Читать книгу The Treasure House of Martin Hews - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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I found my temporary refuge larger than I had expected, with some sort of ventilation from overhead, and lit by an electric bulb which flashed out with the closing of the door. I fitted the microphone to my head, and established myself in a not uncomfortable chair before the spy-hole. Then I suddenly received an unexpected shock. Exactly opposite to the opening through which I had entered there flashed, through a chink in the wall, a thin line of light. Noiselessly the panels rolled back and a woman stood framed in the aperture—a woman whom I judged at first, notwithstanding the youthfulness of her figure, to be elderly. Then, as she lowered her head a little, I saw that what I had taken for grey hair was in reality a very beautiful shade of ash-coloured blonde, fine as silk, and glimmering almost to gold as she stooped to enter the closet and stood for a moment under the electric bulb. She held up her finger, and I checked my first exclamation of surprise.

“Pay attention, please, to what I have to say, and answer me in as low a tone as possible,” she begged.

“But who are you?” I enquired.

“I will explain directly. Put on your microphone again, and listen for the opening of the door. Your mission, which I suppose is to guard Martin Hews, does not commence until then.”

I obeyed her, almost unconsciously. Her voice, soft and pleasant though it was, had in it some curiously compelling quality. With the instrument fixed to my ears, my sense of hearing became at once more acute. I could hear the scratching of a pen upon note-paper, the hissing of a log in the grate; otherwise there was silence in the room.

“You are poor,” she continued. “You came down here on a desperate chance. You may not know it, but you have failed. Martin Hews has decided not to employ you. The car is already ordered to take you back to the station.”

It was like a sentence of fate, and my heart sank.

“How do you know that?” I demanded.

“It is my business. I am Martin Hews’ niece. I know most of the secrets even of this house.”

“Well,” I sighed, “I hope you are making a mistake. Unless you have been listening—”

“I have been listening,” she interrupted, “and I know my uncle.”

“He was pretty well my last chance,” I confided gloomily.

“Then you have lost it. You are, I think you said, in straightened means. You can earn this, if you care to.”

She handed me a folded slip of paper. I opened it out and found that it was a twenty-pound Bank of England note.

“Who am I to serve for this?” I asked. “Your uncle or you?”

“Me,” she answered calmly. “Hush!”

I, too, had heard the click of the motor chair. I looked through my peephole. Its occupant had simply changed his position in order to reach a box of cigarettes. He lit one and recommenced his writing. The room was still empty. I turned back to the girl. Her eyes were fixed upon me—grey eyes with a glint of green in them, indifferent, almost inhuman, as it seemed to me at that moment, yet curiously impressive under her strange-coloured hair. For the first time I realised that in her own fashion—and a very distinctive one it was—she was beautiful.

“You can earn this twenty pounds,” she whispered, “by leaving your place here and catching the train for London which starts in twenty minutes. I will show you the way to where the car is waiting. All that you will have to do is to deliver a letter in Berkeley Square, and never come near this house again.”

We looked at one another for a few seconds in silence. Her eyes never left mine, but it would have taken a cleverer man than I to have guessed what was passing in her brain.

“If your uncle will not engage me,” I said, “that is my misfortune. I have accepted the task of watching here until his visitor has gone, and I must carry it out.”

“Take my advice,” she begged. “Don’t waste your time. You owe nothing to Martin Hews. Soon he will dismiss you with a cynical word of farewell. There is not a soul in this house who does not hate him. Those of us who live here and obey his orders do it because we must. As yet you are free. Take my offer and hurry away.”

“And leave him without a protector in case there is trouble,” I reminded her.

She laughed very softly, but with a scorn which was almost malicious.

“My uncle can look after himself,” she assured me. “Besides, if his time has come, you would be of very little help to him. It would be all over before you could get halfway across the room. Will you come?”

I looked at her once more, and my decision, if anything, was strengthened by what I saw in her eyes, but failed wholly to read.

“I will not,” I decided, turning my back upon her, and peering through my spy-hole.... “There is some one coming into the room. Please go away.”

Apparently she was convinced of my obduracy, and, in a measure, reconciled to it, for I heard the door roll smoothly back and the click of its fastening. I had no time to indulge in speculations as to this strange happening, for it was obvious that the expected visitors had arrived. I heard the opening of the door and the butler’s sonorous voice. I saw Martin Hews’ eyebrows go up, saw him lean a little forward in his strange chair. Then the other two figures came into view—a fair, sturdily built man, commonplace enough in appearance, but with a bulldog type of feature and keen blue eyes. There was a look of suffering in his face as though he were ill, and he leaned upon a stick. He was dressed in reasonable clothing, but his hair was unkempt, his collar crumpled, one of his shoe laces undone. I judged that he had come from some adventure, for there was an air of exhaustion about him, and in his eyes there was fear. Holding on to his arm was a girl—a little Jewess she seemed to me—small, with an exquisite cameo-like face, dark brown eyes and hair, and brilliantly red lips. She looked defiantly at Martin Hews.

