Читать книгу Harvey Garrard's Crime - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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Mildred Garrard, curled up upon a lounge in the room which she called her boudoir, threw down her novel at Harvey's entrance and raised herself a little to confront him.

"Where on earth have you been all day, Harvey?" she demanded peevishly.

"I've been down at Bermondsey," he answered.

"Down at Bermondsey?" she repeated incredulously. "Do you mean to say you forgot altogether that we were lunching at Ranelagh?"

"I'm sorry," he apologised, "but that's exactly what I did do. I forgot all about it."

She frowned. Although at thirty-five she was still a beautiful woman, the frown was not altogether becoming.

"What on earth did you want to stay down there for all this time?" she persisted. "And where did you lunch?"

"Now I come to think of it," he acknowledged, "I didn't lunch at all. I found a great deal to occupy me, and I forgot."

She rose to her feet, yawning, and drew her silk dressing-gown around her. There was still just a glimpse of blue crêpe de chine and blue silk stockings.

"You're a terribly casual person sometimes, Harvey," she complained. "Perhaps you forgot to bring me my money, too."

"I did," he confessed. "I completely forgot all about it."

She turned away from the looking-glass into which she had paused to glance with an impatient exclamation.

"If that isn't just like you," she declared petulantly. "I don't suppose you even remembered to tell Greatorex to pay in the house money."

"I didn't," he admitted. "To tell you the truth I was far too busy."

"Busy!" she repeated scornfully. "Why, what on earth can you find to do down there? You don't know anything about the business."

"Perhaps it's a pity I don't," he remarked. "They haven't been doing any too well."

She yawned once more and rang the bell.

"We'll have a cocktail before we change," she suggested. "We'll have to go out for dinner, I'm afraid. François has only just arrived and is absolutely disgusted with the kitchen. He simply declines to cook this evening, so I've telephoned to the Ritz for a table."

"Just as you like," he answered. "If François is going to be difficult he had better go back to France. He can't expect a kitchen in Curzon Street to be anything like what he's used to."

"Don't talk nonsense," she enjoined sharply. "If we parted with François I might as well give up entertaining altogether. He's the greatest attraction anyone could possibly get hold of. I saw the Duchess in the Park this morning and she told me that if I didn't ask her to dinner the very day François arrived she'd never speak to me again. These people all love him, Harvey."

"They may have an opportunity of acquiring him before long," Harvey ventured.

"That they certainly will not," was Mildred's prompt rejoinder. "If we have to economise we won't begin with François."

She gave an order to her maid, who had answered the bell, and stood for a moment yawning in front of the mirror. She was troubled at the sight of a little line near her eyes and gazed at herself discontentedly.

"What a ridiculous thing to come back to London so early," she grumbled. "Mayfair isn't fit for a human being until June. There is something about the light here or the mirrors which makes one feel, as well as look, positively ugly. I shall have to go to Madame Arlène to-morrow. And I hope you won't go down to that hideous warehouse of yours again, Harvey, if it makes you as gloomy as you are this evening."

He roused himself with a little shrug of the shoulders. The time for disclosures was not yet. Annette entered with a cocktail shaker and two glasses. Harvey, as he took a cheese wafer from the tray, was conscious that he had eaten nothing since breakfast.

"Where are your pearls, Mildred?" he asked, abruptly, as soon as the maid had left the room.

She looked at him with some surprise.

"In the safe with my other jewels."

"Let me see them," he begged.

She crossed the room, took the key from her bracelet, and opened a door let into the wall. Presently she returned with a morocco case. He drew out the pearls and studied them.

"I suppose they're still worth what I gave for them," he reflected.

She nodded indifferently.

"I should think so. They would have been worth more but for this craze for imitation jewellery."

"Twenty-eight thousand pounds," he murmured.

She nodded and held them up to the light.

"They are quite nice," she observed, "with the exception of the one or two at the back which I have always wanted to change. Of course," she went on, with a sudden gleam in her eyes, "if you have any idea of making me a present, it's an excellent time just now. Cartier's told me only this morning that at a very moderate cost they could make this into an almost perfect necklace. They have a wonderful lot of pearls their agent has just sent them from Ceylon."

She looked at him expectantly. He shook his head.

"Not the slightest chance of my being able to do anything of the sort at present," he assured her. "On the contrary—"

"Then why this mercenary interest in them?" she demanded, with obvious disappointment.

He smiled grimly.

"The taint of the City! I must have brought it back with me. I seem to have been talking about nothing but money all day."

She rang the bell again.

"Go and change now, Harvey," she enjoined. "I must have my bath. I'll wear black and the pearls tonight and you shall see how those poor ones spoil the effect. We might go on and dance at the Ambassador's afterwards for an hour."

"Just as you like," he agreed, rising to his feet a little wearily as Annette entered.

