Читать книгу The Mouthpiece - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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THE pressure came at dinner that evening. Mrs. Smith, having studied the wine list, laid it down and turned to the waiter.

"A bottle of No. 127," she said, and, as the waiter withdrew, smiled across at Jacqueline and encountered a disapproving frown. "Anything wrong, Jacqueline?"

The girl shrugged.

"Only that when we can't pay our bill it hardly seems necessary to waste money on bottles of wine."

"Graves, dear—quite inexpensive. We can't really deny ourselves every little luxury just because I don't choose to pay my bill on the terrace. To hear you talk, Jacqueline, anyone would imagine that we were absolute paupers."

"Well, aren't we?"

"Certainly not," said her mother emphatically. "I should be sorry to think I couldn't have a bottle of wine when I fancy one. And if I couldn't afford it I shouldn't order it. You seem to have got the foolish idea into your head, Jacqueline, that I can't pay my bill."

"I'm not the only one with that idea, Mother. The manager's got it, too, hasn't he?"

"No, dear. I'm sure he hasn't. These foreigners are always a little excitable, but he knows quite well that I shall pay him."

"In due course?" She shook her head. "It's no use trying to keep it up, Mother. We can't even get credit for a bath now'."

Mrs. Smith gave that sudden significant turn of her head.

"This evening," said Jacqueline, "I went to the bathroom and was told by the chambermaid that I couldn't have a bath unless I paid spot cash for it. The manager's orders, she said."

Her mother frowned.

"My dear—I can't believe—there's evidently some mistake—I shall see the manager immediately after dinner."

She paused as the waiter came to the table, and glanced at him. "The manager presents his compliments, madam," said the waiter, "and if madam will very kindly pay for the wine now, he will be delighted to supply it."

Mrs. Smith raised her eyebrows.

"Really—" she began in her most freezing voice; and then suddenly Jacqueline was on her feet, her cheeks crimson and her eyes blazing.

"No!" she exclaimed. "We don't want the wine—we won't have the wine. You can tell the manager."

"Very good, madam. I will inform the manager that the wine is not required," said the waiter, and hurried away with an understanding smile.

Jacqueline faced her mother.

"For God's sake, mother—after that—if you haven't had enough, I have. If you don't mind being insulted and humiliated. I do. I can't stand any more of it." She turned abruptly and, with her gaze fixed on the carpet, hurried from the dining-room.

Colonel Lutman, seated at a table in the corner, adjusted his monocle and glanced at Jim Asson.

"You saw that, James?"

Asson nodded.

"The pressure," explained the Colonel. "The manager has taken my tip and refused to supply wine except for ready money, and Miss Jacqueline has gone into the lounge to gnaw her knuckles and tell herself that she can't stand any more of it. At such a moment, I fancy, the prospect of marriage even with Mr. James Asson will seem like a ray of hope and a glimpse of paradise. Hadn't you better be going?"

Asson frowned.

"Hang it, Lutman, I'm only half-way through my dinner."

"So much the better, James," interrupted Lutman. "It will add a touch of realism to your hungry look. Go and get a move on."

Asson rose and followed Jacqueline from the room.

Colonel Lutman was more or less correct in his psychology. Jacqueline, seated in a secluded corner of the lounge, was not actually gnawing her knuckles, but she was frowning and smoking a cigarette furiously, jerking it to and from her lips with quick, impatient movements, and restlessly tapping off imaginary ash with her finger. And she was certainly telling herself that she could stand no more of it. She felt bruised and sore, as if every glance that had been levelled at her as she had gone striding from the dining-room had been a lash that had stung her.

It had been her own fault, of course. She shouldn't have made a scene like that. If she had wanted to attract the attention of everyone in the dining-room to what was taking place at her table, she couldn't have found a more certain way of doing it. But she hadn't been able to help it. The tone of the waiter's voice, the veiled insolence of his smile, had suddenly made her feel that she must do something violent or scream. She had wanted to knock the waiter down and smash the glasses and kick the table; and because she couldn't do any of these things she had turned on her heel and hurried from the room, feeling that everyone who saw her go knew just what she wanted to do and why she wanted to do it. It was degrading—humiliating. For the sake of a bottle of cheap wine and a few pennyworth of hot water, she and her mother must be insulted and sneered at! And that was how it had been for years now—living on sufferance, kow-towing to hotel-keepers, never having a shilling that was really their own, because long before it was received it was always owing to someone for something.

