Читать книгу The Face in the Night - Edgar Wallace - Страница 11

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Audrey woke from a restless, troubled sleep and, struggling to her unsteady feet, rubbed her shoulders painfully. She had been lying on a bare plank, covered with the thinnest of blankets, and she ached from head to foot.

The sound of a key turning in the cell lock had awakened her; it was the matron, who had come to conduct her to the bathroom. She had returned to her cell a little refreshed, to find coffee and bread and butter waiting for her, and she had finished these when the door opened again, and she looked up to meet the grave eyes of Dick Shannon. He nodded to her.

"I want you," he said. Her heart sank. "Am I going before—before a judge?" she faltered.

"Not yet," he said. "I'm afraid that eventually you will go before a judge, unless—?"

She waved aside the suggestion with an impatient hand. She had settled that matter definitely in the silence of the night.

The man's heart ached for her. He knew well enough that she was innocent, and he had sent a man into Sussex that morning to prove the matter, as he hoped, beyond question.

"Here's somebody you know, I think," he said, and, opening a door, drew her into a room.

There were two occupants: Dora Elton and her husband. Audrey looked; she had to dig her finger-nails into her palms to control herself, and she succeeded wonderfully.

"Do you know this girl?" asked Shannon.

Dora shook her head.

"No, I've never seen her before," she said innocently. "Do you know her, Martin?"

The haggard-faced Martin was equally emphatic.

"Never saw her before in my life," he said.

"I think she is your sister."

Dora smiled. "How absurd!" she said. "I've only one sister, and she is in Australia."

"Do you know that both your mother and your sister lived at Fontwell?"

"My mother never lived at Fontwell in her life," said Dora calmly, and, in spite of her self-possession, Audrey started. "There were some people who lived at Fontwell who were"—she shrugged—"pensioners of mine. I helped the woman once or twice. If this is her daughter, she is a perfect stranger to me."

All the time she spoke her eyes were fixed on Audrey, and the girl thought she read in them a mute appeal. In a flash she realized that what Dora had said might very well be true. She had married in her stage name, and it was quite possible that none of the neighbours identified her with Mrs. Bedford's daughter, for she had not visited the place, and Audrey's mother was one of the reticent kind that made no confidences.

"What Mrs. Elton says is quite true," she said quietly. "I do not know her, nor does she know me."

Dick Shannon opened the door, and the girl went out again to the waiting matron. When she had gone, he faced the Eltons.

"I don't know how long she'll keep this up," he said. "But if she sticks to the story from first to last, Elton, she'll go to jail." He spoke deliberately. "And I'm going to tell you something. If that child is sent to prison, if you allow her to sacrifice herself, I will never rest night or day until I have brought you both to the penal settlement."

"You seem to forget to whom you're speaking," said Dora, a bright light in her eyes.

"I know I'm speaking to two utterly unscrupulous, utterly depraved, utterly soulless people," said Dick. "Get out!"

* * * * *

Lacy Marshalt sat in his breakfast-room. A newspaper was propped up before him; his face was puckered in a frown. He looked again at the picture taken by an enterprising press photographer. It was the portrait of a girl alighting from a taxicab. In the background a blur of curious spectators. A policeman was on one side of her, a broad-shouldered wardress on the other. It was one of those pictures fairly familiar to the newspaper reader. A fleeting snap of a criminal on her way to trial.

There was no need to compare the newspaper with the photograph in his pocket. The name of the prisoner would have told him, even if there bad been no photograph.

Tonger came in, slipping through between door and post.

"You didn't ring, did you. Lacy?" he asked.

"I rang ten minutes ago. And I'm telling you for the last time to forget that 'Lacy' of yours. There is a limit to my patience, my friend."

The little man rubbed his hands gleefully. "Heard from my girl today," he said. "She's doing well in America. Clever kid that, Lacy."

"Is she?" Lacy Marshalt returned to a survey of his newspaper.

"She's got money—always writes from the best hotels. Never thought things would turn out that way."

Lacy folded his paper and dropped it on the floor.

"Mrs. Martin Elton will be here in five minutes. She will come through the mews to the back door. Be waiting for her and bring her through the conservatory to the library. When I ring for you, show her out the same way."

