Читать книгу The Double - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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His memory, however, was not entirely reliable in regard to essentials. But he remembered one recent trifle and produced a sensation by its recital.

“It’s a funny thing,” quavered the old man, as he offered a limp hand at parting, “that all sorts of people want to know about that there house. I had a young lady here a day or two ago—pretty as a picture she was, a bit of a girl. She said she was writing a book about houses and wanted to know if I had any old plans. And, sure enough, up come the question of this house of Mr. Derrick’s.”

“What was she like?” asked Dick. “Tall or short, stout ... ?”

The old gentleman considered.

“Well, now you come to mention it, I don’t remember anything about her except that she’d got very pretty eyes—a sort of grayish-blue, just like my granddaughter’s; sort of long, dark lashes over ’em.”

Dick knew that he was describing the eyes of Mary Dane, or Mary Dane’s double. He thought it was a moment to make the tactful admission that he was a police officer.

“Detective, are you? Well, I can’t tell you anything more than I’ve told you. She wanted to know where she could find the architect, and I gave her his address. She wrote it down on this very table.” He pointed shakily. “She couldn’t find a pencil for a bit, and then she took one out of her bag—a gold one with a big red stone at the end of it.”

Dick’s jaw dropped: he was describing the pencil he had lost and which Nurse Mary Dane had restored to him.

It was a sorely puzzled man who left Scotland Yard that evening and walked to his lodgings. It was half-past eleven, and once he had left the Strand behind him he was in a fairly deserted area till he came to Holborn. This passed, he entered the silence and desolation of Bloomsbury, and was feeling a twinge of annoyance that he had so precipitately let his flat when he found interest in one of those unpleasant little dramas which are all too frequent in a great city.

A woman was walking ahead of him, so far ahead that he could not be certain that it was a woman and not a man. As he swung along he gradually overtook her, though he was totally unconscious of the fact. Her assailant must have been coming from the opposite direction: Dick did not see him until he heard a girl’s cry and saw two people struggling. He quickened his pace and came up to them as, slipping from the man’s grasp, the girl turned to fly. She cannoned into the detective and almost knocked him over. In another second the man had gripped her arm. He was tremendously tall, overtopping Dick Staines; his voice was thick and drunken and very loud.

“Hey! Come back, you!”

Inspector Staines caught him with a professional grip and swung him back against the railings of the gardens that occupied the centre of the square.

Then he heard a little gasp from the girl, and, turning his head, found himself staring stupidly into the face of Mary Dane. She was dressed in a dark blue costume, and he might not have recognized her in the closely fitting hat if he had not known her.

“Oh! Mr. Staines, please send that man away!”

The tall fellow was truculent, most anxious to take up the matter of an unprovoked appearance.

“What’s the idea?” His voice was louder and even more raucous. “Can’t I talk to a young lady—old friend of mine from Capetown?”

He waggled his finger drunkenly in the girl’s face.

“Didn’t think I knew yer, did yer? But Lordy’s got a memory: he never forgets people who done him a bad turn—and——”

The actions of police officers are rather definite. Dick Staines again jerked the man against the railings without an effort.

“Is this fellow annoying you?”

He saw by the light of a street lamp that her face was very pale.

“No—I think he has mistaken me for somebody else.”

“Like hell I have!” said the stranger. “Your name’s Mary Devilliers! And who are you, I’d like to know?” He turned suddenly on Dick.

“I am Inspector Staines from Scotland Yard,” said Dick, and at the words the long figure seemed to wilt. His voice sank to an ingratiating whine.

“I’m not giving any trouble, Inspector. Perhaps I’ve made a mistake with this young lady. To tell you the truth, I’ve had a couple of drinks——”

“Let’s have a look at you,” said Dick, gripping him by the lapel and drawing him to the light.

The first thing that struck Dick Staines was the man’s extraordinarily narrow head; a long brown face, a pendulous nose, small round eyes deeply set, and a ragged little moustache were photographed in Dick’s memory.

“It’s all right, baas—Lordy Brown is my name. I landed last Saturday from the Glamis Castle. This young lady knows—well, maybe she doesn’t know.”

