Читать книгу The Forger - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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When Peter stepped out of his car before St. George's he faced fifty cameras. A dozen urgent voices begged him to stand still—there was a fierce chattering of falling shutters.

"Thank you, Mr. Clifton," said a newspaper photographer.

"Thank you," said Peter mechanically.

What on earth brought all these people here? Every pew filled; throughout the church the sickly perfume of flowers. Strangers, most of them—idle folk lured by curiosity to see two millions of money marry beauty. Idle, open-mouthed women staring at him and nudging one another—he saw his valet in one pew and his butler and wife in another. Forby smiled respectfully, in his face a look of sad uncertainty. Possibly he would not "suit" the new madame. It was rather dreadful to have so many lives dependent on one. Blossoms were massed along the chancel rail, and flowers on the altar, and lighted candles. His gloved hands twiddled with the rim of his hat.

"Have you got the ring?"

"Eh?"

He felt in his waistcoat pocket. Yes, it was there. Jane had begun by expressing her indifference to gold or platinum, and had finished by distinctly favouring platinum.

Marjorie Wells smiled at him from a favoured front pew. She looked unusually haggard, and there was no geniality in her smile. Perhaps she was continuing, mutely, her protest against Donald acting as best man. She had become a stickler for custom. It was unlucky to have a married best man; it was absurd. Surely Peter had a friend. His lawyer? Peter's lawyer was also a benedict—lawyers marry young.

Marjorie Cheyne Wells had been crying! He made the discovery when she turned full face to him, and it came as a shock. Marjorie was no sentimentalist.

"For Heaven's sake, how long do we wait?" he asked fretfully.

Donald Wells looked at his watch.

"You've been here just under fifty seconds. Nervous?"

"A bit, yes. I wish I had seen Jane yesterday—I was rather stuffy about her going out to dance with Hale—I wanted to apologise."

Wells's thin lips were pressed tighter. Jane should have been spanked, he thought. She had set the town talking—supping tête-à-tête with Basil Hale two nights before her marriage.

A stir and a craning of necks. The choir was waddling down to meet the bride. "Waddle"—that was the word for it, decided Peter. Like a double rank of white ducks. . . .

She was here! The organ trembled, and one clear note led the sweet voices of boys. Now they were coming back with greater dignity. And here was Jane on her father's arm and mysteriously strange girls in white behind her. He hardly knew one of them—certainly did not recognise Jane, though he stared and stared till Wells caught his sleeve and placed him. . . .

Kneeling was an aching business, though in Jane it seemed no effort. Would her hand be cold when he took it—no, it was blood-warm and soft: to touch it was to receive a caress.

She never looked at him once; her voice was clear when she answered the priest's demands—but she never looked at Peter—did not take his arm as they walked to the vestry. He was so dazed that he had to think before he signed the register—a full half-minute he kept them waiting, the pen poised. . . .

More snappings of cameras and a swaying mass of women surging up to the car door. A policeman stood on the step till they were clear of the crowd.

"Ghastly, wasn't it?" she said.

"Yes . . . rather . . . I don't realise."

They were alone, but no more alone than when he had driven her back from Lord's or a theatre. And there was no splendour in this very special loneliness.

"I'll be awfully good to you," he blurted out.

It was just the banality he would utter. Jane drew into the corner of the car, for the first time in her life self-conscious.

Thank Heaven she had managed at the eleventh hour to change the venue of the reception from the hotel to the house in Avenue Road! It had involved the dispatch of hundreds of telegrams, and fewer people would come—which was an advantage.

In her own room she sat down to take stock. Mainly she was concerned about herself, but now and again a thought of Peter crossed her mind and her maid saw her face shadow.

"You ought to go down soon, madame."

Madame! She was Mrs. Peter Clifton. There was no time to reflect on the phenomenon.

"Porter, who did the flowers for the house, said Mr. Clifton paid him with a bad five-pound note, miss—ma'am. I told Porter it would be all right——"

"Bad five-pound note? A forgery?"

Jane's first sensation was one of amusement.

"Yes, miss. He took it to the post office and they said: 'Where did you get it?' and all that—and Porter says he can't afford to lose all that money."

A bad five-pound note! How odd! And yesterday there was trouble about a fifty-pound note. Jane was not amused any longer.

She opened a drawer of her writing table, took out her bag and opened it.

"Here is another five pounds—tell Porter not to be silly—of course he will lose nothing. Mr. Clifton must have had these forgeries passed on him."

She went downstairs, so intent upon the forged note that she had to be shepherded to the studio. This was not a moment to discuss the matter with Peter. She found it very difficult to talk to him at all. . . .

Free of everything at last, thank God—of white charmeuse and veil and the faint smelling bouquet, free of the slavery of greeting unimportant people with a smile that must approximate to happiness.

Basil Hale was almost the last to approach, and she saw an imp in his dancing eyes.

"I've got orders not to annoy or depress you," he said, and whilst he spoke he was shaking hands with Peter, at whom he did not look. "Happy life to you, Jane, and all that sort of thing, and come back soon and make matches for all your friends—ow!"

His hand was still resting in Peter's—Peter had given it a sudden and excruciating grip.

"Congratulate me!" he said coolly.

It was the first glimpse she had of another Peter.

"By Gad—you've got a grip on you!" complained Basil.

That was the one distinct memory she carried away from the babel and the white rosettes and silver confetti.

As the car went swiftly and noiselessly across Hampstead Heath she brushed the last silver anchor from her skirt and looked round at her husband. His arm was in the rest loop, his eyes fixed thoughtfully on the road ahead. She tried to ask him if he was happy, but she could not bring her tongue to this supreme hypocrisy. And then she remembered the five-pound note. She thought he hadn't heard her, and told him again.