Tonger grinned.

"What a lad for the girls!" he said admiringly.

Lacy jerked his head towards the door.

Less than five minutes later Dora Elton pushed open the heavy wicket gate and, crossing the courtyard, mounted the iron stairs to the "conservatory"—a glass annexe thrown out at the back of the house above the kitchen and scullery of the establishment. She was dressed in black and heavily veiled. Tonger detected signs of nervousness as be opened the conservatory door to her.

"Have you come to breakfast?" he asked amiably.

She was too used to his familiarities to resent his manner.

"Where is Mr. Marshalt?"

"In the library—readin' Christie's Old Organ," suggested Tonger humorously.

Lacy was reading nothing more informative than the fire when she was shown in. "I had an awful trouble getting here," she said. "Wouldn't it have done this afternoon? I had to tell all sorts of lies to Martin. Aren't you going to kiss me?"

He stooped and brushed her cheek. "What a kiss!" she scoffed. "Well?"

"This jewel robbery," he said slowly. "There is a girl implicated. I understand that the police are under the impression that she is your sister."

She was silent.

"I know, of course, that you are on the crook," he went on. "Stanford is an old acquaintance of mine in South Africa, and he's one of your gang. But this girl, is she in it?"

"You know how much she is in it," she said sulkily. She had not come, at some risk, to Portman Square to discuss Audrey. And at the thought of risk...

"There was a man watching this house at the back when I came along the mews," she said. "I saw him by the back door. When he saw me he walked away."

"Watching this house?" he said incredulously. "What sort of a man?"

"He looked a gentleman. I only just saw his face—very thin and refined-looking. He had a limp... "

Lacy took a step towards her, and gripped her by the shoulders. His face was grey, his lip quivered. For a moment he could not speak, then:

"You're lying! You're trying to put one over on me!"

She struggled from his grip, terrified.

"Lacy! What is wrong with you?"

He silenced her with a gesture.

"I'm nervy, and you startled me," he muttered. "Go on with what you were saying. That girl is your sister? I want to know."

"My half-sister," she said in a low voice.

He stopped in his pacing.

"You mean... you have different fathers?"

She nodded.

He did not speak again for so long that she began to feel frightened.

"She'll go to jail, of course, and she's shielding you." He laughed, but there was no mirth in his laughter. "That is best—I can wait," he said.

A month later, on a bright March morning, a pale girl stood in the spacious dock of the Old Bailey, and by her side a square-shouldered Belgian, the first to be sentenced.

Coming out of court towards the end of the case, sick at heart and weary of the solemn machinery of vengeance which was grinding to dust so frail a victim. Shannon saw a familiar figure ensconced in one of the deep- seated benches where, usually, witnesses sat waiting.

"Well, Slick, have you been in court?"

"I have," said the other carefully, "but the illusion of the successful detective wore through, and that big pen was certainly hungry- looking. I tore myself away. Other people haven't any sensitive feelings. I saw Stanford amongst the ghouls."

Shannon sat down by his side.

"What do you think?"

"Of the case? Little Miss Quixote—pronounced Key-o-tey, they tell me—is going down." He pointed significantly at the tiled floor.

"I'm afraid she is," Shannon said after a pause, and sighed. "But that is as far as they'll get her," mused the crook. "She'll come up just as she went down—sweet. That kind doesn't sour easily. Say, Shannon, ever heard of a man called Malpas?"

Dick, who was thinking of something else, started. "Yes, he's an eccentric old man who lives in Portman Square—why?"

Slick Smith smiled blandly. "He's in it somewhere," he said. "I am speaking in my capacity as a detective. That case has finished mighty suddenly."

A policeman was beckoning Shannon, and he hurried into court in time to hear the sentence.

"What is your age?" asked the judge, pausing, pen in hand, and looking over his glasses.

"Nineteen, my lord." It was Shannon. "And I may say that the police are perfectly satisfied, in spite of the evidence, that this girl is an innocent victim of other people who are not in custody."

The judge shook his head.

"The evidence does not support that view. It is very dreadful to see a young girl in this position, and I should be failing in my duty to society if I did not deal severely with so dangerous an agent. Audrey Bedford, you will go to prison with hard labour for twelve months."