Читать книгу The Calendar - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8
IV
Оглавление“We met young Hipplewayne in Florence. Isn’t it dreadful about him? Being warned off, I mean. And oh, Garry, he has got so much money that there was no need for him to do anything so awful. He was very nice about you, and told me that you had warned him. He is naturally supremely miserable, drinks a great deal more than is necessary for him—he and Willie are quite good friends—and gambles a tremendous lot on cards. Wenda will be in England by the time you get this letter. I am staying over in Paris to bring her dresses across for Ascot. Willie is staying to look after me! Isn’t that funny? But perhaps you don’t see the funny side of it.”
Molly was a good correspondent. She had constituted herself the chronicler of the family. Garry had an uneasy feeling sometimes that her very conscientiousness and industry were subtle reproaches.
He had thought a great deal about Molly, and was almost shocked when he met Wenda at Victoria and casually mentioned Molly’s name, when:
“Molly? Oh, yes, she’s all right. She’s so terribly right she gets on my nerves.”
“She’s rather a dear——” he began.
Wenda’s glance stopped him.
“She’s a Panniford.” There was a little note of bitterness in her voice. “And I should think they are not particularly adorable as a breed.”
And then, quick to realise the impression she made, she went on quickly, with a smile:
“How is the great Rangemore—the horse of the century? What an extravagant man you are, darling! You spend your life finding exaltable subjects!”
“Such as——?”
She shrugged her beautiful shoulders.
“Such as poor me.”
He was driving her down to Sunningdale, and they were speeding along the Great West Road when she asked, after a long interregnum of silence:
“John Dory is a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” he said, in surprise. “Do you know him?”
“In a way.” She was vaguely antagonistic.
“But you’re not keen on him?”
She smiled.
“Don’t be absurd, Garry! Is one keen on bookmakers?”
“But John is a public-school man——” he began.
“Stuff! The prisons are full of public-school men, somebody told me the other day.”
Again she relapsed into silence, which she broke as they were breasting the hill at Egham.
“Henry is coming down to spend the Ascot week with us, and I’ve rather made a muddle of my invitations. I thought Willie would be back, but he insists upon staying in Paris with Molly, and unfortunately he will not be at Welbury when Henry comes down—couldn’t you put him up?”
Garry made a little grimace and laughed.
“He bores you. I think he’s rather amusing. But he can go to an hotel——”
“Of course he can stay at Daneham. I’ve about six spare bedrooms, and nobody ever accepts my hospitality,” said Garry. “I’ll wire him if you like; though why he shouldn’t stay at Welbury, with a house full of servants, heaven only knows!”
Wenda fetched a quick little sigh.
“I don’t know.... Willie’s so difficult. And perhaps I’m a little proper. Molly is so prudish, which is an ugly word that I don’t very much like.”
Again she looked at him.
“I haven’t congratulated you—you’re a lucky man.”
He chuckled at this.
“You haven’t seen my betting-book,” he said gaily, but evidently she did not take him very seriously.
He had begun the journey in a fever of apprehension. Would she speak again of the divorce? Every moment he expected her to return to the subject. For the first time in his life he was relieved to drop her at the door of Welbury House.
When he got home he gave instructions to Hillcott to prepare a room for Henry Lascarne, and the little man sniffed.
“Him, eh? It’ll be a change for old Lascarne to get into good racing company,” he said.
Henry Lascarne, arriving on the following night, made the acquaintance of a new type of manservant and was not impressed.
He was still less so when, strolling into the lounge next morning, he was an auditor of a sharp exchange between the odd butler and the postman, who had come to the wrong door with his letters.
“What’s the matter with you? What’s wrong with the front door?” demanded Hillcott.
The postman sorted his letters sourly.
“Gone to sleep, all of you?” He handed over the letters. “One registered—sign for it.”
Hillcott took the letters and scrutinised each one deliberately.
“That’s no way to talk, my lad,” he said, scribbling his name on the registered receipt.
