Читать книгу The Grassleyes Mystery - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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Very reluctantly Jane Grassleyes obeyed Pooralli's eager request and followed him into the reception room. Spenser was standing alone amongst the shadows at the far end of the apartment. He was contemplating with an air of intense absorption the safe which was let into the wall exactly opposite to him. He neither heard Pooralli's entrance nor Jane's footsteps nor her cold greeting.

"Mr. Spenser," she said, addressing him for the second time.

He started and swung round towards her.

"Isn't this rather a late visit?" she asked. "Pooralli said you wished to see me particularly. Surely to-morrow would have done."

He laughed uneasily.

"Perhaps it would," he admitted. "I thought you might feel pretty lonely up here by yourself. Glorious night for a ride, too, if you cared to get away for an hour. What about a run down to Nice? I'll bring you back again."

"It is very kind of you," Jane replied. "I am feeling sad, of course, but I am certainly not lonely, and I should not think of a joy ride to Nice or anywhere else."

"You must miss the poor old lady, though."

"I have scarcely had time to miss her yet," was the icy rejoinder, "and to tell you the truth, Mr. Spenser, I don't feel in the least like conversation. What is this urgent matter?"

"Well, it is business connected with the estate. Can't you sit down and talk for a few minutes, please?"

"Certainly not."

"Ten minutes only," he begged. "And do you mind if I ring for a whisky-and-soda? This has been rather a trying day, you know."

"I am afraid," she told him, "that the servants are all in bed."

"Pooralli never sleeps."

Pooralli was already there. Spenser looked at him in surprise.

"Jove, that was quick work! I never heard you open the door."

"Handle noiseless—Pooralli's footsteps noiseless," the man explained. "Gentleman want drink?"

"A whisky-and-soda as quickly as possible," Spenser ordered.

Pooralli took his leave. Jane, with a sigh of resignation, seated herself in a high-backed chair.

"Tell me at once, please, Mr. Spenser, what it is you wish?" she begged.

"Dash it all, Miss Grassleyes," he protested, "there's not any need, is there, to be so grim with me? You and I ought to be great friends."

"I don't see why."

"You must know," he continued, drawing a chair close to where she was seated, "that I have a great admiration for you."

"I would rather not know it, especially at this particular moment," she answered indignantly. "My aunt thought that you were a very clever business man and perhaps she was right. Beyond that I certainly have no interest in you or your doings."

He looked at her keenly. He was not a bad-looking man, even at the end of a trying day during which he had made no change in his toilet. As though conscious of her disparaging glance, he straightened his tie and studied his hands. Jane rose to her feet.

"As soon as you have finished your whisky-and-soda I should be glad if you would leave."

Spenser's expression hardened almost into a scowl. The sound of the fizzing sodawater, however, restored his complacency. He accepted the glass from Pooralli.

"Leave the whisky and the sodawater," he ordered. "Don't come back until I ring."

"If you will excuse my saying so," Jane told him severely, "I strongly object to your giving orders to my aunt's servants in that fashion. You are her man of business, it is true, but that does not entitle you to behave as though you lived on the premises, does it?"

"So it's like that, is it?" he said quietly.

"That is just how I feel about your presence here, Mr. Spenser."

"Perhaps, if you should find that you and I are co-executors in the handling of this property," he remarked, "you might change your mind a little."

"I hope that we are not," she declared fervently.

"Want it all for yourself, eh?"

"Not at all. I shall welcome help but I hope it will be from Mr. Clunderson."

He took a long drink and set down his glass.

"What, that dry-as-dust old lawyer?"

Jane made no comment but glanced patiently at the clock.

"Dash it all!" Spenser exclaimed. "You make it very difficult. I came all the way out here to-night first because I was wondering about you, second because a very important matter of business has turned up in connection with the property—business which requires immediate attention."

"Really? You can set your mind quite at ease about me. I do not ask for your interest and I do not require it. Furthermore, there could be no question of business that we could discuss at this hour of the night."

"That shows that you know nothing whatever about it," he snapped. "If we were on the terms I should like to be, Miss Jane, I would talk to you differently. Perhaps what has happened to your aunt has disturbed you to-night, but you will have to pull yourself together to-morrow. You may wake up to find yourself a rich woman."

