman who pricked my shoulder blade, are going to make sure of that, I suppose,” Reuben Argels sneered.

“There are more than three of us who’d go through fire and water for Moran Chambers,” the Scotchman assured him. “The killing isn’t due yet, though.”

“You are so damned melodramatic,” Argels complained. “Your threats remind me of one of the old Drury Lane plays. You break in here at half-past two in the morning and settle down in front of my treasure chest as though you would open it by staring at it. I would have invited you in any time to have looked it over in peaceful fashion.”

“I wasna sure that I wouldn’t find the keys,” Pulwitter explained.

“More fool you!” Argels scoffed. “What do you take me for—one of the babes in the wood?”

The Scotchman sighed.

“I was a wee bit of an optimist, perhaps,” he admitted. “It’s a fine chest,” he went on, looking at it thoughtfully. “He’d be a master of his profession who broke into that without the proper keys.”

“He would indeed,” Argels agreed. “I told the man who made it that I wanted a chest that no one could smash and a lock that could never be copied. I’m inclined to think that he served me well.”

“He did and no mistake,” the other acknowledged ruefully. “There’s no tampering with a piece of work like that.”

Argels yawned.

“Having arrived at that conclusion,” he suggested, “as I am a little sleepy, and we are both ruining our night’s rest, might I propose that we now break up this séance?”

“Ah!” the Scotchman murmured thoughtfully, as he finished his whisky and soda.

“You see, I bear you no ill will for your intrusion upon my privacy,” Argels went on, “or your attempt to acquire my property. It’s all in the game.”

“ ’Tis a sporting attitude you adopt, Reuben.”

“Very well, then, what about a friendly good night?”

Andrew Pulwitter drew up his straggling legs and rose to his feet.

“You may be right,” he agreed. “The hour is late.”

“Hope you’ve enjoyed your visit,” Argels grinned.

“Fine,” the intruder replied, looking back from the threshold. “And, Reuben, lad.”

“Well?”

“It was a clever trick of yours sending those keys on to Marseilles. Has there never been a time, though, when it seemed to you to be inconvenient without them, when you felt that you would like to just look over those documents and check them up?”

Argels shook his head, with another yawn.

“I know pretty well what’s there,” he confided sleepily.

The Scotchman’s lank figure had almost disappeared. Only his long, lean face remained looking back into the room.

“If you should be disturbed in your mind about their safety at any time, Argels,” he remarked, “if you want to kind of check them up or anything, come around and see me. Maybe I’d be able to help.”

The door was closed with a slam. Argels sprang from the bed, suddenly awake. He knelt in front of the chest and, without the slightest effort, threw back the lid. The interior was divided into two steel compartments. In one there was a thick pile of bonds, which had apparently been left undisturbed; the other was empty.