Читать книгу Up the Ladder of Gold - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 11

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Warren Rand’s next visitor was a very different affair. She entered joyously, with a waft of many perfumes, and the trill of her laughter was ringing through the room from the moment of her appearance. She stood on the other side of Warren Rand’s desk and looked at him provocatively. He motioned her sternly to a chair.

“Young lady,” he said, “you were told not to come here in Colonel Tellesom’s absence except in cases of emergency.”

“The emergency is here,” she replied. “I have quarrelled with Felix Behrling. I knew him first at Berlin and Vienna, but he neglects me all the time now for Chloe. It is no longer possible to make a partie à trois.”

“You were very foolish to quarrel with him,” Warren Rand declared. “That means, I suppose, that you can bring us no more information. No information, no pay, you know.”

“Oh, la, la!” the young lady exclaimed, crossing her legs and inspecting with entire lack of concern the rib of a green silk garter. “Money is not so difficult. All men are not so hard with us as you, Mr. Warren Rand.”

She laughed at him, with all the invitation of her wicked little soul shining in her eyes, found him unbending, and made a grimace.

“Ah, well,” she sighed, opening her vanity case and gazing into a mirror, “I must be getting ugly, I suppose.”

“May I enquire,” he ventured, “whether your coming here was for the purpose of completing your toilette?”

“What a man!” she exclaimed. “I bring great information. I shall surprise you.”

“Perhaps you will; perhaps not.”

“Felix Behrling has left London,” she announced.

“For the South of France,” Warren Rand added. “He arrived there the day before yesterday. He is staying at the Hotel du Cap d’Antibes.”

She closed her vanity case with a snap. An unbecoming frown seemed to take the sparkle from her face.

“Why do you employ me at all?” she demanded irritably. “Why did you send your beau garçon Charles Tellesom out to dine with me, and dance with me, and whisper nonsense in my ear? Of what use am I to you? You appear to know most things already.”

“One always hopes,” he remarked, looking across at her keenly, “that you may bring some information really worth having. The few hundreds you have earned already are only trifles. Felix Behrling has evidently forsaken you for Chloe, especially as I hear that he has taken her with him. I wonder that you don’t seriously try to earn the diamonds which I understand are your favourite stone.”

She fidgeted a little in her chair. A graver expression had crept into her baby face. Warren Rand, watching her closely, recognised the unmistakable light of fear in the depths of her beringed eyes. Her chair was close to the desk, but she leaned forward.

“There is something I could tell you,” she confessed, “but I am afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Felix Behrling.”

“How is he likely to find out? Words that are spoken in this room are spoken as though in the grave.”

“One never satisfies oneself entirely about Felix,” she said uneasily. “There are many times when he seems as he was the other night—a great, overgrown schoolboy, loving the wine and the girls and the gay life—and there are other times, just once or twice when I have seen a cruel look in his eyes. When we quarrelled finally, when I told him that I would go no more out with him and Chloe to be neglected, he was terrible, and he didn’t know, he didn’t know the secret I am carrying with me.”

“A strange person,” Warren Rand murmured.

She dabbed at her eyes.

“Something like hysteria came to me,” she went on. “I walked up and down the room and I shouted at him. If I had had a knife in my hand—still, what can one do against a man like that? Monsieur Rand, I confess it, the tears were streaming down my cheeks. I was shrieking abuse at him, and then, quite suddenly, it all went. I found myself growing cold inside. He was no longer Felix Behrling of the gay life. He was sitting quite still. He was as still, even as you—simply looking at me. I felt him asking questions of himself—asking himself, ‘how much does she know? Is it safe to allow her to live?’ I swear, Monsieur Rand, that it was an inspired moment. I read those thoughts in his brain. Perhaps he’s still asking himself the same question. ‘How much does she know?’ And I know more than he would believe.”

“Very well,” Warren Rand said. “Tell me what you know. You have never found Tellesom, or any of my people, lacking in generosity. You will be paid according to the value of what you tell me. For certain information, I should pay very high indeed.”

The girl was agitated. She had worked herself up to this, but she was afraid. A little wisp of hair had stolen out from underneath her hat. The make-up upon her face was losing its pristine effectiveness. What did it matter? The man before her was hopeless. Studying her closely, Warren Rand decided that what he was about to hear would be the truth.

“Tell me,” he asked, “how do you know what sort of information I am in need of?”

“I know it from him,” she confided. “Before Chloe was his favourite, he talked more freely to me, and besides—this is where I learnt most—when he dozes, he talks. You will know if I speak the truth. I commence then. It is war he wants—war within five years. And peace, you. Am I right?”

“You are right,” Warren Rand acknowledged.

“He has a great new scheme,” she went on—“a new alliance. The face of Europe is to be changed once more and Germany is to regain everything she has lost—Why do I talk like this, I wonder?—You may succeed in forcing them to sign the Treaty—how do you call it?—of Disarmament. They sign it with the tongue in the cheek. The Peace Pact is to follow. The Peace Pact which is to make the nations a flock of lambs. Oh, la, la! How I talk—and I do not even know yet for what recompense I run this terrible risk.”

“If you tell me what I am hoping you will tell me,” he said softly, scribbling on a cheque form which he had taken from his drawer, “I shall give you this cheque. You see. It is for ten thousand pounds. They will cash it for you in the bank below at any moment. It is a million and a quarter francs.”

“You are a prince!” she gasped—a flood of joy suddenly dissipating all her fears. “With money like that, one can live. I shall tell you my own story—the story of Clara von Trugner—whom you know only as Lucie. When I have told it, you shall judge whether it is worth while. Come nearer. Every one of these words would mean a knife in the heart if those others were here.”

Warren Rand leaned across his desk and listened. When she had finished her little torrent of hoarse, breathless words, and had passed over to him the little scented pocketbook which she drew from a portion of her clothing, he handed her the cheque for ten thousand pounds.