Читать книгу Down Under Donovan - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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THERE are slums in Nice of which the visitor who only knows the Promenade des Anglais, and the glories of the mimosa and palm which beautify the front, can have no conception.

It was to one of the little streets on the north side of the town that M. Soltykoff directed the cocher to drive. The man looked in amazement at the well-dressed visitor who seemed bent upon penetrating the undesirable district of Nice, but the other repeated his order with a definite gesture of one who was used to being obeyed.

The Passage du Bue is a narrow street of tall, unlovely houses where the artisan classes of Nice, the hawkers, and all the small pitiful under-world of that beauty spot overcrowd in their penury. Number 27bis was the least attractive of the dwellings, but M. Soltykoff was not unused to unsavoury habitations, and possibly this unattractive house had qualities which compared very favourably with the tenements in which his own workmen dwelt. At any rate he was not the kind of man who took a sentimental interest in the miseries of those who were forced by circumstances to dwell amidst such, signs of squalor and misery.

"Monsieur Pentridge," said a slatternly concierge—even this miserable dwelling boasted a concierge—whose business it was to collect the rent weekly from the unfortunate tenants, "yes, M. Pentridge is in residence, monsieur will find him on the fourth floor in the little room at the left as one reaches the head of the stairs."

Soltykoff mounted the rickety stairs, gingerly. He was sardonically amused at the thought of the danger he would run if it were known that he was carrying two and a half million francs in his pocket. He reached the door he was making for and knocked on its yellow panel. At first there was no reply, and he repeated the knock.

"Come in," said a voice gruffly.

He opened the door and entered.

The room was a small one, almost innocent of furniture save for a rickety trestle-bed in one comer of the room, a small table, and a chair. Light was afforded by a small oil-lamp which stood upon the table.

John Pentridge, the man the Russian sought, was sitting on the edge of his bed. He was dressed in an old pair of trousers and a discoloured shirt which was open at the front to show his bony chest. On one end of the bed lay the disordered evidence of a hasty change of dress. It was only by urging the driver forward with a promised reward that he had arrived before his visitor.

His eyes, sunk in his head, burnt fiercely, as though some malignant fever consumed him, and as he looked up at the visitor, making no attempt to rise, Soltykoff, even in his bemused state, thought he had never seen so sinister a figure.

"Are you M. Soltykoff?" he asked.

He spoke in English and Soltykoff nodded. Without invitation he pulled the chair towards the bed and sat down.

"Now, Mr. Pentridge," he said, "I have the business important with you to transact immediately; for to-night I must leave for Paris, having engagements, you will understand."

"I understand," said the other harshly, "have you brought the money?"

"That," M. Soltykoff replied diplomatically, "is for the future consequence to discover. At once I required your formula." He spoke a little thickly, because he had utilised the hour between Monte Carlo and Nice to still further indulgence of sweet champagne.

"You understand," he said, "I am a glass maker practical. I will tell you at once if your scheme is good."

"You have seen the samples," said the other, scowling at his visitor, "ain't they enough for you?"

"I have seen the samples," agreed Soltykoff cheerfully, "and they are marvellous. I do not disguise from you, my friend, that they are wonderful. Now you have the formula."

The other man rose slowly and shuffled to a little cupboard over the head of his bed. He unlocked it with a key that he took from his pocket and brought out an envelope. He held the precious package tightly.

"There will be trouble for you," he warned, "if it ever comes out where you got this from. I ain't going to say that I got it dishonestly," he went on cunningly. "I have had it for nigh on thirty years, and in my pocket most of the time, and I made the glass; you wouldn't think it to look at me, would you? but I 'ad a master, I 'ad. The man that taught me could teach babies. Did you ever hear of Granford Turner?"

"Granford Turner," repeated Soltykoff, "that name is familiar; why, yes, he was the inventor, fifty years ago the great inventor. I remember now the tragedy."

The man nodded.

"I dare say you do," he cried, "he killed a pal, didn't he? and got transported

for life I know," he nodded his head, "because

I met him in Australia, the finest inventor the world has ever had. He's dead now," he said hurriedly.

"Where did you meet him?" asked Soltykoff, curiously.

"That's nothing to do with you," snarled the other, "here's the formula, here's every ingredient, the degree of every heat that's got to be used; why, he even tells you how to make the crucibles to melt it," he added, with reluctant admiration.

"The inventor is not to be met?" asked M. Soltykoff.

