Читать книгу The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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“There’s a note for you in the rack, Mr. Ferrison,” Joseph informed him on his arrival at Palace Crescent soon after six the following evening. “Don’t forget to hang your key up before you go upstairs.”

Roger Ferrison looked at him sharply.

“Why is it so important for me to hang my key up?” he demanded.

Joseph seemed a little taken aback.

“No offence, sir,” he apologised. “Only it is the rule of the house and the only one, it seems to me, that Madam sets much store by. The moment you come in, you hang your key up. Any one telephones or asks if Mr. Ferrison is in, just a glance at the board and we know if you are here. It is convenient in many ways.”

Ferrison drew his key from his pocket and hung it on the hook marked Number Sixteen.

“There you are then,” he pointed out. “Now, tell me—does every one obey Mrs. Dewar’s request?”

“I should say that the gentlemen are perfectly wonderful at it, sir. They have got into it now as a matter of habit. As soon as they enter the house up goes the key.”

“Really? And suppose they go out again in the evenings?”

“Simple matter to pull it down again, sir.”

“And when they come in at night—supposing they are a little tired or thinking about other things?”

“Makes no difference, sir. I must say they are most respectful in doing what they are asked. If by any chance any one is out late at a theatre, or a bit of supper afterwards, or anything of that sort, the key’s hanging up there before they go to bed.”

Roger remembered last night and felt that he was being watched. For some undefined reason he held his peace. He had been on the point of referring to those five empty hooks. Something in the man’s stealthy regard made him change his mind.

“Let’s hope I will fall into line with the rest,” he observed, “if ever I am out late. Must be a mistake about that note, Joseph. There’s not a soul knows my address except my partner and I have just left him.”

“The note is from Madam, sir.”

Roger felt a sudden sinking of the heart. If for any reason he had displeased any one? If he was to be turned out? If even a portion of the seven pounds was to be impounded? He strode to the letter rack, took down the note and read it rapidly. After all, it seemed harmless enough.

Dear Mr. Ferrison, (he read)

Would you be so kind as to step in and see me for a moment if you are home from business before six-thirty this evening.

Faithfully yours,

Hannah Dewar

“Is Mrs. Dewar in her room?” Ferrison asked.

“She is there and she will be there for another half an hour, sir,” the man confided. “At seven o’clock punctual she goes to dress. There never was such a lady for punctuality as Mrs. Dewar.”

Roger pushed open the baize door, walked down the passage, knocked at the door of the office and was immediately bidden to enter. Mrs. Dewar, sphinxlike as ever, was seated at her desk, adding up some figures in a small ledger before her. She set down the pen at his entrance.

“Won’t you sit down for a moment, Mr. Ferrison?” she invited.

“You won’t want me for long, will you, Mrs. Dewar?” he replied, seating himself gingerly, however, on the edge of one of the cane chairs. “Hope I have not been doing anything wrong—breaking any of the rules of the house or anything of that sort?”

“Certainly not, Mr. Ferrison. I am sure your behaviour has been everything that could be expected. What I am going to ask you is more in the light of a favour.”

Mrs. Dewar had not in the least the appearance of a woman to whom the asking of favours was a usual thing. If there was any change in her at all, it was a certain hesitancy which seemed to denote a distaste for the situation.

“You made the acquaintance last night,” she began, “of a young lady—Miss Quayne.”

“Yes,” Roger admitted briefly.

“Miss Quayne,” his landlady continued, “is a very valued client of this establishment. She is very much liked and respected by all my boarders. They have, perhaps, got into the habit of spoiling her. Miss Quayne’s affliction makes her very sensitive.”

“Well?”

“She invited you, Mr. Ferrison, to accompany her to the cinema, to-night I think it was, or to-morrow. This was meant as a compliment to you because you are the newest arrival here. You found yourself unable to accept her invitation.”

“I thought it was remarkably kind of her,” Roger acknowledged, “but I am not in a position to accept that sort of invitation at present.”

“Might one enquire why not?”

Roger’s eyebrows were slightly upraised.

“Isn’t that rather an unusual request?” he queried, “Need I do more than say that it does not suit me to accept any invitations for the present?”

The chill immoveability of the woman was disturbed. One might almost have said that there was a certain amount of pleading in her cold eyes as she turned towards him.

“Mr. Ferrison,” she explained, “the welfare of this house is largely dependent upon the caprices of Miss Quayne. I think that my other clients understand this. They do their best to humour her. She was very much upset at your refusal to go to the cinema.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Dewar,” he protested, “it is perfectly natural, surely, that I might find myself unable to go?”

