Читать книгу Flat 2 - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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Not many days after her escape from Louba's flat, the same girl stood talking in a low voice to a man in white overalls. The man held a test-tube in his hand, and a broad patch of purple lay across his heavy and unprepossessing face, thrown by a lingering ray of sun slanting through the violet panes of the window.

He kept his eyes on the tube, as though prepared for interruption and desirous of appearing engrossed in his work. The girl herself only leaned inside the door, whispering hastily.

'If you understand, you'd better go now,' he said, without turning his head. 'We don't want to be seen talking together.'

'No. I'm afraid he's seen us before.' She swung round, and started as she met the grave kindly eyes of the one man she least desired to find her there. 'Why, Daddy...I didn't hear you. I just looked in the laboratory to see if you were here,' she stammered. 'Won't you come and have some tea before you start work?'

'Yes, Kate. I came to see if you were going to give me any. I was afraid you were out.' He spoke a few words to his assistant, then walked with the girl to the living-rooms.

'I used to think you didn't care for Berry,' he observed, a short while afterwards, as he sat drinking tea.

'Well, I didn't at first,' she replied. '...But I think it was only his manner I misunderstood.'

'That might well be. He had a great deal to learn there; though he's a good worker...a bit irregular in his hours lately, and...'

He wrinkled up his forehead, pursing his lips dubiously.

He said no more to the girl, but he had growing doubts of the integrity of his assistant, Mr. Charles Berry. Valuable equipment had disappeared from the laboratory since Berry's coming.

The girl rose early the next morning and wrote a letter which she put in her handbag. Going out, she met the housekeeper.

'Why, Miss Kate, you're never going out so early?' exclaimed the woman. 'Before breakfast?'

'Yes, I am. I'm going to Covent Garden to buy some flowers, and then I'm meeting a friend. Perhaps I shall stay out to lunch, too,' she replied, hastening to the door.

'Well, she does do some strange things,' soliloquised the woman, as she watched Kate out of sight.

The letter which the girl had written was delivered at the house the following morning and the envelope bore the Dover postmark.

Charles Berry did not come to work on the day that Kate left, nor was he seen at his employer's house again.

Inquiries elicited no news of him, but the girl whose dislike of him had been succeeded by civility and hurried conferences was steeping her romantic soul in the East which had for so long filled her dreams, and it was Louba who sat beside her, looking down on the flat-roofed town, with its maze of narrow streets, its medley of colour and costume, scorching under the midday sun. Beyond the town lay a dust-hued plain over which a faint line marked the slow progress of a camel caravan.

'Oh, I can't believe it—I can't believe it's real, even yet!' Kate ejaculated.

'It is very real,' he answered, with deep satisfaction. 'You have left stagnation behind, and are just beginning to live. I knew we should be in the East together, one day.'

'How could you know? I—'

'Because I wished to bring you here, and I always get what I want. I meant to take you away from that fellow...and I have done so.'

'Jimmy?'

'Yes.' His teeth showed viciously as he spoke the word.

'Why, Emil, you say it as if you hate him.'

He laughed softly. 'No. It is not worth my while to hate those who cross me. It is sufficient that I always get the better of them.'

'But Jimmy has never done you any injury?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Jimmy, as you call him, does not exist. Let us talk of some-t'ing else.'

They went down into the bazaar towards sundown where she revelled in the sights and sounds and smells, all equally delightful to her infatuated imagination. Even the filthy beggars, in their nondescript tatters of clothing, were powerless to offend her. Were they not truly of the East?

The bargaining, the frequent pretence of breaking off negotiations, the raised hands and protestations when Louba made an offer for the things which caught his or his companion's fancy, all captivated her. It was the Eastern method of buying and selling, and as such it was delightful.

She resented the intrusion of anything English, and therefore viewed with hostile eyes the obviously English man who tugged furtively at her sleeve when Louba had disappeared within the low dark opening leading to the inside stores of the vendor whose varied goods she was examining.

'Excuse me, but is it all right with you?' asked the man, in a manner at once timid and eager. 'You seem to be without friends here...with Louba. This is a long way from England, and—'

'It is a long way, but I don't think that a sufficient excuse for impertinence,' returned Kate, flushing. 'I don't know you.'

'No; but you see I know Louba, and you don't look as if you do.'

'I know him well enough to be content with his...friendship, without requiring the advice of a stranger,' she said, moving away.

She was the more angry because of that burning flush on her face, the keen sense of her position, according to Western ideas, brought back to her by this reminder of home, and all the conventions she had overthrown. She told herself it was like being wakened from the exotic joys of a gorgeous dream by the sound of a suburban milkman.

'Yes, I know I'm a stranger,' said the mild voice. 'And I don't ask you to trust or confide in me, only I would suggest to you that you go back home. Whatever your home is like and whatever awaits your return, leave Louba, my dear, and go back before you lose heart, and while life still seems worth another effort.'

Before she could find any reply his mild eyes glanced past her and he darted backwards, out of sight round a pile of carpets and mats, up one of the narrow alleyways running from the main thoroughfare of the bazaar.

It was Louba who had frightened him away. He had come to the doorway and stood beside the youth who was in charge of the place, and he was looking at a customer who strode away through the meandering throng with something held close under his arm, and a suggestion of tremendous haste in his step.

'Somet'ing interesting about that,' observed Louba, as he rejoined Kate. 'A tawdry t'ing, of no value, yet he has given a ridiculous price for it and made off as if he were afraid they would take it from him. Look at the boy!'

The boy, otherwise the proprietor's son, was rubbing his hands gleefully as he watched the tall form of his late customer disappear. A moment later, he was telling the tale of his good bargain to his father who, blear-eyed and soiled, listened with an indifference that quickly changed to anger.

'What, he offered that for it, and you let him have it for double the price?' he cried, according to Louba's quick translation to Kate. 'He offered that?—in the beginning?—and you let him have it for double, dolt!'

'But, that was a dozen times more than it was worth!'

'How do you know that, fool? Would he have offered six times its value at the first if it were only worth what we thought? Fool, dolt! He so anxious to get it that he—! Oh, why was I cursed with such a son!'

Leaving the old man to his lamentations, Louba and Kate resumed their walk.

'What was it?' asked Kate.

'Just a casket stitched over with beads and stuck with coloured glass.' His eyes were narrowed. If there was anything to be gained, he disliked another than himself to be the gainer. 'M'm. I should much like to know the meaning of that.'

Kate was less gay on the homeward journey than she had been when they set out. Though she recalled it with anger and resentment, yet the episode with the little Englishman had dimmed the brightness of her romance.

The sun was sinking as they climbed the low hill; looking back, the town appeared flat and drab. She drew closer to Louba.

'I do hate those little insignificant men,' she said, and he pressed her arm against his side. She did not tell him that she was expressing her dislike of another, not her admiration of himself.

She listened with even more than her usual avidity to his extravagant compliments and conceits, clinging the more passionately to her romance because of the chill touch of reality which had approached it.

Though she was smiling when they reached the walled-in garden of the house on the hill, she halted with a sudden start as the figure of Charles Berry loomed before them. She shrank against Louba, glimpsing the hate in the man's eyes, though he raised them to her for but a moment. If she had tried to forget her aversion for him, he had not forgotten her former slights.

Her new-found smile froze. She shivered.

'Let's go in,' she said to Louba. 'I'm cold.'