Читать книгу Blue Hand - Edgar Wallace - Страница 11

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“I SHALL not be in the office to-day, sir. I have several appointments which may keep me occupied,” said Jim Steele, and Mr. Salter sniffed.

“Business, Steele?” he asked politely.

“Not all of them, sir,” said Jim. He had a shrewd idea that Mr. Salter guessed what that business was.

“Very good,” said Salter, putting on his glasses and addressing himself to the work on his desk.

“There is one thing I wanted to ask, and that is partly why I came, because I could have explained my absence by telephone.”

Mr. Salter put down his pen patiently.

“I cannot understand why this fellow Groat has so many Spanish friends,” said Jim. “For example, there is a girl he sees a great deal, the Comtessa Manzana; you have heard of her, sir?”

“I see her name in the papers occasionally,” said Mr. Salter.

“And there are several Spaniards he knows. One in particular named Villa. Groat speaks Spanish fluently, too.”

“That is curious,” said Mr. Salter, leaning back in his chair. “His grandfather had a very large number of Spanish friends. I think that somewhere in the background there may have been some Spanish family connection. Old man Danton, that is, Jonathan Danton’s father, made most of his money in Spain and in Central America, and was always entertaining a houseful of grandees. They were a strange family, the Dantons. They lived in little water-tight compartments, and I believe on the day of his death Jonathan Danton hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to his sister for twenty years. They weren’t bad friends, if you understand. It was just the way of the Dantons. There are other families whom I know who do exactly the same thing. A reticent family, with a keen sense of honour.”

“Didn’t Grandfather Danton leave Mrs. Groat any money? She was one of his two children, wasn’t she?”

Septimus Salter nodded.

“He never left her a penny,” he said. “She practically lived on the charity of her brother. I never understood why, but the old man took a sudden dislike to her. Jonathan was as much in the dark as I am. He used to discuss it with me and wondered what his sister had done to incur the old man’s enmity. His father never told him—would never even discuss the sister with him. It was partly due to the old man’s niggardly treatment of Mrs. Groat that Jonathan Danton made his will as he did.

“Probably her marriage with Groat was one of the causes of the old man’s anger. Groat was nothing, a shipping clerk in Danton’s Liverpool office. A man ill at ease in good society, without an ‘h’ to his name, and desperately scared of his wife. The only person who was ever nice to him was poor Lady Mary. His wife hated him for some reason or other. Curiously enough when he died, too, he left all his money to a distant cousin—and he left about £5,000. Where he got it from heaven knows. And now be off, Steele. The moment you come into this office,” said Mr. Salter in despair, “you start me on a string of reminiscences that are deplorably out of keeping with a lawyer’s office.”

Jim’s first call that morning was at the Home Office. He was anxious to clear up the mystery of Madge Benson. Neither Scotland Yard nor the Prisons Commissioners were willing to supply an unofficial investigator with the information he had sought, and in desperation he had applied to the Secretary of State’s Department. Fortunately he had a “friend at court” in that building, a middle-aged barrister he had met in France, and his inquiry, backed by proof that he was not merely satisfying his personal curiosity, had brought him a note asking him to call.

Mr. Fenningleigh received him in his room with a warmth which showed that he had not forgotten the fact that on one occasion Jim had saved him from what might have been a serious injury, if not death, for Jim had dragged him to cover one night when the British headquarters were receiving the unwelcome attentions of ten German bombers.

“Sit down, Steele. I can’t tell you much,” said the official, picking up a slip of paper from his blotting-pad, “and I’m not sure that I ought to tell you anything! But this is the information which ‘prisons’ have supplied.”

Jim took the slip from the barrister’s hand and read the three lines.

“ ‘Madge Benson, age 26. Domestic Servant. One month with H.L. for theft. Sentenced at Marylebone Police Court. June 5th, 1898. Committed to Holloway. Released July 2nd, 1898.’ ”

“Theft?” said Jim thoughtfully. “I suppose there is no way of learning the nature of the theft?”

Mr. Fenningleigh shook his head.

“I should advise you to interview the gaoler at Marylebone. These fellows have extraordinary memories for faces, and besides, there is certain to be a record of the conviction at the court. You had better ask Salter to apply; they will give permission to a lawyer.”

But this was the very thing Jim did not want to do.