“Why?”

He half rose to his feet, then he sat down again with a little laugh.

“Well, I’m not sure that it will not be better for me to answer that question,” he said, “although it seems to me rather an unusual one. Fact number one, then. I not only have not evening clothes fit to be seen in with a young lady at night, but I haven’t another suit of clothes to my name,—even my stock of linen is practically exhausted. You have seven pounds of mine, which is very nearly all I had left and, if I don’t succeed in what I am trying to do by the time my month is up, I shall be completely and utterly broke. I couldn’t pay for a programme for Miss Quayne. I couldn’t pay for a taxi. I couldn’t offer her supper afterwards, or any of the amenities which she would have a right to expect. How can I accept an invitation from a young lady under those conditions?”

“Is that all?” Mrs. Dewar asked, and he fancied that there was a note of relief in her tone.

“Of course it is all. Isn’t it enough?”

“It is a matter of pride, then,” she said. “I sympathise with you because I have been proud myself in the days when I had sufficient courage. Could I not appeal to you, Mr. Ferrison, to put your pride in your pocket for the sake of doing a good action? Miss Quayne is not quite like other young ladies.”

He deliberated for a moment, then he laughed again.

“The thing is not worth talking about,” he decided. “If, under all the circumstances, Miss Quayne desires my escort, I will go with pleasure—this once. I don’t mind what I do once but nothing would induce me to make a habit of it. Not that she is likely to ask me again, anyway.”

It appeared to him that the relief in his landlady’s face was immeasurable. He failed to understand it. It was another of the small mysteries which seemed to multiply in this place.

“Would you be so kind, Mr. Ferrison,” she begged, “as to step down to her room and tell her that you will be pleased to go? It is the next but one to this, on the same side. She has had rather a bad day. She suffers a good deal of pain sometimes. It wouldn’t take you a minute.”

He rose brusquely to his feet. He was looking forward with distaste to the whole enterprise.

“Very good,” he conceded. “I’ll do as you ask.”

He left the room, knocked at the second door on the left and was at once bidden to enter. His eyebrows were raised in surprise as he crossed the threshold. Here was an apartment utterly different to anything the mind could have conceived in connection with Palace Crescent. His feet sank into a beautiful Turkey rug of one of those faint Eastern shades something between mauve and blue. The silk curtains were of the same colour. There was Louis Quinze furniture in the room—genuine—two great bowls of flowers upon the table, a pile of books, a wood fire burning in the grate, although it was already May. Flora Quayne, who had been lying upon a couch, sat up and held out her hands.

“How sweet of you to come and see me, Mr. Ferrison!” she exclaimed. “It means you have changed your mind about the cinema, doesn’t it? Or the opera—or the theatre—anything you like. I have so many kind friends—they send me boxes for everything. Do sit down there. It is a real man’s chair. Unless you like to go on holding my hands—I don’t mind.”

He backed away a little awkwardly—all the more so because he fancied her eyes were inviting him to remain where he was. He sank into the depths of a very comfortable easy-chair.

“If it really gives you any pleasure, Miss Quayne,” he said, “I would love to go to the cinema with you. Frankly, I refused because this is the only suit of clothes I possess in the world and I shall have to treat you to my last collar. I cannot send you flowers. I can do no more than pay your taxi and buy your programme. As for supper afterwards, that’s out of the question. I should have accepted your invitation with pleasure if I had been able to treat you properly in these ways.”

She laughed softly.

“What an idiot you are,” she crooned. “As though they mattered, anyhow! I am not poor, but it is not to my credit. The money I have has been left or given to me. Don’t think of that again, please.”

“All right,” he muttered, none too graciously. “On those conditions I shall be delighted.”

“I cannot offer to buy you a suit of clothes,” she went on, “but those you have look very nice. I shall be ready half an hour after dinner this evening and please, Mr. Ferrison, there will be no expenses at all. As I dare say you don’t know, I own a car, so no taxicab will be necessary. My maid always sees me into the theatre or wherever I go, so I never have to look about for silver. I am terribly sorry, of course,” she concluded, “to hear that you are going through a bad time, but it doesn’t make the faintest particle of difference.”

He looked at her, glanced round the room and looked back at her again. There was luxury everywhere—in the drooping roses, a great bunch of orchids in the background, the books and magazines, the little jewelled knickknacks on her table. He felt a sudden admiration for her restraint. He was perfectly certain that it was owing to her sense of the fitness of things that she came in to dinner so simply dressed and without jewellery.

