Читать книгу The Sinister Man - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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THE house of Amery & Amery stands where it stood in the days when its founder marshalled his apprentices and clerks to fight the Great Fire of London, so that, when the holocaust had smouldered to ashes, the cramped old house alone raised its head amidst the blackened ruins of Wood Street. Improvements had come with the years, an exigent City Council had demanded certain structural alterations, but in appearance the Amery building remained what it was in the days when the "Mayflower" set forth from Plymouth Harbour and narrowly missed fouling the "Pleasant Endeavour," the first of the Amery Brothers' fleet of East Indiamen.

The centuries had seen many fluctuations in the fortunes of the house. One evening at White's, in the days of the Regency, an Amery had diced the fleet out of existence; later, another Amery had won back its equivalent in the tea trade; but the narrow-fronted house, with its uneven floors, its poky little cupboards and presses, its low ceilings and tortuous stairways, defied the passage of time.

Above the thick green glass window panes that admitted light and distorted vision the faded inscription "Amery & Amery, Shippers & Importers," appeared in the identical lettering that an Amery had chosen on the day George the Third went to his rest. The little room where Elsa Marlowe attended to the private correspondence of the newest proprietor had been furnished in his youth by a chief clerk who, as an old man, had seen the first policeman on the streets of London.

Elsa, sitting before her worn writing-table one morning in late spring, when the sunlight poured into the room, seemed as much out of place in the grim setting as the bunch of lilies of the valley she had arranged in a cheap glass vase beside the typewriter.

There was a sculptor in Paris who specialised in dainty statuettes of slim Parisiennes, and she might have posed for M. Milliêre, a straight-backed, long-limbed girl, with the tilted chin, the straight nose, the large, enquiring eyes and the confusion of spun gold hair he loved.

She had that complexion which made wise and sceptical women look twice at her; yet her pink and white owed nothing to artifice, and the rich red of her mouth was as everlasting as the deep grey-blue of her eyes.

Her forehead was puckered as she listened to her voluble companion. She was never quite comfortable when Miss Dame came to her favourite topic of discussion, though the gaunt woman expressed much that she thought.

Elsa Marlowe was not prepared to accept Miss Dame's judgment on any other subject than stenography. Her views on human affairs were inclined to be coloured by the peculiar brand of romance she had absorbed overnight. But when she described the house of Amery & Amery as "creepy," and spoke of Paul Roy Amery as a "sinister figure," Elsa found herself ranged on the side of Romance.

"You can laugh about the pitchers," said Miss Dame earnestly, "but you get ideas of Life out of 'em... types, characters, if you understand me? It's experience to a young girl like me. The villains I've seen!... My Gawd! But I've never seen anybody like the Major. Sinister! You've only to look at him, Miss Marlowe. And why your dear good uncle, the finest gentleman that ever breathed—more like The'dore Roberts 'n anybody I know—should let you stay in this place, is more'n I can understand. See what I mean?"

Miss Dame glared fearfully through her big rimless spectacles. Her large mouth was grotesquely open, her little button of a nose redder than ever. She was tall, round-shouldered, awkwardly made. Her hands and feet were large; her bobbed hair, refusing to behave as bobbed hair should, spread fan-wise from her head.

"I wouldn't call him 'sinister,'" said Elsa thoughtfully; "he is certainly unpleasant. I don't think he is used to dealing with white people—"

"That's what I say," broke in Miss Dame. "Niggers and black people an' Injuns! I'll bet he lashes 'em to death. I've seen it done. Do you remember the 'Monster of the Marsh'? Anna Conseuello was in it. Oh, it was perfectly marvellous! This monster took her to an 'ut and tied her up, and Frank—that was her fiancy, that was misjudged by her owing to her seeing him kiss his sister that she didn't know anything about—he rode all night with a sheriff's possy—the way they flew across the hills was perfectly marvellous—"

Elsa's soft laughter interrupted her.

"Anyway, he's sinister," said Miss Dame firmly, "and so is this building. Hundreds of years old—there ain't a floor that's level or a door that fits; and look at the poky little windows and the beams over the ceiling. And there's no proper washing place, and in the heart of the City too! Where did he come from, anyway? Old Mr. Amery never said he had a nephew, and your dear uncle was that surprised when the will was read that he could have dropped. He told me so himself."

For the moment her "dear uncle" was as unpleasant a subject as the sinister Mr. Amery. It was accepted by the employees of Amery's that Mr. Tarn and she were uncle and niece, and she never attempted to correct that erroneous impression.

"We shall get used to him," she said with a half sigh. "New people are always awkward at first. And probably he isn't used to business. He had an official position in India. I know that—"

She stopped. Here she was going beyond the bounds of propriety. She could not tell of the mysterious letters which Paul Amery dictated, letters in which whole lines were made up of unintelligible code words.

"Mr. Tarn knows something about him," Miss Dame nodded vigorously. "They were together hours yesterday—I heard 'em! Gee! The noise they made!"

Elsa turned startled eyes to the other.

"Quarrelling?" she said incredulously.

"Quarrelling!" repeated Miss Dame triumphantly. "You never heard anything like it! It was when you were out at lunch. When I say 'hours' I mean twenty minutes. I never saw your dear uncle so upset in my life."

Elsa was not impressed. Mr. Maurice Tarn was easily upset in these days. Was she responsible for that? she thought whimsically. But a quarrel! Why should Amery quarrel with his general manager? They hardly knew one another, for Paul Amery had not occupied the presidential chair a month as yet, was new to the business and scarcely acquainted with its routine.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

Before Miss Dame could answer, a bell shrilled and Elsa hastily gathered her notebook and pencil and passed into the lair of her ogre.

