Читать книгу The Strange Boarders of Palace Crescent - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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It was the avowed ambition of Mrs. Dewar’s professional life, though secretly she took not the slightest interest in the social inclinations of her clientele, to make the dinners at the boarding house over which she presided what she called sociable affairs. For that purpose, although she sat at the head of a long table to which the ordinary newcomer was invited upon his or her arrival, she encouraged the majority of her boarders to make up parties amongst themselves and occupy small tables which were distributed around the room. Most of her visitors, after the first few days, were glad enough to do so, but amongst those who remained faithful to the company of their hostess were Mr. Luke, Miss Freda Medlincott—the fair-haired, voluble young lady who was hoping for a position upon the stage and Mr. Reginald Barstowe, the dark-haired, taciturn young man who spent a good deal of time hanging around Flora Quayne’s chair and who was supposed to have something to do with banking. These, with a Colonel Dennett, a retired Indian Army man who seldom spoke a word to any one and drank a great deal of water with his meals, were, just at the moment of Roger Ferrison’s arrival, the only occupants of what might have been termed the head table.

“So Mr. Ferrison has found a companion already,” Freda Medlincott remarked, motioning with her head towards the small table at which the inventor of the automatic cleaner was seated amicably with Audrey Packe as his vis-à-vis. “I wonder when those two found time to make friends? I have never seen him speak a word to any one since he has been here, except Miss Quayne.”

Mrs. Dewar glanced coldly at her neighbour.

“Mr. Ferrison has done what I wish every one who comes here to do,” she confided. “He has found an agreeable companion and devoted himself to her entertainment. I am always flattered when any of you choose to remain with me, but I never wish any one to feel the slightest compunction about the matter. As regards Miss Quayne, she has always made it a condition that she have a table to herself and I don’t think that she would be inclined to leave it or to share it.”

“No one has ever invited me to desert,” Miss Medlincott observed, with a self-pitying sigh and a glance across at her vis-à-vis. “I sometimes think that those tables against the wall for two look very cosy.”

If it was a challenge, Mr. Luke ignored it. He had a singular habit of appearing, when he chose, absolutely detached from any conversation.

“I accept your continued presence here, my dear Miss Medlincott, as a great compliment,” Mrs. Dewar pronounced. “As to your not having been asked to desert, I am afraid that I cannot accept that. It was only the other evening I heard Mr. and Mrs. Padgham begging you to join them.”

Freda Medlincott looked across the room to where a middle-aged man—the only one in the room except Colonel Dennett, Mr. Luke and Reginald Barstowe to wear a dinner coat—was seated opposite his good-looking wife.

“Mr. Padgham always terrifies me,” she confessed. “I am perfectly certain that he has a terrible past. The person whom I would really like to see here would be an opulent and susceptible theatrical manager or writer of plays.”

“How do you know that I don’t write plays?” Mr. Luke asked from across the table.

The girl regarded him speculatively. Her dark eyes, in contrast to her golden hair, were rather effective. The longer she looked, the more bright with interest they became.

“To tell you the truth,” she observed, “it never entered my head. Flora Quayne always declares that there is an element of mystery about you. You may be a great writer. Two of the best plays in the West End lately have been written anonymously.”

He looked at her with cold grey eyes. His tone remained expressionless.

“You see what risks you have run,” he pointed out, “in taking so little notice of me.”

“If you are as clever as I believe you are,” she rejoined languishingly, “you will realise why I have refused at least half-a-dozen invitations to leave this table.”

“You get served sooner here,” Reginald Barstowe, the young man connected with money, ventured, entering into the conversation for the first time.

“That is a very unkind remark,” Freda Medlincott declared. “No one has ever suggested before that I was greedy.”

“Besides,” Mrs. Dewar put in equably, “it is not true. It is part of my system to maintain a perfect equality in such matters. Every table in the room is served first in rotation.”

“So that if I were really greedy,” the girl pointed out, “I would change my table every night. What nonsense we do talk,” she went on more seriously. “A change of place would not appeal to me in the least. The only thing that I do sometimes wish—”

“Is it anything we can alter, Miss Medlincott?” her hostess enquired.

Freda Medlincott, who had been glancing at the ceiling with a rapt expression, shook her head slowly.

“It was a stupid thing to say,” she confessed, “but then, I am an imaginative person.”

“And that wish?” Mr. Luke ventured.

“I would like to feel that Palace Crescent was a less obvious sort of place—that we were not all of us exactly what we seem to be.”

“I don’t think we are,” Colonel Dennett mumbled. “Humbugs and hypocrites, most of the world that I come across. I expect we are about the same as the others.”

“But I mean something romantic,” the girl explained. “That Mr. Luke here was perhaps, as he has suggested, a well-known author living here incognito. That Reginald Barstowe, who has just been so rude to me, was a famous criminal, perhaps even a murderer. That Colonel Dennett was in the Army Secret Service, living here in disguise. That Mr. Padgham was as wicked as he sometimes looks. That Flora Quayne, with her sensitive quivering mouth and those beautiful eyes, was a sort of Louise de la Vallière in disguise. That all of you were utterly different. That Palace Crescent was the sort of place where all sorts of tragedies were being hatched and developed.”

