Читать книгу The Coat of Arms - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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ANNA JEANS played tennis most proficiently. She played golf; she rode. In the week that followed Dick's costume was mainly riding-breeches and top-boots in the morning, and flannels in the afternoon. She played the piano rather well—Dick remembered that he had once had an aspiration to become a concert singer.

Keith Keller went over to the "Coat of Arms" for tea, and met her. Marie thought she was rather lovely. Keith did not like the type.

"What type do you like?"

They were strolling back through the plantation to the Hall. His hand readied down and took hers, but she disengaged herself quickly.

"Eddie's around," was all she said.

Eddie, in truth, was at the other end of the plantation. He saw nothing except the two young people walking towards him. When he met his wife, she was looking rather bored, and his new-found friend was explaining just why Arranways should not have been built near the road, but away back in the middle of the park.

"Exactly," said Eddie. "That is my contention."

Mr. Keller knew it was his contention; he had listened for hours whilst his lordship had enlarged upon the lunacy of his Tudor ancestors, who had decided to build the great house so near to the post-road that in the old days the guards of the coaches which plied between London and Guildford could throw their mail-bags over the wall. He had listened and profited by his listening. Mr. Keller had a remarkable memory, which seldom failed him. He had, too, a trick of reproducing other men's arguments without robbing them of their credit.

In the days that followed he haunted the library, assimilated every printed allusion of his host; for Lord Arranways had a passion for private publication, and one shelf was filled with calf-bound reports, recommendations, views and theses, official and unofficial.

His diplomatic career had not been wholly successful. They said of him at the Foreign Office, as they said at the India Office, that he suffered from notions. Eddie was engaged at the moment in preparing an authoritative work on Indian reform, and was bearable because in the main he was invisible in the daytime, and so tired at night that they saw very little of him.

Dick spent a lot of time at the "Coat of Arms". At week-ends it was rather overcrowded, and the big paved yard a little too full of cars. But in the midweek, when the revellers went back to town, it was rather a haven of peace for Dick, for there was none to dispute his claim to the tennis-court, and in the evenings after dinner, when he called in, Anna Jeans was there to accompany him in the songs he generally began but never finished.

There came a night when the household of Arranways Hall went to bed rather early. Dick returned at eleven to find one servant waiting for him. Half an hour later there was only one light in the house, and that the light in Dick's room. The old man who stood in the shadow of the plantation watched and watched until the light disappeared. He waited half an hour and then moved stealthily, and, availing himself of every patch of shadow, he came round to the back of the house.

The clouds which had obscured the moon had rolled away, and it was almost as clear as daylight when he crossed the strip of lawn which separated him from his objective.

With remarkable agility for a man of his years, he hoisted himself up to a window-sill, holding fast to the gnarled brandies of the ivy which ran up the side of the house, and, gripping the bag with his teeth, he drew himself up hand over hand till he swung himself over a stone balcony. Facing him was a long narrow casement window, in which were laid four colourful escutcheons. Taking a small chisel from his pocket, he worked steadily, noiselessly and patiently. It was the way he had come before —the only window in the Hall to which, for some reason, no burglar alarm had been fixed.

Presently he pushed, the window opened, and in another instant he was inside. He stopped to close the casement gently, and waited, listening. He heard a sound and drew back into the alcove. A door in the corridor opened and a man in pyjamas looked out cautiously. Keith Keller did not so much as glance towards the window: he was peering along the dark passage towards the head of the grand staircase. He went back into his room and closed the door without a sound. The old man waited, his hand fingering the hair of his long, white beard.

He was going to move, when he heard another noise. Somebody was in the passage walking slowly towards him. It was a woman. She came into the diffused, mysterious rays of the moonlight... Lady Arranways. Over her nightdress she wore a tightly fitting dressing-jacket that reached to below her knees. In one white hand she held a lighted cigarette.

She stopped and looked back the way she had come; then she went to Keller's door and knocked gently. Instantly the door opened. The old man heard a whisper of voices and she went in. He stood motionless, heard the door close, and the faint click of the key in the lock. Then, moving from his hiding-place, he shuffled along the corridor of the silent house, seemingly oblivious of the treachery he had witnessed.