Читать книгу The Clue of the Silver Key - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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Faith needs the garnishing of romance as much as hope requires the support of courage. Mary Lane had faith in her future, courage to brace the hope of ultimate achievement. Otherwise she was without the more important and disastrous illusions which do so much to create rosy prospects and unhappy memories.

She knew that some day she would be accepted by the West End of London as an important actress, that her name would appear in electric lights outside a theatre, and a little larger than her fellow artistes on the day-bill. But she never dreamed vain dreams of sudden fame, though, in the nature of things, fame is as sudden as the transition of a sound sleeper to wakefulness. Some day the slumbering public would open its eyes and be aware of Mary Lane. In the meantime it was oblivious of her existence—all except a few wide-awake writers of dramatic criticism. These very few, having a weakness for discovery, continuously swept the theatrical sky in search of nth dimension stars which would one day (here the astronomical analogy became absurd) blaze into the first dimension. Occasionally they "found"; more often than not they made themselves ridiculous, but covered their failure with well-designed fun poked at themselves and their own enthusiasms—which is one of the tricks of their business.

It was only a half-hearted discovery so far as Mary was concerned. She was a brighter speck in the nebula of young actresses. She might be (they said) a very great actress some day, if she overcame her habit of dropping her voice, if she learned how to use her hands, if this, that and the other.

Mary strove diligently, for she was at the age when dramatic critics seem infallible. She did not dream unprofitably; never lay awake at night, imagining the eruption of an agitated management into the dressing-room she shared with two other girls.

"You're understudying Miss Fortescue, aren't you? Get into her clothes quick: she's been taken ill."

She did not visualise newspaper columns acclaiming the young actress who had found fame in a night. She knew that understudy performances, however politely received, are as politely forgotten, and that a girl who grows famous in an evening steps into oblivion between Saturday and Monday.

On the second morning after her appearance at Washington Wirth's party, she had a brief interview with Mr. Hervey Lyne on the subject of her allowance. It was not a pleasant interview. None of her interviews with Mr. Lyne had ever been that.

"If you go on the stage you must expect to starve!" he snarled. "Your fool of a father made me his executor and gave me full authority. A hundred and fifty a year is all that you get until you're twenty-five. And there is nothing more to be said!"

She was very pretty and very angry, but she kept her temper admirably.

"Twenty thousand pounds brings in more than a hundred and fifty a year," she said.

He glared in her direction; she was just a blotch of blue and pink to his myopic vision.

"It is all you will get until you are twenty-five—and then I'll be glad to get rid of you. And another thing, young lady: you're a friend of my nephew, Richard Allenby?"

Her chin went up.

"Yes."

He wagged a skinny forefinger at her.

"He gets nothing from me—whether I'm alive or dead. Understand that!"

She did not trust herself to reply.

Binny showed her out and was incoherently sympathetic.

"Don't worry, miss," he said in his dull voice; "he ain't himself this mornin'."

She said nothing, hardly noticed Binny, who sighed heavily and wagged his head mournfully as he shut the door. He was by way of being a sentimentalist.

Ten minutes later she was talking vehemently over the telephone to Dick Allenby. His sympathy was more acceptable.

People used to say about Hervey Lyne that he was the sort of character that only Dickens could have drawn, which is discouraging to a lesser chronicler. He was eccentric in appearance and habit; naturally so, because he was old and self-willed and had a vivid memory of his past importance.

Everybody who was anybody in the late Victorian age had borrowed money from Hervey Lyne, and most of them had paid it back with considerable interest. Unlike the late "Chippy" Isaacs, as mild and pleasant a gentleman as ever issued money on note of hand, Hervey was harsh, unconscionable and rude. But he was quick. The swells who drove in broughams and had thousands on their horses, and gave champagne parties to men who wore side whiskers and women who wore flounces and regarded other women who smoked cigarettes as being damned body and soul, were sometimes in difficulties to find ready money, and generally they chose Hervey first because they knew their fate sooner than if they applied to Chippy.

Hervey said "No" or "Yes," and meant "No" or "Yes." You could go into Hervey's parlour in Naylors Crescent and either come out in five minutes with the money you needed or in two minutes with the sure knowledge that if you had stayed two hours you would not have persuaded him.