It was a pleasant room, carpeted in a dull blue that showed the polished black panelling to advantage. Over an old fireplace, a solemn-faced clock ticked sedately. The leaded windows were curtained with dark blue velvet; the only touch of gay colour in the room was the scarlet leather of the fender and seats.

The man at the big writing-table was glowering at a letter on his blotting-pad, and, seemingly oblivious to her presence, was reading it over to himself, his thin lips moving silently as he assimilated every line, every word. A minute passed, and then Paul Amery looked up with that expression on his saturnine face which never failed to rouse in her breast something that was akin to fury. Not that he was consciously offensive—her resentment would have been excusable if he were.

There was just the faintest hint of a sneer, a downward droop of the corners of his mouth that coincided with the lift of his upper lip, and a something—a cold, appraising something in his blue eyes that was altogether and yet indefinably insulting.

She had surprised that expression before—invariably followed upon the interruption of a reverie. And Paul Amery's day-dreams were not pleasant. Only for a second did that twisted smile disfigure his thin dark face. In another second, it set like a mask of fate; except that the black brows had met in a frown that hardened and almost dehumanized him.

"Yes?"

His voice had the quality of granite. Instantly he had passed through the stage of transition between dreams and reality, and his eyes were searching hers suspiciously. There were people who would think he was good-looking, she thought, and was sufficient of a woman to concede this advantage to him. The hot sun of India had tanned his face to a permanent brown; it had given him, too, something of the character of the jungle beasts he had stalked—she never saw him come noiselessly, almost furtively, through the outer office without thinking of a cat—and she loathed cats.

"Yes?"

He never raised his voice; he did not display his impatience, but his "Yes?" was like the flick of a whip in her face.

"You rang for me and you wished to see the bills of lading... Chi Fung and Lee, Mr. Amery," she stammered and despised herself for her deference.

Without a word he reached out his hand and took the papers she had brought to him. Silently he examined them and then put them aside.

"Why are you afraid of me?"

The question stunned her; it was so unexpected, so utterly unanswerable that she could only stand and stare at him until, before the masterful blaze of his eyes, she lowered her own.

"I'm not afraid of you, Mr. Amery," she said, and tried hard to keep her voice level. "What a queer thing to say! I'm—I'm not afraid of anybody." This defiantly.

He did not speak. His very silence gave her the lie as plainly as if he had spoken.

"Besides," she went on with the ghost of a smile, "isn't it the proper attitude of a secretary toward her employer? A wholesome respect ."

She finished lamely, feeling a fool. He was looking through the window into the dusty sunlight of Wood Street. Apparently his attention was absorbed in the laden trucks that lined the narrow road; in the red-faced City policeman who was engineering a passage for a steam trolley; in the drab fascia of the office block opposite—in anything but one pink and white girl with a mop of fine, browny hair that defied regulation.

"You are five feet three inches, he said, going off at a tangent.

"Sixty-three inches! The little finger of your left hand is crooked —you must have broken it when you were a child. You live constantly in association with somebody who is deaf: your voice is just a little too strong. Of course, Mr. Maurice Tarn! I have noticed that he is deaf."

Elsa drew a long breath.

"Shall I leave the bills of lading, please?" she asked.

His eyes were no longer on her face. They had dropped moodily to the blotter.

"No... I wanted you. Take this letter to Fing Li T'sin, 796 Bubbling Well Road, Shanghai—'Tang chiang chin ping ch'ang—'I beg your pardon, you do not understand Chinese, of course?"

He was not joking. She saw him flush with annoyance at his mistake —at the possibility that she might think he was being funny at her expense.

"He reads and speaks English better than you—or I, for the matter of that," he added hurriedly. "Take this. 'I am looking for a trustworthy man to cover the Nangpoo province. Feng Ho has arrived—you may send letters to him here. When you see the Long Sword of Sun Yat tell him—"

Here he paused, and passed a slip of paper across to her. Carefully pencilled in capital letters were the words:

"Barrow Tendency Makeshift Warlike Candle Stencil Pendant Maple Crest Hamlet Desire."

He was looking at her as she read, a thin hand caressing the little black moustache that covered his upper lip, and as she raised her head she met his glance and went hot.

"Nice job, this?" he asked absently. "Not too much work? Wages good?"

It was the first time he had displayed the slightest interest in her. Hitherto she had had the feeling that he had regarded her as part of the movable fixtures of the establishment.

"Yes, it is a good job," she said awkwardly, and added (fatuously, as she told herself): "I hope my work is satisfactory?"

He did not answer, and she added boorishness to his sins.

"You knew my great-uncle, Bertram Amery, of course?"

He was not looking at her; his eyes were still on the street below. "Slightly," she said. "I was here during the last few months of his life. He only came in for a few minutes each day."

He nodded slowly.

"The ancient ran the business, of course?"

"The ancient?" She frowned, and then realised that his flippant reference was to Mr. Maurice Tarn. "Mr. Tarn has always helped to run the business," she said, a little stiffly, though heaven knew she was in no mood to feel offended because he spoke slightingly of her very distant relative.

"Mr. Tarn always helped to run the business," he repeated absently, and then jerked his head round to face her. "Thank you, that will do," he said.

She was at the door when his voice arrested her.

"How much does the Stanford Corporation pay you?" he asked.

She turned round, staring at him in wonder.

"The Stanford Corporation, Mr. Amery?" His keen eyes searched her face.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "I see you do not know that enterprising business."

He nodded to the door, and she was back at her desk before she realized the indignity of her dismissal.