Читать книгу The Devil Man - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9

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AT Brinley Hall Madame Stahm sat at a black-lacquered table, resting her elbows on its polished surface, her long chin in the palm of her hand. At the far end of the table Baumgarten half sat, half sprawled.

"Twelve o'clock. The doctor's cart was to bring her back." Madame Stahm spoke in Russian.

Baumgarten sat up and stretched, flicked a speck from his immaculate evening coat and yawned.

"And I, my dear Clarice, told you that she would never come back."

A deep frown gathered on Madame's brow. "Another spy to combat." she said, her eyes glowering. "And a woman! They are the worst!"

Baumgarten yawned again. "She is no spy. She is frightened, partly of the beast, partly of the noises, but mainly of the beast, I think. You were very stupid to let her see him."

Madame shrugged. "She is a spy, she has been listening at doors. I have found her in my bureau when she was not supposed to be there. If she does not come back—" She looked at the jewelled watch that lay on the table before her.

"She will not come back—have no fear."

"She could have sent a message—" began the woman.

"The doctor could have sent the message, but he did not. We are a long way out. If these barbarians had telephones we could speak to Sheffield. To be sure, I will myself go to the doctor, but I know exactly what he will tell me—that he has taken a blood test of the beautiful nurse and that she is unable to continue her work for a week or two."

Madame Stahm brooded for ten minutes. "I did not send for her—" she began.

"I sent for her, yes," said Baumgarten calmly. "If you die without medical attention, what will people say? They will say: 'Baumgarten, to whom this dear, good lady has left all her money, must have poisoned her.' The English are ready to believe anything of foreigners."

Again that brooding silence. "The little man would bring her back," she said.

Mr Baumgarten smiled, and stroked his long face reflectively. "Indeed? You overrate the beast. He can do many things; he is very strong, cunning and wicked. I myself have never met a worse man. He can play divinely and bring you out of your tantrums, Clarice, and that in itself is wonderful. He can do other things that require violence. How shall he bring the girl here? Shall he hit her on the head, lift her into a wagonette, and will your doctor do nothing? Beware of that young man, Clarice. He is clever and he is a soldier. Mr Dibden, who knows him, tells me he is the cleverest revolver shot in the country. Also he has killed his man. That to me is very important. Kill one—the rest are so easy, even though the one be a marauding Somali. Also he heard the noise."

She shrugged. "So you said."

"I told you the truth," said Baumgarten coolly, "because I could not afford to have another night of nerves and screamings and teeth-grindings. I did not emphasize the fact, but he heard." Another ten minutes passed by, the silence broken only by the periodical puffs of his cigar.

"Was there any result?" she asked.

He shook his head. "The result was negative—for the moment. I am not so sure that Lamonte knows nothing. He was with Eckhardt in America. One thing he told us, and that is important, that Eckhardt had a friend in Cleveland, an engineer, a man who is now in Yorkshire, and has been in communication with Wertheimer. Eckhardt and this man spent many evenings together, especially when Eckhardt was ill. This gentleman is an engineer by profession and a draughtsman. He took notes. He is apparently the kind of man who would take notes methodically. Also—and this I learned from our friend—Dyson (which is his name) has offered to help Wertheimer on certain conditions which that treacherous dog has not granted. He could only bargain if he had something to bargain with. Also certain observers of mine, who have shadowed him, say that Dyson boasts that he has in his narrow head a secret that would revolutionize the world. That can only be the formula."

"Is it possible to get his notes?" asked Madame Stahm. "Who is this man? What does he do for a living? Where does he work?"

Baumgarten sighed wearily. "I have told you a hundred times, Clarice, that you are so not of this world that you refuse to hear me. He is an engineer; his name is Dyson; he lived or worked in Cleveland, Ohio—"

"But if he has the documents they can be found." Her voice had risen to a shrill treble, a certain symptom of her growing excitement, which the man did not fail to notice.

"If you keep calm and quiet I will tell you more, but if you are going to scream and clench your hands and be mystic, I am going to bed." She was breathing deeply through her nose, and that, too, was symptomatic of the grip she had taken on herself.

"It is a waste of time to find his notes if he carries the vital information here." Baumgarten tapped his forehead. "We are prepared to make him an offer, I suppose?"

"Of course," impatiently. "What are you doing about this, Peter?"

He shrugged his shapely shoulders. "I don't know. It is all in the realms of conjecture. Dyson has a very charming wife, a pretty woman who drinks a little—which means she has vulgar tastes. She is a woman, I should imagine, on whom the beast would make a great impression."

A look of disgust wrinkled Madame Stahm's face. "Ach! Who but you would think that, Peter?"

"You might," he said calmly. "I am paying compliments to your little horror—you should be grateful to me! Always he tells me that he is attractive to women, and I believe him. There are stories about him in the city. I speak often with the workmen, and I have discussed him. Your little man is irresistible." She struck the table with the flat of her palm.

"Bring him now," she said imperiously. "Let him be sent for. Have the horses harnessed in the victoria, and let him be brought at once."

