Читать книгу The Treasure House of Martin Hews - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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I found lights streaming from every window of the Mansion and the front door wide open. The first person I saw as I stumbled in was Martin Hews, seated in his chair with Minchin by his side. In the far distance, Miss Essiter was bandaging Huntley’s arm.

“Dear me, dear me, Major!” my employer chuckled, as he inspected my appearance. “Another one to add to the list of casualties, I fear.”

“Major Owston!” Miss Essiter exclaimed, looking across at me with the first suggestion of a human expression in her face I had ever seen.

For the first few seconds after my arrival, I was incapable of speech, even of hearing. Every fibre of my body was responding to the emotion of the moment. A murderer! There he sat, a few feet away, his eyes challenging mine. I had seen fighting of all sorts in my life and bloodshed of every description, but I had never before seen a man shot in such stony-hearted fashion. Again I fancied that I could see the stab of flame and the man’s convulsive gesture of agony as he spun round—Miles too, the perfect butler, placid, emotionless, suave! Perhaps because I was a little delirious with pain and excitement, the face of Martin Hews seemed suddenly to fade into the likeness of an old gargoyle carved over the porch of a château in Normandy where I had once been a guest—an evil, leering thing, with Satanic questioning in its eyes. I knew very well, even in those dazed moments, what he was asking me. Then, with an effort, I pulled myself together. Beatrice Essiter, her task accomplished, was hastening towards me. There was a shocked look in her face.

“You must come and let me look after you at once, Major Owston,” she insisted.

I realised then that the blood was streaming from the gash in my head, down my cheeks and on to my clothes. There was a cut in my trouser leg where I had narrowly escaped being knifed, a bruise on my chin, and a flesh wound on my arm from which the blood was dripping. To complete my dishevelled appearance, my clothes were soaked with mud and water from my fall. She made me stoop over a table upon which was a great bowl of water and some lint.

“They have handled you roughly, I am afraid, Major,” Martin Hews remarked, gliding a little nearer towards us.

“Serves him right,” cried a shrill voice from the top of the banisters. “Crikey! A great fellow like that never ought to have been let loose amongst a lot of undersized ’uns. They didn’t half cop it. You big bully, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

I looked up, startled. Rachel was leaning over the oak balcony of the first landing. She threw me a kiss flagrantly.

“That was one of my boys whose neck you nearly broke,” she continued reproachfully. “Taken me to the pictures many a time, he has.”

“You will have to come to your room, Major Owston,” Beatrice Essiter announced. “Huntley, if you feel strong enough, can you find any sort of a change of clothes?”

“In the meantime,” Martin Hews observed, “I shall send for refreshments. Our staff is crippled, but still mostly on its legs. Dear me, we shall miss Miles! Grateson, I see you have your head bound up, and are looking more yourself again now. Will you bring in wine and spirits? Major Owston will be glad of some refreshment as soon as he has been attended to.”

The man departed, and I was hurried away. With indifferent but skilful fingers, Beatrice Essiter washed the blood from my face and dressed the wounds. Huntley presently arrived with a change of clothes, and soon I began to feel myself again.

“You are still rather a pathetic looking object,” she remarked. “I suppose you had to go and plunge into the thick of it like that.”

“I rather thought that was what I was here for,” I reminded her.

She made no reply. Suddenly we heard the stopping of a car outside.

“The police at last!” she exclaimed, a little anxiously. “I expect you will be wanted.”

Two policemen and an Inspector in uniform were in the hall when I arrived, and a surgeon who had come with them in an ambulance was out in the grounds. My presence was evidently not required for the moment, so I went to the sideboard and helped myself to a stiff whisky and soda. When I returned, the Inspector had departed for the grounds to take a note of the casualties, and my employer was leaning back in his chair as though exhausted. He beckoned me to him, however.

“New sort of fighting for you, Major,” he remarked, his eyes, more beady than ever, seeming to protrude from under his inflamed eyelids.

“It was an undisciplined sort of scrap,” I acknowledged. “We had the best of it, I think, but we ought to do better next time with a little method.”

“Every one of my men, as you doubtless observed,” he continued, “has been a fighter. I watched you, Owston. I am satisfied with my bargain. As usual, I was right in my judgment. It is really an amazing thing how seldom I make a mistake.”

“I wish I had gone for that fellow Joseph earlier in the evening,” I confided.

“I am glad that you did not,” was the response. “Joseph, they say, is a terrible fellow to deal with, and a wonderful fighter. We might have lost your help.”

“What I cannot understand,” I told him, “is why they all cleared off so suddenly. I won’t say that they were getting the best of it, but they were certainly pushing us very hard when they chucked it.”

Martin Hews nodded.

“I can tell you why they went,” he said. “I know Joseph’s methods. They had a man near Bringford Police Station, and directly the police got the message and started out, he sent a warning. They got away at precisely the right moment. But for an act of treachery, Major, there would have been many more of them who never got away at all. We should have filled the cells of Bringford Police Station.”

“Treachery?” I repeated.

His eyes held mine.

“Miles,” he explained simply. “He went up to London during the afternoon, and I thought it as well to have him watched. He was lost in Shoreditch within a hundred yards of Joseph’s headquarters. There isn’t the slightest doubt as to the nature of his business there. Joseph arrived to-night with a plan of our defences. If his men had attacked as usual, in a semicircle, there wouldn’t have been half of them able to swing a fist or raise a knife. They wouldn’t have got over the shock by now. As it was, they came in single file, feeling for the wire, and only one man got it. ‘De mortuis,’ you know, Major! We’ll let it go at that, but it is a very curious thing—traitors pay. They always pay. Miles, you see, is our only fatal casualty—the man who turned informer.”

