Читать книгу The Man From Sing Sing - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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Reuben Argels joined his friend and enemy in the smoking room and ordered a liqueur. He appeared not to notice the fact that the latter received him with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“What are you doing with the documents you stole from me last night?” he enquired.

“They are deposited in the purser’s strong room,” Andrew Pulwitter confided. “It seems a simple place, but it is, without a doubt, a safe one. A digest of the letters and the agreement has been wirelessed to the lawyers in New York. We shall probably demand a new trial.”

“I never thought you had it in you, Andrew,” his companion meditated. “I knew you were a crafty fellow, but I thought that you were too careful of your skin to play a game like that on me. I should probably have shot you before I recognised who it was, if you hadn’t taken my automatic away. Then this smoking room would have been a very different place, all a-buzz with talk and gossip. Why on earth didn’t you make your effort in the daytime?”

“Because you keep your door locked,” the Scotchman told him. “I know that, for I made three attempts at quiet times of the day. I came on board this ship for a wee glance into that steel trunk and I had to have it, although, as you’re pointing out, it might have cost me something.”

“We are certainly conducting our campaign of hatred and robbery upon the most modern principles,” Reuben Argels observed drily. “We should congratulate ourselves that up till now, we have avoided the slightest suspicion of being in earnest.”

“Aye, lad, we’ve done that,” Andrew Pulwitter acquiesced, filling his pipe with long, deliberate fingers. “Maybe we’ll be jumping into the real thing before we know where we are.”

Reuben Argels lit a cigar with great care.

“I must confess,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “that there is one thing which puzzles me. You would like, perhaps, to gratify my curiosity. How, in the name of all that’s amazing, did you get the four keys that are necessary to unlock that box? I told you the truth about mine. They are in Marseilles at the present moment.”

“It was Moran’s idea,” his companion confided. “He has not been trusting you for a long time. You know that, Argels. He’s had you watched, day and night, and when you ordered that steel box, he made friends with the locksmith. It cost him a thousand dollars, but he got a spare set of keys. When the trouble came and he knew that he would be arrested, he handed them over to me. ‘Follow the box, Andrew,’ he begged me—and I followed it on board here.”

“You’re a staunch friend,” Argels mused.

“Scotchmen are that,” Pulwitter rejoined. “Moran Chambers always played the straight game with me, as he did with all his friends. I’m on his side to the end. If we can get a new trial, I shall go back to see what I can do about it.”

“A new trial,” Argels meditated, “might place you in the dock, if you were in the country. I fancy the matter would be too complicated for extradition.”

“I am willing to take what’s coming to me,” Pulwitter declared. “I’d even enter the dock, if I felt sure that you’d be by my side.”

A steward entered the room, carrying a large, square envelope. He brought it across to Argels, who stared at the sight of his own name written in large characters across it. Andrew Pulwitter, looking over his shoulder, frowned.

“That’s the handwriting of your lady acquaintance,” he remarked. “It’s clear to see she wasna brought up in Scotland, or she wouldn’t have been allowed to waste note paper like that.”

Argels tore open the flap of the envelope. There was no beginning or end to the few words which were scrawled at any angle across the large, perfumed sheet.

“I have changed my mind. Come at once.”

Argels laid down his cigar and tried to hide the trembling of his fingers as he pressed it into the ash tray. Nothing, however, could keep the slight note of exultation from his tone.

“A royal command,” he observed, as he nodded his farewell to Pulwitter.

To Reuben Argels, sensitive always to atmosphere, there seemed something unusual in the steely reserve with which Francis, the maître d’hôtel, ushered him into the salon, and something almost feverish in Ambouyna’s manner as she greeted him. The salon, notwithstanding its well-ordered luxury, bore traces of its occupant’s disturbed expression—a pile of crumpled cushions, a book flung face downwards upon the floor, a great cluster of roses reposing upon the table, with her cigarette case. Ambouyna herself—a glittering and bespangled shawl of deep indigo blue about her shoulders—called him almost imperiously out on to the balcony. Coffee and liqueurs were arranged, and easy-chairs drawn back into the shadows.

“I was a fool to send for you and I do not know why I did so,” she exclaimed nervously. “Since you are here, though, I am glad. Sit down. You will help yourself, please. The coffee is hot. Francis has made it himself in the machine. Give me, some, please, and place it on this table by my side.”

He obeyed her orders almost in silence. Even when he dropped sugar into her cup, he held up the tongs in mute question. She accepted green crême de menthe, and drew the cigarettes to her side. He helped himself to brandy and coffee and also seated himself. There was a lack of repose, however, troubling the atmosphere. His efforts to appear at his ease were abortive.

“I am glad you sent for me,” he remarked, as he assumed a more comfortable position. “One gets tired of the smoking room and our friend Andrew Pulwitter is overpleased with himself. He exudes the self-conceit of the Scotchman who feels that he has the best of a bargain.”

She looked at him intently, studied his sallow complexion, the fine chiselling of his too perfect features, his curved nose, his jet black hair, his lips, lurking under his black moustache, a trifle too full, and yet not repulsively so.

“Of what nationality are you?” she asked abruptly.

“I am American by naturalisation.”

“One knows that!” she exclaimed impatiently. “What were you by birth?”

“Why should I tell you my secrets?” he queried. “You tell me very few of your own. You are the friend of my enemy.”

“Your birth is a secret then?”

“Not if your curiosity were a real one. There are records, of course, one cannot conceal.”

“If I were not a woman,” she confided, “madly in love with another man, I do not think that I should risk myself with you or talk to you at all.”

He smoked his cigarette nearly halfway through before he answered her. Then he merely made an observation.

“Scarcely madly, I think,” he meditated. “Devotedly, would be better.”

