Читать книгу The Green Pack - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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Jacqueline did not enjoy her breakfast the next morning. She knew, however, that any marked loss of appetite was bound to attract her father's attention, and that when the meal was over he would want to see her tongue, stare into her eyes, diagnose and prescribe. It was the inevitable result of failure to eat a hearty meal, to which she was quite accustomed; but this morning the searching scrutiny of her father's eyes was an ordeal she was anxious to avoid; correct diagnosis was the last thing she wanted, and the only prescription which could cure her trouble was one which her father could not possibly supply. So she valiantly swallowed her breakfast and tried to dismiss from her mind the thought—which assailed her with every mouthful—that it was Louis Creet's money that had paid for what she was eating.

As soon as Dr. Thurston had left for his consulting room in Harley Street, Jacqueline shut herself in his study and telephoned to Monty. Mr. Carr, she was informed, was not yet up, but would speak to her if she would hold the line; and a few moments later, Monty's voice, as expressionless as his face, reached her.

"Good-morning, Jacqueline. Don't you ever sleep." It's barely ten o'clock."

Jacqueline forced a laugh.

"I didn't sleep much last night, Monty."

"No?"

"I—I was too worried."

"I'm sorry.

"About that bet last night," she explained. "It was idiotic of me to worry, really. You knew it was a joke, Monty, didn't you?"

"Joke?"

"Louis said you might not appreciate that sort of humour, so I've rung up to apologize. I'm frightfully sorry, Monty."

For some moments there was silence, while Jacqueline gazed anxiously at the telephone, as if trying to wrest from it some indication of the effect of her words on Monty's impassive face. And then came his voice again.

"I'm afraid I don't understand, Jacqueline. I wasn't aware that you had played any joke."

Jacqueline forced a laugh, but there was no smile in her face.

"You didn't really believe the bet was anything else, Monty, did you?" She strove, not very successfully, to prevent her voice from betraying her anxiety. "You couldn't really have thought I should risk a thousand pounds—"

"On the hand you held, a thousand pounds was a moderate stake," interrupted Monty. "Yours was the third ace out, and the odds were tremendously against my turning up the fourth. As it happened, I did. If I hadn't, I should have owed you a thousand pounds. I shouldn't have thought it a joke, but I should have paid without squealing!"

Jacqueline drew in her breath sharply, and her fingers gripped the receiver more tightly. She was losing, and she knew it. Something in Monty's voice told her that the bluff had failed, that Monty recognized it as a bluff, that he knew she had made the bet seriously and was now trying to escape payment by the contemptible subterfuge of pretending it had only been a joke. Louis had thought the same. And of course it was true. Of course she had made the bet seriously, and of course it was contemptible to try to wriggle out of payment. She despised herself as much as Monty despised her. But a thousand pounds was an impossible sum....

"Are you there, Jacqueline?"

"Yes."

"Why not be frank? You never intended the bet as a joke."

For some moments Jacqueline hesitated, staring at the telephone, with panic in her eyes. Then:

"No, Monty," she said quietly, "I meant the bet quite seriously. I'm sorry. Monty, I—I can't pay. I knew when I made the bet that I couldn't pay if I lost, and I had no right to make the bet at all. I'm terribly ashamed of myself. I can't think how I came to do a thing like that. I suppose I was excited and lost my head—"

There came a click over the line, and she paused, frowning.

"Hullo! Are you there, Monty?"

There was no reply. Monty had hung up.

The colour rushed to her cheeks. So that was his answer! He could not have told her more plainly what he thought of her: he despised her as much as Louis did—and with better reason. But at that moment neither of them despised her as much as she despised herself.

She tried to persuade herself that Monty had not hung up his receiver. The exchange, perhaps, had cut her off. Another call to Mount Lodge, however, dispelled that hope. Mr. Carr, she was told, was engaged and could not come to the telephone; and although she tried again three times during the morning, Mr. Carr on each occasion remained obstinately inaccessible. After the third attempt she gave it up. After all, it did not matter very much what Monty Carr thought of her, as long as he realized that she could not possibly pay. Louis had said that he would certainly expect payment, but she did not allow that fact to worry her. Louis had had very special reasons for wishing her to think so; that threat had been just a thong in the whip which he had cracked at her. She suspected that the whip, if she were obstinate, would prove to have other thongs, and she wondered what they would be.

She was soon to discover. In accordance with her plan of patient perseverance, Mrs. Thurston had invited Louis to dinner that evening, and by means of the transparent manoeuvres which passed with her for tact, contrived to leave him alone with Jacqueline in the drawing room.

Louis seated himself at the piano and ran his fingers over the keys.

"What tune shall I play for you, Jacqueline?" Jacqueline, staring into the fire, shrugged. "Whatever tune you play, I'm not going to dance to it."

Louis strolled to the fireplace and stood smiling down at her.

"It doesn't do to be too sure, darling," he said. "The music might be so—compelling that you couldn't help dancing."

Jacqueline sprang to her feet and faced him with angry eyes.

"Louis, how dare you come here tonight! After last night, if you'd had any decent feelings at all you would at least have kept away from me."

"I came because your mother invited me," said Louis. "Of course, if the proposal I made to you yesterday is really as repugnant as you pretended—"

"I was not pretending."

"Very well," agreed Louis. "Then we will say that if you feel you can afford to refuse it, I shall have no choice but to stay away in the future."

"I've already refused it."

Louis sighed.

"I suppose, Jacqueline," he said, "it is too much to ask you to believe that I am really very much in love with you? But it happens to be true."

"Love?" She laughed. "I should leave love out of it, Louis, if I were you. You don't want me to believe, do you, that because I won't be bought for a thousand pounds you're going to rush away in despair and shoot lions?" She shook her head. "But we won't talk about it." She nodded towards the piano. "Play something, Louis."

Creet did not move.

"I shan't go and shoot lions," he said, "but I shall certainly go abroad. You could hardly expect me, caring for you as I do, to stay here in London, coming to your house, meeting you—"

She cut him short with a gesture.

"I shall go abroad," he repeated. "For many reasons I shall be sorry to go. I shall be sorry, for instance, to lose your father—both as a friend and as a medical adviser; and I feel sure your father will miss me—both as a friend and as a patient."

He paused and shot her a questioning glance. Jacqueline was frowning.

"I see," she said. "So that's the other thong, is it?"

"Thong?"

"Oh, never mind," she sighed. "I understand, and there was no need for you to beat about the bush. You mean that unless I agree to your beastly proposal, Father will lose the five hundred a year you pay him as your medical attendant."

Louis shrugged.

"That would naturally be so," he said, "though it hadn't occurred to me. But I don't imagine my paltry five hundred a year is of much consequence to your father."

"It is—and you know it is," interrupted Jacqueline. "For heaven's sake, Louis, if you can't be decent, be frank. First you threaten me with having to pay a thousand pounds to Monty, and now, when you find that hasn't done the trick, you threaten to cut off the five hundred a year from my father because you know that he can't afford to lose it, that to all intents and purposes we're living on it, and that if he lost it he'd have to give up everything and be a little G.P. in the country again, just when he's starting to do the work he has always longed to do. And you're counting on my caring too much for him—and for Mother—to let it happen. Isn't that the truth?"

Before Louis could answer, Mrs. Thurston, having tactfully rattled the handle of the door, came in and glanced eagerly at Jacqueline; and the girl, reading the question in her eyes, turned her head away.

"You're just in time, Mother," she said. "Louis is going to play us a tune."

Louis went to the piano.

"And Jacqueline is going to dance," he laughed, and began to play.