If only her mother would go back to England and settle down! But of course she wouldn't. She couldn't live that sort of life. If she couldn't have wealth and luxury, she must at least have the illusion of them. She could never be happy living quietly in a small flat somewhere, paying her bills every Saturday, and wearing her evening dress only on special occasions. Drab— humdrum—monotonous—wearisome—her mother had a large vocabulary of synonyms for that sort of existence. She would rather wander from one third-rate continental hotel to another, staving off importunate proprietors and tradespeople, wearing her expensive dresses, smoking her expensive cigarettes, creating for herself the illusion of a gay, colourful life. It was all pathetically silly, and the poor travesty of a gay, colourful life wasn't worth the price paid for it.

But it meant a great deal to her mother, and Jacqueline had always had the feeling that, even if she could persuade her to give it all up and live quietly in a home of her own, she had no right to demand such a sacrifice; and she had often longed, particularly when she caught that rather wistful look in her mother's eyes, to be able to pour a few sackfuls of money into her mother's bank account so that the gay, colourful life which meant so much to her might be more than a mere illusion. But tonight she felt that, with all the good-will and filial affection in the world, she could stand no more of the sort of life they had been leading lately. She wasn't like her mother; she couldn't rebound like her mother did.

Incidents like the one in the bathroom and the one at dinner this evening flattened her out. She was stupidly sensitive, perhaps, but there it was; they made her feel cheap, ashamed, inferior—rather like walking about with a ladder up the back of her stocking....

"Hullo, Jacqueline!"

She glanced up to find Jim Asson smiling down at her. It struck her at that moment that he had quite a pleasant smile and a good set of teeth; but she felt that, even in a third-rate hotel, he need not have had that flower in the buttonhole of his dress coat, and that he might have worn a dinner-jacket like everyone else.

"Hullo, Jim!"

"All alone?"

"I was."

There was no hint of a smile on her face or of welcome in her greeting, and Jim Asson hesitated, half inclined to leave her and await a more auspicious moment; but then, remembering that time was an important factor, and Lutman a sarcastic devil, he seated himself beside her.

"If you're going to try to be sociable, Jim," said Jacqueline, "please don't. I don't feel like being sociable; I feel like kicking you."

"I say, Jacqueline, what have I done?"

"Oh, it's not you, Jim, in particular; I just want to kick something."

Asson was silent, frowning. Even Lutman, he thought, must realize the inauspiciousness of the moment for a proposal of marriage. It was all very well for Lutman to talk, but if he were sitting here now, with that frown on Jacqueline's forehead and that touch-me-and-I'll-bite-you look in her eyes, he'd probably think differently about holding her hand and kissing her. After all, there wasn't such a desperate hurry that he couldn't give her time to get into a more agreeable frame of mind. He'd leave it for the moment, anyway, and see how she was a bit later.

With a feeling of relief Asson took out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette, and as he did so Jacqueline turned to him with a smile.

"Sorry, Jim," she said. "I needn't vent my rotten bad temper on you, need I?"

"That's all right, Jacqueline. Worried, aren't you?"

She nodded.

"Something wrong?"

"Most things. Everything."

"I thought as much," said Asson, with a sympathetic nod. "In the dining-room just now you got up and dashed off."

"Oh, you saw that, did you?"

"I couldn't help noticing, Jacqueline."

"Well?"

"Well, I wondered why—I mean, you'd hardly started your dinner."

"Because I'd had enough. Jim."

"But you hadn't got farther than the fish."

"Enough of everything, I mean," interrupted Jacqueline. "Enough of the whole rotten scheme of things. Perhaps it has never struck you, Jim, that the whole scheme of things is rotten."

"Can't say it has," admitted Asson.

"It is, anyway," the girl assured him. "You haven't noticed it because you've led a sheltered and pampered life, Jim, and have never had your face shoved smack up against the rottenness of things. I don't suppose you've ever known what it is to be short of money, have you?"

