Читать книгу The Lion and the Lamb - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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DAVID awoke some time in the black hours of the following morning, in the chamber of his suite at the Milan Court, acutely conscious that he was not alone. He leaned out of his bed and turned on the switch of his electric lamp. Nothing happened. He tried again—without result. He reached upward for the bell and found only an empty cord. The severed plug lay upon his pillow. The curtains, which he remembered distinctly having left open to admit a current of air from the window, were closely drawn. He was dimly aware of at least two, there may have been three, dark, human shapes grouped a little way from his bed. He was not a nervous person but there was something terrifying in the silence by which he was surrounded.

"Who is in this room?" he asked sharply.

There was no immediate answer. He sat up and opened his mouth to shout. Suddenly an unseen hand thrust something between his teeth; others pinioned his arms. One of those dimly visible shapes bent over the bedstead rails, and his feet were held down. He struggled for a moment furiously. Then he realised that he was at a hopeless disadvantage, and he lay quite passive, using all his senses, struggling to discern the forms of his assailants, listening for any encouraging sounds from without. It was evidently the one hour of rest between night and dawn, for the rumble of traffic over Waterloo Bridge had ceased, and a pall of silence lay over the Strand and the nearer thoroughfares of the City. He tried to speak, but only choked. Then a voice addressed him, unexpectedly near to his bedside—a familiar, silky, almost melodious voice, with a sneer underlying its smoothness.

"I am Reuben," the voice announced, "and these are two of Tottie Green's lads chosen for their muscle. We've brought you a message from Tottie Green—an official one this time—and from the Council of the Lambs, the Lambs who admitted you to membership less than twelve months ago. You know what we want."

David made no attempt at reply. Speech could only be a grotesque and incoherent thing.

"You know also who I am," the voice went on. "I am Reuben—Reuben Grossett. If I'd been at the Lion and the Lamb when you paid your visit there, you wouldn't have brought off that bluff. If I take the gag away, will you give us your word of honour not to call out whilst we talk. Nod your head if you agree."

David nodded. Anything to get that loathsome spring, bound with rubber, out of his mouth. The other deftly removed it.

"I take it you will keep your word," Reuben remarked, "but perhaps it would be as well to remind you that I am sitting within a foot of you, and that if you try to summon help, it will be the last time you open your mouth in this world. We don't merely threaten, either. You ought to know that. We keep our word."

"I shall not call out for help," David agreed, "unless some one actually comes to the door. Why should I—What harm have I to fear from you?"

"None, if you behave like a pal, and don't try any silly games," was the curt reply. "If you want to know what we've come for, I'll tell you. We've come for the Virgin's Tear, or the Blue Diamond, or whatever you care to call it—the jewel you pinched from Frankley Place."

"Then the sooner you go back again," David rejoined, "the less time you'll waste. I haven't got it."

There was a brief silence. David's eyes, accustomed a little now to the darkness, made out that there were four forms in the room and, though no voice was raised above a . breath, he was conscious of that whisper of menace, a veritable wave of evil. He realised that no one believed him.

"So far as we have heard," Reuben went on slowly, "there was only one burglary at Frankley Place that night, and we were the boys who were concerned in it. There were no other thieves about, just you and I and Lem. You stayed longest in the room where the jewels were—too long for your own safety. You followed us out—"

"Yes, I followed you out," David interrupted fiercely, "and what happened? We could all have got away. You wanted to make sure of your own safety and you locked the door—locked it against me, as well as your pursuers. Dirty cowards, that's what you were. That's what I went back to tell Tottie Green."

Again there was that little breeze of menace—an undernote of movement, half of muttered whispering. A breath of wind shook the blind against the window.

"We are here to discuss one matter, and one matter only," Reuben said, "and you've a better chance of waking up in the morning if you'll remember it. The Virgin's Tear was stolen from Frankley Place that night, from the room in which we left you. No one else could have got in and taken it. What did you do with it—You disposed of it somewhere. How? In what hiding place?"

