Читать книгу The Lion and the Lamb - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 11

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LOUNGING still on the edge of the couch, her hair tousled, her dress shamefully disarranged, her sleepy eyes only half open, she laughed a greeting at this unexpected visitor across the room.

"Daniel, come to revisit the Lion's Den," she mocked. He looked away from her with a queer little shiver, half of distaste, half of anger with himself that her flamboyant witchery should have the power to stir in him even the faintest feeling.

"You flatter your Chief, or whatever you choose to call him," he said scornfully.

She glanced across at the sleeping figure of Tottie Green. His waistcoat, as usual, was unbuttoned, his trousers covered with cigar ash. There was an unhealthy flush upon his cheeks as he snored stertorously.

"Rather more like a spider than a lion," David continued, contemplating him in disgust. "You should stop him falling asleep sitting in that attitude. He'll have a fit one day. What an atmosphere! Don't you ever open the windows?"

"For an uninvited guest," she remarked, "you seem to me unnecessarily critical. And, anyway, what are you doing here? It isn't a healthy neighbourhood for you. Perhaps you've come to hand over the diamond."

"The Milan Court wasn't a particularly healthy neighbourhood either."

She smiled.

"They didn't hurt you. They went there meaning to put you out, but they changed their minds."

"What the devil made you interfere?" he asked swiftly. She stared at him, her beautiful eyes wide open, her lips a little parted. This time he had certainly scored. Her armour of indifferent contempt had fallen away. She was startled.

"How did you know that I was there?" she demanded.

"I didn't exactly," he admitted. "I guessed. They certainly meant killing me. Something, or somebody, prevented them at the last moment. Was it you?"

She yawned.

"I'm always too tender-hearted," she lamented.

"How did you get there?"

"The same way that they did."

"And may I further enquire," he went on, "why you intervened?"

She had half risen from the couch, her hands, gleaming with rings, pressed against its back, supporting her.

"Do you complain?"

"On the contrary," he assured her hastily, "I come here full of gratitude. I still ask myself, however, why?"

She swung herself on to her feet, smoothed down her skirt, arranged her masses of hair for a moment with indolent fingers.

"I wonder why?" she ruminated. "However, I'll tell you, if you answer my question. How did you know that I'd been there?"

"Because," he confided, "you happen to use a very pungent and penetrating perfume. I detected traces of it when I came to this morning."

She sighed.

"What a mistake to be kind," she murmured. "You see what happens to me. I stayed with you for an hour after the others had left, to be sure that no further harm came to you, and I pay for it in this way. I am detected. Shall you denounce me, David? Shall you have me arrested for trespassing in the sacred precincts of the Milan Court?"

"I have already acknowledged," he reminded her, "that I have every reason to be grateful for your presence there. I have answered your question. What about mine?"

For a single moment he was startled by the light which flashed out of her eyes. Then, even as he looked at her, it was gone. The old mockery was there, half challenging, half scornful.

"You have cast a spell upon me," she declared. "I could not bear the thought of losing you. You are the only person likely to keep us alive in these days. The police have ceased even to amuse us. You, on the other hand, make life worth living. You strike terror into our souls. You are going to root us out and exterminate us. Poor Daddy Green! Poor little worried Lambs; how they must all be fretting!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Mind if I take a seat?" he asked. "Your illustrious Chief shows no signs of waking up, and I am in no hurry. Perhaps you would honour me by trying one of my cigarettes."

He moved across the room to her, his flat gold case invitingly opened. As they stood together, he realised that she was as tall as he. He realised, too, with unwilling and rebellious admiration, the grace of her. body, so slightly concealed by the flimsy nature of her apparel. She accepted the cigarette and passed him a little fragment of cambric she had been holding.

"Recognise it?"

He bent over it and nodded.

"I should know the perfume anywhere."

"Made for me in Grasse," she told him, "undistilled. I like my perfumes, as I like everything else in life—strong. Do you care for it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"For one reason," he replied, "I like a perfume which belongs to one woman only. This, I have met with before to-day, even since I left the Milan Court."

She sighed.

"That terrible little girl at Abbs'," she murmured. "She stole half a bottle once, and now I have to lock it up to keep it from her. She does typing for Reuben twice a week, dresses like me, dyes her hair, and hopes for the best."

"She isn't at Abbs' any longer," he told her.

"How do you know?"

"I sent her away this morning."

"You sent her away—What had you to do with it?"