"I am not in the least interested," she said. "I do not wish you to call me Miss Jane or anything but Miss Grassleyes, either. And please leave my hand alone," she added, snatching it away from his tentative grasp.

Once more his face hardened and such good looks as he possessed became negligible.

"Well, I suppose I must approach this subject differently," he decided. "Do you see that safe, Miss Grassleyes?"

"I do," she answered. "I noticed that you were looking at it very fixedly when I came in."

"Have you the key to it?"

"Whether I have or not makes little difference," she replied. "I would not give it to you."

"Why not?"

"You have no established position in any of my aunt's affairs except the letting of the bungalows."

"That shows how ignorant you are," he scoffed. "It is I who am responsible for this wonderful offer."

"From whom?"

"From a syndicate. A very important syndicate of French and English business men."

"An offer to purchase the Manoir?"

"Yes."

"I am not interested," she assured him. "If I have any voice in the future disposition of the property in any way I shall be dead against selling it."

"You have not heard the offer or what it is for," he reminded her.

"I am not interested. I am going to ring for Pooralli to show you out."

"I am not ready to leave yet. Wait," he added, holding out his hand as she turned towards the door. "I will show you how much your aunt trusted me. I will show you the sort of position I am likely to hold in this household."

He rose to his feet and swaggered over towards the safe. From his pocket he drew out a long, slim key. He played for a little time with the combination, then swung the heavy door open.

"Perhaps that will help you to realize that I am something more than your aunt's estate agent," he said scornfully.

Jane crossed the room swiftly.

"Where did you get that key from?" she demanded.

"Never mind. I just wanted to show you that I am not dependent upon your help."

"I insist upon your telling me how that key came into your possession."

"Simplest way possible," he said. "Your aunt gave it to me."

"I am perfectly certain that that is a falsehood, but since you have it why not see what you can find?" she suggested. "Go on, I am not interfering with you."

He thrust his arm into the hollow space and brought out a pile of engrossed documents.

"Leases of the bungalows," he announced.

"Mind you put them back neatly when you have done with them."

Spenser scowled at her for a moment, thrust his arm in again and brought out a pile of miscellaneous papers—fire-insurance policies and correspondence of various sorts. Jane watched him equably.

"Am I right," she asked, "or were you not searching for something else? Just what is it that you are looking for, Mr. Spenser?"

"It would save the estate a tremendous lot of money if I could find Lady Grassleyes' will," he confided.

"Why don't you find it, then?" she asked, with an irony in her tone which was entirely lost upon him.

He turned back to the safe, searched again, stood away from it and tried the handle of the corresponding section.

"Have you the combination for this side?" he enquired.

"There is none. It is a very clever safe but that is a dummy handle. The whole of the thing is supposed to be a dummy except the portion you have opened. I think, Mr. Spenser," she concluded, "that if my aunt had really meant you to be one of her executors she would have told you all about her bogus safe and where to find her will."

"Do you know where to find it?" he asked bluntly.

"The will is not your business or mine."

"Whose is it, then?"

"Mr. Clunderson's."

"Clunderson again!" he muttered. "It will take us months to get a move on if your aunt has been stupid enough to leave him in authority."

"I do not agree with you, Mr. Spenser," she said. "I should be very pleased indeed to hear that Mr. Clunderson was one of the executors."

"That is because you don't understand," he explained impatiently.

"Was my aunt a very rich woman that you are making such a fuss about her will?"

"She owned very valuable properties."

"Well, it is not our business yet," she said calmly, "and it is scarcely decent of you to come here worrying about such matters before my aunt is even buried. Don't you think you had better put back those leases?"

He flung them into the safe, closed the door and turned towards her.

"Look here," he exclaimed, "I want your aunt's will! I know your name is mentioned in it. I know mine is. I want to read it. It's important."

"You will read it when it is common property and not before," she answered.

"You know very well that there is more in the safe than these few rubbishy leases and other oddments," he declared fiercely. "Look at the size of it! How do we get at the other part?"

He moved a little nearer to her. It seemed incredible but for a moment Jane thought he was really about to seize her by the throat.

