Читать книгу The Forger - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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Her hand thrust wildly at a bristling chin—she remembered an old jiu-jitsu trick and pressed it upward, and as she did so she felt the arm encircling her shoulder relax under the shock. In an instant she wriggled from his grasp and was out of bed, too breathless to scream, too terrified to think.

Blindly she ran to the door by the window. It swung open and she was in the dour sitting-room. She could see nothing. The drawn curtains excluded even the faint lights of the night.

Behind her she could hear the scraping of feet on the polished floor of her bedroom, and in a frenzy of fear she ran forward and, stumbling over a chair, fell. Falling, her hands touched the handle of a door, and this in her desperation she turned.

"Who is there?"

A sudden blinding glow of light. Peter was half out of bed. As she picked herself up from where she sprawled on the floor she stared at him, amazed, dumbfounded. The visitor of the night had not been this newly wakened sleeper. She had felt the roughness of a tweed coat and a soft collar.

"Jane! What is wrong?"

She could only point backward through the dark opening of the door and gasp an incoherent story. Before she was half-way through her narrative, Peter had run past her. Jane staggered to the bed and sat down. She was trembling from head to foot. For the first time in her life she had known fear. And she was cold—terribly cold.

She looked round helplessly for something to cover her, did not see his black dressing-gown hanging behind the door.

Peter came back to find her sitting on his bed, an eiderdown about her trembling shoulders.

"Your window is wide open and there is a ladder against the wall outside. Now just tell me what happened."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and listened as she told her disjointed story. He was not furious, as she expected him to be. There was a certain gravity in his tone which first surprised and then piqued her. All his interest seemed to be centred, not in the identity, but in the clothing of the visitor.

"You're sure he was dressed?"

"Of course he was dressed," she said, a little impatiently. "I tell you, I felt the coat, and there was a safety pin in his collar which came loose and scratched my finger—look!"

He was silent for a while, but she knew that he was not thinking of her scratched finger, at which he had hardly glanced.

"He didn't speak—you're sure of that? And he wore boots? I must have been sleeping heavily: I did not hear you scream——"

"I didn't scream. I had no breath to scream. I thought it was—you!"

He had raised his head, listening. She heard the whine and purr of a distant motor-car.

"That is he," he said.

It may have been imagination on her part, but she could have sworn she detected relief in his tone.

"Why didn't you follow him?"

She tried to simulate reproach, but did not succeed. She was only too glad that he had not left her alone.

"I wasn't sure." And then, in some confusion: "You see, I didn't exactly know what had happened—it might have been nightmare. And even if I had followed, it is very unlikely that I could have come up with him."

He was walking about the room now, gathering up his clothes.

"I suppose you want me to go?"

He shook his head again.

"No, I'll dress. It's nearly four o'clock and I've slept quite long enough. You had better stay here and keep the light on till I come back."

Apparently he dressed in the sitting-room, for in an incredibly short space of time he returned to take the electric torch that lay on the bedside table.

"I'm going down the ladder to do a little investigation," he said. "In the meantime you can either go to sleep—I don't think you will, somehow—or dress yourself—or, alternatively, stay where you are!"

He said this with one of those quick, rare smiles of his, and she had the impression that he was feeling very cheerful about something. She heard his feet on the rungs of the ladder, and, slipping out of the bed, she made her way to the sitting-room.

The electric fire offered a coal-like comfort, but it did not induce her to stay. Passing into her bedroom, she shut the door and looked out of the open window. Peter was standing on the gravel path below. She saw the circle of his lamp roving the garden beds, and she must have made some sound, for he addressed her.

"There are new footmarks here," he said conversationally.

It was extraordinary, she thought, as she closed the window and drew the curtains before turning on the light, how calmly he accepted her terrifying experience. It was almost as though he had expected something of the sort to happen.

She had not finished dressing when she heard him come back up the ladder, cross the sitting-room and pass into the corridor. Going into the sitting-room, she found he had turned on the lights. She had hardly settled herself in a chair before the all too warm radiator when he came in with two cups of tea and a plate of biscuits, which he set on the table. He might have been a thought-reader, to have gauged her wonder and resentment.