Then, to Dick’s surprise, he began talking rapidly in a language which the detective did not understand. At first he thought it was German, then he knew it to be Dutch, and the taal at that.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you understand that?” He turned to the watchful girl, who had withdrawn a little from the circle.

She shook her head.

“I have an idea he’s trying to speak to me,” she said.

“To you, miss?” said Lordy Brown almost humbly. “Why should I talk to you? I’ve given you enough trouble to-night. I’m a gentleman, and I apologize. Only landed from the Glamis on Saturday. I got a good friend here, Mr. Inspector. I went round to see him, but he wasn’t in. Good feller, too—knew him years ago when he was living in a dirty old tent in Tanganyika. He’ll see Lordy all right. Millionaire, this fellow is. Had a row with his old man and ran away to Africa, but a good feller—old Walter Derrick.”

Dick looked at him quickly.

“Do you know London at all?” he asked. “Do you know ...” He mentioned a café near Piccadilly Circus which almost every overseas tourist has visited. “Meet me there in half an hour. Where are you staying?”

The man gave a hotel in a street off the Strand and gave it so readily that Dick knew he was speaking the truth.

“I’ll see you in half an hour. If you’re not there I’ll come and find you,” said Dick Staines, and without another word left the man.

The girl was already walking slowly away. Evidently she expected his escort.

“It was all very terrifying, and I rather lost my head,” she said ruefully. “I didn’t see this man until he came up to me. I hate drunken people.”

“Where are you staying to-night?” he asked.

She was staying at a private hotel in Gower Street. She had come up for the day from Littlehampton to do some shopping and was going back the next day. She did not like London particularly, she confided to him.

“I want to ask you a question,” said Dick. “Have you ever heard of somebody being so like you that you have been mistaken for each other?”

She shook her head.

“No, I don’t think there’s anybody in the world quite like anybody else,” she said. “Have I really got a double?”

“A treble, unless Mr. Lordy Brown was talking in his sleep. He mistook you for a Miss Devilliers of Capetown. Do you know Capetown?”

To his surprise she nodded.

“I was there two years ago,” she said.

“But you couldn’t have been a nurse then: you weren’t old enough.”

She laughed softly at this.

“You’re in a very complimentary mood to-night, Mr. Staines.”

And then she shivered.

“I wish I hadn’t seen that man: I’m rather worried about him.”

He did not ask her why she should be worried about a man she did not know and whom she might not see again.

“It is queer that he should know Derrick,” he said.

She did not answer, and when he repeated the rather banal statement:

“Mr. Derrick? He was the gentleman with the yellow motor car? Is he in London?”

At present, Dick told her, Mr. Walter Derrick was at his country house in Surrey.

“He is very fortunate,” she said.

He asked her why, and she smiled. When he pressed her:

“How stupid you are! And Lord Weald—Tommy, don’t you call him?—thinks you’re so terribly clever! Wouldn’t you think it good fortune not to have to entertain an old African friend like Mr. Brown? You’re going to see him, aren’t you—Brown, I mean? Do ask him who Miss Devilliers is—it’s rather a common name in Capetown, if I remember rightly. Have you lost your pencil again?”

The question recalled to his mind a matter that troubled him.

“I almost thought I had,” he said. “And this is where the question of your double comes in. There’s a builder at Wandsworth named Ellington, a very old gentleman, who recently had a visitor—a lady who, from his description, was rather like you—she called on the day the pencil was lost, and on the day—something else happened that was rather remarkable. Ellington said the young lady had asked him for particulars about Mr. Walter Derrick’s house, and that she had produced a pencil to write down an address that was obviously my pencil. Am I being very amusing?” he added a little tartly, for she was laughing.

“I think you’re terribly amusing. Look!”

She opened her bag and took out a shining gold object and handed it to him. He stopped to examine it: it was identical with the pencil he had in his pocket.

“I bought it this afternoon in Regent Street,” she said solemnly. “I could have bought forty or fifty or a hundred! There seems to be a vogue in these pencils just now. I saw a man using one in the train. Where did you get it?”

