Читать книгу The Face in the Night - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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Lacy Marshalt was once a Senator of the Legislative Council of South Africa, therefore he was by courtesy called "Honourable"—a fact which was, to Mr. Tonger, his gentleman, a source of considerable amusement.

He came out of his bathroom one drear morning, simply attired in trousers and silk singlet, under which the great body muscles showed plainly. Thus, he had less the appearance of a legislator than what his name had stood for in South Africa—the soldier of fortune who had won at least this guerdon of success, a palatial home in Portman Square.

He stood for a long time staring moodily down into the square. Rain had followed the fog as a matter of course; it always rained in England —doleful, continuously, like a melancholic woman. He thought longingly of his sun-washed home at Muizenburg, the broad, league-long beach and the blue seas of False Bay, the spread of his vineyard running up to the slopes of Constantia...

He turned his head back to the bedroom with a jerk. Somebody was tapping softly on the door.

"Come in!"

The door opened and his old valet sidled in with his sly smile.

"Got the mail," he said unceremoniously, and put a handful of letters on the little writing-table.

"Say 'sir'," growled Lacy. "You're getting out of the habit again."

Tonger twisted one side of his face in a grin. "I'll have to get into it again," he said easily.

"You'd better: I can get a hundred valets in London for a quarter of what I pay you—younger men and twenty times as efficient," threatened his master.

"I dare say, but they wouldn't do what I do for you," he said; "and you couldn't trust 'em. You can't buy loyalty. I read that in a book the other day." 'Lacy Marshalt had chosen one letter from the others, a letter enclosed in a pique-blue envelope and addressed in an illiterate hand. He tore it open and read:

"O.I. Breaking Sown"

There was no signature.

The big man grunted something and tossed the letter to the valet.

"Send him twenty pounds," he said.

Tonger read the scrap of paper without the slightest hesitation.

"Breaking down?" he mused. "H'm! Can he swim?"

Lacy looked round sharply.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Of course he can swim—or could. Swim like a seal. Why?"

"Nothing."

Lacy Marshalt looked at him long and hard.

"I think you're getting soft sometimes. Take a look at that envelope. It has the Matjesfontein postmark. So had the last. Why does he write from there, a hundred miles and more from Cape Town?"

"A blind maybe," suggested Tonger. He put the scrap of paper in his waistcoat pocket. "Why don't you winter in the Cape, baas?" he asked.

"Because I choose to winter in England."

Marshalt was putting on his shirt as he spoke, and something in his tone riveted the man's attention.

"I'll tell you something, Lacy: hate's fear!"

The other stared at him.

"Hate's fear? What do you mean?"

"I mean that you can't hate a man without fearing him. It's the fear that turns dislike into hate. Cut out the fear and it's... well, anything —contempt, anything you like. But it can't be hate."

Marshalt had resumed his dressing.

"Read that in a book, too?" he asked, before the glass,

"That's out of my own nut," said Tonger, taking up a waistcoat and giving it a perfunctory snick with a whisk brush. "Here, Lacy, who's the fellow that lives next door? I've meant to ask you that. Malpas or some such name. I was talking to a copper last night, and he said that it's believed that he's crazy. He lives alone, has no servants and does all his own housework. There's about six sets of flats in the building, but he won't let any of them. Owns the whole shoot. Who is he?"

Lacy Marshalt growled over his shoulder:

"You seem to know all about it: why ask me?"

Tonger was rubbing his nose absent-mindedly. "Suppose it's him?" he asked, and his master spun round.

"Suppose you get out of here, you gossiping old fool!" Tonger, in no wise disconcerted by the magnate's ferocity, laid the waistcoat on the back of a chair.

"That private detective you sent for the other day is waiting," he said, and Lacy cursed him.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he snarled. "You're getting useless, Tonger. One of these days I'll fire you out—and take that grin off your face! Ask him to come up."

The shabby-looking man who was ushered in smiled deferentially at his employer.