“Uncomfortable,” Mr. Luke criticised tonelessly.

“Might be true about some of us,” Reginald Barstowe commented. “Miss Quayne, if it were not for her strange way of looking at you sometimes and her stand-offish manners, could be quite as fascinating as the heroine of any historical romance I ever read.”

Mrs. Dewar’s eyes were fixed upon the closed curtains at the other end of the room. They were a little vaguer than usual. Otherwise her face had not in any way relaxed.

“So you think,” she observed, “that we are all commonplace people and that our lives are as humdrum as they seem.”

“How are we going to get away from it?” Freda Medlincott demanded. “We know all about the Colonel from the army books of reference. We know that Mr. Padgham, instead of being concerned in a life of crime, is a solicitor down at Finsbury, has made plenty of money and only practises occasionally. We should only have to telephone the manager of the bank where Mr. Barstowe pretends to work and there is no doubt that we should get an excellent reference about him. We know that Miss Packe is employed at Mallory’s and we know, since just before dinner was served, that Mr. Ferrison is engaged in trying to sell some sort of a machine of his own invention. We know that Mr. Ollivant, the moody-looking gentleman who sits by himself and talks out loud whenever he reads the menu, was once a great financier and lost most of his money in the war. We know that Mr. Lashwood is a manufacturer of some sort in the far East End, and that the two Misses Clewes have come to die here, because they spent the first forty years of their lives in a country village. We do not know exactly what you do, Mr. Luke, except play golf and shoot with a syndicate. The fact is, that we know too much about one another. Books of reference, ‘Who’s Who’ and telephone directories have all brought us too close together.”

Mr. Luke sipped his wine thoughtfully.

“It seems a pity,” he remarked. “By-the-by, you have not mentioned Miss Quayne.”

“Poor Miss Quayne,” Freda Medlincott murmured. “It’s quite true that we none of us know anything definite about her, but I suppose I left her out because of her infirmity. She wouldn’t have much chance of getting into mischief, would she?”

“I don’t see why not,” Mrs. Dewar said calmly. “I think you are very wise to leave her out of your speculations but she is surely as much a possible heroine of romance as any one you have mentioned.”

“One of the greatest villains in sensational fiction,” Mr. Luke reminded them, “was a man with a club foot. Nowadays, with the kingdom of science to help, crime can be spun as it were from the easy-chair. Then, so far as romance is concerned, if the historian is to be trusted, Louise de la Vallière was almost as lame as Miss Quayne when she embarked upon the greatest romance of history.”

Colonel Dennett drank half a glass of water at a gulp and leaned forward.

“Let’s see what sort of a physiognomist you are, young lady,” he said. “Supposing you knew that one person in this room was a dangerous criminal, whom would you select as the most probable?”

Mrs. Dewar rose to her feet. She performed the action as she did most others—soundlessly—without any visible effort.

“I think,” she intervened, “that the conversation has gone far enough. We had better withdraw.”

On the way out of the room Freda Medlincott whispered in Colonel Dennett’s ear. He seemed a little startled.

“You may be right,” he acquiesced, after a moment’s reflection.

On their way into the lounge they came across Roger Ferrison, whistling softly to himself as he brushed his hat by the light of a standard lamp. Mrs. Dewar paused and drew him on one side.

“I have a message for you, Mr. Ferrison,” she said.

“A message?” he repeated.

“Miss Quayne was not well enough to come in to dinner to-night. She wondered whether you would stop in and have a word with her.”

Roger Ferrison left off brushing his hat. There was nothing he desired so fervently in life as to refuse this very simple invitation.

“Do you mean now?” he asked.

“It would not take you long. Miss Quayne seems to be suffering a good deal.”

Ferrison sighed and hung up his hat.

“Of course, I will. Would you mind,” he added hesitatingly, “if Miss Packe comes out before I return, telling her where I am? Say I shall only be a minute or two.”

“I will do so,” Mrs. Dewar replied. “Pardon me,” she went on, “I do not wish to seem impertinent, but do I gather that you are going out with Miss Packe?”

He looked at her in frank astonishment.

“We are going to a cheap cinema,” he confided. “We sha’n’t be late and I shall remember about the keys.”

“It’s not that,” Mrs. Dewar said. “I really ought not to say what I am going to say to you, but you see we all have the deepest sympathy for Miss Quayne. You are the one person she has singled out to spend an evening with. She enjoyed it so much and—she needs some one to be kind to her. I think she will feel hurt if you are only able to stay for a moment because you are going out with Miss Packe.”

“That sounds very queer to me,” Roger Ferrison, confessed, honestly but bluntly.

“I am afraid,” Mrs. Dewar admitted, “it may sound also rather impertinent. If so, you must forgive me. I was thinking of you as well as of my boarder. Miss Quayne has the command of a great deal of money and many advantages. She is able to offer so much to those who will spare a little time for her distraction. I was thinking only that if you knew how sensitive she was, perhaps it might make a difference.”

It was a very lame speech for the precise Mrs. Dewar. Roger Ferrison made no direct reply. He stubbed out his cigarette in a small receptacle provided for that purpose on the hall table and turned away.

“At any rate, I will go and speak to Miss Quayne,” he promised.