Читать книгу The Crimson Circle - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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"I CAN'T understand why that fellow hasn't come back this morning," said Jim Beardmore with a frown.

"Which fellow?" asked Jack carelessly.

"I'm speaking of Marl," said his father.

"Was that the large-sized gentleman I saw yesterday?" asked Derrick Yale.

They were standing on the terrace of the house, which, from its elevated position, gave them a view across the country.

The morning train had come and gone. They could see the trail of white smoke it left as it disappeared into the foothills nine miles away.

"Yes. I'd better 'phone Froyant, and tell him not to come over."

Jim Beardmore stroked his stubbly chin.

"Marl puzzles me," he said "He is a brilliant fellow I believe, a reformed thief I know--at least I hope he is reformed. What upset him yesterday, Jack? He came into the library looking like death."

"I haven't the slightest idea," said Jack. "I think he has a weak heart, or something of the sort. He told me he gets these spasms occasionally."

Beardmore laughed softly, and going into the house returned with a walking-stick.

"I'm going for a stroll, Jack. No, you needn't come along. I've one or two things I wish to think out, and I promise you, Yale, I won't leave the grounds, though I think you attach too much importance to the threats of these ruffians."

Yale shook his head.

"What of the sign on the tree?" he asked.

Jim Beardmore snorted contemptuously.

"It will take more than that to extract a hundred thousand from me," he said.

He waved a farewell at them as he went down the broad stone steps, and they watched him walking slowly across the park.

"Do you really think my father is in any kind of danger?" asked Jack.

Yale, who had been staring after the figure, turned with a start.

"In danger?" he repeated, and then after a second's hesitation. "Yes, I believe there is very serious danger for him in the next day or two."

Jack turned his troubled gaze upon the disappearing figure.

"I hope you're wrong," he said. "Father doesn't seem to take the matter as seriously as you."

"That is because your father has not the same experience," said the detective, "but I understand that he saw Chief Inspector Parr, and the inspector thought there was considerable danger."

Jack chuckled in spite of his fears.

"How do the lion and the lamb amalgamate?" he asked. "I didn't think that head-quarters had much use for private men like you, Mr. Yale?"

"I admire Parr," said Derrick slowly. "He's slow, but thorough. I am told that he is one of the most conscientious men at head-quarters, and I fancy that the head-quarters chiefs have treated him badly over the last Crimson Circle crime. They have practically told him that if he cannot run the organisation to earth he must send in his resignation."

Whilst they were speaking, the figure of Mr. Beardmore had disappeared into the gloom of a little wood on the edge of the estate.

"I worked with him during the last Circle murder," Derrick Yale went on, "and he struck me--"

He stopped, and the two men looked at one another.

There was no mistaking the sound. It was a shot near and distinct, and it came from the direction of the wood. In an instant Jack had leapt over the balustrade and was racing across the meadow. Derrick Yale behind him.

Twenty paces along the woodland path they found Jim Beardmore lying on his face, and he was quite dead, and even as Jack was staring down at his father with horrified eyes, a girl emerged from the wood at the farther end, and stopping only long enough to wipe with a handful of grass something that was red from her hands, she flew along the shadow of the hedge which divided the Froyant estate.

Never once did Thalia Drummond look back until she reached the shelter of the little summer house. Her face was drawn and white, and her breath came gaspingly as she stood for a second in the doorway of the little hut, and looked back to the wood. A swift glance round and she was in the house and on her knees tugging with quivering hands at the end of a floor board. It came up disclosing a black cavity. Another second's hesitation, and she threw into the hole the revolver she had held in her hand, and dropped the board back in its place.