"Oh, money!" said Asson lightly.

"Exactly—'oh, money!' Money's nothing to you, Jim. You can't understand why people make such a fuss about money, can you? That's because you've always had plenty of it and have never been sufficiently interested to imagine how those people feel who don't know where to turn for their next shilling. You don't know what it means to be hard up."

"No, I suppose I don't."

"Well, I do," said Jacqueline bitterly, "and you can take my word for it, Jim, that it means a whole lot of rottenness. It means that any nasty little bounder can spit in your eye and you've got to put up with it. It means that you've got to slink through life with your tail down and your ears back, and it's hateful, degrading. You'd never think a man was justified in stealing money, would you, Jim?"

"Stealing? Good heavens, of course not!"

"'Of course not!"' she repeated, with a slight smile. "You'd think that if he got caught and put in prison for it, he'd only got what he deserved, wouldn't you?"

Asson glanced at her doubtfully. It struck him that the topic was not one to be pursued.

"Well, naturally—" he began, but she cut him short.

"Naturally, you would," she said. "But I wouldn't. Not necessarily. I'd understand that having no money might have so humiliated and shamed him that he'd become desperate—felt that he could stand no more of it—and made him decide that he'd get some somehow, no matter what the consequences might be. I've felt like that myself sometimes. But you haven't, have you?"

"Well, no—I can't say I have," said Asson uneasily. "But I say, Jacqueline, I can understand anyone feeling like that, you know. It must be pretty awful for you."

"It is, Jim. But I suppose it's very bad taste to talk about it."

"I don't see why—not with me, Jacqueline. I mean, we know each other pretty well, we're very good friends, and—well, as a matter of fact it's not really news to me."

"No, I don't suppose it would be news to anyone in the hotel. But just how did you spot it, Jim? How did I give the game away? I'd like to know, because if you're broke to the wide the last thing you must do is to let people know it. Did you notice that my heels were down or that my stockings were darned?"

"I didn't notice anything," he assured her. "I just sort of got a feeling you were up against things somehow, and then Mrs. Smith—"

"Oh, has mother been talking?"

"Well, I was chatting with her this morning, you know, and one or two things she said sort of gave me the clue. I think she feels it, Jacqueline, not being able to give you everything she'd like to, and it's rough luck her investments all going to pot."

"Investments?" Jacqueline smiled. "Yes, poor mother! She only has one investment left now. That's me, Jim. She has put a lot of money into me in the hope that one day she'll get it back with interest. I'm to marry a rich man, Jim, and mother is to live in the best hotels for the rest of her days."

Asson's eyes betrayed his sudden anxiety.

"I say, Jacqueline, you're not—not engaged to be married, are you?"

She shook her head.

"No, Jim; I'm still on offer."

Asson nodded and for a time smoked in silence. Then:

"Why not marry me, Jacqueline?"

She glanced at him with amusement in her eyes.

"Is that original, Jim? I mean, did you think of that yourself, or did someone suggest it to you?"

"I thought of it myself, Jacqueline. Why not marry me, anyway?"

"Why not?" She shrugged a shoulder. "I could give you lots of reasons why I shouldn't. But it's up to you, Jim, if you really want me to marry you, to tell me why I should. Can you? Try!"

Asson frowned slightly. Things weren't going quite as he had hoped they would, and there was a cold-bloodedness about the whole affair of which, he felt, Lutman would certainly not approve. He glanced at her, wondering if the moment had come when he might venture on the intimacy of taking her hand. Meeting Jacqueline's glance, he decided against it.

"Well, we get on pretty well together, don't we?" he said, gazing at the end of his cigarette. "That's one reason, anyway."

"I get on very well with heaps of people, Jim," she smiled. "Colonel Lutman, for instance—and the boy who cleans the boots—but I don't feel like marrying either of them."

"I wish you wouldn't rag, Jacqueline. I'm serious. I'm asking you to marry me. As a matter of fact, we'd get on splendidly together, and you'd be free of—well, all the rotten sort of things you were talking about just now. You'd have plenty of money, for one thing."

"That's one good reason, anyway, Jim."