Her eyes flashed. He clenched his fists, unseen amongst the cushions of his chair, until he nearly broke one of his perfect nails. The beauty of her when she was angry!

“What do you know about it?” she demanded.

“Instinct,” he murmured. “I know a great deal about people, without troubling to find out. I know about you. If you had not been a great artist, you would have been a glorious woman. As it is, you’re not so bad.”

“I shall not receive you again,” she declared icily. “Your manners are too familiar and I do not like you.”

“Then I must make the best of my last opportunity,” he said, taking her fingers, which were hanging over the side of the chair, into his.

“Look at me, please, Ambouyna.”

She snatched her hand away, but not before she had left it there for several seconds, and not before she had returned with a sudden angry passion his caressing grasp.

“Why do you not talk to me? You came here to entertain me and you say nothing. Since when have you learned this habit of silence? You do not even answer my questions.”

“Forgive my rudeness,” he apologised humbly. “Repeat them, if you please.”

“Of what nationality are you?”

“My father,” he told her, “was a Greek; my mother was a Levantine Jewess. My real name is Agropolis, but it would have been a little against me in Wall Street. Your interest in my antecedents is flattering.”

“No wonder these poor honest Anglo-Saxons have no chance against you!” she scoffed.

He sighed assentingly.

“I cannot decry my own intelligence,” he maintained. “My particular corner of the Orient is famous for producing men with a certain type of brain.”

“Do not talk about yourself any more, please,” she begged hysterically. “Do you know what you are—the English word? You are smug and I hate smug men. Smug and conceited.”

“And I try so hard to please!” he lamented.

She was silent for a moment. He watched her covertly. The signs of her disquietude were a joy to him.

“Tell me this,” she asked, steadying her voice, “will these documents which Andrew Pulwitter took from you prove Moran’s innocence? Will they mean freedom for him?”

“They will not prove his innocence,” Argels confided, “because, up to a certain point, he was guilty of misdemeanour. They certainly minimize the blame that might be attached to him, however.”

“Will they mean freedom for him?”

“That depends on how skilfully they are used. I will answer your question fully at Marseilles.”

“Will their loss bring trouble upon you?” she continued eagerly.

He shook his head.

“Nothing that could happen would bring trouble upon me,” he assured her. “I choose my way through life too carefully.”

“You avoid all risks?” she scoffed.

“I take them when they are worth while,” he rejoined. “I have a streak of cowardice in me, but I am not a coward.”

She knew that he was speaking the truth. She looked at him and she decided that she hated him more than any man with whom she had ever spoken. It was a hatred of which she was afraid. No one had ever made her feel like this since those early days, or even before that.

“You take a risk when you come to see me,” she warned him fiercely. “I love Moran Chambers and I detest you. It is through you that he is in prison. I sometimes wonder that I don’t kill you outright. That would make me happy.”

“Would it?” he queried quietly. “I wonder?”

“I do not speak of the things of which I am not convinced,” she insisted.

“It is possible that you do not know yourself,” he murmured imperturbably.

She sprang to her feet with a little gasp of anger and walked up and down for a moment like a tigress. Then she disappeared into the salon. Argels drew a long breath of relief, fanned himself with his perfumed handkerchief, and carefully wiped his forehead. He rose to his feet, and, looking into the mirror, straightened his tie, discovered whisky and soda upon the small sideboard, helped himself, and returned to his place. Presently, she reappeared.

“I fear that I am a bad hostess,” she apologised. “Please forgive. You make me very angry. You spoil my beautiful scheme. I was to have been like your lady in the Bible who cut off the man’s hair, learned all his secrets, and made him crazy for love of her. I cannot move you. You are the first man whom I could not move. I give up my task.”

“Then we can be friends,” he suggested.

“Why not?” she agreed, throwing herself upon a chair. “Underneath I shall always hate you, but no one need know that—not even you. I am humiliated. Our young friend who scratched your shoulder, he frightened you, he made you feel that your life was at his mercy. He did his part. Andrew Pulwitter burgled your stateroom, risked a bullet from your automatic, and stole your papers. He has done his part. I was to make you crazy and make you suffer—and I have failed. Therefore, I am angry with you. Therefore, I hate you. We will be friends, as you say, but friends at a distance. Do not come and see me any more. Our battle is over. You have won. I have failed. I must admit it to Moran.”

She rose, threw open the door, and waved him away. Her hands were clenched, her bosom was heaving, but her eyes refused the challenge of his.

“Hurry—hurry—hurry!” she cried.

Nevertheless, he lingered upon the threshold.

“We shall reach Marseilles in three days,” he remarked. “One more visit I shall pay you before we land.”

She slammed the door behind him and he heard her stifled cry as she flung herself back into her chair. He was far too clever to make the mistake of returning. He passed through the salon with swift footsteps and found his way out on to the deck....

In the smoking room, he smiled as he caught Andrew Pulwitter’s expression of relief. He sank into an easy-chair by his side.

“Was your conversation with the lady interesting?” the Scotchman asked.

“Not to me,” was the careless reply. “The beautiful Ambouyna had set her mind upon discovering the exact measure of disaster which would accrue to me, and, in a lesser degree to you, from the publication of those purloined documents. I was not disposed to tell her anything worth hearing and I am sorry to say that she became very ill-tempered. I do not think that I shall be honoured with another invitation.”

The Scotchmen pulled at his pipe for several moments and then withdrew it from his mouth.

“I’ll tell you the consequences myself,” he declared. “Perhaps you’re not altogether appreciating them. Moran Chambers will be a free man in less than two months and you will have to find another continent for your exploits. Europe or America won’t be big enough to hold you. Maybe you’ll escape an extradition, but your name will have an unsavory sound wherever the Saxon tongue is spoken.”

“You distress me,” Reuben Argels sighed. “You drive me, in fact, to order another whisky and soda for myself.”