Читать книгу The Forger - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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Peter Clifton looked from the detective to the neatly packed bundle of notes.

"I have never left a suit-case at Victoria," he said steadily.

"I am telling you——" began the inspector, raising his voice.

"Don't be aggressive, please." The authority in his voice made Jane open her eyes. "I have told you that I have never left a suit-case at Victoria."

"It had your label on," insisted Rouper, but in a milder tone.

Peter's lips parted in a ghost of a smile.

"One does not label bags containing forged notes and leave them in a public place—I would like to have your chief constable's views on that. And Superintendent Harvey's and a few other gentlemen's. The inference I am to draw is that I knew those notes were forged and that I was distributing them. The Bank of England will give you one million eight hundred thousand reasons why I should not do anything so stupid. Have you the suit-case?"

Rouper turned to one of the two men who stood outside the door and gave an order, and presently he brought in a brand-new cowhide case. To the handle dangled a printed label:

Mr. Peter Clifton, 175, Carlton House Terrace.

"I have never seen it before," said Peter after one glance. "Would it be suggesting that you betray official secrets if I asked you how you knew the bag was at Victoria?"

"That is neither here nor there." Rouper, never an even-tempered man, was ruffled. "I've come down to inquire into the circumstances. And another thing——"

"I gave a man a forged fiver this morning, and a forged fifty was traced to me yesterday and——"

Peter put his hand in his pocket and took out a leather note-case. He opened this on the table and slowly extracted one by one its contents.

"That is a good twenty and so is that—this one"—he lifted the note to the light—"is forged. The watermark is bad—you'd better take charge of it. This note"—he fingered the fourth carefully—"is genuine, and this—but this is a forgery; I can feel without looking."

One by one he sorted the notes.

"Did you get these from your bank?"

"Some of them—I'm rather careless about money and keep my notes in a steel-lined drawer of my desk. When I want money I take the first that comes to hand. When I receive money in return for a cheque I replenish the store."

"From the bank?" asked the detective quickly.

Peter shook his head.

"I seldom go to the bank. No, from tradespeople—my tailor, for example, cashed a cheque last week for a hundred. Whoever's nearest."

Jane listened, puzzled, fascinated. Suppose——If he were guilty here was a complete and baffling explanation.

Baffled, Rouper certainly was. He fell back on the bundle of notes.

"You couldn't have got these from a shop," he said triumphantly.

There was contempt in Peter's voice.

"I have told you—they are not mine. The case isn't mine. The only thing that looks like mine is the label. An enemy hath done this."

"Have you any enemies?"

Peter smiled.

"Only you, Rouper."

The detective's face went dark with anger.

"I'm no enemy—I am surprised that a gentleman like you should say so. I'm doing my duty."

Then, to the amazement of the listening girl, Peter shook his head.

"You have been watching me for a month—keeping me under observation, I think, is the expression."

Anger overcame the inspector's discretion.

"Have I? Then perhaps you'll put a little more information at my disposal. Who is the lady who has been visiting you in your flat night after night—going in by the side door and leaving I don't know when?"

"What a horrible invention!"

Jane could hardly believe that it was she who was talking so furiously.

"Even if it were true, you have no right——"

"It is true." Peter was coolness itself. "Perfectly true. I have been visited in my flat by a lady who has generally stayed no longer than an hour and has left by the way she came. Her age is, I believe, sixty-five. Her name and address I am not prepared to give——"

"A friend of yours?"

Again Peter smiled.

"Not even a friend. She is in truth one who hates me—her occupation is, or was, a cook, and I will add she is, or was, a very bad cook. And that, I think, is all I can tell you."

Rouper rubbed his chin irritably.

"This will have to be reported to our people," he said.

"It will be reported by me." Peter nodded to the telephone on the table.

The inspector hesitated.

"Can I use that?" He half reached for the instrument.

"No," curtly, "you cannot. There is no law which gives you the right to use my telephone."

Rouper's surprise was almost comic.

"All right, sir. I am sorry I annoyed you. As a matter of fact, I haven't reported this matter to the Yard——"

"Nor to the Essex police," smiled Peter. "In fact, Rouper, of all the people in this room you are in the worst mess! You've come without a warrant—you're on territory where you have no right except at the request of the Chief Constable of Essex, you've brought two men with you—unauthorised, I imagine—and you've got to ask me very kindly not to mention this matter to head-quarters."

Rouper looked at him suspiciously.

"You're not a police officer of any kind, are you?"

Peter shook his head.

"Merely an intelligent observer," he said.

Then for the first time he appeared to be aware of his wife's presence.

"Jane, if you will excuse us for a moment, I would like to talk to the inspector."