"And then there's your mother. Of course, I should see that she was well provided for."

Jacqueline nodded.

"Good reason number two, Jim. Mother gets a dividend on her investment. Any more reasons?"

"Well, we'd be able to have a pretty good time, Jacqueline. We could travel about—"

"Travel?" She shook her head. "You've misfired badly there, Jim. I'm feeling just now that I never want to see a train or a hotel again. I feel that there's nothing on earth I want so much as a home where everything belongs to me. I want my own front-door and latchkey—spoons and forks that aren't stamped with the name of a hotel—a bathroom that nobody else uses—somewhere where I can stay put, feel I belong there, and know that, unless I choose to, I never need pack a trunk or write a luggage label again. Say I should have all that and I'll call it good reason number three."

"You'd have anything you wanted, Jacqueline. You could live where you like and have what you like and do what you like. I can't say more than that, can I?"

"Can't you? Try, Jim."

He glanced at her with a puzzled expression on his face.

"If there's anything else you want, Jacqueline—"

"There is."

"Then you've only to mention it."

She smiled.

"You don't read very much, do you, Jim? Novels, I mean. You can't, or you wouldn't need reminding that when a man asks a girl to marry him it's usual to tell her that he loves her. It may not be true, but it's a polite convention to say it, at all events."

"Yes—of course—but I thought—I mean, that goes without saying, Jacqueline. You know I'm frightfully fond of you."

She was shaking her head.

"As a matter of fact, Jim," she said, "it's the one thing in the world that never goes without saying. Still, we'll take it as said." She rose from her chair. "Thanks very much, Jim. It's quite the most original proposal I've ever had."

He stood up, took a cigarette from his case and tapped it on the back of his hand.

"And what's the answer, Jacqueline?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. I've got to work it out—take the minus reasons from the plus reasons—and it's too complicated to do in my head. Let x equal the unknown quantity of affection—"

"Hang it, Jacqueline, I've told you I'm frightfully fond—"

"All right, Jim," she smiled. "Don't worry. I'll find the answer all right, and as soon as I've found it I'll let you know."

"But can't you tell me now?" he persisted.

She shook her head.

"It's pretty rotten waiting, not knowing and wondering all the time."

"Sorry, Jim, but it can't be helped. There's x and y to be dealt with. I can make a good guess at the value of x, but I've still got to discover the 'why'. I'll tell you as soon as I know myself."

Before he could say any more she turned and hurried away, and Asson, having frowned at her back until she turned the corner, flung himself into his armchair again and savagely struck a match for his cigarette.

And there, a few minutes later, Colonel Lutman found him. "Well, my dear James," he said, smiling affably, "does one congratulate you?"

Asson gave a shrug.

"I'm hanged if I know."

Lutman raised his eyebrows, and his monocle, as if in protest against his taking such a liberty, slipped from his eye.

"Surely, James," he said, "you can't so soon have forgotten whether a charming young lady is betrothed to you or not?"

"I tell you I don't know," snapped Asson irritably. "Of all the cold-blooded, calculating, sarcastic little devils—" He made a gesture of impatience. "She wouldn't say yes or no, Lutman. She wants to work it out, she says. She'll tell me as soon as she knows herself."

"H'm!" said Lutman. "It's a pity, but it can't be helped. Time is precious, though, and you must be importunate, James. You must hover around her like a love-sick shadow, melt her heart with your pleading eyes—"

"Oh, shut up, Lutman. I'm fed up with the whole outfit."

"And in the interim," continued Lutman imperturbably, holding out his hand, "I will keep the expensive engagement ring in my waistcoat pocket."

Asson glanced up at him, scowling.

"What's the great idea?"

Lutman smiled.

"There is a pawnbroker's establishment in Cobenzil, my dear James," he said. "I noticed it this morning."

"I don't get you, Lutman."

"Nor the price of the ring, James. Hand it over."

With a scowl, Asson took the ring from his pocket and laid it on Lutman's open hand.

"You're a nasty suspicious devil, aren't you?"

Lutman slipped the ring into his waistcoat pocket.

"My dear James," he smiled, "you must try to forgive me. I once lent you a gold cigarette-case."