Читать книгу The Terrible People - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9

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THE entrance to the house was on the shore side, and a footman took her parcel and ushered her into the big hallway.

"Mr. Monkford has a gentleman with him at the moment, miss," he said, opening the door of a small drawing room, but she had taken two steps to the place of waiting when the man she sought appeared in a doorway on the opposite side of the hall. He was short, stout, and rather bald. She could not help thinking at that moment that nobody less like the nemesis of the unfortunate Shelton was imaginable than the jovial, red-faced man, with his ludicrous spectacles and his polka-dot waistcoat.

"Come in, Miss Sanders, come in—it is Miss Sanders, isn't it? Did Miss Revelstoke get that statuette for me? Splendid! What a superstitious lady she is, to be sure!"

Miss Revelstoke and her sometime banker shared one hobby, the collection of Roman antiquities. The statuette which Nora had brought had been acquired by her from a dealer—its gruesome character made the transfer to Mr. Monkford a perfectly natural one.

"Come right in. That parcel must have been heavy. If I had known you were coming, I'd have sent the car.

I'd like you to meet a friend of mine—one of the best—yes, one of the best! "

He had a trick of repeating his final sentences that amused the girl. A stimulating, vital man, who radiated a heartening life force, his friendship was as much part of him as the average man's superficial courtesy.

"Let me take your umbrella"—he bustled with it to the hat-stand, talking all the time—"an umbrella on a day like this!"

As she followed him into the big library that overlooked the river, she saw, standing by one of the windows and gazing gloomily across the lawn to the river, a man she had seen somewhere before. Then, in a flash, she knew him and saw the sudden recognition in his eyes.

"Miss Sanders, this is Mr. Long."

Long! The name was familiar, but for the moment she could not place him. And then she remembered the boatman's story and Shelton, who was hanged. Betcher Long, the detective! She wondered if Betcher were a Christian name bestowed by an eccentric parent.

He was looking at Nora; his gaze enveloped her, item by item. She felt this, yet was not uneasy; her dominant expression was of the power she had overlooked when she had seen him first. The tremendous strength of him, the queer magnetic qualities of his eyes. Was it imagination, born of the mystery of his profession? she wondered. Was she endowing him with ideal qualities? She had never met a detective before. They belonged to a terrible and a romantic world. He was wonderfully alive, communicating to her a sense of immense completeness—hand and eye, brain and thew, and above all a transcendent individuality. She was eager, impatient to know all about him, his beginnings, his life, his strange career. And just as she was hoping that he would speak and disillusion her, Monkford bustled to the fireplace and rang a bell.

"We'll have tea," he said. "The other matter can wait."

Betcher Long seemed content to wait. He strolled to the window and resumed his staring. The fishermen interested him.

For a few minutes, Nora was occupied with the object of her call.

"Miss Revelstoke would have sent the figure by post, but I rather think it got on her nerves," she said, with a half-smile.

The banker was busy unwrapping the parcel. An uncovering of paper wrappers showed a small wooden box, and the lid of this he prized off with a paper- knife. Beneath was a mass of wooden shavings into which the hand of the collector dived. It emerged holding a small object wrapped in silver tissue, and, when this was removed: "Wonderful!" He was awe-stricken.

And wonderful it was—a nude figure of a negress, about six inches high. Betcher himself found the statuette of greater interest than the landscape, and came slowly across the room.

"Perfect! The workmanship... exquisite!" Monkford gasped his admiration in disjointed words. The woman was carved from ebony—erect, chin raised, defiant. The tiny hands held across her an ivory sword. Girt about the bare waist was a metal belt from which hung an empty scabbard, the only other metal being a thin golden fillet about the woolly head.

"I don't see the inscription."

"It is underneath, on the base of the pedestal," said Nora, and Monkford turned the figure upside down. And now the inscription was decipherable, though the characters were almost microscopic in their smallness.

"Latin," said Monkford, unnecessarily. "Can you read it, Long?"

To her surprise, the detective nodded. He scanned the writing, his lips moving, and then he read aloud:

I am Death who waits at the end of all roads. Men see me and forget their happiness, straightway falling upon their swords. Beware, 0 Stranger, lest for love of me you too die by your own hand!

