Читать книгу The Man Who Changed His Name - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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NITA would have been glad to escape the ordeal of lunch with her husband, but she did not dare to excuse herself. She must not, she told herself, on any account give him reason to suspect that she was avoiding him or was ill at ease with him or was being anything hut perfectly natural; but the half hour at the luncheon table put a strain on her nerves which was almost more than she could bear. Selby seemed anxious to make himself as pleasant as possible, and talked to her as he always talked, but she could not rid her mind of the thought that he was all the time talking with a definite purpose. Behind every remark that he made she suspected some ulterior motive; in every seemingly innocent question she feared a trap. She hesitated before answering, knew that she had hesitated, and wondered whether her husband had noticed her hesitation. She was conscious of being awkward and unnatural, of talking in a forced, stilted way, and felt that he could hardly fail to detect that she was not at her ease and to draw his own conclusions. She found it difficult, too, to keep her attention forced on what he was saying. She did not want to talk; she wanted to think. For the first time since she had known him she felt that she would have been glad for old Sir Ralph Whitcombe to be sitting at the table, prosing away in that monotonous manner of his about something which, as far as she could see, was not of the least importance to anybody. He would, at any rate, have kept Selby occupied and given her a chance to think.

She had so much to think about if only she could get a chance. There was Frank. She had tried to keep all thoughts of Frank from her mind since she had shot the small silver bolt last night. She had told herself then that by that action she had definitely bolted him out of her life. But she realized that Frank would have to be thought about some time. He would be here at Sunningbourne this afternoon, and there would have to be some sort of settlement between them. He had hurt her atrociously, and the pain at first had made her terribly bitter against him. Too bitter, perhaps. A man did not see these things from the same point of view as a woman, and he would probably be surprised to learn that he had hurt her or done anything atrocious. He would think her, she supposed, appallingly old-fashioned and squeamish, and perhaps a little unreasonable. Men always expected everyone to be reasonable, which only went to show that they could sometimes be very unreasonable themselves. Selby, for instance, would refuse to believe her if she told him what had actually occurred at the Laffan last night, because he would not think it reasonable. She could not help smiling as the thought struck her that both Selby and O'Ryan, seeing the affair from their own points of view, would agree on the fact that she had not been reasonable.

The meal seemed interminable, and once or twice she had a vague suspicion that Selby was purposely prolonging it; but it was over at last, and she got up eagerly, intending to seek sanctuary in the garden. There was coffee, however, in the library, and since she had always had a cup of coffee and a cigarette in the library after lunch, she did not venture to break the usual routine. And before she had finished her cigarette Muller was announced—broad-shouldered, grey-haired, with a pair of piercing blue eyes that held a genial twinkle, and a voice that boomed. As he came striding into the room, gripped her husband's hand, slapped him on the back, and boomed out that he was darned glad to set eyes on the old scoundrel again, Nita reflected that to try bluffing Mr. Muller would be a foolhardy sort of enterprise, and that if there were trouble of any sort about she would rather have him with her than against her. He turned to her and took her hand.

"I'm happy to meet you again, Mrs. Clive," he said. "I missed you last trip. Thought I should miss you this trip, too."

Nita smiled.

"But you're not going back yet?"

"Early next week—through New York."

"Not even staying for Ascot?"

He shook his head.

"Horses don't mean a darned thing to me, Mrs. Clive," he said; "and I guess I'd feel too conspicuous in a grey topper. Besides, I've a whole lot of work to do in town." He stood eyeing her keenly for a moment and then turned with a smile to Selby. "It's a poor sort of husband, Selby," he said, "who knows less about his wife than his lawyer knows. It's the left cheek, as I was willing to bet you. If you ever feel inclined to get rid of your husband, Mrs. Clive, just bear in mind that, on the other side of the Atlantic, for a husband not to know on which cheek his wife's mole is situated would be deemed sufficient grounds for a divorce. Still, I'd stick to old Selby if I were you. He's a steady old horse, and you might do a lot worse."

Selby smiled.

"You'd have known her, Jerry?"

