Читать книгу The Forger - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

Table of Contents

Peter's brother? Peter was an only child: it was the one piece of information that he had given to her about himself.

"I think you are mistaken——"

"Allow me!"

It was Peter's voice. He had come out of the library noiselessly behind her.

"Allow you, eh?" The painted lips curled in an ugly sneer. "You'll do all the talkin'! But you can't talk your poor brother out of his rights!"

There was a subtle difference in the harsh voice that addressed Peter Clifton. The coarse assurance had been replaced by a note of pleading; there was an uneasiness in it which was reflected in the woman's gesture, for now the jewelled hands were rubbing nervously one over the other and the blackened lashes were blinking nervously.

"I come down to see you an' have it out!" The voice had grown shrill. "I'm not afraid of you. If you come any of your father's tricks I'll shoot you like a dog, by God I will!"

She had snapped open the big bag she carried, groped into its depths and now one trembling hand held a nickel-plated revolver.

". . . shoot you as soon as look at you. I want justice, and you ain't goin' to frighten me!"

Peter was surveying her, his face expressionless, his grave eyes fixed on the woman's.

"Come in, Mrs. Untersohn," he said, and, turning, walked to the library and threw open the door.

Jane could only gape, dumbfounded at the scene. It was like the segment of a fantastic dream that had neither beginning nor end. She watched the woman waddle past, her suspicious eyes on Peter, the shining pistol still wagging tremulously in her hand.

Madame Untersohn backed into the room and Peter followed her. The door closed upon them. Jane walked out on to the lawn, her head in a whirl.

What did all this mean—what explanation could there possibly be for the intrusion of this overdressed old woman with her threats and her revolver and her cryptic references to Peter's brother?

As she walked slowly and aimlessly towards the drive she heard the hum of wheels and, looking up, saw a car appear from the direction of the lodge gates. Her heart leapt as she recognised the blue body of it, and she ran across the lawn, waving her hand.

"I'm terribly sorry—barging into Arcady and all that sort of thing." Donald Cheyne Wells' white teeth showed in a smile as he took her hand.

"And I'm terribly glad you came," she said fervently. "Welcome to Wonderland!"

He smiled again.

"A pleasant wonderland, I hope?" he suggested.

It was a curious fact (she remembered even as she revealed the happenings of the night) that she had never before been on terms of confidence either with Donald or his wife, and yet, almost before she realised what she was saying, she had told him of the midnight visitor.

The effect upon him was remarkable. He stood stock still, staring at her.

"For God's sake!" he breathed; and then quickly: "You didn't know him?"

There was something almost comic in his agitation. And then she saw his eyes open even wider. The "coach" of Madame Untersohn had drawn up beyond the house, and as they walked it had come into view.

"Untersohn—is she here?"

His face had gone peaked and grey. She could only gaze at him in consternation.

"Do you know her? Who is she?"

But before her question was finished he was walking quickly towards the house.

Before he could reach the portico, Madame Untersohn had appeared. Under the powder her face was a choleric red. Imperiously she beckoned to the watchful footman and her ponderous car moved towards her.

Cheyne Wells stopped at the sight of her and did not speak or move until the machine moved on with its resplendent burden.

"How long has she been here?" He was brusque almost to a point of rudeness.

"Only a few minutes," said Jane wonderingly. "Who is she?"

She heard his long sigh, the sigh of a man from whom a weight of trouble had been shifted; his tone became more amiable.

"She's a woman who's been worrying Peter rather a lot, I fancy," he said. And then quickly: "Did you see her? Did she say anything to you?"

Jane laughed.

"You're becoming mysteriouser and mysteriouser, Donald," she said. "Yes, I did have a brief interview with the lady, in the course of which she told me that her son was the rightful heir, that he was Peter's brother——"

Again his face had gone tense; his dark eyes had narrowed till they were the merest slits.

"She told you that, did she? She's mad! Obviously she's mad. Nobody would travel about in a band wagon as she does unless they were crazy. You didn't take the slightest notice of anything she said, did you?"

Jane shook her head.

"I haven't had time to think about it," she said, and was going on, but he interrupted her.

"Peter never had a brother. This woman is a lunatic, obsessed with the idea that her son is the heir to Peter's fortune."

"She doesn't seem particularly poor herself," said Jane, remembering the flashing diamonds.

Wells nodded.

"She ought to be a rich woman. That makes her behaviour all the more extraordinary."

He seemed most anxious to convince her on the point—too anxious, she thought, in her shrewd way.

"Peter should have had her arrested years ago; he's too kind-hearted—hallo, Peter, old boy!"