Conscious that he had been kept waiting for a quarter of an hour, the postman exploited his grievance.
“Don’t these London servants get up in the mornin’? My wife’s out in the garden every morning at five,” he said bitterly.
Hillcott looked at him thoughtfully.
“So would I be if I was married to you,” he said.
Insult or not, the postman lingered, being human and having certain human weaknesses.
“Do you know anything?” he asked confidentially.
“Everything.” Hillcott was never modest.
“I mean about to-day. Is the governor’s horse goin’ to win the Ascot Stakes?”
The postman asked this anxiously.
“Don’t ask questions: buy a paper,” said Hillcott in his loftiest manner.
The postman went down the garden path, declaiming against the nerve of “handymen.”
Hillcott looked round, saw Henry, and paused in his task of examining postmarks.
“Clodhoppers,” he said tersely, and added: “Nothing for you.”
“No. My letters will go to Welbury House. Hillcott, will you send my things over after breakfast?”
Hillcott did not disguise his relief.
“Leavin’ us?” he asked, and, when Henry nodded: “That’s a pity. Thought we was goin’ to have company.” And then, as a thought struck him: “You needn’t go there for breakfast, you know. They always come here on the first morning of Ascot.”
This was news to Henry.
“A sort of ritual?”
Hillcott looked at him. “Ritual” was a new word, and he disliked new words.
“No, ’abit,” he said.
An odd fellow—an objectionable fellow. But rather the sort of man one would have expected Garry to employ.
“Where is Captain Anson?” asked Lascarne.
“Playin’ golf on the lawn,” said Hillcott. “He’s playin’ with himself—he’s winnin’. Here you are—do you want a paper?”
He practically threw The Times at the horrified guest.
Molly was coming across the lawn, her arms full of newly cut flowers. If there was a ritualism at Daneham Lodge this was it. Every year since the days when she was a little girl and Garry was rather a lank, awkward youth, she had performed this office, at first shyly, in later years as a matter of course.
She came into the room and stopped for an amused second, watching them—she could almost sense Harry Lascarne’s resentment.
“Good-morning, Hillcott!”
“ ‘Morning, miss.” He turned with a grin.
He jerked his head significantly and a little derisively in the direction of Henry, picked up the doormat and went out.
Mr. Lascarne greeted her languidly.
“Hullo, Molly! You’re an early riser. Did you and Willie get home last night or this morning?” he asked.
He was more than ordinarily interested in the movements of Willie at that period.
Molly went over to the desk, and, taking the old flowers out of the vase, began to replace them with fresh blooms. She had a trick, very irritating to Henry, of thinking a long time before she answered the simplest of questions he addressed to her.
“This morning—one a.m. We caught the four o’clock from Paris.” She looked at him, a smile in her eyes. “How did you sleep in this house of sin?”
He shrugged.
“Oh, quite well, really.”
“How curious!” she mocked.
“It really was very good of Anson to have me here,” he said, hastening to amend a speech which lacked grace.
He came across to her.
“I say, Anson’s awfully fond of Wenda, isn’t he?”
It was an assertion rather than a question. She felt he was asking for confirmation.
“Awfully fond of her?” she scoffed. “My dear, she’s the world’s only woman!”
He smiled at this; this loosely framed young man rarely smiled.
“I can understand that——”
She looked at him.
“You can understand what?”
“I mean, I think she’s most charming.” He blundered. “It’s a great pity she’s——” He stopped.
“Married to Willie?” she suggested, and left him a little breathless by the brutal directness of her speech. “Go on, say it!” she laughed. “Don’t spare a sister’s feelings. I certainly think it’s a pity they’re married. At the same time, it’s easier to get rid of a husband than a boy friend!”
Lascarne looked at her, aghast: it was not so much the sophistication of her words as the surprise that Molly could use them.
A new Molly—new to him, at any rate. He always thought of her as a schoolgirl.
“You are not suggesting that Anson——?”
“No, I’m not.”
He was justifiably annoyed.