Betcher Long was watching her as he read. Though she could not see his face, she had no doubt. When he had finished reading, Monkford chuckled.

"Great! That is unique—almost! They have one in the Cluny Museum—the Black Fate. She's supposed to possess all sorts of mystical powers... genuine, I'll swear. There are three in Europe and one in America. You can tell your lady, Miss Sanders, that I'm a proud and happy man."

"Black Fate?" Betcher's brows met in a frown. "Black Fate—hum!"

Again he read the inscription. When he finished and looked up, his eyes were fixed on hers.

And then she asked a question that was out before she could govern her tongue. It was apropos of nothing. It was, she knew, in execrable taste, but a force within her, beyond her own power to resist, impelled the words.

"Who was Shelton?"

There was a dead silence; her heart beat wildly at her own temerity. They saw the colour come and go from her cheeks.

"Oh, I'm so sorry—I don't know what made me ask such a stupid thing!"

Monkford's face was gray; there was a wild, hurt look in his eyes. From being a figure of rubicund fun, he had become a worn and tragic man.

Whatever effect her question might have upon Monkford, the corner of the detective's mouth twitched in secret amusement.

"Shelton was a forger who killed a policeman," he said simply. "I arrested him, and he shot the officer who was with me. He was hanged."

He glanced at his silent host, and, watching him, Nora saw in that glance a hint of worry.

"Nobody guessed he would pull a gun: I suppose he went mad. We wanted him for forgery and fraud. He took more money out of the American and English banks than they like to remember, and we could never get him."

Again she saw him look anxiously at Monkford.

"Mr. Monkford and I went after him—we laid a trap and he fell into it. That gun play was certainly a surprise. If his hanging is on any man's hands, it is on mine. I ought to have killed him before he fired."

She knew instinctively that he was telling an oft-repeated story; and that the moral of the story was Monkford's innocence of responsibility.

Somehow, she could not understand why he needed excusing. Even if the stout man had been consciously responsible, why should he blame himself for the death of a man who had butchered an officer of the law in cold blood? But Betcher's next words explained a great deal.

"Naturally, Mr. Monkford worried himself sick about it all. He got an idea—"

"Oh—well—we'll change the subject. Here's the tea—let us talk about something else."

Monkford's voice was harsh and unsteady. Not the flippancy of words could hide his emotion. His face had paled to an unhealthy gray, the hands that raised the statuette and examined the inscription were shaking. His very interest in his new possession was badly simulated.

"The Black Fate! Cheerful, upon my soul!" His chuckle was thin and mirthless. "I'll take back what I said about that superstitious lady of yours, Miss Sanders. But I'll not die by falling on my sword, or even on my fountain pen!"

After tea she strolled out on to the lawn. There was a wait of two hours before her train went back to town, and she thought the men wanted to be alone. In this surmise she was wrong. She had reached the water's edge and was standing watching a small pike's lightning dart at a school of minnows, when she heard a voice behind her and turned to meet Arnold Long.

"Mr. Monkford has gone up to his room to lie down," he said.

"And it was all my fault." She was the picture and tone of penitence. "Why I ever mentioned that wretched man I don't know. And I just hate murders—I never read them or talk about them."

"I read nothing else," he said, and rubbed his nose irritably. "Morbid—I've got that way lately."

She felt a return of the fatal curiosity of the afternoon. "You really don't look like a detective," she said, and Betcher sighed.

"I've come to the conclusion that I'm the worst detective in the world," he said; "and yet, the first time I saw you, I guessed I was nearly the biggest. But it was luck, after all."

"When did you see me first?"

She told herself that the challenge was a stupid one, and the reproach in his eyes made the colour come to her face.

"Southern Bank," he said laconically. "You remember—betcher!"

She was furious with him, but only for a second.

"A year ago I was a light-hearted young man. I'm now a hundred—maybe a hundred and fifty."

"Why?" she asked.

He took a cigarette from his case and, asking her permission with a lift of his eyebrows, lit it.

"Because," he said, as he threw the match into the river, "they are going to kill Monkford next week, and I don't exactly know how I can stop 'em."