“Well,” she remarked, with an amused little smile, “you seem to be rather taking stock of me.”

“Perhaps in a way I was,” he admitted. “I was sorry, by the way, to hear from Mrs. Dewar that you were not well.”

“I am never well,” she told him, “when I don’t get my own way. Look at those lines under my eyes. They are there just because I was angry. When I come into dinner, you will see nothing of them. Don’t you feel a magician?”

The words of common sense were upon his lips but he suddenly remembered her infirmity. She must be young, too, he decided.

“I am only too glad,” he said, “that Mrs. Dewar explained matters to me. If it gives you any pleasure to have me take you out to-night, I shall be delighted.”

“You would not care to come and sit at my table for dinner, I suppose?” she invited.

“Do you mind if I don’t?” he begged. “I have my own way of doing things here and I don’t want to interfere with them. In a few months’ time things may be different and then I’ll take you to the Ritz and give you the best dinner I can order and take you to any show you like afterwards.”

“I should love that,” she told him, “but I should be just as glad to be hostess. I won’t press you about dinner to-night. We will meet in the lounge afterwards.”

At nine o’clock she escaped from the little circle of men, who seemed always to surround her after dinner, and came across to him. He felt himself for the moment touched by the obvious efforts at simplicity which her toilette betrayed. She was wearing a very plain black dress of some material which looked to him like velvet, and a small hat to match. The only ornament was a diamond clasp with which it was fastened. She handed him opera glasses and her bag.

“Now for our expedition,” she exclaimed gaily. “Of course, you know you have all sorts of things to do for me. I hope you won’t mind. I have to be carried down these steps. That’s the reason Mr. Luke will never take me out.”

“If I were a young Goliath like Mr. Ferrison,” Mr. Luke said, “there is nothing I should glory in so much as showing you my strength.”

They made their way into the hall. The maid, who was fussing round, gave him a hint or two and he carried her like a child through the door, down the steps and into the waiting limousine. She sank into her corner with a sigh of pleasure.

“You held me as though I were a bag of feathers,” she laughed.

“You can’t pretend that you are much of a weight, can you?”

She pouted a little.

“I have known men quite as strong as you who have been out of breath when they set me down. Marie,” she went on, speaking to her maid, “you will ride with George in front to the Carlton Picture House and show Mr. Ferrison how to help me. Then you can go and see your sister, if you like, but be back at twelve o’clock.”

“Very good, Madam.”

She held his hand all the way to the theatre. Her fingers felt to him hot and feverish.

“You must not think,” she said, “that because I need so many attentions I am a helpless invalid. I am really nothing of the kind. My leg is not withered or anything of that sort. This lameness of mine is simply the result of an accident. Once or twice I have almost been able to walk alone. A doctor in Vienna is sending me a masseuse next month and she and my London man are hoping to make a tremendous difference.”

“I am very glad,” he assured her. “I wish that you could be cured altogether. I hope that you will be some day.”

“I think I shall be,” she confided. “I am not ambitious for great things. I just want to live my life as other women live theirs. They all say there is no reason why I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t know much about it,” he admitted, “but I can’t imagine why you shouldn’t.”

“If I marry the sort of man that I should like to marry,” she said, “I hope that we shall live in Italy. I do need more warmth and a drier climate; then I should be quite all right.”

“Would it be awfully impertinent of me if I asked you why on earth you stay at Palace Crescent?”

She was silent for a moment.

“I have known Mrs. Dewar all my life,” she confided. “She has had great misfortunes. I fancy that my being there helps a little. She does a great deal for me too—it is not all one-sided—and my rooms are very nice. You must come and look at them again when you are not in such a hurry. Do you mind carrying my small bag when we get to the theatre? You will find any quantity of small silver in there which you must use as it is necessary. Tell me, Mr. Ferrison,” she went on, changing the conversation suddenly, “are you engaged—perhaps even married or anything of that sort? Have you any very serious ties?”

He shook his head.

“I haven’t had much time to think of that sort of thing,” he said. “My family history is not worth knowing. My father was a furniture manufacturer in the Midlands, but the war and the aftermath of the war ruined his business and we all had to do what we could for ourselves. Fortunately I have no one dependent upon me. I went out to Canada. Stuck it for two years, but I couldn’t make a living. Then I came back and I’ve settled down to see if I can do anything in London. It doesn’t seem easy, though. My only brother is in the Civil Service in India and doing moderately well. My only sister married a rich man, thank heavens. I see her sometimes but she is absorbed in her home and her children. One gets like that, you know.”