“One of these days you will let me finish what I’m trying to say,” he snapped, and she laughed at him.
“Henry, you so seldom say anything that’s worth finishing.”
She heard somebody come into the room and turned quickly.
“Garry!”
Garry Anson was looking at her thoughtfully, gravely. So serious was he that Molly was surprised into a laugh.
“Why, Garry, you’re looking at me as though I were an unwelcome intruder.”
She was a stranger to him: he realised this as he looked. A new individuality, somebody he had never seen as he was seeing her now. She was lovely; she had not the mature beauty of her sister-in-law, but something sweeter, something more delicate.
He met her jest with a little laugh which was almost artificial.
“Hullo, darling!”
He kissed her gently; he had always kissed her; why did he feel such a fool now? He had never been embarrassed when he kissed her before.
“I see you’ve met our little lodger.”
He jerked his head towards the slightly amused Henry.
“It was very good of you to put Henry up,” she said.
Garry poured out a glass of water from the carafe. His hand was shaking a little, and he wondered why.
“Would you believe it—he wouldn’t stay the night in the same house as Wenda! What is this generation coming to?” he scoffed.
Henry stiffened.
“It was Wenda’s idea, and I think a very sensible idea,” he said.
He was a little prim, and primness, added to a certain latent pomposity, can be ludicrous. It was so now. Molly had an insane desire to shriek her laughter, but she restrained herself.
“Shut up!” said Garry scornfully. “You couldn’t compromise anybody who was grown up—and if Wenda’s not grown up I am a babe in arms!”
Hillcott came in laboriously with the doormat he had been shaking on the well-swept garden path. Presently the gardener would come along and voice his woes and his wrath; but Hillcott lived for the moment.
“Did The Calendar come?” asked Garry.
Hillcott pointed at the table.
“You’re looking at it,” he said.
Garry picked up the folded Calendar and opened it.
“Go and hurry up breakfast.”
Molly was arranging flowers on the writing-table.
“Could you live without The Calendar?”
Henry had heard about The Calendar before. It was a mysterious publication which interested the oddest kind of people.
“What is it?”
Garry smiled grimly.
“There are only two Calendars, old boy—the Newgate Calendar and The Racing Calendar—the losers of the past and the losers of the future.”
He smoothed out the crumpled pages.
“Are you going to the races?”
Henry inclined his head graciously.
“I hope so.”
“Good,” said Garry. “I’ll give you a winner.”
Henry Lascarne’s nose went into the air.
“I don’t bet.”
“Good—I’ll give you two.”
“In fact,” Henry hastened to exculpate himself from any suggestion that he was attached to this social evil, “I don’t know one horse’s name from another.”
“You’re going to have an interesting week,” said Garry.
Lascarne looked round. Hillcott had gone, and, remarkably enough, had closed the door behind him. This was not a weakness of Mr. Hillcott, who was tremendously interested in all the happenings of the household, and never closed an avenue of information. He did not deliberately eavesdrop, but he made eavesdropping a possible accident. Nevertheless, in spite of the closed door, Mr. Lascarne, who was a little uneasy about Garry’s servant, lowered his voice.
“I say, who is that fellow of yours?” he asked.
Garry stared at him.
“That fellow of mine——”
Molly explained.
“He means Hillcott.”
“Oh, Hillcott!” Garry kept a perfectly straight face. He always found it difficult to be serious when he was discussing Hillcott; he found it more difficult now that he saw Henry’s concern. “Why, what’s the matter with him?”
Lascarne hesitated.
“Well, he’s rather unusual, isn’t he?”
Garry nodded, and then, sympathetically:
“I know what you mean—he’s damned impertinent. Have you noticed that, too?”
“Well—er—yes,” hesitated Henry.
“That’s right.” Garry nodded again. “He’s not a good servant—that’s why I keep him. He’s a souvenir, a sort of war relic. Other people brought home odd bits of shell and put ’em on the mantelpiece, and cartridge-cases and turned ’em into dinner-gongs. I brought back Hillcott. I’m not so sure he shouldn’t be in the National War Museum.”