“Tommy gave me mine,” he said.

“Of course Tommy gave you yours!” she scoffed. “There’s a shop in Regent Street selling nothing else—a fountain-pen shop. If you take the trouble to look you will see an enormous display of them in the window; and if you think they’re gold, they’re not! I hate exposing your Tommy, but they cost seven and sixpence each, and I should think there are nearly fifty thousand of them in use. Will you tell me something?”

“I’ll tell you anything I can,” he replied.

She was silent for a little while, and then asked:

“What is the great mystery? What do you mean when you say that I am three people—Miss Devilliers and myself and somebody else? Who is the somebody else? Have they been committing terrible crimes, and did you really come down that night to Brighton to arrest me?”

“What an absurd idea,” he began.

“Don’t prevaricate! I could see, the moment you came up to me in the ballroom, that there was something very, very wrong. I thought you’d come especially on my behalf—to catch me out—that was the sensation I had. And you did, too!”

“Have you a sister?” he asked, and she nodded.

“Aged twelve, and not a bit like me. She’s rather dark. She’s an awfully clever child, but not clever enough to impersonate me. Have I a twin? No. The truth is, Mr. Staines, I must be a very commonplace type.”

He could protest against this in the tritest possible way, but she changed the topic.

She told him that any letters addressed to the little hotel where she stayed would always find her. That she should suggest his writing at all was ridiculously pleasing to him. The pleasure was somewhat modified at parting:

“In case you find a fourth person like me, and you would like to know where I am,” she mocked him.

Dick went back to the café where he had arranged to meet the man from Africa and found him sitting at a small corner table. Even among the Bohemian assembly he was an unusual figure, in his gray, soft shirt, open at the neck, his battered Stetson hat on the back of his narrow head, and the long, brown, lean face.

There were people in the restaurant who knew Dick Staines and who turned their backs on him quickly when he made his appearance; for this was a favourite rendezvous of the swell mob, the “kite” men, the confidence artists, and that queer little word of fashionably dressed young men who lie in wait for gullible strangers.

“What’ll you drink, captain?” asked Lordy Brown, and his fingers snapped at a waiter like the crack of a pistol. “Hi, you! Get the captain a drink.”

But Dick was not drinking anything stronger than a lemon squash.

“I’d have had one myself, but I’ve lived on it for years—limejuice and bad water! The sight of a cordial bottle makes me go sick in the stomach! Hope you don’t think any the worse of me, captain, for that little business with the young lady. The truth is, I was a bit tight. Do you know my friend Mr. Walter Derrick?”

He was obviously taken aback when Dick replied in the affirmative.

“A good feller—rather soft but good. Funny how I met him. He had a camp at a place called Pakaska, gold prospecting, him and a feller named Cleave. I come across him in the bush. He was a pretty sick man—been mauled on the leg by a lion—but I got him back to his camp. I’ll bet he remembers that, captain! I’ll bet he’ll say ‘Why, Lordy, what can I do for you, you old crook!’ Full of jokes, was Walter. If ever there was a witty man or gentleman, he was that man.”

“Or gentleman,” suggested Dick, amused.

“I was in the camp four days lookin’ after his leg—left calf cut up something awful. He went after a mangy old lion—that sort can be dangerous. He said he’d be a limpin’ cripple all his life, but I says, ‘No. You trust me, Walter.’ Naturally, with my experience, I’m better than a doctor. Plug in the iodine an’ plenty of hot water—better than a doctor. Walter will remember that! He’ll say, ‘Lordy, I’m glad to see you! You saved my life, Lordy, an’ now you’re down and out I’ll save you!’ ”

“I hope so,” said Dick when the loquacious man paused.

“Of course he will. Us voorloopers always stand together. We’re the salt of the earth. We’re different from you fellows at home—we’ve been through it. My brother was one of the original pioneers. I know the country from Christmas Pass to the Falls and down again to Bulawayo. I’ve prospected in Barotseland and Bechuanaland; I’ve lived in the Kalahari.”

