Читать книгу The Avenger - Edgar Wallace - Страница 12

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The dynamo wagon was humming as he walked down the garden path, and with a hiss and a splutter from the arcs, the front of the cottage was suddenly illuminated by their fierce light. Outside on the road a motorist had pulled up to look upon the unusual spectacle.

“What is happening?” he asked curiously.

“They’re taking a picture,” said Michael.

“Oh, is that what it is? I suppose it is one of Knebworth’s outfits?”

“Where are you going?” demanded Michael suddenly. “Forgive my asking you, but if you’re heading for Chichester you can render me a very great service if you give me a lift.”

“Jump in,” said the man. “I’m going to Petworth, but it will not be much out of my way to take you into the city.”

Until they came to the town he plied Michael with questions betraying that universal inquisitiveness which picture-making invariably incites amongst the uninitiated.

Michael got down near the market-place and made his way to the house of a man he knew, a former master at his old school, now settled down in Chichester, who had, amongst other possessions, an excellent library. Declining his host’s pressing invitation to dinner, Michael stated his needs, and the old master laughed.

“I can’t remember that you were much of a student in my days, Michael,” he said, “but you may have the run of the library. Is it some line of Virgil that escapes you? I may be able to save you a hunt.”

“It’s not Virgil, maestro,” smiled Michael. “Something infinitely more full-blooded!”

He was in the library for twenty minutes, and when he emerged there was a light of triumph in his eye.

“I’m going to use your telephone if I may,” he said, and he got London without delay.

For ten minutes he was speaking with Scotland Yard, and, when he had finished, he went into the dining-room where the master, who was a bachelor, was eating his solitary dinner.

“You can render me one more service, mentor of my youth,” he said. “Have you in this abode of peace an automatic pistol that throws a heavier shell than this?”

And he put his own on the table. Michael knew Mr. Scott had been an officer of the Territorial Army, and incidentally an instructor of the Officers’ Training Corps, so that his request was not as impossible of fulfilment as it appeared.

“Yes, I can give you a heavier one than that. What are you shooting—elephants?”

“Something a trifle more dangerous,” said Michael.

“Curiosity was never a weakness of mine,” said the master, and went out to return with a Browning of heavy calibre and a box of cartridges.

They spent five minutes cleaning the pistol, which had not been in use for some time, and, with his new weapon weighing down his jacket pocket, Mike took his leave, carrying a lighter heart and a clearer understanding than he had enjoyed when he had arrived at the house.

He hired a car from a local garage and drove back to the Dower House, dismissing the car just short of his destination. Jack Knebworth had not even noticed that he had disappeared. But old Mr. Longvale, wearing a coat with many capes, and a soft silk cap from which dangled a long tassel, came to him almost as soon as he entered the garden.

“May I speak to you, Mr. Brixan?” he said in a low voice, and they went into the house together. “Do you remember Mr. Knebworth was very perturbed because he thought he saw somebody peering in at the window—something with a monkey’s head?”

Michael nodded.

“Well, it is a most curious fact,” said the old gentleman impressively, “that a quarter of an hour ago I happened to be walking in the far end of my garden, and, looking across the hedge toward the field, I suddenly saw a gigantic form rise, apparently from the ground, and move toward these bushes”—he pointed through the window to a clump in a field on the opposite side of the road. “He seemed to be crouching forward and moving furtively.”

“Will you show me the place?” said Michael quickly.

He followed the other across the road to the bushes, a little clump which was empty when they reached it. Kneeling down to make a new skyline, Michael scanned the limited horizon, but there was no sign of Bhag. For that it was Bhag he had no doubt. There might be nothing in it. Penne told him that the animal was in the habit of taking nightly strolls, and that he was perfectly harmless. Suppose ...

The thought was absurd, fantastically absurd. And yet the animal had been so extraordinarily human that no speculation in connection with it was quite absurd.

When he returned to the garden, he went in search of the girl. She had finished her scene and was watching the stealthy movements of two screen burglars, who were creeping along the wall in the subdued light of the arcs.

“Excuse me, Miss Leamington, I’m going to ask you an impertinent question. Have you brought a complete change of clothes with you?”

“Why ever do you ask that?” she demanded, her eyes wide open. “Of course I did! I always bring a complete change in case the weather breaks.”

“That’s one question. Did you lose anything when you were at Griff Towers?”

“I lost my gloves,” she said quickly. “Did you find them?”

“No. When did you miss them?”

“I missed them immediately. I thought for a moment——” She stopped. “It was a foolish idea, but——”

“What did you think?” he asked.

“I’d rather not tell you. It is a purely personal matter.”

“You thought that Sir Gregory had taken them as a souvenir?”

Even in the half-darkness he saw her colour come and go.

“I did think that,” she said, a little stiffly.

“Then it doesn’t matter very much—about your change of clothing,” he said.

“Whatever are you talking about?”

She looked at him suspiciously. He guessed she thought that he had been drinking, but the last thing in the world he wanted to do at that moment was to explain his somewhat disjointed questions.

“Now everybody is going to bed!”

It was old Jack Knebworth talking.

“Everybody! Off you go! Mr. Foss has shown you your rooms. I want you up at four o’clock to-morrow morning, so get as much sleep as you can. Foss, you’ve marked the rooms?”

“Yes,” said the man. “I’ve put the names on every door. I’ve given this young lady a room to herself—is that right?”

“I suppose it is,” said Knebworth dubiously. “Anyway, she won’t be there long enough to get used to it.”

The girl said good night to the detective and went straight up to her apartment. It was a tiny room, smelling somewhat musty, and was simply furnished. A truckle bed, a chest of drawers with a swinging glass on top, and a small table and chair was all that the apartment contained. By the light of her candle, the floor showed signs of having been recently scrubbed, and the centre was covered by a threadbare square of carpet.

She locked the door, blew out the candle and, undressing in the dark, went to the window and threw open the casement. And then, for the first time, she saw, on the centre of one of the small panes, a circular disc of paper. It was pasted on the outside of the window, and at first she was about to pull it off, when she guessed that it might be some indicator placed by Knebworth to mark an exact position that he required for the morning picture-taking.

She did not immediately fall asleep, her mind for some curious reason, being occupied unprofitably with a tumultuous sense of annoyance directed towards Michael Brixan. For a long time a strong sense of justice fought with a sense of humour equally powerful. He was a nice man, she told herself; the sixth sense of woman had already delivered that information, heavily underlined. He certainly had nerve. In the end humour brought sleep. She was smiling when her eyelids closed.

She had been sleeping two hours, though it did not seem two seconds. A sense of impending danger wakened her, and she sat up in bed, her heart thumping wildly. She looked round the room. In the pale moonlight she could see almost every corner, and it was empty. Was it somebody outside the door that had wakened her? She tried the door handle: it was locked, as she had left it. The window? It was very near to the ground, she remembered. Stepping to the window, she pulled one casement close. She was closing the other when, out of the darkness below, reached a great hairy arm and a hand closed like a vice on her wrist.

She did not scream. She stood breathless, dying of terror, she felt. Her heart ceased beating, and she was conscious of a deadly cold. What was it? What could it be? Summoning all her courage, she looked out of the window down into a hideous, bestial face and two round, green eyes that stared into hers.