And then the look of perplexity on Henry’s face broke him down and he rocked with laughter.
“A war relic?” repeated Lascarne. “I don’t quite——”
“Of course you don’t. I mean, he was my batman—my servant. You don’t quite approve of my gambling? It is not my worst habit—he is!”
“Was he a butler before the war?” asked Henry.
Garry shook his head.
“No, a burglar,” he said calmly, and Henry almost jumped, for he was on the lawful side of life, being an immensely rich young man, to whom all men who threatened the rights of property were without the pale.
“A burglar?” he gasped.
“Yes. You know the kind of creatures that we racing people associate with,” said Garry gaily. “The lowest of the low, old boy! Don’t you know that racing is wicked? Don’t you know that any three or four toughs who get together and start a fight become officially a race gang? We racing people love burglars. If we can’t get a good burglar for a butler, we get a pickpocket.”
“You’re pulling my leg,” said Henry.
“Of course he is!” scoffed Molly. “Don’t you know Garry better?”
Henry ran his fingers through his long hair.
“Anyway, he’s not a very bright——” He hesitated to criticise the servant to his host, for he was a well-bred young man and a considerable sum had been spent upon his social education.
“Butler?” suggested Garry. “No, he isn’t. But I believe he was a scintillating burglar.”
The object of their conversation came in at that moment. Hillcott had a distressing habit of drawing attention to his presence with a low, sibilant hiss. He hissed now, and since his eyes were fixed upon Henry it was obvious that it was that young gentleman’s attention he wished to hold.
“The telephone,” he said. “Will you speak here or in the ’all?”
Henry looked round helplessly.
“In the hall,” he said.
He had remembered that a ’phone message might be coming through to him at this moment, and walked to the door.
“It’s Lady Panniford,” Hillcott called after him, and now Garry was really annoyed.
“Hillcott,” he said sharply, “how often have I told you not to mention the name of the person who is calling anybody in this house?”
Hillcott looked round, hurt, a little indignant. Slowly he began to untie the string of his green baize apron.
“I don’t seem to be givin’ much satisfaction here, Captain, do I?” he said truculently. “I think I’ll hand in my notice. Nothing I’m doin’ is right.”
Garry shot out an accusing finger.
“It’s not your turn to give in your notice,” he said sternly. “Tie up your pinny. You’ll leave at the end of the month.”
Hillcott flamed with indignation.
“You gave me notice last time!” he said.
Garry considered this domestic problem for a little time.
“Did I? I don’t remember. Very well, I’ll accept your notice.”
Molly waited till Hillcott had strutted from the room, and her laughter followed the annoyed little man.
“What a child you are, Garry!”
But he did not heed her.
“I’m sure he gave me notice. He’s so dashed unfair, that fellow.”
She looked at him, still amused; then the smile died out of her eyes. She was faced with a much more important problem than the eccentric relationship between Garry and his servant.
“What do you think of Henry?” she asked.
He looked round at her, startled.
“Does one think of such things?” he asked.
But she was not jesting. And then:
“What does he do for a living?”
“Nothing,” replied Molly, adding inconsequently: “He’s at the War Office.”
It was very difficult for Garry to think of Henry Lascarne. There are people in the world who have no value to us, however valuable they may be to themselves, and to others. “Set” is a glib name for an association of people with more or less identical interests. It keeps them in separate compartments, and usually one set is almost ignorant of the identity, the habits or the pleasures of the other.
Garry belonged to the racing set, a big brotherhood of men who touched all manner of interests but were essentially of the turf. To them, racing was the beginning and the end of all recreation and amusement. They had no politics, paid only cursory attention to the doings of the outside world, were conventionally conservative, drank a little, hunted a little, played around a little at fashionable night clubs, but were immensely bored with the pleasures which satisfied other men.
