Читать книгу The Green Archer - Edgar Wallace - Страница 17
ОглавлениеThe Gas Bill
"Now, let's hear all about this. How do you know about the letter, anyway?"
"I was there when it was found," said Spike. "In fact, they'd have passed it over if I hadn't seen it."
"They would, would they?" said the old man grimly.
"I saw it and made a copy before the inspector realised it was anything important."
He took out a pocket-book and extracted a sheet of paper, which he opened and laid on the table.
"I'll read it to you," he said. "There's no date, a fact that has rattled the police.
"'Mr. Abe Bellamy,
"'Re the man Z. He is in my ward, and he is a very quick-tempered fellow. I think I could do what you suggested at our meeting, but you would have to pay me well, because I might lose my job. Especially if anything went wrong and another warder saw me. Also, it might be very painful for me and I might seriously injure myself, and I must know where I stand financially. I don't like Z. He is too smart and ready with his tongue, and there has already been a little trouble with him. If you want to go ahead with this, will you see me tomorrow? I am going on my holidays and shall be staying with relations at Henley. If it is convenient, perhaps you could see me there.
"'(Signed) J. Creager.'"
Abe Bellamy read the letter twice, then folded it up and handed it back to the reporter.
"I don't remember receiving it. I know nothing whatever about Z., whoever he may be, and I never paid him money except for the service he rendered me."
His tone was unusually mild, though Spike saw that it was only with an effort that he was keeping his temper.
"But it was at Henley he saved your life, wasn't it?" Spike persisted. "It is rather a coincidence he should have fixed it for you to meet him there. Maybe he knew you were going to fall into the river?"
"I want none of that fresh talk, Holland," exploded the old man. "You have all the information you'll get from me. As to this letter, there's no proof that he ever sent it. Maybe you faked it and put it amongst his papers. What were you doing at the search, anyway?"
Spike folded the letter and put it back in his pocket.
"What was I doing?" he repeated. "Well, I guess I was just around. You've nothing to say to this letter, Mr. Bellamy?"
"Nothing. I never received it. I know nothing whatever about the man he mentions. I did not even know that Creager was a prison guard until I read it in the Globe—my favourite newspaper," he added sardonically, and Spike grinned.
"Well, that's that," he said. "Any more news of the ghost?"
"You get it before I do," replied Abe. "All the information I have about that darned Green Archer I read in the Globe—a very fine newspaper, full of accurate information. Say, I'd rather go without my breakfast than the Daily Globe."
"I suppose you don't mind my looking over the castle?"
"You suppose wrong," said Abe. "You can look over the wall you came across, and the sooner you look the better."
To be perfectly sure that his unwelcome visitor had gone, he accompanied him to the lodge gates, and the lodgekeeper's jaw fell at the sight of him.
"These walls are not high enough, Savini," said the old man after Spike had departed. "'Phone somebody in Guildford to come along and fix barbed wire on the top. And, Savini——"
Julius turned at the door.
"I didn't mention this before, but I think it will save you a lot of trouble if I tell you now that a leather folder of mine, where I keep a few photographs, is no longer in the drawer of my desk; I've put it in the safe. If you want to look at 'em, maybe you'll come along and ask me and I'll get 'em out for ye!"
Julius did not feel called upon to reply, and was incapable of making any adequate response, even if he had had the opportunity.
Garre Castle had undergone considerable renovation before Abe Bellamy had taken up his residence. Under the personal supervision of the old builder, gangs of men had spent the greater part of a month carrying out the work which he himself had planned. He was his own architect, his own ganger. He had introduced a new water-supply and had electric light introduced into the castle and a system of gas radiation. There were gas fires in every room except the library and a great range in the kitchen.
This gas-supply was the cause of considerable perturbation in the mind of Wilks, the butler, on the day Spike had made his unauthorised entrance to the castle grounds. The household accounts went to Bellamy direct, but by some accident there came to Mr. Wilks' pantry and office the gas bill for the summer quarter, and he pondered on it for a long time before he interviewed his master.
"What is it?" asked Abe, scowling up at his servitor.
"This gas bill, sir, is wrong; they have overcharged us," said Wilks, gratified that he was able to approach the lord of Garre on a matter in which he knew he would welcome instruction.
"Wrong? What's wrong with it?"
"Well, sir, they've sent us a heavy bill for one of the hottest months of the year, when the gas range in the kitchen was out of order and we had to use coal."
Bellamy snatched the bill from the man's hand without looking at it.