He looked at Dick with a speculative eye. Evidently he was debating in his mind whether he should give him an item of information which he had almost given once or twice in the course of the conversation.

“I suppose you’ll be finding out who I am, Inspector? Well, I’m not going to give you any bother—I believe in treating the police as gentlemen. I’ve been in trouble, I admit it: I’ve done two terms in Pretoria Central, and there’s no sense in denying it—twelve months and three and a half years. But that was in the days when I used to drink and got led astray by people who were worse than me. I’m straight now. The other game doesn’t pay. You know that better than I do, Inspector.”

“What were your offences?” asked Dick.

Mr. Lordy Brown coughed embarrassedly.

“Well, they were bad and yet they weren’t bad. I wasn’t the chief man in either job.”

It was the old cant that Dick knew so well. Evidently Mr. Lordy Brown was not particularly proud of his crimes, since for a long time he rambled about the subject before he made the confession.

“The first job was just gold robbery from a prospector—he was tight and I was tight, and I don’t really know the rights of it even now. But the police swore my life away—they’re not so honest as they are in England,” he added hastily. “I had my first dose in Pretoria Central. The second job I was innocent, in a manner of speaking. They told me the gentleman was buying diamonds—you’re not allowed to buy diamonds in South Africa——”

“I know all about I. D. B.,” said Dick. “Well?”

“Well, sir,” said Mr. Lordy Brown slowly, “I went to tip him off and tell him the police would be looking for him. I might have asked him for a few pounds to get me to Capetown, but nothing worse than that. Well, it appears that this gentleman wasn’t buying diamonds at all, and I got four years on false evidence.”

“For trying to blackmail him, in fact: is that your weakness?”

Lordy did not attempt to deny the impeachment, but thought it necessary to proclaim the purity of his motives with regard to Mr. Walter Derrick.

“There’s a gentleman that is a gentleman. I know nothing against him except that he’s too generous! That man couldn’t do a crooked thing—and such a jocular chap! Full of fun and amusement. Do you know what he used to call his leg when I was dressing it—the lion’s share! It takes a man to make a joke about his own troubles, don’t it?”

When he said he was broke he was speaking in a figurative sense. He confessed to Dick that he had landed with “a few” pounds, and regretted in a half-hearted way that he had ever left South Africa. The detective guessed that there was a very excellent reason for his leaving.

“Did you ever get into trouble in Capetown?” asked Dick suddenly.

By the man’s hesitation he gathered that the full record of Lordy Brown’s crimes had not yet been confessed.

“There was a bit of a bother,” replied Mr. Brown vaguely, “but I always say that give a dog a bad name and you might as well string him up! When I was there, Capetown was full of crooks, and naturally other people got the blame. Crooks! Half the Australian gang were there—men and women living in the best hotels and all on the make-haste.”

He felt the intensity of Dick’s inquiring gaze and became suddenly uncommunicative.

“Who was Miss Devilliers?”

Lordy Brown looked past him and for an instant was ill at ease.

“Oh, her? Well, she was a—she was a lady I knew slightly.”

“Crook?” asked Dick.

“I’m not giving any information about ladies,” replied Lordy virtuously.

Of one thing Dick was certain as he walked home: it was that this man really had been genuinely deceived when he addressed Mary Dane. There was nothing amorous, nothing friendly in his tone when he had spoken to her; rather was it the gloating satisfaction of an injured man who had met the one responsible for his misfortunes.

He was intrigued, a little bit hurt. He analyzed this latter sensation quite unnecessarily. He was hurt because he was fond of the girl and because at the back of his mind there was a suspicion, not entirely a conviction, that Mary and her double were one and the same. And yet both he and Lordy Brown might easily have been deceived. They had both “recognized” the girl in the half light: one in the basement of Walter Derrick’s house, the other in the uncertain light of a street lamp. Why was she an enemy of Walter Derrick? What did she hope to gain by these mad adventures? His mind went back to the unknown Slough murder. Was she a sister, a wife? He shook his head. In romance such things happen; in real life people are content to leave well alone.