There was an amused look in the tired eyes of the Russian. "Manana!" he said. "Tomorrow is also a day, beloved." He rose from the table and stretched himself, his arms outflung tautly. "I don't like your doctor—he is too intelligent, and he doesn't like me, which is unfortunate. He will give you trouble, especially if the nurse arouses him. He is in love with her.

"Glouposli!"

"It is not rubbish," said Baumgarten.

He walked behind her, dropped his hands on her thin shoulders and swayed her to and fro.

"Beloved, while there is money left shall we go back to a country of clean snow and blue skies? These English are a peculiarly unimaginative people. They hang men rather too readily, and women too. They have no emotion, no sentiment, no romance. Think of it, Clarice—in a day and a night we could be in the shadow of the Matterhorn!"

"Never!" she stormed. "Never! Until I recover the work of John Stahm's life, and the secret they stole from him, I will never rest. If you are too soft for this work, go, Peter. I am not afraid of prisons and ropes. I will go on to the end."

"Very well." Baumgarten was calmness itself. "If you stay, I must, for I adore you! I will do as you desire—everything, except engage myself to work with the nasty little man. There I cry 'Never!' He offends me, socially and aesthetically. There is nothing in him that is not—what is the English word? They have a fine one—ah, squalid. He is squalor, he is foul, he is something to be decently burnt and turned into clean ashes."

He heard her low, amused laugh. "He is divine," she said, with a little gurgle of laughter, "beyond price. Also extraordinarily useful, Peter, as you have proved. He may be more useful yet."

In the morning Baumgarten sent a messenger to Peace. He was not at home; he had left on the previous night for Manchester, a city in which he took a very great interest, though it had sent him to penal servitude for twelve years. None the less, the lure of the cotton city never failed. In every moment of financial crisis Manchester was the city.

Charles Peace limped to the railway station, took a third-class ticket to the northern city, and spent a profitable and instructive two hours of the journey arguing theology. For Charles Peace held strong and orthodox views, though it was his boast that he believed in God and the devil but feared neither.

He went away with the amount of his return fare and a golden sovereign in his pocket; he came back with a small bag filled with miscellaneous articles, some of which he put into the fire. Most precious of all the loot was a new and beautifully fitted concertina, and throughout the day of his return his neighbours heard strange melodies issue from the Peace house, for he was improvising a hymn, making up the lyric as he went along. It was all about love and heaven and beautiful white angels, and dear little children waiting to receive their earthly parents. Mr Peace had lost a child; it had been born and died whilst he was in prison. But to him it was a dream child, surprising and dazzlingly lovely. He often wept over the baby he had never seen, and composed poetry about him; for he was a sentimentalist and easily moved by a vision of angels playing harps. He himself was always on the look-out for a harp, for he was certain he would excel upon it, but never found one.

"There's no instrument I can't play," was his boast.

Since there was no harp, a concertina was an effective substitute.

When he sat back in the chair tilted against the kitchen wall, manipulating the keys under his fingers, his eyes closed dreamily, he could almost imagine harp-like qualities in the wailing harmonies that the little leather bellow blew.

"I value that concertina," the owner of the burgled house was telling a sympathetic policeman. "I paid a lot of money for it."

"Have you lost anything else?" asked the police officer.

The other compiled a list of spoons, clocks and portable silverware. Mr Peace could have compiled a fuller list and have claimed greater accuracy, for all the articles which had been lost lay snug in the coal cellar, and that night would be fenced for a tenth of their value.

He had no friends, this lone wolf. His dowdy wife feared him; his stepson hated him; the child of his marriage was petrified in his presence. He had a quick and heavy hand for wife or child, though he could be generous. Sometimes he would be unaccountably flush with money; golden sovereigns would jingle in his pockets; the bar of his favourite public- house would yield him a sycophantic audience.

"There's no instrument I couldn't play, sitha. Piano? I can an' all. Trumpet, bugle, organ—"

"Harp?" suggested somebody at random.

The ugly face grew uglier. "We'll say nowt about religion, lad. I'm religious." He was particularly religious at that moment, for he had escaped arrest by the skin of his teeth, and by luck was without his six- shooter.

Subsequently he told a chaplain that he ascribed his escape from justice to a direct answer to prayer. He prayed for things and got them, he said, and related how he once paid his address to a sweetheart, who had received them coldly, and after an evening spent in supplication he had changed her attitude to him in twenty-four hours.

Madame Stahm, who never prayed, sent for her faithful servant, and he, hiring a car, drove out to her in the dark of the night, smoking a cigar which was wholly distasteful to him, but which seemed consistent with his importance.

A plain clothes man saw him as he left the outskirts of the city, and reported his movements to headquarters on a dial telegraph. Baldy, who was at the station, took the report and sniffed at it.

"Let him go," he said. "If there's any burglary in that direction, pull him in, and ask the patrol to pick him up on his return." Baldy Eltham was taking an unusual interest in his pet abomination. Curiously enough, Peace at that moment was especially interested in Sergeant Eltham.