Читать книгу Slane's Long Shots - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

Table of Contents

DINNER at the long table at the Lavender Club was always a cheerful affair. That particular night it was even hilarious. Two of the most popular men in the Club—Sir Jasper Slane, who rejoiced in the dual nicknames of "the tec" and "the Bart" and Colonel Le Bretton, the explorer, generally called "the tramp"—sat opposite to one another, and the conversation and chaff centering around them was insistent. A popular play had just come to the end of its run, and a famous actor, Harold Tennant, was able to dine at a reasonable hour, a circumstance of which he showed his appreciation by an inspiring appetite and thirst, and a continual flow of anecdotes. Several other well-known members of the Club had moved up their chairs to join the cheerful company. The atmosphere was charged with the genial spirit of club life at its best.

"I sometimes wonder, Le Bretton," Sir Jasper Slane observed, "how you manage to pass the time in the tranquillity of London after these hair-raising expeditions of yours."

Le Bretton, a long, lean sunburnt man, with sunken eyes, protruding eyebrows, and a disfiguring scar on one side of his face, which effectively concealed his natural expression, sipped his wine approvingly, and smiled.

"So do a good many other people," he observed. "Traveling's really my hobby, but the vital savor of life is variety. One has to come to London, for instance, to drink vintage port, and, so long as I don't have to stay here too long, I am perfectly comfortable in my little flat dictating lies about my adventures in the daytime, and joining some of you fellows at night."

"The ideal modern Münchausen," Harold Tennant pronounced. "We all read them, of course, but you don't suppose that anyone really believes these amazing stories of yours?"

"I should be very hurt if they did," was the calm retort. "Every traveler must write with imagination. Bald facts would interest no one. Oh, London suits me all right for a time. What I wonder is, how the Bart here passes his evenings when there are no jewels to be restored, or family mysteries to be solved, or aristocratic sinners to be caught and cast out. You must have a dull time between cases, Slane."

Sir Jasper grinned amiably.

"I am always preparing for the next one," he confided.

"The real sleuth hound is always agog," a noble lord, who was president of the club, remarked. "Goes about scenting crime and mystery all the time, don't you, Bart?"

"Jolly useful chap to have about the place," a member of the committee put in. "They tell me there hasn't been even a spoon stolen since his real profession became known."

Sir Jasper sighed.

"My profession," he decided, "is becoming difficult. Years ago, there was a certain pleasing ingenuousness about the criminal, and a certain amount of science about the detective. The latter generally got his quarry in the long run. Today it is the criminal who has the science and the detective who is left guessing. The betting odds have changed at least twenty-five per cent.

"Look at the Montague Brest case, for instance. Who killed Montague Brest? There's a mystery for you, if you like—a pleasant, insignificant young man occupying a minor post in a Government office, stabbed through the heart in his study in a seven-roomed villa at Barnes. No evidence of any visitor, no robbery, so far as anyone knows, nothing to steal apparently, for he and his sister seem to have been in straitened circumstances. The cleverest detective in Scotland Yard has even confided to me that he doesn't know where to start his investigations. That's a mystery worth solving. Who killed Montague Brest?"

A small man, pale, almost anemic in appearance, who had been dining alone, seated just outside the enchanted circle, had been listening with absorbed attention to Jasper Slane's speech. In the momentary silence that followed it, he replenished his glass from the modest half bottle of claret which stood by his side, and leaned towards the little group.

"I think that I can tell you," he said quietly.

There was a sudden paralysis of attention, a dramatic dumbness of mind and thought. They all stared at him.

"It's Professor Odane," his neighbor whispered to Jasper Slane. "Oriental languages, and that sort of stuff. Got a Chair somewhere. Doesn't often come in here. Quite a decent chap, but he must have gone balmy."

Slane, the first to recover himself, leaned tolerantly forward in his place.

"You mean that you have a theory, Odane, I suppose?" he suggested. "Move up and join us."

The little man, glass in hand, rose and accepted the invitation.

"Another decanter of port, and a glass for Mr. Odane," Jasper Slane ordered from the steward. "You mean, I suppose," he repeated, looking across at the newcomer, "that you have a theory."

"I have something more than a theory," was the calm reply. "I know who killed Montague Brest, and why."

A thrill shivered through the circle. Odane was not very well known—a recent member, in fact—but he had occupied a Chair at one of the Universities. He was a man of repute, and his manner was convincing. Le Bretton rose to his feet. It was a June night, and the room was warm.

"Let's have a little air for a few minutes," he proposed, crossing the floor, and throwing open one of the windows. "I've lived in the open spaces too long to stand these stuffy nights. . . . Whew, that's good!"

He returned to his place. Odane, the small man with the shrewd eyes, incisive voice, and almost waxen pallor, had become the center of attention.

"Were you at the inquest?" Jasper Slane asked him.

"Unofficially. I knew more about Montague Brest, perhaps, than anyone else. He was a neighbor of mine at Barnes, and I knew something of the work upon which he was engaged. I went to the inquest to see if there was any evidence offered. When I found that there was none, I decided to wait for a short time before I spoke. I see no one here whom I could suspect of a breach of confidence. In an hour or two's time, I have an appointment with an important person at the Foreign Office, and I shall be able to lay before him certain information which I believe beyond a doubt will lead to the arrest of the murderer. The whole affair will be public property before the morning, so I see no reason why I should not confide in you."

He was silent for a moment, glancing behind as though to assure himself that the waiters were out of hearing. Then he looked at the expectant little group of faces by which he was surrounded.

There was Harold Tennant, the actor, the humorous lines gone now from his face, his expression stern and eager; Jasper Slane, as tranquil and genial as ever, but rigid in his attention; Le Bretton, with a suggestion of slight incredulity about his cynical lips, leaning towards the window as though to enjoy the freshness of the night air; Matterson, the musician, his crumpled hair all awry, his mouth open, staring through his enormous spectacles like a frightened child; Jarrett, the sculptor, sprawling across the table, also open-mouthed and breathless; Holland Gordon, the novelist, his thin, esthetic face drawn into intense furrows.

They were all old members of the club, men of repute, and to be trusted. The little man who had cast this bombshell into their midst raised his glass and drank slowly of its contents. It was as the glass left his lips that the amazing thing happened. There was seen something like a flash of lightning, dimly heard the singing sound of a bullet. The glass was shattered into a thousand pieces. The little man gave one groan, and fell backwards in his chair—dead.