Suppose that the Slough murderer was behind these unaccountable outrages, he would certainly have known that all the fingerprints in the possession of old Derrick had been offered to the police by his son and had been refused. And if they were hidden in some secret hiding place ... No, he rejected the fingerprint theory. More likely was it that these midnight visitors were seeking the balance of old Derrick’s money which they knew to be hidden in the house.

So he could lift down Mary Dane and her double from the realm of romance, and place the latter where she would belong, if his theory held—a member of a clever gang who were seeking easy money, money which would never be missed and therefore would arouse no outcry.

He lay sleepless in his bed for a long time that night, thinking and thinking, creating theories only to destroy them. He went to sleep with one resolve—to find the woman who was impersonating Mary Dane and to lay bare a mystery which had begun to get on his nerves.

Nothing but asinine infatuation (as he told himself) would have taken him the next morning to the little hotel in Gower Street where Mary had spent the night. As it was, he was punished for his act of folly, for Mary had left by an early train, although she had hinted to him that she would be in town all day.

“Are you Mr. Staines?” asked the maid, as she remembered a commission. “Would you mind waiting here, sir? The young lady left a letter for you: she said you would call this morning.”

In spite of his annoyance Dick laughed. How very sure this “young lady” was, and how very wise in the ways of men! And his irritation was not easily dispersed. Certainly her letter did nothing to soothe him.

Dear Mr. Staines:

I am so sorry I have had to go back to Littlehampton. I had a telephone message early this morning that Mr. Cornfort was not so well. I’m so sorry I cannot lunch with you, but I do hope you will ask me again.

The writing was small, rather childish. And now Dick Staines’s annoyance was more acute, for he had called to ask her to go to lunch, and he was perfectly sure that on the night before he had made no mention of such an occasion.

He could almost see her laughing at him, very gently, those gray eyes of hers alight with fun.

“Curse the woman!” said Dick mildly, and went back to his duties.

His duties that day were rather light, his task the rereading of the Slough dossier. It was remarkable how little was known of the murder. The only evidence of the slightest value was given in a statement by a carter named, curiously enough, Carter, and a pencil note on the corner of the foolscap ran laconically: “This man has since died.”

Carter had seen the motorcycle and sidecar coming slowly from the direction of Maidenhead. The driver was dressed in brown and wore goggles. His height was difficult to ascertain because he sat astride of the machine. The murdered cashier was a man of forty, an amateur boxer and a great pedestrian. It had been his habit to walk from Slough to the works, which were just outside the town, and to carry the money in a black bag. The managing director had considered this a dangerous proceeding and had issued orders that the cashier was not to collect money unless he had a guard with him; but more often than not this rule was ignored. He was alone this morning when, in view of three or four people and the driver of a grocer’s cart, the motorcycle and sidecar came to a halt by the edge of the path and the driver alighted. He was tinkering with his machine until the cashier came abreast, whereupon he turned round, whipped out his pistol, and fired. Nobody saw the driver get back into his saddle, and before anybody realized what had happened he had disappeared. He had passed through Slough town, and, curiously enough, obeyed the signal of a traffic policeman who held him up to allow the passing of a trolley, and that was the last seen of him.

The pistol was found in the middle of the road about forty yards from the murder, and the theory of the police was that in trying to put it into his pocket the murderer had let it slip and it had fallen down between the cycle and the sidecar. Nothing was seen of the man: even his motorcycle was never traced nor its number taken. Naturally enough, Scotland Yard had pulled in every man with a bad record and who had ever committed a hold-up, but they got no nearer the solution of the mystery, and the general idea at Scotland Yard was that he was an educated man who had escaped to France.

Now, it is a peculiar fact that ordinary criminals do not attempt to leave England, and for a very excellent reason. A man without a knowledge of a foreign language or of foreign customs is a hopeless creature in a new land. He is marked wherever he goes, and since the descriptions of wanted men are circulated instantly abroad, it would have been generally impossible that they should evade capture.

Scotland Yard can count on the fingers of one hand men who have committed crimes and have made for the Continent, and invariably these have been international crooks and safe blowers who are as much at home in Paris and Berlin as they are in London.