Henry’s set was distinct, but, as far as Garry was concerned, unintelligible. Henry read and understood poetry, could play golf, was interested in amateur theatricals, collected cameos, and was a pseudo-authority on Russian art.
“He’s rather rich, isn’t he?”
Molly nodded.
“That worries me—a little,” she said.
He frowned.
“Why should Mr. Henry Lascarne’s prosperity ruffle the brow of pretty Molly Panniford?” he said grandiloquently.
Again he saw that odd look in her eyes.
“Pretty, am I?”
“Darling, you’re lovely,” he smiled, heard the quick intake of her breath, and:
“You’re a queer fish, Garry,” she said.
He was a little taken aback.
“Why? Because I think you’re lovely? Darling, I’m sure hundreds of people think that.”
“Thousands,” she said sardonically; but when he tried to pursue the conversation she turned it.
He opened The Calendar, read down column after column, until he came to the acceptances for the Northumberland Plate, and amongst the nonacceptors he saw a name that set his heart chortling.
“Gosh!” he blurted. “Silver Queen hasn’t accepted!”
“Has she been asked?” said Molly, busy with her flowers.
“Don’t be silly—I mean the horse. She hasn’t accepted for the Northumberland Plate, which means that I shall win it.”
He dropped the paper on the writing-table, remembering something he wished to ask her.
“Why were you so late getting into town last night?”
Molly shrugged.
“We missed the twelve o’clock train,” she said. “Willie went to the buffet.”
She hated herself for her disloyalty. There was so much more she could have told, she might reasonably permit herself this one act of betrayal. She could have told how near they were to losing the late train, of Willie staggering up the long quay of the Gare du Nord, assisted by porters, and being hoisted bodily into the train, of the rather unpleasant scene on the boat coming over, when, in his most quarrelsome mood, he fell foul of an innocent fellow-passenger, and narrowly escaped corporal chastisement. Willie was like that: a genial fellow on the first bottle, a brute thereafter. Garry only suspected as much. He had never plumbed the deeps of Willie Panniford’s weaknesses.
“What a mug! Can’t Wenda do something?”
It was curious that Molly never thought of Wenda with sympathy except when she thought of Wenda and her brother together.
“Can you stop a man drinking who wants to drink?” she asked.
Garry was puzzled.
“But why the dickens should he want to drink? He used to be the most abstemious fellow. Has anything happened to him lately?”
She shook her head. He walked across to her, caught her by the shoulders and looked down into her face.
“Molly, you’re being mysterious.”
“No, I’m not,” she said in a low voice.
“He’s got the best woman in the world for a wife,” said Garry slowly. “Wenda couldn’t make a man unhappy.”
He felt a curious sense of insincerity as he said this. Did he believe all he was saying? Was Wenda such a paragon? All his life he had built up a mental statue of Wenda Panniford. A radiant, glorious thing, worshipful, almost unhuman.
She was eyeing him closely.
“You adore her, don’t you?”
He came from a reverie which was not too pleasant, at last, guiltily.
“I believe I do.”
He remembered at that odd moment a fact he had forgotten for many years.
“I once wrote a poem about her. Did she ever show it to you?”
Molly shook her head.
“No, but I expect she’s got it. She’s a great hoarder.”
He made a face at this. “Hoarder” was an ugly word. Somehow it didn’t fit Wenda.
“Well, she does hoard a little,” insisted Molly.
“God bless her for it!” said Garry. “And if you ask me why, I won’t tell you.”
“You can’t expect any woman to be enthusiastic about her sister-in-law,” said Molly. “Garry, you’re a darling, but——” She looked up. “You think you know Wenda?”
She felt rather than had any evidence of his change of attitude.
“What do you mean?” he asked coldly.
“You think she’s everything that’s wonderful,” said Molly quickly, breathlessly, as one who was taking a plunge into chilly and unknown waters. “You think she’s big and generous——”
“Generous! What has she to be generous about, poor darling? Has Willie got a lot of money?”
Nobody knew better than Molly how little money Willie had.
