Читать книгу Grey Timothy - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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Mr Peter Callander lived near Sevenoaks in a lovely old Georgian house, big enough and important enough to be referred to as a 'seat', surrounded by grounds sufficiently extensive to be referred to as an 'estate'.

He had the ordering of its furniture, which meant that it was severe and comfortable. There was no Mrs Callander. She had died when Gladys was a baby of embarrassing diminutiveness. She had been many years younger than her husband, and Gladys often indulged in the disloyal speculation whether her mother had worried herself to death trying to understand her husband, or whether she understood him too well and accepted oblivion cheerfully.

For Gladys had no illusions about her father. Worthy man as he was, admirable pillar of society, she never deceived herself as to his limitations.

Three days after the coming of the telegram which announced the arrival of the infamous Pallard, she was walking up and down the lawn before Hill View—so Mr Callander's country called—awaiting her father.

Horace was amusing himself with a croquet mallet. He was passionately fond of croquet, and was one of the best players in the county: this game and painting were his two known vices. He was of the pre-Raphaelite School and specialized in willowy maidens with red hair.

Now he threw down his mallet and came across the lawn to his sister, his hands thrust deeply into the pockets of his grey flannel trousers.

"Aren't we going to have tea or something?" he asked.

"Father promised to be here by five," she said; "but if you can't wait, I will get something sent out to you."

"Oh, don't bother!" he said. He took a silver case from his pocket, selected a Virginian cigarette and lit it. "I wonder if father has seen that man?" he asked.

"I shouldn't imagine so," she answered dryly. "I hardly think that his enthusiasm for meeting us would survive father's letter."

"Yes, it was pretty warm," admitted Horace admiringly. "The governor can be awfully cutting. By the way, Gladys dear, did you speak to him about—you know?"

A little frown of annoyance gathered on her forehead.

"Yes," she said shortly, "and I wish I hadn't. Why don't you ask him yourself?"

"I've had my allowance, and, to be perfectly frank, I've used it up," he confessed. "Wouldn't he let you have any money?"

"No," she said.

"You didn't say it was for me?"

"Oh, don't be afraid," she said coldly. "If I had said it was for his dear chickabiddy, I should have got it. You had better ask yourself."

The young man threw his cigarette away.

"You're very unfair, Gladys," he said with a reproving shake of his head; "very unfair. Father thinks no more of me than he does —"

"Fiddlesticks!" interrupted the girl, with a little smile. "Why don't you own up like a Briton? And why don't you tell me what you want the money for? Father isn't a niggard where you are concerned. He paid twenty pounds into your account not much more than a week ago. The bills for all your pastime material go straight to him; you do not even pay for your clothes or cigarettes."

"I have a lot of expenses you know nothing about," he began roughly, when the hoarse boom of Mr Callander's motor hom sounded on the road without, and in a second or so his handsome car came into view round the clump of laurels which hid the lodge end of his restricted drive. He descended with the weary air of a man who had done a day's work and was conscious of the fact.

At the sound of the motor horn two servants had hurried from the house, the one with a silver teatray, laden with the paraphernalia for afternoon tea, another with a wicker-work table.

Horace collected three chairs, and into one of these his father sank.

"Ah!" he said gratefully.

"Well, father," said the girl, as she handed him his tea, "we are anxious to hear the news. Did you see our terrible cousin?"

Mr Callander, sipping his tea, shook his head. "I did not, but I spoke to him." He put down his cup. "You would not imagine that, after receiving such a letter as I sent him at his hotel, he would wish to communicate with me again. Yet this morning he rang me up—actually rang me up!"

"Impertinence!" murmured Horace.

"So I thought, and the voice!" Mr Callander raised his hand in despair. "Coarse, uneducated, raucous. 'Is that Callander's', he said: 'it's Misther Pallard of the Great West Central spakin'. I want to get through to ye're boss.'"

Mr Callander was an excellent mimic, and Gladys shuddered as he faithfully reproduced the conversation.

"Before he could get any farther," said Mr Callander solemnly, "I said, 'Understand once and for all, Mr Pallard, that I want to have nothing to do with you.' 'It's the boss I'm wanting', said the voice. 'I am the boss', I said—it is a word I hate, but I used it. In reply there came a profane expression of surprise, which I will not repeat. I put the receiver on, and there was an end to the conversation."

"And an end to him," said Horace decisively. "What a brute!"

Gladys said nothing. She was conscious of a sense of disappointment. Without definite reason she had expected that Pallard, rascal as he undoubtedly was, would have cut a more heroic figure; somehow the description her father gave did not tally with the picture she had formed of this gambler from his letter. She had hoped at worst only to be shocked by her erratic relative; as it was, both her taste and her principles were offended.

Mr Callander went into the house to change. It was his practice to play a game or two of croquet with his heir before dinner, and since Horace had returned to his mallet, Gladys was left to her own devices.