"I've bought the business."

She threw herself into an easy-chair and rocked with laughter.

"Oh, David," she lamented, "why aren't you sensible? What's the use to you of all those youths in Abbs' Gymnasium who have taken cheap boxing lessons? Why not come and join up here again? You would find a welcome. You can work with me, if you like."

He shook his head.

"I have crossed the border line," he declared. "I am with the law now, not against it."

She scanned his Savile Row clothes, his generally wellturned-out appearance.

"Going to live on the Virgin's Tear, I suppose?"

"I never brought the Virgin's Tear away," he assured her.

"All my eye!" she scoffed, leaning a little farther back in her chair. "Where did your money come from then—You hadn't a bob when you went to prison, and you never even took away the fifty pounds the old man left for you, or your share of the Frankley money."

"Where did my money come from?" David repeated thoughtfully. "Well, once more I'll answer your question if you'll answer mine."

"Go ahead," she invited.

"Precisely what relation are you to Tottie Green, and what are you doing in this galere?"

"In this what?"

"In this company. Cannon Ball Lem, for instance; Reuben, Fishy Tim =? whom I haven't seen, by-the-by, since I came out—I expect he's sulking somewhere."

"You'd have seen him last night if you'd been an owl," she confided. "He was at the foot of your bed, and he was the one who wanted to put you out. And no fool, either. He and Reuben will both have to tow the line some day."

"What about answering my question?" he interrupted.

"Why should I?" she rejoined lazily. "Don't you think that I belong?"

"In a way," he agreed. "Not altogether, though. I can imagine you driving the people crazy at the Moulin Rouge. I can imagine you being the inspiration of a matador at Barcelona, or the favourite of a millionaire sugar planter at Cuba, but I can't imagine you hanging round with Tottie Green, unless there was some reason for it."

"There is," she answered. "He is my father's partner, and I am going to wake him up. As for my question, you needn't answer it. I don't care where your money came from, or whether you've got any or not. The only thing I'd say to you is this. If you've got the Virgin's Tear anywhere in pawn and are living on that, chuck it and play the game. The lads will get you for it, and I sha'n't always be around to beg you off."

She rose to her feet and crossed the room towards where he was seated, walking with swaying hips, a crude, animal grace in all her movements. She lingered for a moment before him, challenged his eyes, and laughed at his momentary discomfiture.

"You're a very foolish young man," she said. "I think that you're afraid of me. One day you will come after me, and then perhaps I sha'n't want you."

She lingered still for an imperceptible fragment of time. One of her hands, with its load of jewels, and overmanicured nails, rested upon his shoulder, a breath of that curious perfume momentarily confused his senses. Then she passed on and approached the sleeping object upon the chair. Her method of awakening him was curiously gentle. She stroked one side of his face until his breathing gradually subsided, and his eyes opened. He looked around for a moment vaguely. Then he saw David, and his hand slid into the drawer of the table which stood by his side.

"Don't worry," his visitor enjoined. "I'm not armed."

He rose to his feet and strolled across the room. The sight of the two—the man looking like a great, overgrown human spider, and the girl bending over him in her Shaftesbury Avenue clothes, which still seemed marvellously designed to display her glorious figure—her silky masses of ill-coiffured hair, her over-bejewelled hands, the little stabs of perfume which seemed to dart out from her body, filled him with a queer sort of revulsion.

"You don't need to look for your gun, Tottie Green," he continued. "I don't go in for that sort of thing. You ought to know that."

"Are you going to play straight?" the awakened man asked, struggling to raise himself into a sitting position.

"Are you coming back?"

"I am not," was the firm reply.

"Then what the hell are you here for, anyway?"

"Curiosity for one thing. You got your lads into my room last night by some devilish means. I came to see why they didn't make a job of it?"

The man in the chair pointed a dirty, stubby forefinger at the girl.

"She wouldn't let them," he jeered. "Got a fit of softheartedness, or else she thought we could work you better alive."

"She thought wrong then," David observed. "I'm going to be a nuisance to you, Tottie Green."

The Chief's waistcoat rose and fell spasmodically. It seemed to be a sign from inside that he was moved to mirth.

"It would take more than a toff like you to worry me or my lads," he replied scornfully. "Better cough up the diamond, young man."

"If you mean the Virgin's Tear, I don't happen to have it," David declared tersely.

A voice, low-pitched but softly venomous, came from behind the screened doorway.

"You're a damned liar!"