Читать книгу The Way of These Women - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 10

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Lakenham had discovered a copy of the Sporting Times, which he threw down at once, however, at Lucille’s entrance.

‘Good girl!’ he exclaimed. ‘Come and restore my drooping spirits. I am feeling like a naughty boy, left here all alone. Dear Jermyn doesn’t approve of me. He’s given me a little moral lecture and gone off to bed.’

‘I met him on the stairs,’ Lucille remarked. ‘He treated me in very much the same fashion.’

‘Fellow won’t listen to reason,’ Lakenham grumbled. ‘I did no more than remind him that this fascinating little mortal whom he’s fallen in love with belongs to the world of easier ways than his. He went and looked at the stars for about five minutes and came back like an archbishop.’

‘The trouble of it is,’ Lucille declared, taking the chair which Jermyn had vacated, and helping herself to a cigarette from the gold case which hung from her chatelaine, ‘the trouble of it is that Jermyn au fond is the most pig-headed individual that ever breathed. He is up in the clouds now. Heavens, how he irritates me!’

She seldom studied appearances before Lakenham. Her face seemed to have grown harder and colder. She was smoking quickly, frowning all the time.

‘Can’t think how it is that the fellow attracts you at all,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘Neither can I, and yet he does,’ she replied. ‘No wonder you see it. Every one can see it except Jermyn himself. Here have I come all the way from Dinard to try and get a few days alone with him down here, and I find myself compelled to sit at the head of his table and play propriety for his little actress. Why, in Heaven’s name, doesn’t he behave like an ordinary mortal and keep her where she belongs! Upon my word, if only I had the heart to laugh, it’s the most absurd situation that anyone could possibly devise!’

‘No doing anything with Jermyn,’ Lakenham said decidedly. ‘He’s got it in the neck. Fairly bowled over. You wouldn’t believe the rot he talked to me just now after he’d been out moon-gazing. I don’t know what it all meant except that he’d marry the girl even if she turned out one of the worst.’

‘He thinks he would,’ Lucille remarked, ‘but he wouldn’t really, you know. The trouble of it is that the girl herself has been so clever. Apart from that elusive memory of yours, which I am beginning to hate, I suppose you never heard anything at the club or anywhere about her?’

‘Not a single word,’ Lakenham declared.

‘And the memory?’

‘Blank as ever,’ he answered gloomily.

Lucille knocked the ash from her cigarette.

‘Aynesworth,’ she said, turning a little towards him, ‘I am used to having my own way in life. I want to upset this marriage.’

‘So do I,’ he replied bluntly.

She raised her eyebrows.

‘You? But why? Where do you come in?’

He smoked in stolid silence for several moments. Again that rather curious light shone in his dull eyes.

‘Never mind,’ he muttered shortly. ‘It isn’t necessary to tell you. I want to upset it. I would if I could.’

She leaned back in her chair and laughed softly.

‘After all,’ she murmured, ‘I am glad I came. The situation is improving. I am no longer in the limelight as the central fool. Oh, my dear Aynesworth, Heaven bless you for this!’

He looked at her suspiciously.

‘Don’t understand what you’re getting at,’ he declared.

‘You wouldn’t,’ she answered, wiping her eyes. ‘I’ll ask you no questions. If I guess, that must be proof of my wonderful woman’s sagacity. Now about that little illusion of yours. There is something which it is just possible might help.’

‘What is it?’ he asked eagerly.

‘You know that an hour ago or so Sybil Cluley fainted at the door of Jermyn’s study as they were coming away?’

‘Yes, I know that,’ he admitted. ‘I never saw a fellow so scared in my life as poor old Jermyn was.’

‘Girls don’t faint for nothing, as a rule,’ Lucille continued. ‘Whilst you two were safe in here I have been spending a few minutes in the study.’

‘Find anything?’

‘There was an illustrated paper face downwards upon the writing-table,’ Lucille told him. ‘It was open at a photograph of Sybil Cluley, but part of the next page, which contained an interview and an account of her life, was torn out. It had evidently been wilfully destroyed.’ Lord Lakenham sat quite still, blinking quickly.

‘Well?’

‘It occurred to me,’ Lucille went on softly, ‘that in that interview you might find something which would give you an idea, which would perhaps help that little memory of yours to life. It seems all the more probable, doesn’t it, when you consider that some one—Sybil Cluley herself, of course—during the time that they were in the study together had deliberately torn out that page.’

‘By Jove!’ Lakenham exclaimed, sitting up in his chair. ‘Are there any more illustrated papers in the house?’

‘There is another copy of the same one in the drawing-room,’ she answered. ‘I was on my way to get it when I met Jermyn on the stairs. Ring the bell.’

Lakenham sprang up with unusual alacrity and did as he was bidden.

‘Bring me some Seltzer-water if you have any,’ he ordered the servant.

‘And will you bring me the Tatler from the drawing-room,’ Lucille added, ‘and any other illustrated papers you can find?’

‘Very good, madam,’ the man replied.

Lakenham remained standing. The hand which held his pipe shook a little. Lucille was watching him curiously.

‘I don’t suppose there’s anything in it,’ he said, half to himself. ‘She wouldn’t let them put anything in the papers that she wanted kept dark. Still, it’s an idea. ... Why the dickens doesn’t the fellow come back!’

Lucille laughed at him from the depths of her chair. Her eyes were fixed upon his face. She saw the slight twitching at the corners of his mouth, the movement of his hands.

‘Really,’ she murmured, ‘this new development almost reconciles me to my share in the comedy!’

The man returned presently, bearing three illustrated papers upon a salver. As soon as he had left the room they carried them to a side-table. Lakenham turned over the pages of the first with clumsy fingers. They reached the picture of Sybil. He looked at it for a moment with a curiously intent expression. Then he turned the page greedily over. Lucille gave a little cry.

‘The page is missing!’ she exclaimed. ‘It has been cut out!’

‘It’s gone, right enough,’ he echoed hoarsely.

‘It’s the same page that was missing from the Tatler the one I left in the study!’ she cried. ‘I was right, then. Look at the others quickly.’

Lakenham spread them out upon the table. His thick fingers were trembling. The result was as they had expected. In each case the interview was missing. Lucille smiled triumphantly. Her eyes were suddenly ablaze.

‘After all,’ she murmured, ‘I think, my dear Aynesworth, that we shall be able to call that little memory of yours to life!’