He gave up lending money when the trustees of the Duke of Crewdon's estate fought him in the Law Courts and lost. Hervey thought they would win, and had the shock of his life. Thereafter he only lent very occasionally, just as a gambler will play cards occasionally (and then for small stakes) to recover something of the old thrill.

His attitude to the world can be briefly defined: the galley of his life floated serenely on a sluggish sea of fools. His clients were fools; he had never felt the least respect for any of them. They were fools to borrow, fools to agree to enormous and staggering rates of interest, fools to repay him.

Dick Allenby was a fool, a pottering inventor and an insolent cub who hadn't the brains to see on which side his bread was buttered. Mary Lane was a fool, a posturing actress who painted her face and kicked her legs about (he invariably employed this inelegant illustration) for a pittance. One was his nephew, and might with tact have inherited a million; the other was the daughter of his sometime partner, and might, had she been a good actress, have enjoyed the same inheritance—would enjoy it yet if he could arouse himself from his surprising lethargy and alter his will.

His servants were complete fools. Old Binny, bald, stout, perspiring, who pulled his bath-chair into the park and read him to sleep, was a fool. He might have taken a kindlier view of Binny and left him a hundred or so "for his unfailing loyalty and tireless services," but Binny hummed hymn tunes in the house and hummed them a key or so flat.

Not that Binny cared. He was a cheery soul with large eyes and a completely bald head. A bit of a sluggard, whom his thin and whining wife (who was also the cook of 17, Naylors Crescent) found a difficult man to get out of bed in the mornings. Valet, confidential servant, messenger, butler, chair-puller, and reader, Binny, alert or sleepy, was worth exactly three times as much wages as he received.

Old Hervey sat propped up in his armchair, glooming at the egg and toast that had been put before him. His thin old face wore an expression of discontent. The thick, tinted glasses which hid the hard blue eyes were staring at the tray, and his mind was far away.

"Has that jackass of a detective called again?"

"No, sir," said Binny. "You mean Mr. Smith?"

"I mean the fool that came to ask questions about that blackguard Tickler," stormed the old man, emphasising every sentence with a blow on the table that set the cups rattling.

"The man who was found in the cab——?"

"You know who I mean," snarled the old man. "I suppose one of his thieving friends killed him. It's the sort of end a man like that would come to."

Hervey Lyne relapsed into silence, a scowl on his face. He wondered if Binny was robbing him too. There had been a suspicious increase in the grocery bill lately, Binny's explanation that the cost of food had gone up being entirely unacceptable. And Binny was one of those smooth, smug, crawling slaves who wouldn't think twice about robbing an employer. It was about time Binny was changed. He had hinted as much that morning, and Binny had almost moaned his anguish.

"It's going to be a fine day, sir, for your outing."

He stirred the contents of the teapot surreptitiously with a spoon.

"Don't talk," snapped the old man.

There was another long silence, and then:

"What time is that fellow calling?" he asked harshly.

Binny, who was pouring out the tea at a side table, turned his big head and gazed pathetically at his employer.

"What feller, sir? The young lady came at nine——"

Hervey's thin lip curled in silent fury.

"Of course she did, you fool! But the bank manager ... didn't you ask him to come——"

"At ten, sir—Mr. Moran——"

"Get the letter—get it!"

Binny placed the cup of tea before his employer, rummaged through a small heap of papers on an open secretaire and found what he sought.

"Read it—read it!" snapped the old man. "I can't be bothered."

He never would be bothered again. He could tell light from dark; knew by a pale blur where the window was, could find his way unaided up the seventeen stairs which led to his bedroom, but no more. He could sign his name, and you would never suspect that a man more than half blind was responsible for that flourish.

"Dear Mr. Lyne" (read Binny in the monotonous voice he adopted for reading aloud),—"I will give myself the pleasure of calling on you at ten o'clock tomorrow morning.

"Yours faithfully,

"Leo Moran."

Hervey smiled again.

"Give himself the pleasure, eh?" His thin voice grew shrill. "Does he think I'm asking him here for his amusement? There's the door bell."

Binny shuffled out and came back in a few seconds with the visitor.