She went into the dark drawing-room and turned on the light. A big barn of a place that smelt mustily and of earth, so that, even though the night was warm, she shivered and switched on the electric stove that stood in the open brick-lined fire-place. The sound of voices came to her in a low hum.

Almost, in the new interest, the supreme drama had receded into the background. In that quarter of an hour when she had stood by the side of her husband and heard the stupefying accusation, she had experienced almost every human emotion. Fear amounting to terror, relief, near-happiness as the half charge was turned away from him; contempt—when had she felt contempt? It was with something of dismay to recall that it was Peter's quiet contempt that she had shared. He had changed—the nervous and tongue-tied Peter she knew had vanished and left no trace. It was another man who faced these merciless servants of the law, fenced with them, by inference threatened them.

Was he bluffing? Her heart sank at the thought. Suppose these two millions of his were mythical. . . . Yet the hundred thousand he had settled on her was real enough. John Leith had, as it were, bitten every single pound.

She heard the front door close, and Peter came in. She expected that he would be smiling, but he was very serious.

"The bloodhounds have gone," he said.

"Who is this Rouper?"

"A genuine detective. They are rather a fine lot of fellows at the Yard—poorly paid but beyond suspicion. I suppose they make a little by side-lines—so do we all. Now and again they get a fellow who is gambolling with the hares when he should be snug at home in his kennel. That's Rouper—he's all side-line."

"He is an elderly man——"

"Due to retire this year. I know Scotland Yard rather well. I have had to consult them once or twice—no, I'm not a disguised detective masquerading as a millionaire! I'm just—well, it pays me to keep in touch with the Yard."

"But this man is watching you."

He chuckled at this.

"I made him spiteful and then it came out. Yes, he has been watching me."

He looked at his watch.

"You had better toddle off to bed. You had better lock your door in case somebody leaves a few forged fivers under your pillow."

She smiled for the first time that day—genuinely.

"Longford Manor has no other surprises to offer." Jane was almost flippant. "A family ghost, now?"

"I do not allow my family ghost to travel with me," was all he said. And then he nodded towards the door.

In this way was Jane Clifton peremptorily dismissed on her wedding night.

She was amused as she went up the broad stairs—a little piqued, too. She had pictured many possibilities—it was not within the scope of her unpleasant daydreams that she should be dismissed, or that she should so meekly obey the imperious gesture.

As she reached the landing she had a fright. It was lit by one dim globe, and that was enclosed in an antique iron lantern that swung from the ceiling. One foot was on the top stair when she saw a figure moving in the shadow. Jane suppressed a scream only by sheer force of will.

"Oh, it is you, Anna!"

The aged servant came into the light.

"Yes, ma'am—I bin waiting for you."

She followed the girl into the bedroom with its big four-poster and tapestry-covered walls. But it was bright enough when the light was switched on.

The old lady was ready to accept credit for the efficiency of the electric service.

"We're the only house in the neighbourhood to be lit that way," she said proudly. "Everything's done by it—cookin', cleanin', everything."

"Does Mr. Clifton come here very often?" asked Jane as she stepped out of her dress.

She was surprised at the rebuff which followed.

"We ain't supposed to talk about anybody's business," said Anna primly. "That's why we keep our jobs."

"But are you Mr. Clifton's servants?"

"We belong to the 'ouse," was the cryptic reply, "an' we're let with the 'ouse."

"But the house isn't Mr. Clifton's, I know that," said the undaunted Jane.

Anna had her reply. She belonged to the house and was hired with the house. To which she added, Jinks & Jinks done everything. Jane gathered they were the house agents.

The bed was unexpectedly comfortable—the appointments were made for comfort—you could extinguish all or half the lights from the bed-head. She turned them out and snuggled down luxuriously. She was half asleep when she remembered she had not locked the door.

She had no intention of doing anything so theatrical. She was asleep almost before the thought ran out of her mind. . . .

Anna looked very old in the searching light of morning.

"Good morning, ma'am."

Ma'am—of course. How funny!

Waiting till the old woman had gone out of the room, Jane slipped into her dressing-jacket and slippers and went over to the open window. She looked down upon a shaven lawn separated from the park by a decrepit iron fence. Beyond was the rolling green of parkland that stretched to a belt of sunlit elms.

She did not see Peter, but, as she was turning away, he came into view, and to her surprise a strange man walked by his side.

Peter apparently was in good spirits: the sound of his laughter came to her.

" . . . poor old Rouper . . . caught him out . . ."

She was not sure whether she was glad or sorry to find him so cheerful. Perhaps he did not care very much—or was he waiting to wear down her mental resistance, or hoping that blessed propinquity would bring about a change in her attitude?