"I have had more than enough of you for to-night, Mr. Spenser," she told him. "I refuse to answer any more questions. I am going to my room and please do not disturb me again."

"You are going to stay here with me," he insisted. "Blast that fellow!"

Pooralli was standing just across the threshold. He bowed to Jane.

"A gentleman," he announced. "He saw the lights of Mr. Spenser's car and if he is not disturbing you he would like to speak to Mr. Spenser."

Jane took the opportunity of slipping quietly away. With her fingers upon the handle of the door she looked back.

"I think you are going to have quite a busy night, Mr. Spenser," she said. "All the same, I do not think you will find that will."

Johnson came lumbering into the room and threw himself into an easy chair. He was a fleshy man, he had walked quickly and he was out of breath.

"What the mischief do you want?" Spenser demanded.

"I want to know why you didn't come down to my bungalow," Johnson replied. "You know which it is; you knew that I should be anxious. Out with it! What's going to happen now?"

"How the devil should I know?" Spenser protested. "They have moved the old lady. One of the doctors refused to give a certificate and the body is down in a Nice hospital. I called there on my way up and talked to the matron, who is an old friend of mine. They had no report to make. I telephoned the doctor—I know him quite well—but he had very little to say. He simply declared that life seemed to him to be extinct but on the other hand there was no certain proof of death. So there we are."

"She's out of the place, anyway," Johnson pointed out. "There's no one here to stop you going on with this job. If the truth gets about we shall have a crowd here."

"I can't do a damn' thing till I get hold of the will," Spenser replied fiercely.

"Why not? You told me that you and that slip of a girl were the two executors. Why can't you get her to sign a sanction for us to get on with the proceedings and let me get back to Marseille?"

"She's as pigheaded as she can be," Spenser confided. "I am certain she and I are the two executors but she won't take anything for granted, won't give me the slightest clue as to where the will is, won't even discuss a sale. She was here a few minutes ago and if you had not come in—well, I'm not sure that I shouldn't have shaken the life out of her. Just a schoolgirl hussy a bit above herself—that's what she is."

Johnson poured himself out some whisky and added a splash of sodawater with a grunt.

"You are a clumsy fellow, Fred," he said. "You are always bragging of what you can do with the girls but when the time comes you are nothing but a nitwit."

"Try her yourself, then," the other sneered. "I don't fancy you'll get very far."

"It isn't my line of business," Johnson declared. "I could do the rough stuff all right but this isn't the place for that. What about the safe?"

"Go and look at it, if you want to," Spenser suggested. "Seems to me it must be one of those double ones. The right-hand side opens with an ordinary key and a combination. The left-hand side—well, that's where all the things must be that we want to get at, and the Lord only knows how it opens. The girl tried to make me believe it was a dummy."

Johnson dragged out a case and with some difficulty lit a most unpleasant-looking cigar. His companion waved the smoke away in disgust.

"I wish you would throw that beastly thing out of the window," he said pettishly. "There are heaps of cigarettes on the table there."

"No use to me," was the sullen reply. "Look here, Fred, what are you going to do? We're onto a big thing and it's no good sitting here and letting it slip out of our hands. There's the safe. That would tell us a good deal of what we want to know. And there's the girl in this very house who could also tell us a good deal. It's not in my line of country but if you can't make her talk I shall have to try."

"You're talking now like a damn' fool," Spenser said. "If you try any rough stuff you will find those little foreigners will cut your throat for two pins. Besides, you wouldn't get any forrader. As soon as the formal certificate of death has been signed the lawyer will be here and the will will be read. It's damned annoying to have to wait but it's better than qualifying for the criminal pen."

Johnson smoked stolidly for a moment or two. He looked with gloom at his companion.

"When I think of all the women you have done just as you liked with, you lousy Lothario," he scoffed, "it makes me want to get up and knock your head off to think you can't have your way with a chit of a girl like this. She can't be more than twenty-five."

"It's not a matter of age," Spenser protested irritably. "The girl's got ideas of her own. Of course, if I had known she was going to turn out like this I would have started making the running long ago. I'll tell you a chap I don't like, Johnson—he's a professor, too, just home from India, and he might be a pretty dangerous chap here—Granet. I tried to stop him coming but he wouldn't listen."

