Читать книгу Slane's Long Shots - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 5

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MONTAGUE BREST—Monty to all his friends, and they were many—laid down his cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and swore.

"Ruth," he exclaimed, "I'm done! I'm a fraud! I can't make head or tail of it. Tomorrow I'll have to resign, and then God knows what we shall do. Curse that yellow-skinned, slobbering Manchu, or whoever sat down and wrote this farrago of rubbish to His Majesty's Government. I'm beat, Ruth! I can't make a word of sense of it."

She had crossed the room, and was already leaning over him, her arm around his neck. She looked at the long, stiff sheet of paper, covered with what seemed to be cabalistic signs, and she laughed outright.

"Monty, my dear," she remonstrated, "how could anyone in the world expect you to make sense of such a medley."

"Well, the Foreign Office does, for one," he assured her gloomily. "It looks like the outside of a Chinese teapot to us, but it's Tibetan all right. I daren't say I cannot do, it. I've had too many failures lately. I thought I might be able to make something of it, but I can't. I can't make sense of the opening paragraph, even."

She patted his cheek soothingly. She was a very pretty girl and her voice would have been enough to make most men forget their troubles.

"I shouldn't worry, dear," she advised. "The F.O. would never seriously complain of a man for not being able to make sense of that."

He rose to his feet, and nervously lit another cigarette. The small sitting-room was already thick with tobacco smoke.

"But that's just what they will do, Ruth," he complained. "You see, I made a mess of the Afghan cable. They made use of a word I never heard of, and if I confess to another failure here, they'll think I'm a fraud so far as the Asiatic languages are concerned."

"Let's telephone to Mr. Odane," she suggested. "He offered to help you at any time."

The young man's face lighted.

"It's an idea, Ruth," he admitted. "He's not so good at the Indian dialects as I am, but he's a marvel at Chinese. This certainly seems a good deal more like his touch than mine."

"I'll ring him up," she decided. "Don't you worry."

She threw open the door of the little sitting-room, and made her way to the telephone instrument at the end of the narrow passage. She was back again in less than two minutes.

"He's coming, Monty," she announced triumphantly. "He seemed only too pleased. The idea of a manuscript you couldn't make anything of intrigued him immensely. Let's have another look at the beastly thing."

They pored over it together—an official-looking document, covered with curious characters, scratched on a home- made paper which was half yellow, and half white. Ruth's finger lingered at the middle of one sentence.

"There's an Englishman's name," she pointed out. "The only thing anyone could make any sense of—printed in English characters too—BRETTON. I've heard it before somewhere."

"There's a Colonel Le Bretton, a great explorer," her brother reflected. "By Jove, I should wonder if it were he. He started off a year ago for Mount Everest, or somewhere around there. The man who went through Abyssinia a few years ago, you know. I—"

He broke off in his sentence.

His sister was not a nervous person, but the sound of her shriek filled the little room. He started to his feet. She was staring at the bay window, across which the curtain was only half drawn. Her eyes were filled with a very definite terror.

"For God's sake, what's the matter, Ruth?" he exclaimed. She pointed to the narrow slit of exposed window-pane.

"There was a man there, looking in," she cried. "I saw his face distinctly."

Brest hastened from the room, along the few feet of passage, and threw open the front door. He looked up and down in vain. Their house was the last but four in a long row of seven-roomed villas near Barnes Commons and the space opposite was still unbuilt upon. There was not a soul to be seen except a man and a girl strolling arm in arm, passing from under a lamp-post into invisibility. He closed the door, and returned to the sitting- room.

"Ruth, my dear, you're fancying things," he told her. "There isn't a human being in sight."

"A man looked in at the window," she insisted.

"Then he climbed up the side of the house on to the roof. There was no other means of getting away."

She lit a cigarette, and laughed nervously.

"I hope I'm not beginning to see things'."

"There was nobody there," he assured her. "Look here, Ruth, there's one thing you've got to promise me. Whatever happens, in no case—not under any circumstances—must you ever let a soul know that I consulted Odane about this manuscript. I should get the sack straightaway."

"Am I a gossip?" she scoffed. "Did you ever know me to talk?"

"Never," he acknowledged. "The new regulations are very strict, though. It is ridiculous that you shouldn't be able to ask help of a man in Odane's position, but it would cost me my job if they knew I'd done it."

"Then they never shall, dear," she promised. "I'll get the whisky and soda out for Mr. Odane."

She patted his cheek. He looked at her in surprise.

"Why, Ruth," he exclaimed, "your hands are as cold as ice, and you're trembling. What's the matter?"

"I'm not used to visions," she confided with a little shiver.