"Why are you so sure," David asked, "that the Virgin's Tear was stolen? It wasn't amongst the other jewels. Why should you think that I discovered it?"

"We know that it was stolen," was the half-whispered reply, "because it has just come to our notice that the Insurance Company has paid for its loss. Insurance Companies don't pay without proof. You are the only man who could have taken it. You went into prison a pauper, and you come out spending money like a millionaire. Perhaps you can explain that."

"Perhaps you can explain what I did with the Virgin's Tear, then?" David countered, listening, with a faint gleam of hope, to the first market wagon rumbling over Waterloo Bridge. "It was three or four days before I recovered consciousness after the fight that night, and when I did, all my clothes had been taken away from me."

"You had plenty of chances of getting rid of it before the police rushed in," Reuben replied. "You had to pass through two rooms to get to the door by which we made our escape. There may have been hiding places in the room. On the other hand, two of the windows were open, and below you were the grounds. That's all in the way of explanations. We haven't any time to spare, Dave. We want the Virgin's Tear, or to know where you deposited it. Come through with it, Dave, or take what's coming to you."

"Do you mean to murder me?"

"We mean to get the Virgin's Tear."

"I haven't got it."

The lean, supple figure, bending over the side of David's bed, hung down in front of his eyes the illuminated dial of a watch.

"We can only give you one minute, Dave," he said shortly. "After that, you are going to pass out, or wish you could pass out,—three thirty- three. You have sixty seconds."

"If you murder me," David reminded him, "you'll do it for nothing. I haven't got the Virgin's Tear."

"You know where it is."

"I haven't the faintest idea."

The four shapes all seemed to lean toward him. There was the sound as though of an angry wind stirring amongst decayed leaves. They drew round the bed. He could feel the hot, beery breath of one of them upon his cheek. Reuben was handling a length of sinister-looking cord.

"Thirty seconds have gone," he announced.

Flat on his back, David Newberry waited for death. There seemed little to be done, poor chance of awakening any one, even if he broke his word and attempted to call out. Those long, skinny fingers, which he had always hated, were within a few inches of his mouth. Reuben was bracing his knee against the bedstead.

"Fifteen seconds, David. You're going out if you don't give us a line on the diamond."

Still no sound in the sleeping hotel. A late taxi hooted up the Strand. One or two more wagons were rolling across the bridge, but the electric standards were still alight, the dawn was still to come.

"Time," Reuben murmured.

"Time be damned!" David rejoined. "I haven't got the diamond, blast you!"

The gag was in his mouth. His wrists were held down by two of his assailants. A moment later, the cord was around his throat, drawn up tighter and tighter until it was taut. Then Reuben paused. One of the other stepped forward and handed something across the bed.

"You're in the swinging room, mate. Your last chance— going fast! Where's the Virgin's Tear?"

David made the effort of his life. The muscles of his legs and arms swelled almost to breaking point. He felt that his veins were bursting. His head seemed strangely congested. Not one thousandth part of an inch would those devilishly fastened cords give. A Houdini might have escaped from his bonds; a Samson would have failed. He felt his breath go out in one last gasp, as his strength died away. The cord around his neck was cutting now. Everything in the room was dancing. He heard the drawing of a stopper from a bottle, smelt something less sickly but more powerful than chloroform, which seemed in a single breath to take all his senses away. Without even a struggle he fell back and lay prostrate and inert upon the bed.

* * * * *

The sunlight streaming into the room awakened him. He lay still for some time, trying to reconstruct what had happened, to sort out fancy from fact. Then, still sore, he sat slowly up in bed. There was scarcely a sign of disorder in the room, and little change in it, save that the cut telephone wire lay upon the carpet, and the bell knob still reposed upon the counterpane. He sprang out of bed and gazed at his neck in the looking-glass. There was a faint red mark there, but it was barely distinguishable. And then a strange fancy came upon him. He stood quite still, his head thrown back as though he were listening. It was no fancy, after all. It was unmistakable in its penetrating, cloying sweetness—the perfume of the public-house parlour at the Lion and the Lamb. He had a curious nightmare fancy, a figment of his disordered night. He fancied that he could see her, her hand upon her hip, looking over her shoulder at him with that insolent smile. At the sound of a distant closing door he started. Then, with an effort to pull himself together, he drew back the curtains and threw wide open the window, struck the air with the palms of his hands, as though to beat out into the misty void imaginary wisps of that hateful perfume. He staggered back into the sitting room and rang the bell.