"You can go, Tonger," growled Marshalt.

Tonger went leisurely.

"Well?"

"I traced her," said the agent, and, unfolding his pocket-book, took out a snapshot photograph, handing it to the millionaire.

"It is she," he nodded; "but it wasn't difficult to find her once you knew the village. Who is she?"

"Audrey Bedford."

"Bedford? You're sure?" asked the other quickly; "Does her mother live there?"

"Her mother's dead—five years ago," said the agent.

"Is there another daughter?"

The agent shook his head.

"So far as I can discover, she's the only child. I got a picture of her mother. It was taken at a church fair in 1913, one of a group."

This was the flat parcel he was carrying, and the paper about which he now unfolded. Lacy Marshalt carried the picture to the light...

"That is she!" He pointed to a figure.

"God, how wonderful! When I saw the girl I had a feeling... an instinct."

He cut short the sentence.

"You know her, then, sir?"

"No!" The answer was brusque almost to rudeness. "What is she doing? Living alone?"

"She was practically. She had an old woman in the house who assisted her with a poultry farm. She left for London yesterday. From what they tell me in the village, she is broke and had to sell up."

The millionaire stood in his favourite attitude by the window, staring at nothing, his strong, harsh face expressionless. How wonderful! "Hate is fear," whispered the echo of Tonger's voice—he shook off the reminder with a roll of his broad shoulders.

"A pretty girl, eh?"

"Lovely, I thought," said the detective. "I'm not much of a judge, but she seemed to me to be out of the ordinary."

Lacy grunted his agreement. "Yes... out of the ordinary."

"I got into a bit of trouble at Fontwell—I don't think anything will come of it, but you ought to know in case it comes back to you." The man showed some signs of discomfort. "We private detectives find we work much better if we give people the idea that we're the regular goods. I had to pretend I was looking for a chicken thief—down at the Crown Inn they thought I was a Yard man."

"There's not much harm in that, Mr. Willitt," said the other with his frosty smile.

"Not as a rule," said Willitt, "only, by a bit of bad luck, Captain Shannon happened to stop at the inn to change a tyre."

"Who's Shannon?"

"If you don't know him, don't look for him," said Willitt. "He's the biggest thing they've got at the Yard. The new Executive Commissioner. Up till now the Commissioners have been office men without even the power of arrest. They brought Shannon from the Indian Intelligence because there have been a few scandals lately—bribery cases. He gave me particular hell for describing myself as a regular. And his tongue... Gee! That fellow can sting at a mile!"

"He didn't discover what you were inquiring about—the girl?"

The agent shook his head.

"No. That's about the only thing he didn't discover. You'd think he had all his mind occupied with the Queen of Finland's necklaces, wouldn't you?"

Apparently Lacy did not hear him speak. His mind was concentrated upon the girl and the possibilities that followed.

"You allowed her to go without getting her address? That was pretty feeble. Go down and get it. Then follow her up and scrape an acquaintance. You can be a business man on the look out for investment—lend her money—all that she requires—but do it in a way that doesn't frighten her."

He took from his pocket-case half a dozen notes, crushed them into a ball and tossed them into the outstretched hand. "Bring her here to dinner one night." he said softly. "You can be called away on the 'phone."

Willitt looked hard at him and shook his head in a halfhearted fashion.

"I don't know... that's not my line... "

"I want to talk to her—tell her something she doesn't know. There's five hundred for you."

The private detective blinked quickly. "Five hundred? I'll see... "

Left alone, Lacy went back to the window and his contemplation of the reeking square.

"Hate is fear!"

It was his boast that he had never feared. Ruthless, remorseless, he had walked over a pavement of human hearts to his goal, and he was not afraid. There were women in three continents who cursed his name and memory. Bitter-hearted men who brooded vengeance by night and day. He did not fear. His hatred of Dan Torrington was... just hate.

So he comforted himself, but deep down in the secret places of his soul the words of the old valet burnt and could not be dimmed—"Hate is Fear."