"I don't like him myself," Johnson agreed. "He's sitting in front of his bungalow at the present moment talking pretty with little Carlotta di Mendoza."

Spenser frowned angrily.

"Butting in with her, too, is he? Curse the fellow!"

"Look here," Johnson said. "It doesn't matter how many kids he plays with so long as he doesn't get in our way. Do you believe that this girl, Jane Grassleyes, has the key to the other side of the safe?"

"I don't even know that there is a key," Spenser replied. "If there is she's got it. She has plenty of brains and the first thing she would go for would be the old lady's keys. The one that opens the harmless part of the affair came off a little bunch of her own. I noticed that when she opened it—borrowed it more than a month ago and had another made. The other side of the safe has me beaten but there must be an entrance to it somewhere."

"Why don't we go after the girl, then?" Johnson suggested. "You know which her bedroom is. You seem to have had hard words with her this evening. Why not try the sentimentalist? She can't keep it up for ever, you know. She must be kind of broken down after a day like she's had."

"I'll think it over," Spenser promised.

"Supposing," Johnson speculated, "the old lady gets over it?"

"That's just why I don't want you to try any of these games," Spenser pointed out. "The trouble of it is the girl and I never hit it off. I used to make fun of the old lady sometimes, thinking it would amuse her, but she never liked it. I tried a bit of the usual stuff on her the only night I ever took her out to dinner and it didn't go. I can tell you that, Johnson. She wouldn't have come out at all if her aunt hadn't insisted. Lady Grassleyes looked pretty queer at me the next morning and she never suggested my taking her out again."

"Do you think she knows anything?"

"I'm not at all sure. I'm not even sure that the old lady knew as much as she ought to have known. If she did she was one of the best bluffers I've ever come across."

Johnson threw away his cigar.

"To-morrow," he said, "I'll draw up a little plan of action. You're sure there's no one else on the lay, Fred?"

"Certain!"

"We'd best let it run, then," Johnson declared as he made his way across the room.

Spenser waited until he heard the front door close, then he went back to the safe, unlocked it once more and commenced a more comprehensive search of the loose papers underneath the leases.

He had almost completed his search when he stopped short, gave a little exclamation, lifted up a pile of heavily mounted photographs and drew from underneath a calf-bound volume. He stared at it joyfully. Embossed upon it in gilt letters he read: Private Ledger, Grassleyes Estate.

"God Almighty!" he muttered. "That's a lucky find!"

He listened for a moment, looking over his shoulder. There was no one about. He moved quickly to the desk, carrying the ledger with him, unlocked it with a key which was attached to a ring in its back by a fine steel chain and turned to the index.

"Spenser & Sykes," he murmured in the same hoarse undertone. "Folio ninety-two. Here we are. Oh, my God! She hasn't half stuck me for it!"

He doubled the ledger back, listened again, then walked with swift footsteps to the door and quietly locked it. For a heavy man he had suddenly become very light on his feet. He dragged out the photographs from the safe, took the thickest of all of them and slipped it underneath page ninety-two. Then he drew out a penknife from his pocket.

"Here goes and chance it! One—two—three—four—five—six—seven."

He counted the pages. They were all there. There were some figures in coloured crayon on the next page but nothing else, no other record of that ghastly total. He trimmed the cut edges a little, closed the ledger, doubled up the sheets and stuffed them into his trousers' pocket. Then he returned to the safe, thrust back the ledger as near as possible in the place where he had found it, stuffed in the photographs, closed and locked the door of the safe, reset the combination, regained his seat and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

"My God, if I can only get away with this!" he groaned.

He bit his nails for a moment or two, thought heavily—thought till his face seemed to get smaller—poured out some whisky, forgot the sodawater and drank.

"It's all right," he told himself. "I'm in luck."

He listened intently and went on.

"The whole place is as silent as a mausoleum. There's not a soul about. I'll have one go for the will."

He pulled out the middle drawer of the desk and commenced his search. He was a curious man by disposition and there were many things that interested him in the papers he found. Some he put on one side to examine more thoroughly.

"The will," he kept reminding himself, "the will."