She drank the tea that Anna had brought, turned on the water in her bath and began to unpack her one big trunk. When she joined the two men on the lawn, Peter's flippant mood had passed: he was grave, almost glum, and for the first time since that scene in the library was his old embarrassed self.

"Jane, this is Mr. Bourke—you've heard me speak of him."

So this was the redoubtable Superintendent Bourke. He was a stoutish man with a large, jovial face and many chins.

"Sorry to intrude myself into the Garden of Eden, Mrs. Clifton."

Mr. Bourke was less like a great detective than any man she had ever imagined. It was only when she looked into his eyes, steadfast, searching, sceptical, that she found the attributes of a thief-catcher.

"I hope old man Rouper didn't worry you last night, Mrs. Clifton? Good chap, Rouper, but he rather jumps at conclusions, huh?"

He ended almost every question with a deep-throated growl of inquiry.

He turned abruptly to Peter.

"Perhaps it was the gardener, Mr. Clifton?"

Clifton shook his head.

"The gardener would hardly walk on flower-beds, and to my knowledge he has no car."

She was listening, puzzled.

"What is it?" she asked, and again Peter showed signs of embarrassment. He went red and shifted uneasily.

"The fact is . . . some fellow was in the grounds last night . . . we don't know who it was, but one of the servants saw him." He pointed to a garden bed under the window. "He left footmarks on the mould. It is nothing to worry about. Bourke didn't come down because of that: we were merely discussing it."

Seeing that he did not wish to pursue the subject, Jane left the men alone. She expected Bourke to stay to lunch, but, to her surprise, he disappeared, and she found herself alone at the long table with Peter.

He was no more inclined now to discuss the midnight visitor than he had been.

"A tramp possibly," he said. "These fellows know that the house is empty half the year. I suppose he was looking for an unfastened window."

He spoke enthusiastically of Bourke, his genius and his qualities as an investigator. She listened without interrupting to a eulogy that lasted through the greater part of the meal.

"How did you come to know these people at Scotland Yard, Peter?" she asked, as they strolled out on to the sunlit lawn.

The question produced a curious effect upon him: from the self-possessed, cool man of the world, he became an incoherent, stammering schoolboy.

"Well . . . they have been rather decent to me . . . taken an interest in me and all that sort of thing and helped me tremendously, especially Bourke. You have no idea what good fellows they are. And of course it is always as well to be on the right side——"

"On the right side of Scotland Yard? Why?" she asked quickly.

He did not answer at once, evidently revolving in his mind many alternative answers.

"Well, it is," he said at last, very unconvincingly, and changed the subject.

They spent the afternoon on a miniature golf course. As the day wore on, they both experienced something of the tension and the peculiar antagonism of the night before. Was it antagonism? Was it not in her heart a fear and in his a sense of resentment, she wondered.

He grew shorter and more sparing of speech. Eventually she relapsed into silence, and in silence they dined, under the myopic eye of the old and asthmatic manservant who acted as butler, footman and man-of-all-work.

After dinner she wandered into the drawing-room. The night was a little chilly: a small wood fire smouldered on the open hearth. He followed, and waited (she imagined) with suppressed impatience until the coffee had come. It was almost like a ritual, this coffee-drinking together. The girl in the grey evening frock, and this man sitting stiffly on the edge of a big arm-chair, were indulging in a ceremony from which neither obtained the least pleasure.

Presently he made an excuse.

"I shall be in the library if you want me," he said, in such a tone as suggested to her that he had not the slightest expectation of being wanted at all.

At ten o'clock she looked in. He was sitting at the table with a blank sheet of note-paper before him, nibbling the end of a pen. Peter jumped up in some confusion, which suggested she had surprised him in a reprehensible act.

"I am going to bed now," she said, and was gone before his mumbled reply reached her.

Sleep did not come easily, and hardly had her head touched the pillow before she remembered the visitor of the night before. She got out of bed and, going to the window, looked out. The moon had not yet risen. The calm of the day was at an end: a fitful wind was blowing; from somewhere in the south came a low growl of thunder.

She pulled the curtains over the open window, went back to bed and tried to sleep. It was an hour before she fell into a restless slumber.

It was unusual in her to dream, but now dreams followed in bewildering succession. Of Peter, of her father, of that stout detective. They were without beginning or end—just fitful, uneasy glimpses of horrors—Peter drowning in the sea and the detective grinning fiendishly at him from the high bridge of a liner. . . .

She turned in her sleep, shivering. Peter had told her to lock the door, but she had no fear.

Suddenly she was awake. Somebody's arm was about her thinly clad shoulders.

There were lips to her cheek, hot, hungry lips that roved blindly. With a scream she struggled up, fighting back the man who held her.