“So you are really quite alone?”

“Absolutely and entirely, and likely to be. Sometimes I think I’ll have to chuck it all and go back to Canada. It is a man’s life there, at any rate.”

Her fingers gripped his tightly.

“You must not do anything of the sort,” she insisted. “You must just stay here where you are. Perhaps not for long. I never make promises. I tire of people so easily. I don’t think I should tire of you, though. I am like all partially disabled and weakly people. I adore strength. The way you lifted me! Well, I’d better not talk about it,” she broke off, with a little laugh. “I might make you shy. You are shy, I believe, aren’t you?”

“I am not used to young people or women or social stunts of any sort, if that’s what you mean,” he confessed. “You see Canada takes that out of you pretty well.”

“What made you come to Palace Crescent?” she asked abruptly.

“An advertisement in the Weekly Despatch,” he answered. “In a way, I would rather have had a room than a boarding house, because I am not used to people but, to be quite frank,” he admitted, a gleam of humour in his eyes, “I could not get enough to eat anywhere except at a boarding house. Food is awfully dear when you have to buy only enough for one, and a decent room takes up quite a lot of money.”

“I wonder why you chose Palace Crescent,” she meditated. “Anyhow, I’m glad you did. I’ll tell Mrs. Dewar that you are to be fed up.”

“For heaven’s sake, don’t do anything of the sort,” he begged. “Besides, for what they charge, I think it’s wonderful. I have not been so well looked after for a long time.”

“You are nice looking, you know,” she said suddenly.

“Don’t be absurd,” he protested. “My hands are hard and rough. My skin is baked dry with the sun.”

“Your hands are a man’s hands, anyhow,” she interrupted, “and I like that lean, hard face of yours. You won’t let me fall in love with you, will you, Mr. Roger Ferrison?”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” he assured her.

“I don’t know,” she sighed. “I am very susceptible.... Isn’t it absurd that we are there already?”

This time there was no carrying. With Roger on one side and the maid on the other, she limped gracefully across the pavement, down the corridor and into the box. With a little sigh of content she established herself in an easy-chair and made Roger draw his seat up to her side.

“There is only rubbish going on now,” she explained. “The real thing starts in ten minutes. Sit close to me and tell me some nice things. Tell me how you are going to stop my falling in love with you if I want to.”

“By not falling in love with you,” he answered.

Her silence chilled him. He suddenly felt that he was a boor. He ought to have remembered that she was ultra-sensitive. He laughed awkwardly.

“Make allowances for me, please,” he begged. “I am a rough man of the woods. I have scarcely a penny in the world and I may have to go out and earn my labourer’s wage at any moment. Being with you here in surroundings like this makes me feel—well, like a bull in a china shop. You will have to forgive me for everything I say that is wrong and remember only that I am terribly grateful to you for being so sweet to me and,” he went on, with a sudden influx of courage, “in that gown and hat I think you look simply adorable.”

She leaned towards him and slipped her fingers in his.

“You have said exactly the right thing,” she whispered.

There was very nearly another outburst about his steady refusal to go anywhere, even to a grillroom, for supper, but on the whole the evening passed without any of the threatened storms. The chauffeur took the key and opened the door of the boarding house and Roger carried her up. He would have taken her into the lounge but she tugged at his neck.

“Don’t go there,” she insisted. “There are people sitting up. You must carry me to my room.”

He obeyed. The lights were turned on there and a wood fire had been made up. From the adjoining room, the door of which was open, there came the pleasant sound of the bath being filled and the odour of bath salts. In front of the fire, also, on a small table, was set a silver plate of sandwiches, a small bottle of champagne in a bucket, whisky and a syphon. She threw off her hat and made him draw up her couch to the table.

“You are lucky to-night,” she told him. “If it had been Marie’s night out, you would have had to help me with my frock. As it is, she will be back in a quarter of an hour or so. Do help yourself to sandwiches and—which do you prefer—wine or whisky? I thought so,” she went on, as he chose the latter without hesitation. “Please open the champagne for me then and help yourself.”

None too skilfully, he did as he was bidden. Her ease and graciousness, however, did much towards putting him at his ease. She was seated upright on the sofa at the other side of the small table and there was amusement, as well as something which seemed to be affection, in her beautiful eyes as she watched him.

“I believe,” she laughed, “that this is the first time you have ever had supper alone with a girl in her own room.”

“I am quite sure it is,” he answered emphatically. “In Canada we had a man’s mess—never saw the women except an odd waitress now and then.”

“Were they very attractive, the waitresses?” she asked.

