Читать книгу The Million-Dollar Story - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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HE went downstairs conscious of the fact that he had been flustered out of his normal habit of thought. It was not exactly the kind of introduction that he had pictured, wherein he saw himself very self-possessed, mildly amusingly, absolutely master of the situation. He was the latter, no doubt, but he was annoyed to realise that he had been at best a little commonplace. Even his mystery—and to the girl it was a mystery indeed—was open to the most tawdry interpretation.

He saw the car away and drew a curtain across the room, dividing it into two. The table had been laid at the far end, and there was very little to do except to fix an electric plug which set the kettle boiling for the coffee. She came down—not, as he had expected, a grotesque or ludicrous figure, but preserving all the dignity, and more, that she had shown at the first meeting. His ample dressing-gown she had in some mysterious fashion fitted to her own slim figure and bound it about with a silk scarf which she had found in his room. How she had disposed of the other garments he dared not think.

She sat down before the electric radiator and put out her hands to the warmth.

“Terrible, aren’t they?” she laughed. “But then, you see, I haven’t lived the kind of life that gives one’s hands a chance. Can I help you to make the coffee? It’s years since I made coffee.”

“No, I can manage,” he smiled. “Warm yourself. You guessed, of course, that the room opposite the bath-room will be yours? I left the door open on purpose, and I am glad to see “—with a glance at the scarf—”that you have availed yourself of anything you found.”

She lifted her head to listen. The gale had increased in violence. The rain was beating a fierce tattoo against the back window. She shivered a little and drew her chair nearer to the red radiator.

“Horrid, isn’t it?” she asked. “Not a night I should care to spend on the hill-side in the open country.”

He was humming a little tune. She saw, watching him, that he was curiously like a woman in his movements. He had that everlasting little smile which is the precious possession of a happy woman, and his hands, as he fiddled with the coffee machine, were white and beautiful. She looked ruefully at her own and made a little grimace.

“I have a weakness for comfort,” he said, “a weakness for old china, for silver, for good music and pretty poetry. Do you play?” he asked.

“A little,” she said.

“Then you shall play me some Grieg after supper,” he said.

She laughed again. She was beginning to feel at home and less suspicious of the man, though God knows she could not afford to be suspicious in any case.

“Good music requires a good musician,” she said, “and I am not the good musician.”

Out of the corner of her eye as she sat warming her hands she was watching his every movement. She saw him take something from his pocket—a little phial—and remove the cork. From this he extracted a small white pellet and dropped it into one of the cups. Unnerved as she was by her experience earlier in the day, she grew tense at the sight and jumped to her feet. She thought she had seen something horribly reminiscent.

“What did you do there?” she asked almost harshly.

He looked round in surprise.

“Do where?” he demanded.

“What have you put into that cup?”

She reached out her hand, lifted the cup and shook the pellet into the palm of her hand.

“What is this?”

Her eyes were fixed on him.

“That? Why, that is saccharine. I do not take sugar.”

“Was the cup intended for you?” she demanded, and then went red. “I am awfully sorry. I am rather unnerved, you know.”

“That’s all right.” He patted her hand. “God bless my life! I intend you no harm. If I had, what would have been easier?”

“I am sorry,” she said in a low voice. “It was very ungracious of me. You must think I am very dreadful.”

“Not at all. I know more about it.”

Nevertheless, for all her apologies, she remarked the cup and did not take her eyes from it until she saw him fill it with steaming coffee, and was careful to examine the contents of her own cup before she allowed him to fill it.

It was a pleasant little dinner. The wine to which he helped her sparingly was rich and good. The coffee which ended it all, to her had a fragrance undreamt of. He gave her brandy as a liqueur, and then drew a chair for her to the radiator and took one on the opposite side.

“Margaret Smith,” he said—”or shall I call you Margaret?—I am going to be very frank with you. That you will respect my frankness I am sure; that you will retain any secrets which I may divulge I am equally certain. I know two facts about you, and two only. I do not want to know anything more. The first of these facts,” he stated them very carefully and deliberately, ticking them off on his fingertips, “is that until early morning you were a convict at Aylesbury Jail undergoing a life sentence—for what crime I have not taken the trouble to discover. You have served three years of your sentence and have seventeen years of prison before you.”

“Twelve,” she corrected; “or rather, it would have been twelve if I had not attempted to make my escape. I suppose the sentence would be seventeen now.”

“Those are the two facts—that you are an escaped convict and that you have seventeen years to serve in prison. In other words, had I not come along down Whitecross Hill in that providential manner, picked you up and whisked you off to London, you would have been captured, and be at this moment in a punishment cell at Aylesbury Jail awaiting a new sentence.”

She nodded.

“I heard about you when I stopped for lunch at Aylesbury,” he went on. “The man at the hotel who did some trifling repair to my car told me that a woman convict had escaped that morning. He also said that you were a lifer—that is the term, I believe. Who you were, what was your name, what was your crime, he did not know. That is only natural,” said John Sands, speaking to himself. “How would he know? The main fact that a convict had escaped would be the only information which the prison authorities would give him.”

