Читать книгу The Avenger - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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Adele Leamington occupied a small room in a small house, and there were moments when she wished it were smaller, that she might be justified in plucking up her courage to ask from the stout and unbending Mrs. Watson, her landlady, a reduction of rent. The extras on Jack Knebworth’s lot were well paid but infrequently employed; for Jack was one of those clever directors who specialized in domestic stories.

She was dressing when Mrs. Watson brought in her morning cup of tea.

“There’s a young fellow been hanging round outside since I got up,” said Mrs. Watson. “I saw him when I took in the milk. Very polite he was, but I told him you weren’t awake.”

“Did he want to see me?” asked the astonished girl.

“That’s what he said,” said Mrs. Watson grimly. “I asked him if he came from Knebworth, and he said no. If you want to see him, you can have the use of the parlour, though I don’t like young men calling on young girls. I’ve never let theatrical lodgings before, and you can’t be too careful. I’ve always had a name for respectability and I want to keep it.”

Adele smiled.

“I cannot imagine anything more respectable than an early morning caller, Mrs. Watson,” she said.

She went downstairs and opened the door. The young man was standing on the side-walk with his back to her, but at the sound of the door opening he turned. He was good-looking and well-dressed, and his smile was quick and appealing.

“I hope your landlady did not bother to wake you up? I could have waited. You are Miss Adele Leamington, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“Will you come in, please?” she asked, and took him into the stuffy little front parlour, and, closing the door behind her, waited.

“I am a reporter,” he said untruthfully, and her face fell.

“You’ve come about Uncle Francis? Is anything really wrong? They sent a detective to see me a week ago. Have they found him?”

“No, they haven’t found him,” he said carefully. “You knew him very well, of course, Miss Leamington?”

She shook her head.

“No, I have only seen him twice in my life. My dear father and he quarrelled before I was born, and I only saw him once after daddy died, and once before mother was taken with her fatal illness.”

She heard him sigh, and sensed his relief, though why he should be relieved that her uncle was almost a stranger to her, she could not fathom.

“You saw him at Chichester, though?” he said.

She nodded.

“Yes, I saw him. I was on my way to Goodwood Park—a whole party of us in a char-à-banc—and I saw him for a moment walking along the side-walk. He looked desperately ill and worried. He was just coming out of a stationer’s shop when I saw him; he had a newspaper under his arm and a letter in his hand.”

“Where was the store?” he asked quickly.

She gave him the address, and he jotted it down.

“You didn’t see him again?”

She shook her head.

“Is anything really very badly wrong?” she asked anxiously. “I’ve often heard mother say that Uncle Francis was very extravagant, and a little unscrupulous. Has he been in trouble?”

“Yes,” admitted Michael, “he has been in trouble, but nothing that you need worry about. You’re a great film actress, aren’t you?”

In spite of her anxiety she laughed.

“The only chance I have of being a great film actress is for you to say so in your paper.”

“My what?” he asked, momentarily puzzled. “Oh yes, my newspaper, of course!”

“I don’t believe you’re a reporter at all,” she said with sudden suspicion.

“Indeed I am,” he said glibly, and dared to pronounce the name of that widely-circulated sheet upon which the sun seldom sets.

“Though I’m not a great actress, and fear I never shall be, I like to believe it is because I’ve never had a chance—I’ve a horrible suspicion that Mr. Knebworth knows instinctively that I am no good.”

Mike Brixan had found a new interest in the case, an interest which, he was honest enough to confess to himself, was not dissociated from the niece of Francis Elmer. He had never met anybody quite so pretty and quite so unsophisticated and natural.

“You’re going to the studio, I suppose?”

She nodded.

“I wonder if Mr. Knebworth would mind my calling to see you?”

She hesitated.

“Mr. Knebworth doesn’t like callers.”

“Then maybe I’ll call on him,” said Michael, nodding. “It doesn’t matter whom I call on, does it?”

“It certainly doesn’t matter to me,” said the girl coldly.

“In the vulgar language of the masses,” thought Mike as he strode down the street, “I have had the bird!”

His inquiries did not occupy very much of his time. He found the little news shop, and the proprietor, by good fortune, remembered the coming of Mr. Francis Elmer.

“He came for a letter, though it wasn’t addressed to Elmer,” said the shopkeeper. “A lot of people have their letters addressed here. I make a little extra money that way.”

“Did he buy a newspaper?”

“No, sir, he did not buy a newspaper; he had one under his arm—the Morning Telegram. I remember that, because I noticed that he’d put a blue pencil mark round one of the agony advertisements on the front page, and I was wondering what it was all about. I kept a copy of that day’s Morning Telegram: I’ve got it now.”

He went into the little parlour at the back of the shop and returned with a dingy newspaper, which he laid on the counter.

“There are six there, but I don’t know which one it was.”

Michael examined the agony advertisements. There was one frantic message from a mother to her son, asking him to return and saying that “all would be forgiven.” There was a cryptogram message, which he had not time to decipher. A third, which was obviously the notice of an assignation. The fourth was a thinly veiled advertisement for a new hair-waver, and at the fifth he stopped. It ran:

“Troubled.Final directions at address I

gave you.Courage.Benefactor.”

“Some ‘benefactor,’ ” said Mike Brixan. “What was he like—the man who called? Was he worried?”

“Yes, sir: he looked upset—all distracted like. He seemed like a chap who’d lost his head.”

“That seems a fair description,” said Mike.