“One never looked at them,” he replied. “The work and the outdoor life seemed to reduce one to a sort of coma. All one thought of was going to sleep at the end of the day.”

“Well, I’m glad I have no rivals across the sea, then,” she smiled. “Would you be very sweet, please, and go and turn my bath off? Marie will be here in a few minutes but that may be too late.”

He rose to his feet impetuously, nearly upsetting the small table, made his way across the room with its various treasures, into a bathroom such as he had never seen before in his life. The bath itself, which was within a few inches of running over, was sunken and fashioned of marble which matched the colour of the hangings. Indefinable and nebulous garments were laid out a short distance away. He turned off the tap and hurried back. She looked at him with an amused smile.

“Did you like my bathroom?” she asked.

“Looks like something out of a fairy tale,” he answered.

“You didn’t look about you too much, I hope?”

“I saw—a few things,” he confessed, “and I dipped my fingers in the water—the perfume was so wonderful.”

“Silly! Give me some more wine, please.”

He obeyed. She took one of his hands and stroked the long brown fingers.

“Yes, your hands are hard,” she meditated, “and your nails are shocking. Never mind. I’ll manicure them one day.”

“It wouldn’t be worth while,” he assured her. “I do several hours’ carpentering every day and I should only break my nails.”

“I like your fingers, anyway,” she went on. “They are so strong. I am like all people who have been invalids—I don’t consider myself an invalid any longer because my leg is so much better—I adore strength. I suppose we are all the same—it is something to cling to.... There, if you have finished your sandwiches, take a cigarette and give me one. Light it for me if you will.”

He performed his task with some trepidation. She leaned back upon the couch.

“Do you know,” she confided, “that you are the first of Mrs. Dewar’s boarders—except Mr. Luke, and he only once—who has seen my rooms? What do you think of them?”

“They seem to me just like rooms out of a palace,” he told her. “One cannot imagine finding anything of the sort in a place like this.”

“They were prepared specially for me, of course,” she told him. “Do you like Palace Crescent, Mr. Roger?”

“I don’t know yet. I haven’t been here long enough. The place seems to me more like a puzzlebox than anything. All those funny people and—then you.”

“Do you find the people funny?”

“Oh, no funnier, I dare say, than they find me. Mrs. Dewar is certainly unusual, though, isn’t she?”

The girl knocked the ash from her cigarette.

“Yes, she is unusual,” she admitted. “Will you come with me to the cinema next time I ask you, Mr. Ferrison?”

If she expected a prompt acquiescence she was disappointed. There was a frown upon his face.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I don’t think so. What I am hoping is that very soon I may be able to ask you to come with me and to take you out wherever you like to go afterwards. If I can do that, then I will accept your next invitation afterwards.”

“How stupid you are,” she complained. “I am rich. These things mean nothing to me. Why am I not allowed to find pleasure by entertaining a friend—even if he happens to be a man?”

“You cannot call me a friend yet. We have known one another less than twenty-four hours.”

She patted his hand.

“Don’t be so crude,” she scolded. “However, perhaps I like it better than if you made speeches about having known me all your life, and all through the lives before, and all that sort of thing. I am a sentimentalist, Mr. Ferrison, and you are the most matter-of-fact young man I ever knew in my life. Perhaps that’s why I like you, why I think that some day I may like you very much indeed. Is that Marie moving about in the bathroom?”

He caught a glimpse of her cap.

“It is,” he assented. “I must go.”

“Carry me there first, please,” she insisted.

He looked at her sticks.

“Aren’t you rather a fraud?” he smiled. “You could get there quite well with one stick and my arm.”

She made a grimace.

“Don’t be boorish! I like to be carried and I am always spoilt. I have never found any one so strong as you and I love it. If you say another word, I shall make you carry me round the room half-a-dozen times.”

He picked her up. She nestled closely to him, her arms wound around his neck.

“How far are you going to take me?”

“Straight to the bathroom.”

“Do you really find me heavy?”

“No. Why?”

“Your arm seems to be shaking.”

“That’s because I’m not used to this sort of thing,” he answered gruffly.

He paused on the threshold of the bathroom.

“Shall I put you down here?”

“In a moment,” she sighed. “Good night.”

She lifted her lips in the most natural way possible. He kissed her awkwardly, set her down and handed her sticks to the maid. Then he swung round. She called out to him mockingly.

“Are you running from temptation?”

He made no attempt at a reply. The atmosphere of the bathroom, he decided, must have been overheated for, as he passed along the passage, he found his forehead and his hands were wet.