Читать книгу The Green Archer - Edgar Wallace - Страница 15
ОглавлениеThe Slayer of Children
It was a sudden impulse and a desire to meet again a man so far from the world and its everlasting struggle that made Spike Holland jump at the suggestion offered by his news editor that he should try to persuade John Wood, of Wenduyne, to contribute a series of articles on child welfare.
Leaving London by the early boat-train, Spike spent five uncomfortable hours on a bleak and troubled sea. It was not so much the possibility of securing the articles—they were certain, because Wood had already expressed his willingness—as the likelihood of obtaining even a scrap of information about Abe Bellamy that took him abroad. There was curiously little data available concerning the old man, and Spike had the impression that the philanthropist could have told him a great deal. The abruptness with which he had changed the subject when Bellamy was mentioned suggested this.
Spike was glad to step to the solid foundation of Ostend Quay. He had half an hour to wait in the Place de Gare before there hove in sight the little tram that runs to the Dutch frontier, and he was glad to get to the shelter of a first-class compartment. Rain was now falling heavily, and a chill wind swept bleakly through the square. A frequent visitor to Belgium, he knew the route by heart, that dreary way across the dunes, the only points of interest the deserted gun emplacements which the German left in his retreat. Le Coq was a howling wilderness, but Wenduyne had the appearance of a town. A summer resort, it was deserted now save for a shivering policeman, who stood in the tramway shelter and eyed him curiously as he struggled up the steep incline that led to the digue in the face of a strong north-westerly wind.
The digue was a desolation. The faces of the pretty villas were boarded up, and billows of sand lay in patches on the neglected promenade. The tide was in, and a tawny sea was lashing furiously at the very foot of the embankment as he walked swiftly along, his coat buttoned to his chin. Presently he came to 94.
A tall, narrow-fronted villa like its fellows, its stoop and entrance were hidden behind a grey weather-board, pierced by one door, at which he knocked. There was no answer, and he knocked even louder.
A third time he knocked, with no success, and then he decided to try the rear of the building.
His first knock at the back door was answered by a squat old woman with a slight moustache. She looked at him a little uncertainly.
"What is the name? M'sieur does not receive," she said in French.
"He expects me, aunty," said Spike. "I wired him."
The woman's dull eyes lit up.
"Perfectly I remember. Will m'sieur come this way?"
She led him up a short flight of uncarpeted stairs and knocked at a door on the landing. A voice bade her enter, and she went in before the visitor.
Spike found himself in a long, and, because of its length and height, apparently narrow room, the one wall of which was hung with tapestries, the other covered almost to the ceiling with bookshelves. Light came from two silver electroliers, and these were ablaze, for the only natural illumination was that which came through a stained-glass window at the end.
John Wood was sitting at a large ormolu writing-table as the visitor entered, and he rose and put down his pen.
"You came in spite of the weather? Stout fellow! Sit down, Mr. Holland. And before you ask me, I will gladly undertake the writing of the articles you referred to in your telegram. I need all the publicity I can get for my scheme, and I am a shameless advertiser."
They discussed the articles in detail, and Spike faithfully conveyed all the prejudices, requirements as to length and subject that Syme had impressed upon him.
The squat lady with the moustache brought wine and coffee, with wafer-like biscuits.
"How quiet and peaceful you are here!" said Spike enviously. "I thought you were a bit nutty, living in Wenduyne through the winter. What a place to write!"
John Wood smiled.
"I won't take you up to see the quiet-disturbers. They are enjoying their siesta."
"Have you any children here?" asked Spike in astonishment, and Wood nodded.
"Thirty," he said. "Three floors full." He pointed to the stairway that led to the upper part of the building. "I have only the quite healthy ones here. The sanatorium is at the back of the town."
They talked babies for an hour. Mr. Wood seemed inclined to talk of nothing else.
"Mr. Wood, I have an idea that you know a great deal more about Abe Bellamy than you say. You don't like him, do you?"
Mr. Wood was playing with a golden figure of Pan, an exquisite little statuette that stood on his writing-table.
"I know enough to hang him," he said without lifting his eyes.
Spike heard, amazed.
"You know enough to hang him?" he repeated. "That's a pretty serious thing to say."