"Mr. Moran," he announced.

"Sit down—sit down, Mr. Moran." The old man waved a hand vaguely. "Find him a chair, Binny, and get out—d'ye hear? Get out! And don't listen at the door, damn you!"

The visitor smiled as the door closed on a Binny who was unconcerned, unemotional, unresentful.

"Now, Moran—you're my bank manager."

"Yes, Mr. Lyne. I asked if I could see you a year ago, if you remember——"

"I remember," testily. "I don't want to see bank managers: I want them to look after my money. That is your job—you're paid for it, handsomely, I've no doubt. You have brought the account?"

The visitor took an envelope from his pocket, and, opening it, brought out two folded sheets of paper.

"Here——" he began, and his chair creaked as he rose.

"I don't want to see them—just tell me what is my balance."

"Two hundred and twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds and a few shillings."

"M'm!" The "m'm" was a purr of satisfaction. "That includes the deposit, eh? And you hold stock...?"

"The stock held amounts to six hundred and thirty-two thousand pounds."

"I'll tell you why I want you——" began Lyne; and then, suspiciously: "Open the door and see if that fellow's listening."

The visitor rose, opened the door and closed it again.

"There's nobody there," he said.

He was slightly amused, though Mr. Lyne's infirmities prevented him from observing this fact.

"Nobody, eh? Well, Moran, I'll tell you candidly: I regard myself as a remarkably able man. That is not boastful, it is a fact which you yourself could probably verify. I trust nobody—not even bank managers. My eyesight is not as good as it was, and it is a little difficult to check up accounts. But I have a remarkable memory. I have trained myself to carry figures in my head, and I could have told you to within a few shillings exactly the figures that you gave to me."

He paused, stared through his thick glasses in the direction of the man who sat at the other side of his desk.

"You're not a speculator or a gambler?"

"No, Mr. Lyne, I am not."

A pause.

"H'm! That fool Binny was reading to me a few days ago the story of a bank manager who had absconded, taking with him a very considerable sum. I confess I was uneasy. People have robbed me before——"

"You are not being very polite, Mr. Lyne."

"I'm not trying to be polite," snapped the old man. "I am merely telling you what has happened to me. There was a scoundrelly servant of mine, a fellow called Tickler. The fellow who was killed ..."

He rambled on, a long, long story about the minor depredations of his dishonest servant, and the man who called himself Moran listened patiently. He was very relieved when he had taken the thin, limp hand in his and the door of No. 17, Naylors Crescent, closed behind him.

"Phew!" he said. He had a habit of speaking his thoughts aloud. "I wouldn't go through that again for a lot of money."

Binny, summoned from the deeps by a bell, came in to find the visitor gone.

"What does he look like, Binny? Has he an honest face?"

Binny thought profoundly.

"Just a face," he said vaguely, and the old man snorted.

"Clear those breakfast things away. Who else is coming to see me?"

Binny thought for a long time.

"A man named Dornford, sir."

"A gentleman named Dornford," corrected his master. "He owes me money, therefore he is a gentleman. At what hour?"

"About eight o'clock, sir."

Lyne dismissed him with a gesture.

At three o'clock that afternoon he ambled out of his sitting-room, wrapped in his thick Inverness coat and wearing his soft felt hat, allowed himself, growling complaints the while, to be tucked into his bath-chair, and was drawn painfully into the street; more painfully up the gentle slope to the park and into the private gardens, entry to which was exclusively reserved for tenants of Naylors and other terraces. Here he sat, under the shade of a tree, while Binny, perched uncomfortably upon a folding stool, read in his monotonous voice the happenings of the day.

Only once the old man interrupted.

"What time is Mr. Dornford calling?"

"At eight o'clock, sir," said Binny.

Lyne nodded, pushed his blue-tinted glasses higher up the thin bridge of his nose and folded his gloved hands over the rug which protected his knees from errant breezes.

"You be in when he comes, d'ye hear? A tricky fellow—a dangerous fellow. You hear me, Binny?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then why the devil didn't you say so? Go on reading that trash."

Binny obeyed, and continued with great relish the story of London's latest murder. Binny was a great student of crime in the abstract.