“So that was the reason,” I muttered.

“That was the reason,” Martin Hews assented suavely. “I ran no risk of a mistake. I put him in the chair, and when he had done shrieking, he confessed. You are a soldier, Major. You understand the treatment of spies. The death of Miles was an ethical act of justice. It must be regarded as such. I trust that you agree with me.”

I swallowed hard, and for a moment I could find no answer.

“Perhaps,” he went on softly, “you are inclined to doubt my word. You need not. A deliberate lie I have never told in my life. My niece knows of this business. She will confirm what I tell you. A traitor, Major, must die a traitor’s death.”

“I suppose so,” I agreed.

He nodded, and his face seemed to relax. I well understood, that, so far as I was concerned, and I was the only man who had seen the shot, the affair was finished.

“Show me again that little upper cut, Major,” he begged. “You were only just in time with it. I could see the fellow fumbling for his knife. Just there, eh? ... Capital! It was neatly done. Pray help yourself to another whisky and soda.”

I did as I was bid, and he beckoned me once more to his side. He himself was the calmest member of the household. He had the air of one who has been the witness of some agreeable spectacle. His face, with its little dab of pink colour, was unruffled. There was not a gleam of nervousness in his manner. He was evidently well pleased with himself, and apparently with me.

“You like life, Major,” he continued. “I can see that. Well, you will have plenty of it here for the next month or so. Joseph isn’t likely to be content with what he has got to-night. It is almost his first reverse, but he would have run off with the girl all right if one of my men in London hadn’t seen Miles skulking out of the Bethnal Green Road this afternoon. We were just in time to make a few changes, although we couldn’t alter the main wiring. Joseph won’t be content with this, however. He’ll try again for the girl whilst we are still disorganised—before many hours are passed, I dare say. You find her attractive, Major?” he asked, looking at me with a contortion of his features which I can only describe as a leer.

“In her way, I suppose so.”

“Scarcely a Helen. Attractive beyond a doubt, but a little crude according to modern standards. You know, Owston, I look upon it as rather a humanizing feature in these desperadoes that they set such store by their womenkind. I shouldn’t be surprised to find that there was more sexual fidelity amongst that class than in our own circle. What do you think?”

“I can’t say that I have studied the subject much, sir,” I admitted. “I never heard before, in this country, of a gang vendetta like this on account of a girl.”

“It broke Donkin,” Martin Hews sighed. “Bad luck, for he was serving me well.”

The Inspector returned—apparently a much graver man. There was a studiously official look upon his face, and I felt at once that he wished us to understand that his attitude towards the household and the whole happening had undergone a change.

“This is a more serious matter than I had imagined, sir,” he announced. “We have found a dead man outside, shot through the back, and three or four others, dangerously wounded.”

“The dead man is my own butler,” Martin Hews scowled. “I had just trained him into my ways, and his loss is a great inconvenience to me. As for the miscreants who tried to storm my house, the only regret I have is that every one of them wasn’t badly wounded.”

The Inspector listened without change of expression. One gathered that his attitude towards us was not particularly sympathetic.

“I notice that your house, sir,” he continued, “is fitted with nearly every burglary alarm I have ever heard of. You have, too, a most unusual number of menservants, and a powerful searchlight fitted up in the tower.”

“And why not?” my employer asked irritably. “I am a nervous person, and as you may have heard, I have been a collector of treasures all my life. Naturally I take such precautions as I think are wise. As regards the constitution of my domestic staff, I am a wealthy man, and I choose to be well served by those who can help in such a situation as to-night’s.”

“The ordinary householder,” the Inspector observed, “is as a rule content to rely upon the police for protection. If he has exceptional treasures, he does not bring them to such a lonely and out-of-the-way neighbourhood.”

“I am not an ordinary householder,” Martin Hews snapped. “This house suits me—its locality suits me, and with all due deference to you, sir, I claim the right to make such arrangements as I think necessary to protect my own property. If we had waited for you to answer our call to-night, you can imagine what might have happened. Any ordinary householder would have been overpowered, there would have been serious bloodshed, and I should have been half a million pounds the poorer.”

The Inspector closed his book without pursuing the subject further.

“I won’t detain you any longer, sir,” he said. “I still have your servants to question.”

“If you will pardon my interfering with what is without a doubt your business,” my employer observed, “I should like to point out that this household will be here to-morrow or the next day, and that there is a good deal more to be learned on the road between here and London than in my house. I presume your business is to arrest the burglars who were guilty of this outrageous attack.”

“I have taken such steps as are necessary in that direction, sir,” the man replied. “Every police station in the vicinity has been notified, and Scotland Yard men are now watching the approaches to London in the districts from which these men probably came.”

“Intelligent,” Martin Hews admitted—“very intelligent, Inspector. That’s where the telephone comes in. Block the holes, eh? Of course they’ll separate. I hope Scotland Yard will send their men out far enough.”

“They know their business, sir,” was the somewhat curt rejoinder.

“The man I want to see arrested,” Martin Hews wound up vigorously, “is the instigator of this raid or attempted burglary, or whatever you like to call it. I am perfectly convinced that you have the chance now of breaking up a famous gang of criminals. In that undertaking I wish you every success. My household is, I fear, a little disorganised, but my secretary, Major Owston here, will be glad to offer you some refreshment.”

He swung round in his chair, paused for a moment at the foot of the stairs to allow his wheels to enter the grooves, and flew up them with a speed and unexpectedness which left the Inspector gasping.

“God bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “Ain’t he a marvel!”

I made no reply. My own convictions with regard to Mr. Martin Hews were best kept to myself.