Читать книгу The Yellow Snake, or The Black Tenth - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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Stephen Narth ordinarily left his office in Old Broad Street at four o'clock, at which hour his limousine was waiting to carry him to his beautiful house at Sunningdale. But this evening he lingered on, not because he had any especial business to transact, or because he needed the time to brood over his unfortunate position, but because the China mail was due by the five o'clock post, and he expected the monthly draft to which Leggat had made reference.

Joseph Bray was his second cousin, and in the days when the Narths were princes of commerce and the Brays the poorest of poor relations (they called themselves Bray-Narth, but old Joseph had dropped the hyphenated style, being a man of little education), the great family was scarcely cognisant of Joe Bray's movements. Until, ten years before, Mr Narth had received a letter from his cousin saying that he was anxious to get in touch with his only relative, they were unaware that such a man as Joseph existed, and Mr Stephen Narth's first inclination, as he read the ill-spelt, illiterate letter, was to tear it up and throw it into the wastepaper basket, for he had sufficient troubles of his own without being called upon to shoulder the burden of distant relatives. It was only at the tag-end of the letter that he discovered his correspondent was that Bray whose name was famous in the Stock Exchanges of the world—the veritable Bray, of Yun Nan Concession. Thereafter, Joseph assumed a new importance.

They had never met. He had seen a photograph of the old man, grim and grey and hard, and it was probably this picture which had inhibited those appeals for further help which he so glibly claimed to have sent.

Perkins, his clerk, came in with a letter soon after five.

"Miss Joan came this afternoon, sir, whilst you were at the board meeting."

"Oh!" replied Stephen Narth indifferently.

Here was a Bray that represented a responsibility, one of the two members of the cadet family he had known about until old Joseph's letter came. She was a distant cousin, had been brought up in his home and had received the good but inexpensive education to which poor relations are entitled. Her position in his household he would have found it difficult to define. Joan was very useful. She could take charge of the house when the girls were away. She could keep accounts and could replace a housekeeper or, for the matter of that, a housemaid. Though she was a little younger than Letty, and very much younger than Mabel, she could serve to chaperone either.

Sometimes she joined the theatre parties that the girls organized, and occasionally she went to a dance when an extra partner was wanted. But usually Joan Bray remained in the background. There were times when it was inconvenient even that she should join one of his select little dinner parties, and then Joan had her meal in her big attic room, and, if the truth be told, was more than a little relieved.

"What did she want?" asked Mr Narth as he cut open the flap of the only letter that counted.

"She wanted to know if there was anything to take back to Sunningdale. She came up to do some shopping with Miss Letty," said his old clerk, and then: "She asked me if any of the young ladies had telephoned about the Chinamen."

"Chinamen?"

Perkins explained. There had appeared that morning in the grounds of Sunni Lodge two yellow men, "not wearing much clothing either." Letty had seen them lying in the long grass near the farm meadow—two powerful-looking men, who at the sight of her had leapt up and had fled to the little plantation which divided Lord Knowesley's estate from the less pretentious domain of Mr Narth.

"Miss Letty was a little frightened," said Perkins.

Miss Letty, who lived on the raw edge of hysteria, would be frightened, undoubtedly.

"Miss Joan thought the men belonged to a circus which passed through Sunningdale this morning," said Perkins.

Mr Narth saw little in the incident, and beyond making a mental note to bring the matter to the notice of the local police, dismissed from his mind all thought of Chinamen.

Slowly he tore open the flap of the envelope. The cheque was there, but also, as he had realized when he handled the package, a letter of unusual length. Joe Bray was not in the habit of sending long epistles. As a rule, a sheet of paper bearing the inscription 'With Comps.' was all that accompanied the draft.

He folded the purple-coloured draft and put it into his pocket, and then began to read the letter, wondering why this relative of his had grown suddenly so communicative. It was written in his own crabbed hand and every fourth word was mis-spelt.

Dear Mr Narth (Joe never addressed him in any other way). I dare say you will wonder why I have written to you such a long letter. Well, dear Mr Narth, I must tell you that I have had a bad stroke, and am only getting better very slowly. The doctor says he can't be sure how long I've got to live, so I thought I would fix up the future and make a will, which I have now done, through Mr Albert Van Rys, the lawyer. Dear Mr Narth, I must tell you that I have got a great admiration for your family, as you well know, and I have been long thinking how I should help your family, and this is what I have done. My manager, Clifford Lynne, who has been with me since a boy and was my partner when I found this reef, is a good young fellow (Clifford Lynne, I mean), so I have decided he should marry into my family and keep the name going. I know you have several girls in your house, two daughters and a cousin, and I want Clifford to marry one of these, which he has agreed to do. He is on his way over now and should be with you any day. My will is as follows: I leave you two thirds of my share in the mine, one-third to Clifford, on condition that one of these girls marries him. If these girls refuse, all the money goes to Clifford. The marriage is to occur before the thirty-first of December of this year. Dear Mr Narth, if this is not agreeable to you, you will get nothing on my death.

