Читать книгу Gabriel Samara - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Gabriel Samara seemed for a moment puzzled and unable to appreciate the significance of his companion's words.

"In any case," he rejoined, "beg whoever is down there to come up. Mr. Pride has probably sent a substitute."

Catherine leaned over the instrument with an expressionless face.

"Is it Mr. Bromley Pride himself speaking?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You are to come up, then."

She laid down the receiver without remark.

"Well?" Samara demanded impatiently.

"The man who is below insists on it that he is Mr. Bromley Pride," she announced.

"And you still don't believe him?"

"I know that he is not," she replied. "I have worked for Mr. Bromley Pride. We are old acquaintances."

"Some journalistic dodge, perhaps," he muttered. She began gathering together the paraphernalia connected with her machine.

"It is not my business," she continued quietly, "to offer you advice. I am not sure that I am disposed to do so, but as a matter of common sense I must say that I wonder at you admitting to your apartments a man who is visiting you under a fake name when you have a document, presumably of some interest to the world, lying there on your desk."

Samara looked at her with wide-open eyes.

"But my dear young lady," he protested, "we are in the very centre of civilisation. This is New York."

"A city of which you are evidently extremely ignorant."

Her attitude suddenly inspired him with disquietude. He began to reflect.

"There are some people, of course," he muttered, "who would give the price of a kingdom to know this before I got home. But surely—here—"

She interrupted him.

"Mr. Samara," she said quietly, "I have read several biographies of you. In every one of them, the chronicler has observed that, for a diplomatist of world-wide fame, you are possessed of a remarkably unsuspicious nature. I agree with your chroniclers. Good morning."

"Stop!" he begged her.

There was the sound of the bell. It was rung in quite an ordinary manner, but to both of them there seemed something sinister in its drawn-out summons. She looked at him.

"Your servant?"

"He is sitting with my secretary, Andrew Kroupki."

"I will answer the door," she announced.

"And remain, if you please," he insisted.

She turned away, threw open the outside door, and returned a moment later, ushering in a visitor. She made no comment as she stood on one side to let him pass, but both she and Samara himself studied the new-comer curiously. He was a pleasant-looking man, neatly dressed, with an amiable expression, and the shoulders of an athlete. He carried a black portfolio under his arm, which he set down carefully upon the table, close to the typewriter, before proceeding to introduce himself. His voice, when he spoke, was distinctly a home product and free from any foreign accent.

"I am very pleased to meet you, Mr. Samara," he said, as he gripped the latter's hand. "This is an honour I appreciate very highly."

Samara motioned his visitor towards a chair. He was wondering why his dislike had been of such quick conception.

"I must tell you, Mr. Pride," he explained, "that my own desire was to have kept absolutely secret the nature of my negotiations with your Government until I had had an opportunity of setting them before my advisers in Moscow. Your President, however, thought that complete reticence as to my mission would be too much to ask of your Press, and that therefore an idea of the arrangement concluded had better be given to a representative journal such as your own."

"Quite so," the visitor murmured. "My paper holds almost an official position here."

"May I ask what post you occupy upon it?" Samara inquired.

"I am a member of the Board of Directors," was the prompt reply. "I am also leader-writer on international affairs."

"And your name is Pride?"

"Yes—James D. Bromley Pride. You can speak right out to me. No need to keep a thing back!"

A quiet voice from the other end of the room suddenly intervened. The words themselves seemed harmless enough, but their effect was cataclysmic.

"There is surely some mistake. Mr. Bromley Pride of the New York Comet is in Philadelphia."

Samara himself was a little taken aback by the unexpected intervention of his temporary secretary. The expression on his visitor's face was momentarily illuminative.

"My name is Catherine Borans," was the composed announcement. "I belong to the Typewriting Bureau downstairs. I have often worked for Mr. Pride. You are not he."

The pseudo Mr. Pride had regained his presence of mind. He pointed to the card which he had laid upon the table.

"This young woman's interference is impertinent and absurd," he declared. "If I am not Bromley Pride of the New York Comet, how is it that I am here at all? I received my instructions from the editor himself this morning."

Samara looked across towards Catherine.

"Telephone the editor of the New York Comet," he directed. "Ask him to send some one round to identify this gentleman. I do not wish to be offensive," he went on, turning to his visitor, "but your identity is a matter upon which I must be entirely assured."

