Читать книгу The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Audrey Packe’s startled eyes shone as though the king himself had spoken to her. Perhaps, as a matter of fact, the simile was not so far exaggerated for, although they had not as yet exchanged a single sentence, Roger Ferrison, during the last week, had certainly been the ruler of her little region of troubled thoughts.

“I suppose we are waiting for the usual Number Thirty-three?”

She recovered herself before he had ceased to wonder at the sudden change which that illuminating smile had made in her pleasant but somehow negative appearance.

“The usual Number Thirty-three,” she assented shyly. “You go by it too?”

“It depends on my morning’s work,” he explained, his eyes searching amongst the tangled mass of vehicles. “Sometimes, if I am going direct to the City, where my office is, I take the Underground.”

There was a brief silence. She racked her brain for something to say. She was terrified lest he might pass on and forget her.

“How do you like it at Palace Crescent, Mr. Ferrison?” she enquired.

He shifted his rather large bag from one hand to the other and appeared to reflect. There were shrewd and capable lines to be traced in his face but he also possessed the stolid air of one who never replies to any question in a hurry.

“Well, I have scarcely made up my mind yet,” he confided. “Don’t know that I either like it or dislike it, so far. I suppose it is the same as most boarding houses. One must live somewhere if one has not a home, and it is cheaper anyway than digs.”

“If one has not a home,” she repeated, with an almost unnoticeable sigh.

The bus drew up at the corner. Ferrison was evidently a young man of good manners, for he stood on one side and helped her in. There happened to be plenty of room and, after he had disposed of his bag, he seated himself beside her.

“Where do you work?” he enquired.

“At Mallory’s Stores.”

He showed some interest.

“That’s queer,” he reflected. “I’m going there this morning.”

“You don’t work there?”

He shook his head.

“Wish I did, if the job was good enough. I want to try and see one of the buyers. Don’t suppose I shall have any luck, though. I haven’t had any up till now.”

He was gazing rather moodily at his carefully arranged shoelace. She immediately felt a passionate but quite illogical wish to help him. She was an observant young woman and she had noticed that although he was neatly dressed, his trousers shone in places at the seams, his shoes had been several times mended, his linen, though clean, was of cheap quality and the cuffs of his shirt were frayed. There were things, too, connected with his deportment at Palace Crescent which indicated poverty. The small uncomfortable table at which he sat was the worst in the room. His carafe of water was significant. He had not, up till the present, at any rate, indulged in the coffee served after meals at a small extra cost. She had noticed, too, that when he had been invited to the cinema by Flora Quayne, he had made no change in his toilet, and there had been a rumour in the lounge that he had at first refused the invitation. Somehow, Audrey had it in her mind that he must be desperately poor.

“What do you sell?” she asked.

“A new form of carpet and general cleaner,” he told her. “The best in the world, if only one could get hold of the right man who would give one time to explain it. The trouble is that there are too many sweepers on the market and too many people trying to sell them. The majority of them are nearly as good as mine, but not quite.”

Like most young people talking about themselves and their own affairs, he was becoming somewhat engrossed. She stole a careful glance at him. Yes, he was pleasant-looking enough—tall and strong too—but his eyes were tired and his lips had an anxious turn.

“You see,” he went on, “we are manufacturing in such a small way. My friend and I own the patent for our machine. We invented it ourselves and we have sunk all our capital, buying a few oddments of machinery and manufacturing as many as we dared. It is very hard to quote a price against these fellows who are turning them out by the thousand. It is very hard too,” he concluded, with a sigh, “to get any one to give our machine even a trial. I have been to your place five times already without having been able to see the buyer of the department.”

“You are not the only one,” she assured him. “Mr. Simpkins is a very difficult man—very busy too.”

“What do you know about him?” he asked, with a questioning glance.

“I am in the household goods department,” she confided. “I started in the office but my typing was not very good—I had to teach myself—and they paid me scarcely anything. I found that their saleswomen earned much more than I did, so I got them to move me as soon as there was a vacancy.”

“Know anything about house-cleaning machines?”

“Just a little,” she acknowledged. “But it is not really my department. I just pass customers on to the young men who look after it. I’m sure yours is wonderful, though,” she added, after a moment’s hesitation. “Perhaps you will show it to me one day.”

“You would be the first person who has let me show it to them for nearly a week,” he declared bitterly. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll come up and clean your room at Palace Crescent as it has never been cleaned before.”

She laughed.

“I can fancy Mrs. Dewar’s face, if you suggested such a thing!”

“I shouldn’t do it when you were there, of course. I didn’t catch your name the other evening. May I know it, please? Mine is Roger Ferrison.”

“Mine is Audrey Packe,” she told him.

He nodded without any great show of interest.

“I remember,” he said. “Mrs. Dewar was very punctilious about introductions when I first came but I’m afraid that I didn’t listen very carefully. There were so many people. I had no idea. I thought it was quite a small place. It seemed cheap and that was what attracted me.”

