Читать книгу The Guv'nor and Other Stories - Edgar Wallace - Страница 12

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MR. REEDER was well aware of the fact; Kressholm never moved without his escort of gunmen. He had seen them hovering in the background that day at the Old Bailey. Not for nothing was he called "the Governor"; the very title presupposed a following. He had doubled his escort since he heard that Red Joe was out of prison. His men slept in the rooms on either side of his. He had a guard outside the hotel.

Kressholm would have gone to Paris—he knew the bolt holes better there, and had a certain pull with important officials, and, but for Wenna, he would have left England on the day of the inquest. But Wenna was unusually humble and pathetically helpless. Old Lew Haddin came down to London to bring her back to the show. He was not so much concerned by the tragedy which had broken her as by the loss of an attraction.

"I'll come when I'm ready," she said.

Lew complained sadly to Kressholm that girls were quite different from what they had been in the days of his mother.

"No respect for God or man—or fathers," he quavered. "She's afraid of nothing. She was making lions jump through hoops when she was ten, and she thinks no more of dropping two thousand feet on a parachute than you and me would think of walking downstairs."

He complained, but left her alone.

She had so far forgotten her old detestation of Bob Kressholm that she used to go to dinner with him in his suite. If she contributed nothing to his happiness—for she would sit for hours, hardly speaking a word, staring past him—she added zest and determination to this man who was in her thrall. He saw a grand culmination to these years of disappointment and rebuff. Red Joe he did not fear—he would be "taken care of." If he were uneasy at all it was because Joe made no direct attempt to see him, did not communicate by word or letter.

Though he professed to be without fear, he heaved a sigh of relief when he heard, from the man whom he had set to shadow him, that Brady had left one afternoon for the Continent. For one moment he had an idea of ringing up Scotland Yard and reporting this irregularity. A convict is not allowed to leave the district to which he is assigned, and a breach of this law might bring about his return to prison to complete his sentence.

Only once he spoke to Wenna Haddin about Joe. She answered his question with a shake of the head.

"No, I haven't seen him—poor man; I expect he's too heartbroken to see anybody. I think if anybody loved Danny as much as I did it was his father."

She thought for a long time, then she said: "I'd like to see him. Perhaps he'd help."

"With Reeder?" And, when she nodded: "Don't be silly! Joe thinks Reeder is the best chap in the world! That surprises you, doesn't it? But then, you see, Joe doesn't know what Reeder's done for him. That old man is as artful as the devil. If you told Joe he'd laugh at you."

She was eyeing him steadily.

"Why? If you can convince me you could convince him."

He was rather taken aback.

"I didn't convince you, I merely told you the truth," he said.

She did not answer this, and he reached out and laid his hand on hers. She made no attempt to withdraw it.

"Poor Red Joe!" Her voice softened.

He never knew how simple or complex she was; whether she was either, or just a humdrum medium made radiant through the eyes of his passion. Old Lew Haddin, white-haired and obese, could talk for hours in his monotonous, sleep-making voice and always the subject was Wenna and her peculiar values. Red Joe once said she had the brains of a general, but, by accounts, some generals are rather stupid.

"Why poor Joe?" he asked, and suddenly tightened his grip on her hand.

"We have kept his caravan just as he left it," she said. "Nobody uses it, of course; I tidy it every week. Lew grumbles at the cost of haulage" (she invariably referred to her parent in this familiar way) "and deducts it from Joe's share; he owns half the park." As she spoke she looked at him oddly. "You are a friend of Joe's?"

"Yes."

She nodded.

"Then I can ask you something. He was charged with forging bank-notes, wasn't he? Could they imprison him again supposing they found something else against him?"

Kressholm became suddenly very attentive. "Like what?" he asked.

"Bonds and letters of credit. I found the plates in the wall lining of the caravan. He had a sort of secret panel there. Nobody knew it."

Bob Kressholm's heart leapt.

"Are they there still?" he asked. He tried to give a note of carelessness to his inquiry.

She nodded.

"Yes, the plates, and the papers, and everything, Could the law punish him for that?"

He considered this.

"I shouldn't think so," he said.

He had hazy notions about the English law, but here he saw the making of a second charge, which might easily dispose of a serious menace. She told him that Joe had had an assistant, a man who still worked with the circus, and who was the only person beside herself who had access to the van.

When he left her that night Kressholm had made up his mind. He tried to get in touch with the detective, but J.G. Reeder was out of town. He was working on a case in the South of England. What that case was Kressholm learned from the newspapers, and his hopes rose higher.