Yours sincerely, Jos. Bray.

Stephen Narth read the letter open-mouthed, his mind in a whirl. Salvation had come from the most unexpected quarter. He rang a bell to summon the clerk and gave him a few hasty instructions, and, not waiting for the lift, ran down the stairs and boarded his car. All the way to Sunningdale he turned over in his mind the letter and its strange proposal.

Mabel, of course! She was the eldest. Or Letty—the money was as good as in his pocket...

As the car went up the drive between bushes of flowering rhododendrons he was almost gay, and he sprang out with a smile so radiant that the watchful Mabel, who saw him from the lawn, realized that something unusual had happened and came running to meet him, as Letty appeared at the big front door. They were handsome girls, a little plumper than he could wish, and the elder inclined to take a sour view of life which was occasionally uncomfortable.

"... Did you hear about those horrid Chinamen?" Mabel fired the question as he stepped from the car. "Poor Letty nearly had a fit!"

Ordinarily he would have snapped her to silence, for he was a man who was irritated by the trivialities of life, and the irruption of a yellow trespasser or two was not a matter to interest him. But now he could afford to smile indulgently and could make a joke of his daughter's alarming experience.

"My dear, there was nothing to be afraid of—yes, Perkins told me all about it. The poor fellows were probably as much scared as Letty! Come into the library; I have something rather important to tell you."

He took them into the handsomely appointed room, shut the door and told his astonishing news, which, to his consternation, was received silently. Mabel took out her perennial cigarette, flicked the ash on the carpet and looked across at her sister, and then:

"It's all very fine for you, father, but where do we come in?" she asked.

"Where do you come in?" said her parent in astonishment. "Isn't it clear where you come in? This fellow gets a third of the fortune—"

"But how much of the third do we get?" asked Letty, the younger. "And besides, who is this manager? With all that money, father, we ought to do better than a mine manager."

There was a dead silence here which Mabel broke.

"We shall have to depend on you for the settlement, anyway," she said. "This old gentleman seems to think it quite good enough for any girl if her husband is rich. But it wouldn't be good enough for me."

Stephen Narth turned suddenly cold. He had never dreamt that opposition would come from this quarter.

"But don't you see, girls, that unless one of you marries this fellow we get nothing? Of course I would do the right thing by you—I'd make a handsome settlement."

"How much is he leaving?" asked the practical Mabel. "That's the crux of the whole question. I tell you frankly I'm not going to buy a pig in a poke; and besides, what is to be our social position? We'd probably have to go back to China and live in some horrible shanty."

She sat on the edge of the library table, clasping her crossed knee, and in this attitude she reminded Stephen Narth of a barmaid he had known in his early youth. There was something coarse about Mabel which was not softened by the abbreviation of her skirts or by the beauty of her shingled head.

"I've had enough scrimping and saving," she went on, "and I tell you honestly, that so far as marriage with an unknown man is concerned, you can count me out."

"And me," said Letty firmly. "It is quite right what Mabel says, there is no position at all for this wretched man's wife."

"I dare say he would do the right thing," said Stephen Narth feebly. He was entirely dominated by these two daughters of his.

Suddenly Mabel leapt to her feet and stepped down to the floor, her eyes shining.

"I've got it—Cinderella!"

"Cinderella?" He frowned.

"Joan, of course, you great booby! Read the letter again."

They listened breathlessly, and when he came near to the end, Letty squeaked her delight.

"Of course—Joan!" she said. "There's no reason why Joan shouldn't marry. It would be an excellent thing for her—her prospects are practically nil, and she'd be an awful bore, father, if you were very rich. Goodness knows what we could do with her."

"Joan!" He fondled his chin thoughtfully. Somehow he had never considered Joan as a factor. For the fourth time he read the letter word by word. The girls were right. Joan fulfilled all Joe Bray's requirements. She was a member of the family. Her mother had been a Narth. Before he had put the letter down, Letty had pressed the bell on the table and the butler came in.

"Tell Miss Bray to come here, Palmer," she said, and three minutes later a girl walked into the library—the sacrifice which the House of Narth designed to propitiate the gods of fortune.