"Fill my bath and ask one of the managers to come up," he directed the valet who answered it.

A suave young man, who spoke perfect English with a slightly foreign accent, presently made his appearance. He listened to David's story with the utmost politeness. He examined the severed cords of the telephone and the electric light with much concern.

"You say that your door was bolted, sir?" he enquired.

"Not only was my bedroom door bolted," David assured him, "but the door leading into the hall, and the communicating door between my sitting room and here was also bolted."

"You seem to have taken every precaution," the young man remarked.

"I had reason to," David confided. "I happen to know that there are people in London who are ill-disposed towards me."

The reception clerk moved across the room and gently tried the door connecting with the next apartment. It was fastened on the other side.

"Who is in there?" David enquired.

"I will ring down from your sitting room and ask, sir."

In due course the young man made his report. The apartment was unoccupied, also the apartment on the other side. With a pass-key, he opened the door. The room was a small one, and empty, but the bed had been slept in.

"What about that?" David demanded. The hotel official was a little staggered. He went to the telephone which stood by the bedside and spoke again to the office. He was looking more thoughtful when he hung up the receiver.

"This room was let late last night," he announced, "through one of the waiters on our staff to a former patron of his, a Doctor Nadol, who left for Liverpool, by the newspaper train, to perform an operation."

The two men made their way back to David's room. The reception clerk glanced once more at the defective cord of the telephone and electric bell, and regretted their threadbare condition.

"You are quite sure—you will pardon the suggestion, Mr. Newberry—that you did not have a nightmare last night?"

David swallowed hard. He pointed to the two severed cords. His companion shrugged his shoulders.

"There is always something to be explained," he murmured enigmatically.

"Do you think it possible," David asked him pointblank, "that I could have imagined, or invented, the story I have told you?"

The hotel clerk hesitated. He was so anxious to be polite, and yet equally anxious to believe that his client's suggestion, or something like it, was the real truth of the whole affair. He looked helplessly around the room.

"At present," he pointed out, "what explanation is possible? I shall make enquiries. If you will permit me, Mr. Newberry, we will speak of this later in the day."

He took his leave. David sat for a time in his easychair and reflected. One thing was absolutely certain. He had been entirely at the mercy of his late associates, who had every reason to fear him, and for some reason or other they had failed to strike home. He tried to argue with himself that they had really believed that he had secreted the Virgin's Tear, and having failed to gain his confidence, meant to set a watch upon him. They were perhaps too clever to kill the goose who knew all about the golden egg, yet it was not like the Lambs to leave a job undone. At the back of his mind there remained always that other, detestable, poisonous supposition. She had followed the murderers here, to save his life. It was she who had forced them to withdraw at the last moment. The idea horrified him, and yet the more he dwelt upon it, the more fixed became his conviction. He even fancied that, notwithstanding the open window, he could still catch a breath of that perfume which he perhaps loathed all the more deeply because it brought with it a certain bestial allure. He threw the window even wider open, rang for his breakfast, and drew the telephone book towards him. He found the number he sought, and rang up.

"Mr. Atkinson's house?" he asked. . . . "Good! Can I speak to Mr. Atkinson? Lord Newberry."

A moment later, a sleepy but anxious voice made reply.

"Look here, Atkinson," David said, "I'm awfully sorry to trouble you so early, but haven't I a small house in John Street? Used to belong to my two brothers? . . . Good! You haven't let it—Excellent! See that it's ready for me this afternoon. I'm moving in there. . . . Thanks. Goodbye."

David rose and stretched himself. Then he made his way towards the bathroom.