"Dead," said the other shortly, "that's enough for you. I've carried this about with me for thirty years, I tell you. I knew it would make a fortune for me. I'd have sold it before only," he hesitated, he could not, with credit to himself, explain the reason for his forbearance, for he might in his explanation reveal the terror he conceived for the man who had trusted him with his secret—a trust which he had violated on the first available opportunity—nor could he tell the story without betraying his acquaintance with a confederate who at that moment was lying dead in the shadow of the limes of Monaco.

"Let me see the document," demanded Soltykoff, and the man, with some reluctance, allowed it to go out of his grasp. Drawing his chair near the table Soltykoff carefully read the ten closely-written pages that detailed the secret process of manufacture. Now and then he would stop and start and utter a little exclamation.

"Yes, yes," he muttered, "this is it, so easy, and yet none of us thought of it."

It almost sobered him; the shock and joy which the handling of those papers produced.

No one knew better than he how important this discovery was or how authentic it was, but he must have further proof. Seeing him looking round the apartment the man anticipated his desires. From the cupboard from which he had taken the package he brought a small spirit-lamp, one or two thin pieces of glass, a tiny blow-pipe, and two little boxes, one containing a whitish and the other a reddish powder. "They are made up in the exact proportions," said Pentridge gruffly, "you needn't bother to look at the paper."

For half an hour, M. Soltykoff sat thus, spirit-stove burning bluely on the table, a small plate of steel arranged above it, using a pinch of white powder here, and a microscopic portion of red there, melting and remelting, and melting again till at the last he produced a flat box of colourless glass which was no different in appearance to a piece of glass blown by ordinary commercial methods. He waited for it to cool, and then he sliced it up from the steel plate with a knife. It was still warm, but he held it in his hand. He bent it. Not only did it bend without the slightest sign of a break, but when the pressure he exercised was released it resumed its former position.

"Not only malleable," he said to himself, "but elastic."

He took from his pocket the long, black portfolio.

"What is your price?" he asked.

The man hesitated.

"I asked you for twenty thousand pounds," he said, "but it is worth more than that, and I am not going to part with it under fifty."

Here, however, he was up against a master of bargaining, a man not to be flurried, not to be bullied, and certainly not to be bluffed into giving a penny more than he was actually obliged.

"My friend," said the little Russian with his broad smile, "you think by what you see that I am drunk, voilà, you are right, for to-night I am extremely intoxicated, but of insanity I have none; you understand? You make a bargain; twenty thousand pounds—two hundred thousand roubles. I come to you with the money; I do not ask from whence you secured or stole this; or by what method you secured from the unfortunate Turner the formula. I am prepared to pay you. If you are a rich man and can afford to say I will take it elsewhere, do so. I offer you its full value, twenty thousand pounds. You may take this or you may leave this, but I have my train to catch to Paris, and I cannot afford to wait."

"Give me the money," growled the other.

He held out his shaking hand eagerly, and the Russian slowly counted fifty notes of the value of ten thousand francs each into his hand.

"I am interested," said Soltykoff, "in what you shall do with this money."

The man's eyes were dancing with a strange light.

"Look here," he said fiercely, "you're a rich man, and you've been rich all your life. I'm a poor devil who's been kicked around. You can take your time and do things at your leisure, but I'm getting old and I have lived in poverty for all these years. Every penny I have earned or have won has gone back to the tables, and now I am going to have the gamble of my life, you see what I mean?"

He peered eagerly, almost pathetically it seemed to the Russian, as though he were anxious to secure the other's approval.

"I haven't got so many years to live, I can't afford to wait my turn. I'm going to dress myself to-morrow like a real swell, none of this!" He swept his discarded dress-clothes to the floor, "I'm going to Monte Carlo, just the same as I've seen these nobs go for twenty-five years, and I shall have my flutter; they won't know me when I've got myself up in style. I'll play the maximum every time, that's the way they make money, and that's the way I'll make money."

"My friend," said the Russian blandly, as he carefully deposited the formula in the long envelope of his satchel, "I would tell you this—that if I had leisure—I would play you for the money you have taken from me—and I should win; always, I should win, because I do not need the money. Always you would lose because it is vital to you. You are what they call in England, the damned fool," and he went out of the little room joyously, singing a song as he tripped down the stairs and out to his waiting cab, conscious that he had done, perhaps, the greatest night's work of his life.