Читать книгу Kate Plus Ten - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

Table of Contents

'YOU might do worse than lunch with me,' said Michael Pretherston. He stood outside Felton House with the girl, whose belongings in one small Gladstone bag had been deposited on the kerb, pending the arrival of a taxi-cab.

'Why should I lunch with you?' she asked insolently. 'I thought you were going to pinch me.'

'Your vulgarity is appalling!' said Michael, shaking his head in reproof. 'I cannot pinch you in the vulgar sense. I have no desire to perform that operation in the corporeal sense. You had better compromise and lunch with me.'

The girl hesitated. 'Think of my reputation,' she said.

'Thoughts of your reputation keep me awake at night,' answered Michael lightly, and called a taxi.

They found a little restaurant in Soho, and in an underground cellar where the bad ventilation was compensated for by a blaze of light, they ate their simple little meal.

'Now, Kate, I want to ask you what your little game is,' said Michael, 'and I need the information because I know it isn't a little game.'

'I was scared sick over those pearls,' said the girl, ignoring the question; 'it would have been horribly bad luck to have been taken for a job I had nothing to do with, and such a paltry job too!'

'You owe me something,' said Michael.

'I owe you more than I can ever repay you,' said the girl significantly.

'I suppose one of these days,' suggested the detective, after an interval of thought, 'you will instruct some of your hired pals, Gregori or the Colonel or little Stockmar, to inflict on me a painful injury.'

'You!' said the girl scornfully; 'if there were not men like you in the police, we should have been destroyed years ago! You are a sort of an insurance scheme, and it pays us to keep you alive and well. Why, Crime Street would go into mourning the day you were buried.'

'You are not trying to be rude to me, are you?' he asked.

She looked at him slyly from under her long lashes, and her eyes were dancing with fun.

'Why do you think I went to Lord Flanborough?' she asked.

He shook his head. 'I'm blessed if I know,' he confessed. 'Of course I knew it was you the moment I heard of the rapid typewriting and the Italian songs. Now listen: I am not trying to speak to you for your good ...'

'Don't!' she said laconically.

'But I have often wondered why a well-educated girl and a nice girl, as far as I know to the contrary, should prefer the life of a crook to ...'

'To earning £2 or £3 a week and working all day to earn it,' she finished for him. 'To living my life in one little room on a top floor in Bloomsbury, waiting my turn every morning for my bath. To being made love to by the assistant manager! I have had the experience for professional purposes and I don't like it a bit, Mike.' She looked at him straight in the eyes. She had dropped her air of flippancy, her slang; the voice that spoke was not to be distinguished from that of any other gentlewoman.

'You see, a woman is differently circumstanced to a man. She wants nice things, and her attitude toward life, and indeed the whole of her conduct, depends entirely upon the degree of niceness she requires. Men don't do things for women for nothing. They lend to their men friends all the money in the world, and are grateful if they get it back. They expect nothing more than their money, and are surprised when they get it. But if I were a typist in a city office, and I borrowed £2 from the assistant manager or from the chief book-keeper, or a fiver from one of the partners, why, Mike, I should be booked for supper on Wednesday. Suppose a man lent you £2 and asked you in exchange, not only to repay the money, but to renounce all your dearest principles for the sake of the loan; if he asked you to betray the friends you had been loyal to, and lie where you had been truthful; break your word where you had been faithful, be a thief where you had been honest—would you surrender every reticence, every honourable instinct, every precious faith?'

Mike said nothing. For there was nothing to say. He paid the bill and escorted the girl to a cab.

'I am not going to be sorry for you,' he said. 'You are having The Life. One of these days I shall come along and take you; but I shall hate it. Hop it, Kate!'

Kate literally hopped into the waiting taxi, waved her hand in farewell and was gone.

Michael Pretherston stood for fully five minutes on the edge of the pavement meditating upon what the girl had said. She had struck a responsive note in his soul, for she spoke no more than was the truth, as he knew. He went, a little sadly, back to headquarters, remembering en route that he had forgotten to write the report.

Should he go back to the Yard and compose it from memory, or should he return to the unsympathetic atmosphere of Felton House?

He decided upon the latter, and surprised Lord Flanborough in the act of taking an afternoon nap.

Michael was full of apologies and was so unusually respectful that his lordship forgot to be annoyed.

'Moya's out,' he explained.

'I will endeavour to bear up,' replied Michael, seating himself at his lordship's desk, and preparing to take a note of the circumstances which had led to his lordship's call for assistance. He finished the report, blotted and folded it and placed the document in his pocket.

'I want to ask you one or two questions, and they concern Kate—or Miss Tenby as you call her. I'm afraid I gave you a shock this morning.'

'It was certainly a surprise,' admitted Lord Flanborough cautiously. 'Who is this Kate? We have made a very careful search of the house, but nothing is missing so far as we can tell.'

Mike laughed.