The evening was like many others Harvey and his wife had spent together; superficially interesting enough, yet utterly devoid of any real and intimate intercourse. They were received at the Ritz as welcome patrons and from the moment of their entrance to their departure were exchanging greetings with friends and acquaintances, accepting and giving invitations, hearing gossip about mutual friends. Strangers observed them with a not altogether unsympathetic interest. Mildred in her black gown of severe Parisian fashion, her pearls, which were really very beautiful, her fair hair, blue eyes, and undeniably well-bred appearance, always attracted a certain amount of attention, whilst Harvey, with his sensitive yet strong face, his clean-cut features, tanned skin, and slim, athletic figure, had always been accounted one of the best-looking men in his set. He ate and talked and drank that night to all appearance just as he would have done a week or a month ago. The shadow of an impossible nightmare was always with him, but he thrust it vigorously into the background of his mind. Afterwards they made up a little party and went on to the Ambassador's to dance with Lady Felthorpe, Mildred's sister, Pattie Mallinson, her cousin, a very popular young lady indeed, and several men, who had been attached to a dinner party given by the former. It was two o'clock when they reached home and Mildred went yawning upstairs.

"One does just the same things here," she remarked, "but the atmosphere is altogether different, isn't it? In Monte Carlo I am never tired. Here I am half asleep before two o'clock."

"Try and wake up," he begged, "because I want to come and talk to you for a minute if I may?"

She looked at him in surprise.

"Talk to me, at this time of the night?" she expostulated. "Won't it do in the morning?"

"It might," he assented, "but I shall have left for the City before you are awake."

She yawned again and yielded the point.

"Well, bring me a whisky and soda and give me some cigarettes," she directed. "I'll put on my dressing-gown in a moment and we can talk in the boudoir."

He turned into the dining-room and obeyed her behests, mixed also a whisky and soda for himself and made his way into the tiny blue and white sitting-room opening from her bed-chamber. Presently she made her appearance in a wonderful rose-coloured négligé trimmed with white fur, threw herself into the one comfortable easy-chair, lit a cigarette and leaned back with her hands clasped behind her head.

"What idiots we were to come home to this cold," she declared discontentedly. "Even with a fire one seems chilled somehow."

He nodded.

"It was very hard luck on you," he admitted. "So far as I am concerned, however, it seems to have been necessary. Mildred, what have you done with the deeds of this house?"

She looked across at him, startled.

"The deeds of this house?" she repeated. "Why, what on earth do you want with them?"

He hesitated for a moment. There was a suspicious, almost an angry look in her eyes and his task seemed suddenly to have become more formidable. Nevertheless it had to be undertaken and he summoned up all his courage.

"You have a right to my whole confidence, Mildred, if you wish it," he said. "I will try to explain matters to you. I find that a very serious state of affairs exists in the City. This man, Armitage, my partner, who has recently died, to cover, I am afraid, his own extravagance, and to conceal the fact that he was heavily overdrawn with the firm, has kept me in complete ignorance of the fact that we have actually been losing money for many years. I am not, as you know, a business man, and I have not had time yet to thoroughly grapple with the situation, but this I do know, that somehow or other I have to raise the sum of eighty thousand pounds before the Bank closes the day after to-morrow."

Momentarily she collapsed. Her real emotion was to come afterwards. At first she was simply frightened. "But I can't understand," she gasped. "I always thought your firm were merchant princes. You've drawn just what you wanted—no one has ever said a word."

"That is quite true," he admitted. "I have spent very large sums this year, as you know. The reason Armitage never protested was, that to have done so would have directed attention to his own defalcations. He appears to have overdrawn nearly a hundred thousand pounds."

"But this is wicked," she exclaimed. "Can't it be got back again from his estate?"

"There is no estate to get it back from. Armitage lived in chambers and owned no property whatsoever. As a matter of fact I am nearly as much overdrawn myself, but I had no idea that the business wouldn't stand it."

She began to stiffen.

"What are we going to do?" she demanded harshly.

"As yet I am afraid I cannot tell you," he replied. "Mr. Chalmer is coming to see me to-morrow morning, and I shall make an effort to get a grasp of the whole situation. In the meantime, however, one thing is certain. Somehow or other I must raise that eighty thousand pounds before four o'clock the day after tomorrow. That is why I asked you about the deeds of the house. They should be worth at least twenty thousand pounds as security, and your pearls, say, another twenty-five thousand. Then I thought I could get ten thousand pounds as security upon my own private income and probably borrow something on my life insurance."

The dawn of an overmastering fury glittered in her hard blue eyes. She rose to her feet and stood facing him, clutching the back of a chair.

"You are out of your senses," she cried. "You're talking like a fool. The house is mine. You gave it to me and it is in my name. The pearls are mine. You think I am going to let you take them away and be beggared just because you have been fool enough to let people rob you! You must be mad to ask such a thing. The deeds are in my name at the Bank and they'll stay there. The pearls—see here!"

She unfastened them from her neck, hurried to the safe and unlocked it, stowed them away, locked it again, and replaced the key in its attachment to her bracelet. Harvey made no movement at all. He watched her all the time with curious eyes.

"The pearls and the house are mine," she declared, "and you shan't touch them. You are abominably selfish, Harvey, to have even suggested such a thing. Perhaps you'd like me to give up my beggarly settlement to satisfy your creditors. Do you think I married you, Harvey, to be poor?"