“I suppose that’s what attracts most of us,” she observed dolefully. “There are one or two, though, who seem to have plenty of money. Flora Quayne, the lame girl, for instance. She dresses beautifully, as I dare say you have noticed, goes to the theatre or cinema whenever she likes, and has a private car of her own. Don’t you think she is terribly attractive?”

“She is very beautiful,” he admitted. “She is so far outside any world I have known anything about,” he went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “that I find her a little difficult to understand. I wonder how her lameness came about?”

“They say that either her nurse or her mother didn’t look after her properly when she was young and she had an accident. No one knows the truth about it or the real story of why she lives at Palace Crescent, for that matter. Then, so far as regards money, there are Mr. Luke and Mr. Bernascon, and Mr. and Mrs. Padgham. I can’t think what they stay there for. There’s no allowance made for meals if you are not in and I see them going out once or twice every week.”

“Practical young person, aren’t you?” he remarked, with a smile. “Luke is that fellow who sits at Mrs. Dewar’s table, isn’t he? Kind of star boarder, I should think. What does he do, I wonder?”

She shook her head.

“Nobody knows. That’s one of the queer things about us all at Palace Crescent. I have stayed at one or two boarding houses before and perhaps that’s why I notice it. Here no one ever mentions their business, whatever it is. Freda Medlincott, the girl who is looking for a place on the stage, is the only exception. Every one else we have more or less had to guess at. Sometimes it seems to me quite mysterious.”

“Could there be anything mysterious about Palace Crescent?” he asked, with a queer little smile. “We all of us, except Miss Quayne, perhaps, seem such ordinary people.”

The girl by his side looked out of the bus and wondered. Mr. Luke, their fellow boarder, of whom they had been talking, brought by the exigencies of the traffic to a standstill in his high-powered car within a few feet of the omnibus, glanced carelessly through the window and recognised the young man and the girl. He smiled slightly and raised his hat. Perhaps he too wondered.

Mr. David Gedge, one of the most esteemed floor managers in the great firm of Mallory, watched with an approving smile the completion of an interesting sale in his own department by one of his favourite assistants, and stopped to address a word of congratulation to her.

“You are looking very cheerful this morning, Miss Packe,” he remarked.

“We have been busy,” the girl replied, “and I like work.”

“I wish there were more like you,” the manager grumbled.

He paused with his hands behind his back to survey the crowded room. A young man carrying a heavy bag came round the corner and, catching Audrey’s eye, ventured upon a smile of recognition. She nodded to him brightly.

“Any better luck to-day, Mr. Ferrison?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Same as usual,” he answered. “No openings.”

The floor manager suddenly ceased his inspection of the room and glanced at the young man, who had paused before the counter. Audrey Packe took her courage into her hands. After all, David Gedge had been one of her father’s friends and it was he, in fact, who was responsible for her presence there.

“Mr. Gedge,” she said timidly, “this is Mr. Ferrison, a friend of mine. He has the most wonderful house-cleaning machine in the world. He invented it himself, but he can never get to see Mr. Simpkins. It seems a pity,” she added, “because we often get complaints of some of those we stock.”

Mr. Gedge frowned slightly but not seriously. This sort of thing was against the rules but he was in a gracious humour. He nodded to the young man.

“I am afraid Mr. Simpkins is a very busy person,” he observed.

“It seems so, sir,” was the doleful reply. “I come regularly on his days and I am generally the first arrival, but I have never been able to see him yet.”

“What is the name of your firm?”

Ferrison produced a card.

“We have not been very long established,” he admitted frankly. “Just another fellow and I and a few workmen. If you would allow me, sir, I sha’n’t be in any one’s way here.”

The young man certainly knew how to make the most of an opportunity. The avenue in front of the counter, behind which Audrey Packe was standing, happened for the moment to be almost deserted and along the middle of it, in very little more time than it took to open the bag, a curious affair which looked like a deformed steam roller, throwing out long arms in every direction, was hard at work with a musical but businesslike purr. Every moment a circular protuberance at the back of the handle, which the young man held, was increasing in size.

“God bless my soul!” Mr. Gedge exclaimed, watching with fascinated eyes.

“Your floors look clean enough, but they needed that,” the manipulator of this strange apparatus remarked.

“But where do the dust and débris go to?” Mr. Gedge enquired, adjusting his pince-nez.

“Into this contrivance at the back,” the young man pointed out. “That’s the patent—the chief part of it, anyway.”

He touched a spring and the whole affair seemed to collapse in his hand. He thrust it back into the bag. Mr. Gedge examined the floor which had been traversed and removed his glasses.

“Come with me, young man,” he invited, taking him by the arm. “I will take you round to either Mr. Simpkins or one of the managers.”

Audrey Packe watched the two disappearing figures. She was scarcely disappointed that the young man, talking so eagerly to his companion, seemed to have forgotten to throw even a glance in her direction. She was basking in one of the rare but poignant pleasures of life. She had drawn heavily upon her small stock of courage, she had said the right word at the right time, and she had helped the person who, at that particular moment, meant more to her than any one else in the world.