Willie had never quite forgiven his father for dividing his fortune into equal parts, one for the son and one for the daughter; forgave him less when his own patrimony had been squandered and there was nothing left to him but his bare Scottish acres, the rent from his farms and the other items which went to make up his meagre income.
“She has—Wenda has, I mean.” Molly, realising she was on the defensive, grew nervous. “I mean, Wenda has a lot of money.”
“Are you sure?”
“She has dividends and things,” said Molly defiantly. “I’ve seen the warrants. She’s always well off on quarter days.”
“Are you sure?” he asked again, and her heart sank.
The one thing in the world she did not wish to do at this moment was to annoy Garry.
“Now you’re angry with me. I was an idiot to talk about her.”
She was turning away when he caught her hand.
“Darling, you’re a cat,” he said with a smile.
Perhaps she was. She was prepared to admit as much, and be even worse than a cat, if she could only——
“Molly, my dear,” he went on, “I don’t like to hear you talk about Wenda in that way. Honestly, it rather hurts me, because I’m very fond of you. Do you know—terribly fond of you.”
She looked at him steadily.
“Are you, Garry?”
He nodded.
“So fond of me that you hate me talking about Wenda?”
“Now you’re hurt with me.”
He regained the hand she had drawn from his.
“Not really,” she said.
She walked over to the table, where the post was, and picked up and examined his letters.
“Yes, you are. I’m lecturing you, and nobody likes being lectured.... Yes, darling, it’s a big post—begging letters mainly.”
She smiled.
“ ‘The luck of Garry Anson.’ I saw it in the newspapers when we were in Italy.”
He frowned.
“Oh, the old general’s death? But you knew all about that before you went.”
“How much did he leave?”
He had almost forgotten.
“Five hundred thousand, I think, and the Hereford property. A nice old boy, but he didn’t like me.”
She stared at him, open-eyed.
“If he didn’t like you why did he leave you his money?”
Garry was staggered by the question.
“Leave me his money? Who told you he left me his money?”
She slid down from the table and faced him. Was that shadow, then, to lift—the nightmare that had oppressed her since she had had the news in Italy to be dispelled?
“The newspapers said I had the money, but they were all wrong. I thought you knew?”
She shook her head.
“I don’t want that kind of money, anyway,” said Garry cheerfully. “Dead man’s money, live man’s worry. Give me a horse with twenty-one pounds in hand—that’s my idea of a legacy.”
“He didn’t leave you anything?” she gasped.
“Not a bob.”
Her heart was racing. She had never dared hope for this. She was being selfish, wickedly selfish. With that money Garry would have been a rich man. He was not poor now; she salved her conscience with the thought. But with that money—so many things would have happened that it were better should not happen.
“But, my dear, everybody believes you came into the money—we read about it in Florence, ‘Luck of Garry Anson’—that was the headline. Wenda sent you a wire from us all, congratulating you. Didn’t you receive it? Of course you did, Garry! You answered, ‘Thanks, darling.’ I saw the wire.”
He was trying to remember; and then he found the solution of the mystery.
“Oh, Lord! It was the day after I won the Salisbury Cup with Rangemore. I thought that was what the wire was about.”
She regarded him with mock pathos.
“Then you aren’t half a millionaire? Oh, Garry, and I’ve been so respectful to you!”
He had never seen her like this, never realised her peculiar humour. She was lovely to look upon, altogether a delightful companion. He could wish to find a subject to carry on this conversation indefinitely, for there was no hurt in it for him. She had a soft voice, rather musical, a little husky; the most pleasant of grey eyes. He didn’t know Molly, hadn’t known her at all until now. The amusing child of yesterday was a most agreeable woman of to-day. And then there flashed into his mind the knowledge of an obligation which had become suddenly ugly, and at the thought of it his heart went cold.
“Here’s Wenda,” said Molly.
It seemed to him that she dropped her voice; there was a suggestion of intimate understanding which made him absurdly happy.
