Читать книгу Blue Hand - Edgar Wallace - Страница 10

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THE story of the scar and the queer effect it had produced on Mrs. Groat puzzled Jim almost as much as it had worried the girl. He offered his wild theory again and she laughed.

“Of course I shall leave,” she said, “but I must stay until all Mrs. Groat’s affairs are cleared up. There are heaps of letters and documents of all kinds which I have to index,” she said, “at least Mr. Groat told me there were. And it seems so unfair to run away whilst the poor old lady is so ill. As to my being the young lady of fortune, that is absurd. My parents were South Africans. Jim, you are too romantic to be a good detective.”

He indulged in the luxury of a taxi to carry her back to Grosvenor Square, and this time went with her to the house, taking his leave at the door.

Whilst they were talking on the step, the door opened and a man was shown out by Jackson. He was a short, thick-set man with an enormous brown beard.

Apparently Jackson did not see the two people on the step, at any rate he did not look toward them, but said in a loud voice:

“Mr. Groat will not be home until seven o’clock, Mr. Villa.”

“Tell him I called,” said the bearded man with a booming voice, and stepped past Jim, apparently oblivious to his existence.

“Who is the gentleman with the whiskers?” asked Jim, but the girl could give him no information.

Jim was not satisfied with the girl’s explanation of her parentage. There was an old school-friend of his in business in Cape Town, as an architect, and on his return to his office, Jim sent him a long reply-paid cablegram. He felt that he was chasing shadows, but at present there was little else to chase, and he went home to his flat a little oppressed by the hopelessness of his task.

The next day he had a message from the girl saying that she could not come out that afternoon, and the day was a blank, the more so because that afternoon he received a reply to his cable. The reply destroyed any romantic dreams he might have had as to Eunice Weldon’s association with the Danton millions. The message was explicit. Eunice May Weldon had been born at Rondebosch, on the 12th June, 1899; her parents were Henry William Weldon, musician, and Margaret May Weldon. She had been christened at the Wesleyan Chapel at Rondebosch, and both her parents were dead.

The final two lines of the cable puzzled him:

“Similar inquiries made about parentage Eunice Weldon six months ago by Selenger & Co., Brade Street Buildings.”

“Selenger & Co.,” said Jim thoughtfully. Here was a new mystery. Who else was making inquiries about the girl? He opened a Telephone Directory and looked up the name. There were several Selengers, but none of Brade Street Buildings. He put on his hat, and hailing a taxi, drove to Brade Street, which was near the Bank, and with some difficulty found Brade Street Buildings. It was a moderately large block of offices, and on the indicator at the door he discovered Selenger & Co. occupied No. 6 room on the ground floor.

The office was locked and apparently unoccupied. He sought the hall-keeper.

“No, sir,” said that man, shaking his head. “Selengers’ aren’t open. As a matter of fact, nobody’s ever there except at night.”

“At night,” said Jim, “that’s an extraordinary time to do business.”

The hall-keeper looked at him unfavourably.

“I suppose it is the way they do their business, sir,” he said pointedly.

It was some time before Jim could appease the ruffled guardian, and then he learnt that Selengers were evidently privileged tenants. A complaint from Selengers had brought the dismissal of his predecessor, and the curiosity of a housekeeper as to what Selengers did so late at night had resulted in that lady being summarily discharged.

“I think they deal with foreign stock,” said the porter. “A lot of cables come here, but I’ve never seen the gentleman who runs the office. He comes in by the side door.”

Apparently there was another entrance to Selengers’ office, an entrance reached by a small courtyard opening from a side passage. Selengers were the only tenants who had this double means of egress and exit, and also, it seemed, they were the only tenants of the building who were allowed to work all night.

“Even the stockbrokers on the second floor have to shut down at eight o’clock,” explained the porter, “and that’s pretty hard on them, because when the market is booming, there’s work that would keep them going until twelve o’clock. But at eight o’clock, it is ‘out you go’ with the company that owns this building. The rents aren’t high and there are very few offices to be had in the city nowadays. They have always been very strict, even in Mr. Danton’s time.”

“Mr. Danton’s time,” said Jim quickly. “Did he own this building? Do you mean Danton the shipowner millionaire?”

The man nodded.

“Yes, sir,” he said, rather pleased with himself that he had created a sensation. “He sold it, or got rid of it in some way years ago. I happen to know, because I used to be an office-boy in these very buildings, and I remember Mr. Danton—he had an office on the first floor, and a wonderful office it was, too.”

“Who occupies it now?”

“A foreign gentleman named Levenski. He’s a fellow who’s never here, either.”

Jim thought the information so valuable that he went to the length of calling up Mr. Salter at his home. But Mr. Salter knew nothing whatever about the Brade Street Buildings, except that it had been a private speculation of Danton’s. It had come into his hands as the result of the liquidation of the original company, and he had disposed of the property without consultation with Salter & Salter.

It was another blank wall.