Peter Clifton had strolled out from the house, his hands thrust deep into his flannel pockets, a half-smile on his lips. Without a word to the girl, Donald Wells darted to him, caught him by the arm and led him, reluctantly, Jane thought, back into the house.

"Mysteriouser and mysteriouser," said Jane, and went up to her ugly little sitting-room. No bride ever felt more unbride-like than she, or less necessary to the happiness, the comfort or the entertainment of anybody.

She could not believe her ears a quarter of an hour later when she heard Donald's car moving off. He had gone without saying good-bye, without exchanging another word. At first she was amused, then a little angry, and it required something more than Peter's message of farewell at third hand to restore her equanimity.

"He had to rush back to town."

"Why did he rush down?" she asked, almost tartly.

"I asked him to see me—what do you think of the lady?"

He followed her into the library and pushed an easy chair for her, but she stood by the side of the library table, her fingers drumming ominously.

"Have you any more surprises for me?" she asked, and something in her tone amused him, for he laughed.

"I'm terribly sorry." Peter was apologetic, but he was in no sense abashed—not even apprehensive. "She was surprising, wasn't she?"

He was waiting for a further question, and she did not disappoint him.

"What did she mean when she talked about your brother?"

He smiled faintly.

"That is one of my many family skeletons," he said; "to me, the smallest. I suppose I've got an unmoral mind, but that particular indiscretion of my father does not trouble me as it should."

She was silent at this.

"Oh—is it that?" she asked awkwardly.

"It is that. I'm sorry. Mrs. Untersohn, who, so far as I know, is Miss Untersohn, has very hazy ideas of primogeniture and imagines that her son is entitled to a—er—share in the estate."

His questioning eyes were upon her. Was she convinced? they seemed to ask.

"It is very—ugly, isn't it?"

It was a lame, almost hypocritical response on her part. She really was not shocked; did not even realise the unpleasantness of the revelation. Her chief emotion was one of relief.

"Yes—very. Do you mind? I have asked Bourke to come to dinner."

She was a little staggered at this.

"The police officer? Peter, why are you so keen on having detectives around you?"

This genuinely amused him.

"I thought I had explained," he laughed. "In fact, I can't improve on the explanation I have given. Bourke is a very good friend of mine. He has done a great deal for me. Do you really mind if he comes? I can put him off."

She had no objections at all. A third at dinner would relieve the tension.

"Is he staying the night?"

Peter shook his head.

"He goes back to London soon after dinner."

There was no link between their talk and the realisation of their extraordinary relationship. It came upon her suddenly—the grotesque unreality of their positions. Peter had accepted her with amazing readiness; his compliance was almost inhuman. She sat at the window of her bedroom, looking out over a world that had grown bleak and a little ugly, wondering whether presently she would wake up and find her marriage was a dream; in some respects—here was the curious perversity of it—rather a pleasant dream.

When she saw Peter crossing the lawn slowly she had to tell herself: "That is your husband—you bear his name; you are his wife till death do you part."

Even the horrible inevitability did not shock her; even as she did not believe the unbelievable phenomenon of her marriage, so she accepted her own fate as something in which she was not personally interested.

"Which is silly," she told herself; yet there was no conviction in her scorn.

The afternoon post brought a letter from Basil Hale, and the sight of his handwriting gave her a little pang. Peter brought the letter to her in her room, together with a wrappered newspaper.

"I didn't see the postman come," she said in surprise.

"He was here an hour ago—I forgot to give you the letter," he answered.

She slit the envelope—what had Basil to say? He had, he said, returned from Bournemouth that morning; the London postmark indicated the earliest postal collection.

I am wondering when it will be reasonably decent to call upon you young love birds. . . . Your father was so dismal the night you left that I took a late train to Bournemouth. I don't exactly know why. . . .

The rest was so much chronicling of unimportant personal experiences.

For some reason the letter irritated her. It may have been the suggestion that there was a privacy into which he or anybody else could not intrude.

Basil was being normally impertinent. She was forced to consider her mental attitude towards Basil Hale. They had been friends years before she had met Peter. A typical happy-go-lucky young man of the town, coarse in the grain, inclined to be loose of tongue, but thoroughly amusing. Brilliant sometimes; an excellent companion who could shock, but never bored.

Idly she turned over the little sheet and saw that at the bottom he had written a postscript—an odd trick of his:

I am terribly worried about you—honestly. Have I done right? Have any of us? This passion for money for which we are prepared to sacrifice everything——

There the postscript ended—without so much as a full-stop.

Jane searched the envelope for some continuation of the message—there was none. But as she opened it out she made a discovery. The flap of the envelope curled back under the strain of her search, and the gum was still wet.

Somebody had opened the letter and read it, and that somebody could be no other person than her husband.