"I suppose you think I take this rather calmly," he said. "As a matter of fact, I'm only just beginning to realise what has happened. If I'd been quite awake I'd have gone after that fellow and broken his neck!"

The venom in his voice was certainly genuine, she decided. She too was feeling the reaction, and though the hand that reached out to take the tea did not tremble, she had not wholly recovered from the shock. Dawn was paling in the eastern skies; the elms in the drive were a hard, black line against the steel of morning.

"We had better change rooms," he suggested. "I can keep my window closed. There are three panes which open and admit all the air that I want. But I don't imagine this bird will repeat his attempt—you found no jewellery missing?"

She shook her head. That had been one of the discoveries she had made when she went to dress; though the thought that she might have been robbed had been the last thing to occur to her.

"No; I very foolishly left my rings and bracelets on the dressing-table, but they have not been touched. If it were a burglar——"

She knew that it was no burglar, and in this certitude could not even discuss such a possibility.

Making conversation was something of a trial. She discovered with a sense of dismay that they had so few friends and interests in common. She found herself talking about her wedding as though it were a ceremony in which she had little more than a detached interest. She had not seen Marjorie Cheyne Wells, either in the church or at the reception.

"Do you like her?" she asked, almost knowing what he would reply, for he was one of those maddening people who had no strong likes or dislikes. It was almost in the nature of a pleasant surprise to hear that Marjorie was not a favourite of his.

"I don't quite know what to make of her," he said. "She can be so extraordinarily sour—spiteful is a better word."

"Has she been spiteful to you?" she asked quickly, and he laughed.

"No. I'm too insignificant to arouse her animosity."

Here was an opportunity to ask a question which had been on the tip of her tongue since the visit of the detective. This queer intimacy which the adventure of the night had brought about created an atmosphere in which the most embarrassing problems might be discussed. Nevertheless she thought he was a little distant, and her uneasiness was intensified when, for a moment after she had questioned him, he remained silent.

"Yes, it is perfectly true that this lady frequently visits me; but she is, as I told Rouper, a cook—at least, she was many years ago."

He chuckled nervously.

"She has a grievance," was all that he would tell her, except that her name was Untersohn, of Swedish origin.

The sun came up into a blue, cloudless sky, and garden and lawn called urgently. By seven o'clock, despite the stimulation of tea, Jane found her head nodding. She went to her room, intending to lie down for an hour—it was the sound of the luncheon gong which woke her.

Many things had happened while she had slept. Looking out of the window, she saw Peter walking down the drive with a man whose figure suggested Superintendent Bourke.

Peter was waiting lunch for her.

"I told them not to sound that infernal gong," he said. "You were sleeping so heavily that I didn't want you wakened."

"Was that Mr. Bourke I saw?"

He explained that Bourke had come down at his request, and that he had no doubt whatever about the man who had come to her room in the night being the same individual who had been wandering about the grounds the night before. He did not explain how he knew this, but went on:

"By the way, I hope you won't mind: I've asked Donald Wells if he can come down—I would have gone up to him, but I don't like leaving you here alone."

She looked up from her plate quickly.

"Why? Aren't you well?" she asked.

"Eh—well? Oh, yes, I'm well! Of course, Donald loathed the idea of intruding on our honeymoon."

There was the ghost of a laugh in his eyes when he said this.

"Is he bringing Marjorie?"

Peter shook his head.

"No," he said shortly.

"But why is he coming, if you're not ill?" she insisted.

It was an opportunity for heroics and oblique reproach. Yet somehow she did not expect this, nor was she disappointed.

The afternoon came and brought the second shock of the day.

Peter was reading in the library, and she, having made a futile attempt to interest herself in the rose garden and make conversation with an ancient and taciturn gardener, had returned to the house with a blank feeling of despair as she contemplated the hours that had to be filled before bedtime.

Peter looked up as she came in and hastily concealed the book he was reading—an odd circumstance which excited her curiosity.