"I have wondered once or twice," he said deliberately, "what you did marry me for. Just now I am wondering more than ever."

"I'll tell you then," she exclaimed bitterly, walking up and down the room with quick, uneven steps, and looking at him every now and then: "I married you because I believed you to be what everyone said you were—a rich man with a gold mine behind him. I hated your business—a leather business. Faugh! But no one seems to mind these things nowadays, so I didn't. Externally you were of my world, I will admit. You satisfied me in many ways; but first and last, since you wish to know, I married you because I wanted to be rich. There have been four generations of Farringdons, each one poorer than the last. I was brought up in an atmosphere of poverty and I wanted to get out of it. I wanted to have money to spend with both hands. I didn't know that I was marrying a fool who would play polo and hunt and shoot whilst everyone else robbed him of his fortune."

As though in response to the change in her, there was a distinct difference in his own tone and manner. The slight, apologetic kindliness passed from his face. He reached out his hand for a cigarette and lit it. The fingers which struck the match were perfectly steady, his tone clear and well-balanced.

"Psychologically," he admitted, "your attitude is interesting. After all I don't know that it surprises me very much. I shall, of course, accept your decision to lend me neither your pearls nor the deeds of this house. Nevertheless I feel bound to point out to you, in our joint interests, that there is just a chance if I succeed in raising this money that means may be found of meeting the crisis. If, on the other hand, our engagements are not met the day after to-morrow, there seems to be no alternative but bankruptcy."

She shuddered, but it was obviously in distaste of the ugly word, not from any measure of sympathy.

"If that comes," she announced, "I shall go and live abroad. You will not be such an absolute fool as to let them take everything, I suppose. You will remember your duty as a husband. There will be something for me."

"I have not so far had time to survey the future at all," he replied. "I may remind you, however, that you have your settlement of two thousand a year."

"Do you suppose," she demanded contemptuously, her voice quivering once more with anger, "that I or any other woman in my position could live on two thousand a year? Why, my dressmaker's bills alone come to more than that."

"It is a pittance, no doubt," he agreed regretfully, "but it is at least a certainty. I myself cannot at the present moment see two thousand pence which I shall be able to call my own."

"Oh, who cares about a man?" she cried impatiently. "You'll look after yourself all right. I shall put the house up for sale to-morrow. I won't be robbed of that anyhow."

He rose to his feet.

"I must confess," he said, "that I am a little disappointed, Mildred, with your attitude. I am forced to remind you once more before we close the subject finally that your assistance with the loan of the pearls and the deeds of the house, besides being the reasonable sacrifice which a husband who is faced with a great difficulty might demand of his wife, might in the end avert this crisis altogether."

"Rubbish!" she scoffed.

"Believe me, it is nothing of the sort," he protested. "I have perhaps been a little clumsy in breaking this thing to you, and I am sure that you have not had time yet to understand what it means. The failure of the House of Garrard would bring disgrace upon a name which has been honoured everywhere since my great-grandfather founded the business more than a century ago. The horror of the thing grows upon me every hour. I shall do all that a human being can do to avert such a catastrophe and I ask you to help, Mildred. Remember that it is not only for my sake but for your own. If I can get over the day after to-morrow, I promise you that I will put up a great fight for it."

"I refuse absolutely," she declared, without a moment's hesitation. "I shall part with neither my pearls nor the deeds of the house. If you ask me a thousand times, Harvey, that is my last word to you. If you have let others deceive you, you must pay the penalty yourself. You should be ashamed to even ask such a sacrifice of me."

He remained silent for a moment. There was no sign of anger in his face or disappointment. Only his eyes lingered upon his wife as upon some curious thing.

"If upon reflection," he begged, "you should change your mind, let me hear from you before eight o'clock to-morrow morning. I shall be leaving the house at that time."

She laughed hardly.

"I am about as likely to change my mind," she told him, "as you are to redeem the fortunes of your wretched business."

Upon the threshold, with his fingers upon the handle of the door, he turned around. His expression had become harder. His tone was severe.

"There is one thing I insist upon, Mildred," he said, "until this matter is settled one way or the other, I forbid you to breathe a word of what has passed between us."

"Forbid!" she scoffed.

"I use the word advisedly," he assured her. "A careless word from you might ruin all my efforts. Credit is one of the great factors in the commercial world, and at present the House of Garrard stands where it did. If you are inconsiderate enough to betray my confidence to any living person, you would deserve what may be coming to you—and more. I neither ask for nor expect any kindness or sympathy from you. What I have asked for in material things you have refused. I accept your decision, but I forbid you absolutely and emphatically to breathe one word of anything I have said to anybody until I give you permission."

The half-scornful retort died away upon her lips. She looked into the face of a man who was a stranger to her. He waited for a second or two and then departed, closing the door behind him, leaving her listening to his level footsteps as he crossed the corridor and entered his own room. Then she collapsed once more upon the couch, her head buried amongst the cushions. She began to tear in pieces with quick convulsive movements a lace handkerchief which she had been holding doubled up in her hand.