“I was sentenced for a crime of which I was innocent,” said the girl in a low voice.

“I am sorry to hear you say that,” he said. “I was rather hoping that you were guilty.”

She looked up in astonishment, and to his surprise a faint smile trembled at the corners of her lips.

“And of course you were guilty,” said John Sands. “All people who are convicted are guilty, and the innocent convict is a novelist’s creation. The truth is,” he went on, “I need the assistance of somebody with a criminal mind. A criminal mind is necessarily a clever mind and a resourceful mind. Understand that I do not wish you for the moment to commit any more criminal act than to give a false name to a certain British official and act up to that name. I cannot, for example, imagine that you would care to marry under your own name.”

“Marry!” she said, wide-eyed.

“Marry,” repeated John Sands comfortably. “I assure you the prospect is not an appalling one. For you it means comfort, even luxury, continental travel, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Do you want me to marry you?” she asked bluntly. John took her steady gaze without flinching.

“I desire you to marry Marcus Leman,” he said, and she looked at him wonderingly.

“Marcus Leman?” she repeated. “Marcus Leman? Why, that is the American millionaire, the oil man.”

He nodded.

“Marcus Leman is an American millionaire, and he is an oil man,” he said. “That is proposition No. 1, and we will put it aside. Proposition No. 2 is that Marcus Leman is a friend of mine—in fact, I am the only friend he has in Europe or the United States. That is proposition No. 2, and we will put that aside also. You are to marry Marcus Leman at the Griddelsea register office by special licence on Monday week—or will it be Tuesday week? No, I think Monday week will do.”

She threw back her head and laughed.

“You have made this arrangement without consulting me.”

“Naturally,” he replied. “There was very little opportunity for meeting you before to-day.”

“Had you me in your mind?” she asked.

“I confess I had not,” he said. “No; until this morning Marcus’s prospective bride was a dream lady, a creature of fantasy, the kind of woman that I never hope to find. You came to me directed by my star—you know Bellatrix? It is the star gamma in the constellation of Orion. No? You do not study astronomy? I admit I had not you in my mind, but to-day a miracle has happened, and you are that miracle.”

“Suppose I do not fall in with your arrangement?” she said. “Suppose I refuse?”

John Sands laughed.

“I should ask you to get again into your wet clothes, I should put you into a damp motor-car, and I should drive you through this infernal night to the place where I found you and turn you loose. That sounds very malicious, but I’m not a malicious man. I am all for peace and quietness, and I assure you I should not have undertaken this adventure but for my tremendous respect for my friend, Marcus Leman. There is something about Marcus”—he shook his head contemplatively—“there is something about him that I like.”

“Well, we need not discuss what would happen,” she said, “because I am not such a fool as to refuse, though I am not quite so keen on being married again.”

“Then you were married?” asked John Sands sharply. “Are you free to marry?”

She nodded.

“It would have been extremely awkward if you had had a husband,” he said, “extremely awkward.”

“Now, what do you expect me to do?” she asked.

“I expect you to go to bed and sleep,” he said.

“And what else?”

“In the morning a woman comes here to clean up. I shall explain to her that you are my sister who has arrived unexpectedly and has lost her trunk, and shall send her out to buy whatever articles of attire you may require. There is no reason why she shouldn’t come up and see you and get the details from you first hand,” he said after a pause. “You can dry your clothes in your room—I suppose they do not bear the prison marks?”

She shook her head.

“They belong to the lady doctor at the prison,” she said. “I took them in the early hours of the morning. It was through her house that I escaped.”

“Very good,” said John Sands. “Very good indeed.”

She rose.

“There is still something you aren’t telling me,” she said.

“There are several things that I’m not telling you,” he agreed, “but they can wait. I realise that in your present condition of mind you are not ripe for the complicated story that I have to tell.”

She was half-way up the stairs before he spoke again.

“I shall not be sleeping in the house to-night,” he said, “but I shall be here very early in the morning. There is a telephone in the lobby if you want to call me. My number will be Paddington 1764. I gather,” he said humorously, “that you do not intend making your escape during my absence? I am putting you on your honour.”

She laughed.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said dryly. “I am not likely to venture out of this house without somebody to guard me.

“You are both wise and cautious,” he approved, “and in all probability you have a very good star. It is a matter which you should take up seriously.”

“Stars!” she called down to him from the landing above with a note of contempt in her tone.

“Star study,” said John Sands firmly, “is a study which more than any other repays the student.”

She went to his room and sat on the edge of the bed, her mind in a whirl. She heard him moving about below, and once his not unmusical voice rose in song of a decorous character. Then, after a while, she heard the click of the light and the soft thud of the street door. She pulled off the dressing-gown and resigned herself, with a smile of satisfaction, to the luxury of linen sheets and soft pillows. She had forgotten how tired she was and did not know until she woke. She had but to close her eyes and open them again to find that it was morning.