'You needn't worry about that. Kate is not a pilferer. Her real name is Katharine Westhanger; they call her Kate and she is the Colonel's niece. Her age is nineteen or twenty, and from a child she has been brought up to regard the world as her oyster. Her mother was a wholesome parson's daughter; her father was a rascal who was kicked out of the army in '89 for an offence against the law of property. Her maternal grandfather was General Sir Shaun Masserfield, who was a neighbour of my brother's in Ireland and the greatest strategist the British army has ever held—Kate inherits his genius, but has not learnt his code. Her father died when she was sixteen, and her uncle, who is a greater scoundrel than her father was—the family on the Westhanger side has a criminal history which goes back at intervals for two hundred years—completed her education. Kate has been brought up to be a thief, but a big thief. She is, I believe the brains of the biggest criminal organization in the world. Every member of the gang has been taken, but no evidence has ever been offered against Kate. She plans the big swindles, and each one is bigger than the last—but never once have we traced the offence to her door.'

'Why is it that the police—?' began Lord Flanborough.

'The police, my dear Flanborough,' said Michael wearily, 'are human beings who have to deal with human beings. They are not angels, nor thought-readers, nor are they clairvoyant. The laws of this country are so framed that the criminal has six chances to every one possessed by his enemy. We know Kate was concerned in that big bank-smashing exploit which took two million crowns from the treasury of the Bank of Holland. It was Kate who organized the raid upon the London jewellers in June of last year. Kate is the mother of Crime Street. You don't know that thoroughfare, but one of these days I'll introduce you to it, if you are curious—but I warn you that if you expect to steep your soul in sordidness, you will be disappointed—it is the most respectable street in London. Her ingenuity is remarkable, her patience beyond praise, and that is partly why I have come back; I want to know why she was here, and what she was doing?'

'As I say—' began Lord Flanborough again.

'For Heaven's sake,' interrupted Michael, 'don't tell me that you haven't missed things! I tell you Kate would not touch a pin in your house. In the first place she is a well-off woman. Why in Heaven's name should she bother her head about your belongings? I don't suppose, if she had the full run of your house, she could find £100 worth of realizable property! No, that is not why Kate came to you. How long has she been here?'

'Nearly a month,' said Lord Flanborough, a little annoyed that the result of his own private investigations had so utterly failed to impress a representative of Scotland Yard.

'What work has she been doing?'

'Ordinary secretarial work for Moya. She came with excellent letters of recommendation.'

'You can forget those,' interrupted Michael testily. 'The gentleman who wrote them lives at Number 9, Crime Street, and his name is Millet.'

'She was a wonderful typist,' began his lordship, who was seeking about in his own mind for some excuse which would explain why he had been deceived.

'That I also know. She is, as you say, one of the fastest typists in the world. In fact, no aspect of her education has been neglected. She speaks five languages, and read French fluently when she was nine. What work has she done for you?'

Lord Flanborough considered for a while.

'She has copied a few letters and reports.'

'What kind of reports?'

'Reports from our South African companies. You see, Michael, I still retain the direction of most of my old interests.'

'Were they very important—the reports, I mean?'

'Yes and no,' replied Lord Flanborough slowly, 'they were merely reports of output, cost of production and projected shipments.'

'On what other work was she employed?'

'Let me think,' said Lord Flanborough.

'I am letting you!' replied Michael tartly. 'You used to have a very private code-book if I remember rightly.'

'That is true,' said Lord Flanborough, 'but of course she did not see that.'

'Where did you keep it?'

'In my desk,' said Lord Flanborough.

'Is it possible that she could have seen it!'

'It is possible, but wholly impossible that she could have copied it.'

'For how long a time together was she left alone?'

'Five minutes was the longest period she was left in the library alone,' said his lordship after consideration.

Michael fingered his chin.

'Did you ever come into the library and find her in a semi-fainting condition?' he asked.

Lord Flanborough looked at him with open-mouthed amazement.

'Did she tell you?'

Michael shook his head.

'No, she has told me nothing. I gather from your question that there was such an occurrence?'

'It is remarkable that you should ask the question,' said his lordship. 'I did come in one morning to find the poor girl—er—the wretched girl—in a state of collapse.'

'And you went out and got her a glass of water and sent for your housekeeper, I suppose,' said Michael, his lip curling.

'Yes, I did,' admitted his lordship.

'Which means, in plain language,' smiled Michael, 'that you surprised her in the act of examining some of your private documents, and that whilst you were getting the water and calling assistance, she was replacing whatever she was looking at where she had found it. Did she on any other occasion draw your attention, on your entering the room, to some peculiar circumstance, such as one of the pictures not hanging straight or a broken vase?'

Again Lord Flanborough looked astounded.

'Yes, once she pointed to the china cupboard, and asked me who cracked the glass. As a matter of fact, the glass was not cracked at all,' he explained.

'But you went over and examined it?'

'Naturally,' said his lordship.

'That was exactly the same trick,' said Michael. 'Whilst you were making your inspection she was able to replace any documents she had been examining and close the drawer—if they were in a drawer. Now, I wonder what her game is?'

'You don't suggest,' began his lordship in alarm, 'that she is scheming to rob me?'

'I hope not,' said Michael gravely. 'From the idea of your being robbed, the imagination reels.'

'I wish you wouldn't be so sarcastic. I am afraid you have never quite forgiven Moya—'

'I bless Moya every time I think of her,' said Michael quickly. 'She rendered me the greatest service that one human being could render to another, when she refused me. I hope to do better than Moya. As Moya's father, you utter a pained protest. I know, I know,' said Michael, and he waved his hand cheerfully from the door.