"How long do we have to stay at Longford?" she asked desperately. "Peter, this is an awful place, and will you be very angry if I tell you that I am terribly bored?"

His smile was sympathetic.

"I've been thinking the same thing," he confessed, "and without consulting you I have engaged a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. At least we shall have the theatres."

She was almost happy at the prospect of release from her dismal environment.

"Father mustn't know—he wouldn't understand," she said. "When do we leave?"

He told her that he had not been able to secure the suite he wanted until the day after the morrow.

"What were you reading when I came in?"

Very guiltily he produced the book. It was a French work on etching. She had forgotten that he had a hobby, and told him so.

"I owe it a lot," he said. "I shouldn't have met you if my vanity hadn't run in the direction of a private show."

She had even forgotten that it was in a dingy gallery off Bond Street that her father had introduced them.

"Poor daddy! He was terribly upset about losing your plates. I am sorry."

Here Peter was sufficiently human to echo her sorrow. For in a moment of expansiveness he had loaned what to him was an invaluable set of his etchings to his prospective father-in-law. Peter's work was extraordinarily fine. The lost plates, each no larger than a post-card, represented his supreme efforts.

"It's a terrible pity—I'll never do such good work again," he said, for the moment a picture of gloom. Then he laughed almost gaily. "And they say we English have no artistic leaning! I offered a thousand pounds for the return of the plates, but the finder preferred the masterpieces!"

She sat in a low chair on the other side of the fire, her chin in her palm, looking at him, her mind strangely busy.

"I suppose this man—what do they call him?—the Clever One—must be an etcher too? Daddy says that only a brilliant artist could do the work—he has seen some specimens."

"I suppose so."

His tone was completely indifferent. Evidently he was not greatly interested in the artistic abilities of the unknown forger.

The very mention of the Clever One seemed to dry up his good humour and inhibit further conversation.

After a while she rose and went out into the hall.

She was standing at the door, looking across the park, when she became aware of the car. It was not an ordinary limousine. Her first impression was that by some error part of a circus procession had strayed into the grounds. The body was large and old-fashioned. It was painted a bright crimson lake, and this was "picked out" with gold. The handles and the other metal appointments were of dull gold—the chauffeur and the footman were in uniform which completely matched the car and its upholstery, for their caps were gold-laced.

Watching this tremendous machine open-mouthed, Jane observed that the servants' caps were further ornamented with imposing cockades.

The footman got down and opened the door. He seemed rather self-conscious. From the interior stepped a large woman. She was of commanding height, stout of build, coarse-skinned. But Jane could see, beyond the inflamed face and swollen flesh, the beauty that once had lived in that repellent visage. The thick coating of white powder accentuated the furrows and wrinkles beneath. Her lips were a bright scarlet, the eyelashes heavily darkened—a smear of the colouring matter had somehow reached her cheek and had given a touch of the grotesque to a face which in itself was a little terrifying.

Her swollen hands were gloveless, and every finger was tightly ringed from knuckle to knuckle. There were diamonds in her ears, and suspended from her neck a huge and glittering plaque that rested on her bosom.

She was expensively and youthfully dressed, but the colours must have been of her own choosing. No tyrannical designer would have sanctioned that champagne hue or those girlish lines.

She stood under the portico, staring sombrely at the girl.

"You're his wife? I'm Madame Untersohn."

Madame Untersohn—the cook! This, then, was the mysterious woman who had visited Peter almost daily. Her voice was hard and common; she made no attempt to carry any further than in her appearance and state the illusion of gentility.

"I am Mrs. Clifton, yes."

The large woman was breathing heavily; obviously under the effect of some pent emotion—Jane suspected a rumbling fury and was more interested than alarmed.

"You're gettin' what ain't his to give." The visitor almost barked the accusation. "What he's robbin' the rightful heir out of——"

For a moment Jane was staggered. She could overlook the theatrical gesture, the hackneyed cliché of cheap melodrama.

"Rightful heir? Who is 'the rightful heir'?"

Madame Untersohn struck yet another attitude.

"Peter Clifton's brother—my son!" she said.