Читать книгу The Face in the Night - Edgar Wallace - Страница 12

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On a gloomy morning in December the wicket gate of Holloway Prison opened, and a slim girl, in an old brown velour coat, came out, and, looking neither to the left nor right, passed through the waiting friends of prisoners to be released, walked quickly up the Holloway Road towards Camden Town. Crossing the road, she boarded a street car, and at that moment Dick Shannon's long machine swept past, and she did not see it. He arrived three minutes too late to intercept her.

She had a few shillings left as the result of her year's work and, getting down at the tram terminus, she went along the Euston Road till she came to a small restaurant.

The face was a little finer-drawn, the eyes graver, but it was the old Audrey who ordered extravagant portions of devilled kidneys and egg. For nine months the prison routine had ground at her soul; for seventy-two hours a week she had associated with the debased dregs of the underworld, and had neither grown down to their level nor experienced any sense of immeasurable superiority. There were bitter nights when the black treachery to which she had been subjected overwhelmed her, and she closed her eyes to shut out the hideous realities. Nights of torture, when the understanding of her own ruin had driven her to the verge of madness.

Yet it did not seem unnatural that Dora had acted so. It was almost a Dora-like thing to have done, consonant with all that she knew and all that she had heard of the girl. A horrible thought to Audrey (and this alone saddened her) was that the qualities in her sister were those which had been peculiarly noticeable in her mother. With a half-checked sigh she rose, and, taking her bill, paid at the cashier's little box.

Where should she go now? To Dora, she decided. She must be absolutely sure that she had not wholly misjudged her. She could not go in the daytime; it would not be fair to the girl. She spent the rest of the morning looking for lodgings, finding them at last in a top back room in Gray's Inn Road. Here she rested through the afternoon, straightening the rags of her future. When dark came she made her way to Curzon Street.

The servant who opened the door to her was the same girl that had been there on her first visit.

"What do you want?" she asked tartly.

"I want to see Mrs. Elton," said Audrey.

"Well, you can't," said the girl and tried to shut the door.

But Audrey's nine months of manual work had had results. Without an effort she pushed the door open and stepped in.

"Go up and tellyour mistress I am here," she said.

The girl flew up the stairs, and Audrey, without hesitation, followed her. As she walked behind the servant into the drawing-room she heard her sister say: "How dare she come here!"

She was in evening dress, looking particularly lovely, her fair hair shining like burnished gold. She stared at the girl as if she were a ghost, and her eyes narrowed.

"How dare you force your way into this house?" she demanded.

"Send away your servant," said Audrey quietly, and, when the girl had gone and she had made sure that she was not listening on the landing, she walked across to Dora, her hands behind her. "I want you to say 'thank you'," she said simply. "I did a mad, foolish thing, because I felt that I wanted to repay mother for anything that I owed her, and which I had not already paid."

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Dora, flushing.

"You've got a nerve to come here, anyway!" It was the sleek Martin. "You tried to drag us into your—your crime. You hold your—Mrs. Elton up to the scorn of the world, and then you calmly walk into our house without so much as a please or by your leave. Damned nerve!"

"If you want money, write," said Dora, and flung open the door. "If you come here again I'll send for a policeman."

"Send for one now," said the girl coolly. "I'm so well acquainted with policemen and wardresses that you can't frighten me, my dear sister."

Dora closed the door quickly. "If you want to know, we're not sisters. You're not even English!" she said in a low, malignant voice. "Your father was mother's second husband, an American! He's on the Breakwater at Cape Town, serving a sentence of life!"

Audrey caught the back of a chair for support.

"That's not true," she said.

"It is true—it is true!" stormed Dora in a harsh whisper. "Mother told me, and Mr. Stanford knows all about it. Your father bought diamonds and shot the man who betrayed him. It is a felony to buy diamonds in South Africa. He disgraced my mother—she changed her name and came home the day after his arrest. Why, you're not even entitled to the name of Bedford. She hated him so much that she changed everything!"

Audrey nodded.

"And, of course, mother left him," she said, speaking to herself. "She didn't stay near to give him the comfort and sympathy that a wife might give to the vilest of men. She just left him—flat! How like her!"

There was no malice, no bitterness in her voice. Audrey had the trick of seeing things truly. She raised her eyes slowly until they met Dora's.

"I ought not to have gone to prison," she-said; "you are not worth it. Nor mother, I think."

"You dare to speak of my mother!" cried Dora in a fury.

"Yes, she was my mother too. She's beyond my criticism or your defence. Thank you. What is my name?"

"Find out!" snapped the woman.

"I'll ask Mr. Shannon," said the girl.

It was the only malice she showed in the interview. But it was worth the effort to see the change that came to the two faces.