Читать книгу The Light Beyond - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 10

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Mark was a little shocked at his guest’s appearance when, in obedience to a somewhat urgent summons, he presented himself in the latter’s room soon after ten o’clock on the following morning. The doctor had paid his visit, and departed, leaving a fairly favourable report. The nurse, too, as she prepared to take her temporary leave, was encouraging.

“The doctor thinks that there is no longer any fear of concussion,” she confided, under her breath, as Mark held open the door for her. “He is very weak, though, and seems dazed at times, and afraid of unwelcome visitors. He likes to have the door locked.”

Mark, after he had humoured the sick man’s whim, and turned the key, took a seat by the bed.

“Better not talk too much,” he advised his guest. “That was rather a nasty crack you had.”

“Do you know my name?” the other asked abruptly.

“No idea. Perhaps you’d better tell it to me in case there are enquiries.”

“Brennan—Max Brennan. Can you guess at my nationality?”

“I should have thought that you were English, or perhaps Colonial,” Mark ventured.

“God knows what I am. You shall judge for yourself. My mother was a Russian, and my grandfather an Armenian. I have in my veins the blood of the Slav, the Teuton, and the decadent Asiatic.”

“Then I congratulate you upon speaking English so perfectly. You have not even the trace of an accent.”

“I had, but I have lost it. You see, I was one of those who practically made their homes in England before the War, for a purpose. That’s all over. My Secret Service work now is done in other directions. I set myself a few years ago a great task, and in that task I have succeeded—a little too well to please Felix Dukane.”

“Secret Service work nowadays seems a trifle out of date,” Mark remarked doubtfully.

The sick man turned in his bed, and looked at his host fixedly.

“Who and what are you?” he demanded. “An American?”

“My name is Van Stratton,” Mark replied. “I am an American, as you say.”

“I think,” Brennan continued, “that the Atlantic must be the widest ocean in the universe. It seems to keep so many of you Americans in a state of not understanding. Can you not realise that there are other wars waged than those which are waged with the paraphernalia of destruction—wars underneath the surface of society, quite as devastating as any campaign that was ever launched, only with different weapons? Propaganda instead of cannon, bribery instead of poisoned gas. You understand?”

“I should have thought that you were exaggerating, but I understand,” Mark admitted.

“I have fought in those secondary wars all my life,” Brennan confided, a little wearily. “I ought to know, they wouldn’t even let me into the army. I was too valuable. They called me ‘The Little Ferret.’ There wasn’t much I couldn’t find out if I set my mind to it.”

“Are you sure you are not talking too much,” Mark warned him. “The doctor seems to think that you’re getting on very nicely, but you had a nasty knock, you know.”

“I’ll come to the point, then,” the other acquiesced, “although it is odd that my brain clears as I speak. What have you to do with Felix Dukane? How long have you known him?”

“A matter of twenty-four hours.”

The man on the bed was plainly intrigued.

“You speak the truth?” he demanded.

“Why not? I was introduced to Mr. Dukane and his daughter after luncheon at the Ritz, yesterday. An hour or so later the young lady stopped her automobile in the Mall and invited me to enter. She brought me to Norfolk Street, told me that she and her father were in trouble, and begged for my help.”

“This is interesting,” Brennan murmured. “Go on.”

“Dukane thought that he had killed you. The idea was that I should take your body and leave it in some remote place where it might appear that you had met with an accident during the fog.”

“That is all your acquaintance with or knowledge of the Dukanes?” Brennan persisted almost incredulously.

“Absolutely.”

He lay for a moment silent, with knitted brows.

“Can you explain then,” he went on, “why they should have appealed to you for help of so extraordinary a character?”

Mark reflected for a moment. The man on the bed was beginning to interest him. He was evidently leading up to something. He decided to tell the truth.

“I think,” he confided, “Miss Dukane realised that I admired her very much and that I was likely to do anything she asked.”

The sick man considered his reply thoughtfully.

“Yes,” he observed, “that is reasonable enough. Estelle Dukane had turned a great many heads—broken a great many hearts, one could say, if it weren’t that such things are out of date. For your own sake, young man, I hope that you are not serious.”

“Why do you hope that?” Mark demanded.