The sang-froid of this caller of disputed personality was amazing. Before Catherine could take off the receiver he stepped quickly towards the telephone and faced them both.

"The young lady has spoken the truth," he confessed. "I am not Bromley Pride. I am, as a matter of fact, the representative of a rival newspaper. You do not need to be told, Mr. Samara, that here in New York a live journalist will go further than assume another man's name to get hold of a big scoop—and then some! He will risk more even than being thrown down eleven flights of stairs! Is there any price you are inclined to name, sir, for the particulars which you were about to hand on to the New York Comet?"

Samara's eyes flashed and his frown was menacing.

"An impostor!" he exclaimed. "I request you to withdraw at once from my apartment."

"And I decline," was the prompt reply. "I may tell you right away that I am prepared to go to any lengths to secure this information from you."

"Indeed," Samara scoffed. "May I ask in what direction you propose to make your effort?"

The visitor stretched out his hand backwards and, from one of the folds of that harmless-looking black portfolio which he had left propped up against the typewriter, he drew out an automatic pistol of particularly sinister appearance. His mask of amiability had gone. There was a malicious gleam in his eyes, a cruel twist to his mouth.

"Gabriel Samara," he announced, "I am no journalist at all. I am, as a matter of fact, in another line of business altogether. It is up to me to discover what arrangements you have come to with the President, and how far such arrangements are going to help you with your plans in Russia. I do not desire to alarm either you or the young lady, but I am going to have the truth."

Samara smiled contemptuously. There was not a flicker of expression in Catherine's face.

"Pray set your mind at ease so far as we are concerned," he begged. "Neither the young lady nor I are in the least alarmed at your braggadocio. As a matter of curiosity," he went on, "supposing I were disposed to submit to this highway robbery, how do you know that I should tell you the truth?"

The intruder pointed to the typewriter and to the written sheets on the desk.

"There is only one task upon which you could be engaged this morning," he said. "I guess those sheets will do for me, anyway."

"And supposing by any remote chance I should refuse to give them to you," Samara persisted, "is it your purpose, may I ask, to assassinate me?"

"To be candid, yes," was the blunt reply. "But for the fear of canonising you in your own country, you would have been assassinated long ago. To-day things are different. Even Russia can spare you. Let the young lady fetch the papers and hand them to me."

"The young lady will do nothing of the sort," Samara declared firmly. "So much of the result of my mission as I propose to make public at present you can read in the New York Comet to-morrow. Now, if it is your intention to assassinate me, you had better get on with it."

The gun was slowly raised to a horizontal position. The face of the man behind it was hideously purposeful.

"What you don't realise," he said deliberately, "is that I am in earnest. You are a marked man, Gabriel Samara, less popular in your own country than you were, and hated in mine. Sooner or later this would have been your end anyway, but listen—I'm telling you—your time has come now, unless you place those papers on the table in front of you—before I count five. Before I count five, mind, or I shall shoot!"

Samara looked around the room quickly. There was no fear in his face, only the reasonable search of a man who loves life for some means of escape. There was none which he could apprehend. His assailant was between him and the bell, and the breaking of a window on the eleventh floor—even if it attracted any attention in the street—would be unlikely to bring help in time. All the while the young woman behind the typewriter was watching him, with steady eyes and unmoved expression.

"One—two—three—four—"

"I shouldn't worry," her quiet voice interrupted soothingly. "That gun will not hurt you."

There was a second's stupefaction, then the sound of a harmless click. The silence which followed seemed intolerable, broken though it was in a matter of moments by the piercing shrillness of the whistle which Catherine held to her lips. For the first time Samara himself was dumbfounded; so was his would- be murderer, who was staring open-mouthed at his useless weapon.

"You see," the young woman who had dominated the situation explained to Samara, "this bungling conspirator—really he ought to take a lesson from one of the novelists—put down his satchel behind the cover of my typewriter, having opened it himself first—to get at his gun easily, I suppose. I saw the glitter, so whilst he was indulging in one of his little bursts of eloquence, I slipped out the cartridge roll."

She held it up. Outside there was the sound of a key in the door.

"I have a smaller gun of the same pattern at home myself, so I understand all about them," she went on equably. "And I hope you don't think I was blowing that whistle for its musical properties. It belongs to the hotel detective. What are you going to say to him, I wonder?"

The door was thrown open and a stalwart, broad-shouldered man entered hastily. He was in plain clothes but the stamp of officialdom was unmistakable.