"Leave it," he said.
"But we couldn't have used a thousand feet of gas, and they've charged us——"
"Leave it!" thundered his employer. "And don't open the bills—see? That's not your job."
It was the last straw. Mr. Wilks was well paid, but he had suffered much at the hands of this boorish boss of his, and his patience was exhausted.
"I'm not going to have you talk to me that way, Mr. Bellamy," he said, "and I'll be glad if you'll give me my wages and let me go. I'm not used to——"
"Don't make speeches—go," said Abe.
He put his hand in his pocket and flung a note on the table.
"There's your money. You'll be out of this place in half an hour, or I'll know the reason why."
Spike was taking a modest lunch at the village inn when the tremendous news reached him. The dismissal of the castle butler was, to the village of Garre, an event of world-shaking importance. It was well known that relations were somewhat strained between Abe Bellamy and the chief of his domestic staff, and when Mr. Wilks appeared in the village street he was stopped every dozen yards by sympathisers of all ranks, ranging from the local doctor to one of his late staff who had been scared from the castle by the Green Archer.
The reporter left his lunch and went out to intercept the injured man.
"It was absolutely impossible to live with him," said Wilks, trembling with annoyance; "quite impossible, sir. He's not a human being, he's a pig! And what with his seeing ghosts——"
"Have you seen the ghost?"
"No, sir, I haven't," said Wilks. "I cannot tell a lie; I have seen no ghosts whatever, and my own opinion is that the ghost is an invention of Mr. Bellamy's for his own vile purpose. When I call him a pig, I am speaking as a man who has served in some of the best families. He doesn't know how to live, sir! He's got one of the handsomest dining-rooms in the country, and he takes his meals hog-fashion in his library, which no gentleman ever does. And the meals he eats, sir! They would feed three regular people. He has two quarts of milk for breakfast, half a dozen eggs . . ." He enumerated Mr. Bellamy's prodigious appetite.
He presented Mr. Bellamy in a new light to Spike. He never thought of him as a person who ate or drank or possessed the normal appetites of humanity.
"What was the trouble that led to your leaving?" he asked, and the butler told him.
No gas whatever had been used during the summer quarter, and the company had charged for twenty-five thousand feet.
"It was in his own interests I told him, and instead of being grateful, as a gentleman should be, he turned round and treated me like a dog. Well, naturally, Mr. Holland, I wasn't going to stand for that."
Spike listened to the recital of the butler's woes, but gave little thought to the question of the gas company's overcharge. Instead, he skillfully directed the conversation back to the question of the ghostly visitor, without, however, eliciting anything very startling except the presence of the police dogs, which Spike knew about and had already written up.
Nevertheless, all the time Mr. Wilks was talking he was furnishing a London newspaper with an interesting column which would eventually appear under the heading: "My Life in the Haunted Castle."
Spike, going back to town, decided to call at Scotland Yard. Jim Featherstone was in, and the reporter was admitted immediately.
"Well, Holland, what's the news?"
He pushed the cigar-box across the table, and Spike chose with great care.
"There's trouble in Garre Castle," he said. "The noble owner has fired the butler for butting in about the gas bill. I suppose four hundred years ago poor old Wilks would have been slung up by the neck and would have joined the goodly company of ghosts that gather at night to shoot craps in Abe's backyard."
"Say that all over again, and very slowly," said Jim. "I am rather dense this morning. First of all, what was wrong with the gas bill?"
Spike told him, and to his astonishment the detective pressed him for details, questioning and requestioning until the reporter's brain reeled.
"What's wrong with the gas, anyway?" he said. "That doesn't seem to me to be much of a clue, unless you suspect Abe of running a secret whiskey still."
"The gas bill is the most important thing we've learned from Garre Castle," said Jim Featherstone quietly. "I'm greatly obliged to you, Holland. And, by the way, I'm going abroad for a week or two, so I shan't be seeing you. But any information you get I'd be glad if you would tell my assistant. I'll introduce you."
Spike came into the news editor's room half an hour later.
"Mr. Syme, I'm certain that the big end of this Creager's story is to be found in Garre Castle. The old man has just fired his butler, and we ought to get one of our men into his place right away. I'd go myself, but I've never buttled, and Bellamy would recognise my looks before I'd been there an hour. Can't we send Mason or one of the other boys? We could fix it so that an employment agency sent him down."
"It is an idea," said the news editor.
It was also an idea which occurred to two other interested persons, almost simultaneously.