Wood raised his eyes.
"It might be if I were not speaking in absolute confidence to a man I trust," he said.
Usually Spike hated to be told anything in confidence, but for once he was eager for unpublishable news.
"I have no proof—absolutely none," the child-lover went on. "Nevertheless, I know sufficient to hang him. I don't say that he would hang on my unsupported statement. The law is very tender of human life."
"It was a child, of course," said Spike. "Without suggesting that you have no use for grown-ups, or that you would not get heated up over the shooting of a fat man, I fancy from your tone that it was a child."
"He killed a child," nodded the other, "a child I dimly remember having seen. Whether he or one of his hirelings was immediately responsible I do not know. He hates children. I wonder if you took my wire seriously, the one in which I asked you whether Bellamy was interested in babies? It was a joke—a grim and perhaps a foolish joke. I sent it on the impulse of the moment. Abe Bellamy! He would sooner take his last dollar and cast it into the sea than give the filings of it to help a child!"
"Can't you tell me what he did—was it in America?"
"In America many years ago," said Wood. "I'm afraid that I have already said too much. Sooner or later I shall have proof. I have had two men working on the slight clues I have been able to furnish, and they have been working for years, one in London, one in America."
"He was in trouble with a children's protection society in America?"
"I know; but that had nothing to do with the case I am referring to. There was another case in New York city. He nearly killed an office-boy; threw him down a flight of stone stairs. Yes, I have Mr. Bellamy's public record at my finger-tips. It is his private record that I am seeking. The man is a born brute. It isn't only children that he has beaten. It cost him five thousand dollars to stop a case for assault brought by his valet. He hasn't had a valet since."
"The Lord makes queer people," said Spike.
"The devil makes queerer," retorted John Wood, his fine face darkened. "He throws some men back to the animal stage of existence."
Spike launched a question that he had been pondering all the way across the sea.
"Do you think that the Green Archer is one of his victims?" he asked, and John Wood's brow cleared.
"There are quite a lot of people," he said quizzically, "who think that the Green Archer was invented by a certain newspaper correspondent, whose name it would be impolite to mention to your face!"
A staggering arraignment of his veracity which amused Spike.
"I'd be glad to be the author of a stunt that fooled England," he confessed; "but unfortunately the credit goes to the Green Archer himself."
He told the story of the last visitation, and John Wood questioned him closely.
"Who saw the 'ghost' besides Abel Bellamy?"
"Nobody. Perhaps the old man invented it."
"It isn't likely." John Wood shook his head. "There is nothing subtle about Bellamy. He's just animal all through. You may dismiss that supposition from your mind. The Green Archer is real enough if Bellamy has seen him."
His face clouded again and he lay back in his chair deep in thoughts. They were evidently not pleasant. Suddenly he rose, and, going to a safe at the end of the room, he opened it. He was there for some time, and when he returned he had something in his hand.
Spike had risen to go, for he had only a few hours at his disposal and he had taken up a lot of time discussing the articles.
"Look at that, Holland."
It was a baby's shoe of white kid, stained and discoloured.
"Some day, if judgment does not overtake him before, I will show this shoe to Abe Bellamy in an American court of justice. It will be a woeful day for him!"
It was at this moment that the short old woman with the moustache came in with a broad grin on her homely face, and in her arms a tiny bundle of white.
"M'sieur, the little Allemande will not sleep until she has seen you."
She held up in her arms a rosy-faced baby with big, staring eyes that sought first the glittering chandelier. From the light she moved her head jerkily toward John Wood, and opened her small, wet mouth in a delighted gurgle.
The change in the man was amazing. He seemed to melt instantly. The laughter and bubbling joy that was peculiarly his came back to his face as he reached out and caught her in his arms.
"Here is a coin from my treasury, Holland, more wonderful than Bellamy's millions. A little enemy! How ferocious she is, Holland! You may call her Hun and she doesn't care!"
The baby's soft cheek was against his, and Spike saw the tears in his eyes and marvelled.
As Spike went forth smiling to the gale he looked round. John had the baby sitting on the edge of his desk, one hand about her, the other holding before her delighted eyes the golden figure of Pan.