"Porter? Yes, I gave him a fiver. Bad, was it? How careless!"

Careless was not exactly the word she expected. She discovered that she badly wanted him to talk—she was living for the present: the future was not to be contemplated sanely.

"Longford Manor was your idea, Jane," he said in surprise.

"Was it?" Jane could be very provocative.

"I thought Paris or——"

"Don't say 'Como,'" she breathed. She felt that if he said 'Como' she would scream.

He went red.

"I don't know Como," he said, a little stiffly. "But whatever I should have said it would not have been Longford Manor. I thought you didn't like the place when you saw it."

"Is it your own house?" She evaded the challenge.

"No—I've hired it three months at a time when I got sick of town. The owner lives permanently abroad and one can always get it. The grounds are nice and its loneliness rather appealed to me."

"It shall appeal to me too," she said stoutly, and went on: "Don't mind if I'm rather nervy to-day—getting married is a nervy business. Did you see Marjorie? That woman is in love with you, Peter."

He was too astonished to protest.

"I know. She looked at me with a basilisk eye. Isn't that funny?"

"I'll swear you're mistaken," he said, almost violently.

"Perhaps I am—about you. But she loathes me."

"But why?"

Jane shook her head. They had traversed the mean streets of Tottenham and were on the Epping road. He returned to the question of honeymoon—she would rather have talked about Marjorie Cheyne Wells.

"We could go abroad after," he suggested. "New York—Long Island or somewhere. It is glorious on the Sound. I know quite a lot of people in the States. I went over there last year with Bourke—he's the big fellow at Scotland Yard."

He had been many times in America—pleasure trips to kill ennui really.

She found herself wondering why Peter sought out detectives and made them his friends.

There was little more said on that wearisome journey. With a fluttering at her heart she saw from the crest of the hill above Newport the chimneys of Longford Manor in the distance. Before she could quite collect her thoughts and order them, the car had passed the lodge gates and was slowing before the door of the house.

The two menservants were waiting in the open doorway, deaf old men who had been in the owner's service for years. An ancient maid brought a cup of tea to Jane in her panelled sitting-room—boudoir would have been too pretty a name for this severe apartment.

Peter's room as well as her own opened from this chamber. He appeared at the door as she was sipping the hot liquid.

"You've not seen the garden and the rockery?" he asked her. She was childishly glad to get into the open air and the slanting sunlight, but when he took her arm she was so unresponsive that after a while he let it fall awkwardly.

Time did not pass. Every minute had to be lived through—she was wearing with the strain of it when she went up to dress for dinner with the help of the old "maid."

For one thought of Peter's she was grateful: Anna was under the impression that the honeymoon was in its decline.

"Mr. Clifton said he'd bring you here before you went to London, ma'am. This is a rare place for honeymoons. We often let for a month, but you're the first lady that's ever finished her honeymoon at Longford."

For which she thanked Peter rather prettily when they were at dinner.

"Anna doesn't read the newspapers or she'd know I was a liar," he said, and seemed in a hurry to change the subject.

They spent that interminable evening in the big library that formed one wing of the manor house. Once or twice he tried to say something, but the stream of thought ran into a sandy delta of incoherent words. More than once she had an inclination to fly from the house and find some sort of conveyance that would take her home. When he tried to talk of housekeeping or the future, she sat tense, holding herself in.

" . . . You'll sign what cheques you wish—a sort of joint account, Jane. Money is rather a horrid subject for a honeymoon, isn't it?"

"You've been awfully generous."

He was momentarily deceived into a deeper blundering.

"The settlement was nothing—the hundred thousand, I mean. Money is a ruthless sort of weapon—I wonder sometimes whether I haven't used it a little cruelly."

"It gives you what you want."

A little devil was in her: how could he guess that she was seeking a respite from her panic by the most obvious method?

"It gave me you—I mean, it made possible——"

It needed that gaucherie of his and the arm that slipped a little awkwardly about her shoulders.

She was on her feet, looking down at him with smouldering eyes.

"It bought me—that is what you mean!"

"I meant nothing of the kind——"

"Yes, you did—money was the short cut—we comfortably placed people are inclined to be dazzled with sums that seemed fabulous. It was easier than—courting—that's a stupid old word, but it's expressive. You don't think I love you, do you?"

A white face above her shook from side to side.

"No. I hoped. But I don't think so."

"Or that you have anything more in me than money can buy? A bargain's a bargain—I'll keep to mine. I'll be your wife. I am your wife. I'm not going to be a fool at this hour. But I don't love you. I hate being heroic, but you can't buy that. You can kiss me if you like, but I shall hate it—I'm sorry. I ought to have told you last night—when was it I saw you? If you are satisfied with that—here I am!"

He was looking down at her blankly, and his face had lost all expression.

"I see," he said at last. "Well—I don't want what I paid for. I want what you can give."

She shook her head.

"That is nothing," she said.

He nodded at this.

"Well, we've got—er—a month to fill in somehow," he said.

At that second came on the outer door a knock that reverberated thunderously through the bare stone hall. A shuffle of feet on the flags and the rattle of chains.

Peter waited, his eyes on the door. Presently it opened.

It was Chief Inspector Rouper.

"Sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Clifton."

He was terse to a point of brusqueness as he laid a small attaché-case on the library table and snapped it open. Jane was watching in amazement—almost forgotten was the unnerving five minutes through which she had just passed, though she was shaking from head to foot.

Rouper pulled out a bundle of bank-notes and laid them on the table.

"They were found in a suit-case that you left at Victoria parcels office yesterday morning," he said quietly. "I should like some explanation, Mr. Clifton."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," said the detective, "that every one of those notes is a forgery."