Читать книгу We Shall See! - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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BUT he didn’t. Instead, he snatched his hat from the desk and raced out of the room, leaving us three by the window.

For a third man had come in behind Thomson Dawkes, and at the sight of his red face and heavy-lidded eyes I had grown uncomfortable.

Apparently he did not see me until we stood by the window, and then he turned his face slowly in my direction.

“Hallo, Mont,” he said disagreeably, “I thought you were on leave.”

“So I am, sir,” I replied. “But I made a call on an old friend today.”

“Is he a friend of yours?” he asked, in so disparaging a tone that I knew that Billy was no friend of Inspector Jennings.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “We were together in France.”

“Humph! Personally I do not like Stabbat. He’s much too flippant for my taste. He is certainly not the man I should have advised Mr. Dawkes to employ. I suggested Seinbury’s, they are the best inquiry agents in town.”

I happened to know that Seinbury was also Jennings’s brother-in-law, but I thought it was not the moment to remind him of the fact.

“However,” said Jennings with a shrug of his massive shoulders, “so many people recommended Stabbat; my friend, Sir Julius Brown, whom I met at Mr. Dawkes’s country place, and Lord Foley and several other gentlemen, whom you probably don’t know—they were all very keen on this fellow.”

“There she goes,” said Thomson Dawkes excitedly, “and Stabbat’s gone after her. By Jove, what a bit of luck!”

He turned and beamed upon Jennings, and that sycophant made heroic efforts to reflect his joy.

Thomson Dawkes was a very tall and a very handsome man. Handsome in a florid way, though why he, vain as he was, allowed his face to be disfigured with little black side-whiskers I can’t imagine. He had a heavy silken moustache without a single grey hair, an aquiline nose and a pair of good-humoured, lazy eyes. His lips were big and red, and his chin was a little too rounded for a man, but he was, I must give him credit, as good a looker as I've seen for some years.

His language could be coarse and free, and he referred to the girl he was hunting in terms which a gentleman could not have employed. His father had been a mine-owner in Staffordshire and had left his son a very considerable fortune. Thomson Dawkes was a patron of the prize-ring, he owned a stud of horses, a steam yacht and two country estates. Yet, somehow, he had never managed to ingratiate himself with the right kind of people.

Folk sneer at “society,” but society, as I understand it, is nothing more or less than a standard of manners and morals. Thomson Dawkes had never passed that standard, and in consequence never associated with the men and women who had. There are people who cannot exist without adulation from those with whom they are brought into contact. The big social world, the men and women who are Tom and Dick and Jenny to one another have no place for adulation in their system, for society is nothing if not democratic.

But it was a pleasing thing for Thomson Dawkes to be asked his opinion on this and that and the other subject, to be fawned upon and looked up to, and, naturally, when a man feels that way he gravitates to a lower strata of intelligence for his court. Vanity takes no more obnoxious form than the everlasting desire for approval.

Jennings did not introduce me. I suppose he thought it was beneath his dignity even to admit that he knew a detective sergeant, and as the two men left the room I caught the words: “One of our men.”

Leaving a note on the desk, I went back to my lodgings in Bloomsbury and met Levy Jones in exactly the same place where I had parted from him at the foot of the stairs, on my way out.

“You’re not going, Mr. Mont?” he said in surprise. “I thought Billy wasn’t very busy.”

“Billy’s out,” I explained.

He threw back his head with an open-mouthed “Oh” of understanding.

“On that Dawkes job, I suppose? I saw Dawkes strutting up Bond Street with Fatty Jennings, and they both seemed very pleased with themselves.”

I told Levy just what had happened. He rubbed his long nose.

“I do hope that Billy won’t take an interest in this girl,” he said soberly. “If she’s living in an attic, and supporting an aged and ailing mother, or if she has a brother with consumption in the country, or has got a child she wants to send to Eton, why Billy will be breaking into the Bank of England by to-morrow night, trying to pinch the money that will make right her defalcations. We shall see!” he murmured. “I’ll bet Billy said that when he got the job, and I’ll bet he’s saying it now. Especially if she’s interesting.”

I laughed.

“I don’t think you know Billy, Levy,” said I.

“I do indeed,” said he grimly. “Well I know him!”

And then suddenly he brightened up.

“Have you heard the story about the Jew who sent for the priest to comfort his dying brother one cold and bitter night, and when the priest asked why he, a Jew, had sent for him, a Catholic, replied indignantly:

“‘Do you think I was going to risk the life of our old Rabbi?’”

I had not heard the story.

“Well,” said Levy, “that’s Billy!”

It was a little too cryptic for me and Levy did not explain, but passed on to yet another Hebrew story, this time unprintable, but it left me in convulsions. Levy Jones was the most orthodox Jew I have ever met, yet he never lost an opportunity of telling sly ones against his compatriots.

Before I left him he asked if he could come round and see me that night, and as I had not very much to do and no particular engagement I very gladly invited him, because I am fond of Levy in a way that I am fond of nobody else.

He turned up punctually in Doughty Street and we played cribbage and discussed Billington Stabbat. He told me what I had not known, that Billy was responsible for more escapes from Germany than any other man. It was he who organised the distribution of compasses to the American prison camps in Germany. Levy was in the midst of a rhapsody on the many virtues of his chief when the subject of our discussion was shown in, or rather he showed himself in, the landlady following behind him with an apologetic introduction.

He smiled broadly at me and I could see a thrill in him, if I may be permitted the bull.

“Levy, by gosh!” he said, or rather he howled the words. “Well, isn’t this luck. I wanted to see you.”

“And I wanted to see you,” said Levy significantly. “You asked me to collect a lot of urgent information about the Griddlestone fire”

“O fudge! We’ll see about that,” said Billy impatiently and sat down at the table. “Mont of Monte Carlo,” he said suddenly.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

“You’re coming with me to the beautiful sea, forgive the poetry. Miss Hicks is going to-morrow morning.”

“How do you know?” I demanded.

“I asked her,” he said calmly. “I’ve just seen Dawkes. He follows in a couple of days. Of course, the whole thing is absurd, and is susceptible, I am sure, to the simplest explanation. Why shouldn’t she have money? Why shouldn’t a rich woman indulge herself in cheap bags? After all, the rich are the only people who can afford to wear and carry cheap things. I tell you, Mont,” he spoke with violent earnestness as he leant over the table arid glared at me, “if ever a woman had a heart and a soul too big for her delicate, winsome body, that woman is Mary Ferrera!

You have only to look into her eyes,” he went on, “into those clear, pellucid depths”

“O Moses!” groaned Levy, “I told you what he’d do! I told you, Mr. Mont! If that girl ever got at him he was a goner!”

Bill did not explode as I expected he would. His smile grew broader and broader until it was a grimace of speechless joy.

“O Levy!” he gurgled. “You poor nut! Now listen, Leviticus,” he pleaded. “This girl is innocent, we shall see! But there’s a big story behind it all and I’m going to get the end of it. You’ve got to look after the business till I come back. Until we come back,” he corrected.

“My dear chap, I can’t afford to go to Monte Carlo,” said I. “You seem to think that a police sergeant”

“All your expenses are paid,” interrupted Billy, “and Thomson Dawkes approves of my taking an assistant.” What had he said to her? How had he made her acquaintance? We both asked these questions, and to both of us he returned evasive answers.

That their friendship had made considerable progress in the shortest possible space of time I discovered when she came in to breakfast on the Riviera express two days later.