“I was expecting you, Jim Donkin—but the young lady?”

The man sank into the fixed chair with a little groan of relief.

“You’ll have to look after her, Guv’nor,” he declared. “If she can’t come with me, you’ll have to keep her safe. You know what happened last night?”

“I know that you committed a murder,” Martin Hews observed calmly. “You are trying me very high, Donkin. You were on your own last night, you must remember, and it is not an easy thing to protect a murderer. Tell me about the girl.”

“You know who she is. This is Rachel. ’Tain’t her fault, but it was because of her the row began last night. The newspapers haven’t got half of it yet. There were a hundred of us fighting down in the Mews, back of the Bethnal Green Road, and Phil Abrahams wasn’t the only one who got his. We were obeying orders too, you know, Guv’nor. The cops were getting too inquisitive about what we were really out for. You wanted a real hooligan fight, and we b——y well had it.”

“There isn’t a great deal of time to waste if I am to get you away,” Martin Hews warned him. “Why have you brought the girl with you? It is quite true that I am willing to undertake the task of looking after her, but I did not intend to have her here.”

“Where in hell could I leave her in London?” the man demanded. “Abrahams took her from me, as he had sworn to Joseph that he would, but he was a dying man before he could hand her over, bleeding to death in Aldgate Passage. We’re pretty well wiped out now, though. They’ll get her if I leave her in London.”

“Half a dozen of ’em,” the girl intervened, “half a dozen of ’em who reckon I never ought to have left Joseph, and who mean to get me back if they can. Mind you, they’ll soon forget it,” she went on, “and I don’t know that I’m so scared as it is. Joseph would have something to say if they turned ugly, but Jim here, he’s all for me lying low. You’re afraid Joseph will get me again, ain’t you, Jim?” she asked, with a mocking laugh.

“I’d come back from the dead, blast you, if you went back to him,” the man growled. “What about me, Chief?” he went on, looking anxiously across the desk. “It wasn’t exactly your work we were on last night, but you wanted a row—a real, ordinary row—to put the cops off the scent. Yesterday’s began on the race course, went on in the train from Newmarket, and finished—my Gawd, what a finish!—down Bethnal Green Road way.”

Martin Hews leaned forward in his chair and contemplated the two. His face was unclouded, his smile almost benevolent. He might have been the head of some great charitable organisation, evolving his plans for the protection of this outcast.

“I grasp the position,” he said at last. “Everything is arranged so far as you are concerned, Donkin. You must be prepared to leave here in five minutes. A car is waiting for you now. As for the young lady, I shall offer her at any rate temporary shelter.”

“What, here?” she demanded, with a grimace.

“Certainly. You will be safer under this roof than anywhere. The housekeeper will look after you. As for you, Donkin, please follow my servant downstairs now. I shall keep my word and get you out of this, but you have disappointed me. I wanted Joseph’s gang crushed. I wanted Joseph himself removed. You have failed me.”

“If I get over this,” Donkin muttered, a spasm of pain suddenly contorting his face, “I’ll get Joseph as soon as I can sneak back to the country.”

“That is your own affair,” Martin Hews said equably. “I shall probably have settled with him myself before that can happen. In the meantime, kindly follow my servant downstairs. You will be provided with ample funds, and I wish you well; at the same time, in the struggle between you and Joseph, you are up to now the loser, and I have no use for the second best.”

He dismissed them with an imperative little wave of the hand, and they disappeared, ushered out by the butler who had entered without any visible or audible means of summons. The panels glided open in front of me, and I stepped out. Martin Hews looked at me thoughtfully.

“You can drive a car?” he asked.

“I can,” I answered, with a sudden return of hope.

“You can fight, I know,” he continued. “Do your best to get Donkin away. If you come up against the police, you had better offer no resistance and be sure that my name is not mentioned. If any members of Joseph’s gang try to intercept you, that will be a different matter. Fight if you have any chance at all. They will kill Donkin if they get him ... Here!”

He opened the drawer and handed me a flat-handled automatic, of the latest type, fully charged. Behind me was standing once more that ubiquitous butler, waiting to show me downstairs.

“Don’t use the gun if you can help it,” Martin Hews enjoined. “Those things are for show more than for use, but remember they’ll kill Donkin if they get him. You may report here later if all goes well....”

Five minutes afterwards we were swinging down the straight, muddy road leading towards the river, in a large, open touring car, built apparently for speed. Donkin was by my side, muffled up in an overcoat and groaning every now and then in pain. A dark-complexioned chauffeur in the front crouched over his wheel. One glance I threw behind as we started off, and curiously enough I looked, as though by instinct, at one particular window. Leaning out of it was the girl who had offered me the twenty-pound note and assured me that Martin Hews had decided to turn me down. She stood like a statue, watching us. I shook my fist at her. She turned away.