Brennan raised himself a little in the bed. His thin, shapely hands fell one upon the other as though to give weight to his words.

“Men and women,” he confided, “I have studied all my life. In each woman I have found something good, in each—even the best of them—a little bad, but never before have I known a woman—a girl, for she is scarcely more than that—with a stone in place of a heart. In appearance she is the beautiful image of her beautiful mother, who, although she was of Grecian birth, was a Parisienne at heart. Inside, she is her father over again. You have done me a kindness, young man. I would be doing you a greater if you believed me. Her eyes may promise you the things you desire, her lips may even hint at them, she may have moments of curious kindness, but never for one second will her heart beat faster for any man, never will the thrills of romance, the really beautiful things of life, take their place in her brain, as with other women when love comes. She is a schemer of her father’s type, body and soul.”

The man spoke almost fervently, and, when he had finished, closed his eyes as though exhausted. Mark, dogged and unbelieving, nevertheless felt the chill of his words.

“Well,” he muttered, “let that pass. Is there anything more you want to say to me?”

“Of course there is,” was the almost impatient response, as Brennan raised himself once more in the bed. “I have sent for you because in this last great enterprise of mine I have played a lone hand, and there is no one else in this country I could trust. I have to take a risk with someone. I am taking it with you.”

“Better get on with it then,” Mark begged. “I have to leave here in a few minutes.”

“The doctor speaks hopefully,” Brennan continued, “but I know something of surgery and anatomy. There are two things I fear—loss of memory or a long period of unconsciousness. Lest either of these should come to me, I have something to say to you. Are you listening?”

“Naturally,” Mark assured him.

“Yesterday, I gave Felix Dukane the surprise of his life. I told him of my successful enterprise. I told him of the amazing discovery I had made—a discovery which would shock all Europe and of the corresponding revelations which I was in a position to make. The fate of the world for the next twenty years depends not upon the League of Nations or the Peace Conference, or any of those old ladies’ meetings, but upon me—Max Brennan.”

Mark looked downwards at the man upon the bed a little doubtfully.

“Isn’t that going rather far?” he ventured.

“It is the plain, unvarnished truth,” Brennan insisted. “A dozen words from me, and the proof, mark you—the proof which I hold—and either the war cloud would once more roll over Europe or Felix Dukane would face black ruin. He knows it. He never even for a second doubted my word. When I sought my interview, I meant to sell to him, and the little group who are most interested, the information I have collected, for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. That was my price. They would have given it to me, I am sure, but in his anger, Dukane lost control of himself. I spoke a word he hates. He became for the moment a madman. He struck me with that loaded stick before I was prepared—and here I am.”

“With secret information worth a fortune still in your possession,” Mark observed, with the tolerant good nature of one humouring the sick.

“I said that I went to Dukane prepared to sell the result of my labours for two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,” the man on the bed declared feverishly. “It is worth countless millions. It is worth the future history of a nation. It concerns matters at which no one could guess. It reveals the most gigantic intrigue in all history—an intrigue at the nature of which no human being has ever guessed. If I die or lose my memory, I shall make you my heir. If I do not, for the present, I keep my secret.”

Mark looked at his companion with some anxiety. During the last few minutes, he had grown even paler, and his words were coming with more difficulty.

“See here,” he advised, “you had better quit talking now. I’ll come in again later on.”

Brennan rolled up one sleeve of the pyjamas he was wearing. Above his elbow was a plain, heavy band of iron in the form of a bracelet with a flat top. He touched a spring, and the latter rolled back. Inside was a key.

“This,” he confided, speaking now with almost unnatural restraint, “is the key of the Safe number 323, in the Chancery Lane Deposit Company. Kindly oblige me by taking possession of it. If I lose my memory or die, fetch my papers, read them, realise that I have told you the truth, and act as you will.”

There was a knock at the door. Mark unfastened it, and the nurse entered.

“I think,” she decided, with a glance towards the bed, “that our patient has perhaps talked long enough.”

“Quite right,” Mark agreed, as he prepared to leave the room.

The nurse bent over the invalid, felt his pulse and poured out a glass of medicine.

“I’m all right,” the sick man murmured, with a sigh of relief. “To be tired is nothing, I have no longer the great fear.”