She was debating in her mind whether she should go into the drawing-room and relieve her boredom with the elusive Grieg, or whether she should inspect the farm, when an exclamation from her brother arrested her.

"I say," he said, looking at his watch, "I'm expecting a man to dinner—Willock; you've heard me speak of him. Could you drive down and meet him, Glad? He's coming to the village station, and he'll be there in a quarter of an hour."

She nodded.

"I'll walk down," she said. "I want something to do."

"I'd go myself, but father is very keen on this game."

"Don't bother. I dare say Mr Willock will survive the shock of being met by a girl. What is he like?"

"Oh, he's a very decent chap," said Horace vaguely.

She ran into the house to get her hat and a stick, and in a few minutes was swinging across the fields, taking the short cut to the station.

It was a glorious evening in early summer, and as she walked she whistled musically, for Gladys Callander had many accomplishments of which her father never dreamt.

She reached the station in good time. The train was ten minutes late, and she had time to get to the village to re-post a little parcel which had come to her that morning.

She hated doing so, for the parcel had contained an Indian shawl of the most beautiful workmanship. With it had come a card: "From Brian to his cousin."

She could do no less than return it; it was a lovely shawl, and she sighed resentfully as she affixed the stamps which would carry it back to the donor.

She came to the station platform just as the train steamed in. Only one passenger alighted and instinctively she knew that this was her visitor.

He was a man a little above medium height, straight shoulders, and erect. There was nothing of the artist in his appearance, though the face was intellectual and the humorous blue eyes, no less than the well-shaped, sensitive lips, told of imagination. He was clean-shaven, and might as well have been an actor, a barrister, or a doctor as an artist.

He saw her coming and walked to meet her with outstretched hands.

"I am Miss Callander," she said demurely. "My brother asked me to meet you."

"Gladys Callander, eh?" he said, with a smile. "I'm jolly glad to see you."

His greeting was a trifle warm, but one forgives the artistic temperament much.

"I'll send a man for your things," she said. "You don't mind walking?"

"Love it," he said briefly.

They were chatting as if they had known one another all their lives before they had left the village. There was something very fresh and delightful about him. He invigorated her by his very vitality. She found herself laughing at his dry comments on railway travelling—he had come by a slow train—and fascinated by his terse judgment. Very slowly they walked across the fields, and, to her amazement, she found herself exchanging confidences with this unknown artist.

"I suppose Horace has told you about our cousin," she said. "Oh, yes, I remember, he told me he had; isn't it annoying?"

"I'm afraid I don't know all your cousins," he smiled apologetically; "but whichever one annoyed you deserves something with boiling oil in it."

He was so sincere in his bloodthirsty allocation of punishment that she flushed and was, for a moment, confused.

"Lead me to our cousin," he said, and struck a little attitude which turned her confusion into laughter. "Let me at him!"

"Really, you are very ridiculous!" she laughed, "and I hardly know what you will think of me allowing you to behave like this."

"I exonerate you from blame," said the visitor cheerfully. "Nobody can be responsible for what I do, except me—and I am superior to all criticism."

"Indeed," she said, with polite incredulity. She felt it difficult to maintain a conventional gravity under the influence of his boyish nonsense.

"I am, indeed," he went on seriously. "I am Fortune's favoured child: criticism and reprobation trickle off my back as water from a duck's. A sense of my rectitude, combined with a spirit of toleration for the unrighteousness of others, gives me that lofty feeling which is the peculiar possession of the philosopher."

"You've been reading Shaw," she said reproachfully.

"He wouldn't thank you for mentioning it," he said. "No, my absurd view of life is my very own."

They were approaching the house now. A side wicket, which opened on to the field—Mr Callander called it a 'paddock'—gave them access to the grounds.

She unlocked the door with a key she took from her chatelaine, and invited him in. They walked through the shrubbery at the side of the house on to the lawn.

Horace and his father were playing croquet, and an interested spectator was a stern young man with a straggling beard. A wild thought struck Gladys for an instant that possibly this was the dreadful cousin, but a second glance reassured her.

The stranger was much too respectable.

Horace looked up as she crossed the lawn.

"Hello, Gladys," he said with a smile, "had your journey for nothing, eh? Mr Willock came by the fast train to Sevenoaks and drove out. Permit —"

He was introducing the stern stranger when he saw the look of anguished embarrassment on his sister's face.

Simultaneously Callander senior demanded in his most benevolent tone:

"And who is Gladys's friend?"

She looked round at the young man, who, hat in hand, stood awaiting introduction to the family circle.

He, at any rate, was neither embarrassed nor abashed, for he walked forward with a smile and grasped the outstretched hand of Mr Callander.

"I really believe you don't remember me, Uncle Peter," he said reproachfully. "I am Brian Pallard, and I must say it was immensely decent of you to send my cousin to meet me."