"I'd have picked her out of a thousand, man," replied Muller. "I never forget a face. I guess I'd have made a first-rate club porter."

"And is that nearly all about me?" laughed Nita.

"You must forgive me, Mrs. Clive," said Muller. "I'm forgetting my English manners. But your husband was so darned disbelieving when I told him on the telephone that I'd know you again anywhere that I had to prove him wrong. So you've been to Scotland, Mrs. Clive?"

Nita nodded.

"Back this morning—and glad it's over."

"The silly girl came back by the day train," explained Selby, "which meant she arrived in London dog-tired and had to go to the Laffan for the night. And she didn't even trouble to telephone her husband."

"You're staying at the Laffan, too, aren't you, Mr. Muller?"

"I always do. The Carlton's a little too central for me. So you were there last night, Mrs. Clive?"

"We usually stay there," Selby explained. "They give us the same suite and always make us very comfortable. Funny you two didn't see each other."

"I don't see that it's funny," said Nita. "It's a huge hotel. I've often found I was staying there at the same time as people I know, yet wasn't aware of it till a long time after. You don't see every guest in a hotel when you spend a night there."

"And he's no way of knowing that I didn't see you— eh, Mrs. Clive?" said Muller.

"Did you?" she asked quickly.

"And for all your husband knows," added Muller, "you and I may have had dinner together. But it's all right, Selby, I can reassure you on that point. Mrs. Clive certainly didn't dine with me last night. No doubt she'd choose something younger than me for a dinner partner."

Nita gave him a quick, searching glance, but gathered nothing from his face. Had he seen her or hadn't he? If he hadn't, why all this talk about the Laffan? Was it deliberate? Muller and Selby were old friends, and men were queer like that; they would always forget their chivalry and side with their friend, right or wrong, against a woman. To a man, a woman who disagreed with his friend was inevitably in the wrong....

"Mind you, Selby," added Muller, "from what I know of you, if your wife went off and had dinner with some other man, you'd only have yourself to blame. There never was a man less capable of looking after what belongs to him than you are. If you don't want that sort of thing to happen you shouldn't allow her to go gallivanting off to Scotland without you and staying at the Laffan—"

Nita cut him short.

"Have you visited the Tower of London, Mr. Muller?" she inquired, smiling. "Or the Zoo, or Westminster Abbey, or Madame Tussaud's, or—"

"None of them. Much too busy. Why?"

"Only that any one of them is much more interesting to talk about than the Laffan Hotel," she laughed. She went towards the French windows. "I expect you really want to talk business—acres and leases and sites and—and plots—don't you, Mr. Muller? I'll leave you to it. I'm going down to the lower garden, if you should want me, Selby."

"I wouldn't, my dear, if I were you," said Selby casually, seating himself at his desk.

She glanced at him in surprise.

"Why not?"

"It's very hot, and you're tired already, and if you spend the afternoon down there in the sun you'll only suffer for it."

Nita smiled.

"Selby has taken to heart what you said, Mr. Muller," she laughed, "and is starting to look after what belongs to him."

Clive shrugged his shoulders.

"You must do as you please, my dear," he said, "but if you take my advice you'll keep out of the lower garden. You'd be far wiser to go up to your room and have a rest. Still, if you prefer to risk a splitting headache—"

"I'll take the risk, not the advice," she laughed, and went out through the French windows.

Muller seated himself in a chair beside the desk and deliberately lighted a cigar.

"Now, listen to me, Selby," he began. "I'm your lawyer, and if you don't think your lawyer knows better than you do, you're a darned fool if you don't sack him. About this Tamagari property. You're crazy. If I'd dreamed you'd want to do a fool thing like this—"

Selby Clive smiled and shook his head.

"You've a bee in your bonnet over the Tamagari property, Jerry," he said. "The land has been surveyed—I've got the report here ready to show you—and if there's silver on it, it's only in such small quantities that it isn't worth the expense of doing anything about it."

"Huh!" grunted Muller. "Let's have a look at your precious report."

He took the document from Clive, opened it, and spent some minutes carefully inspecting it.

"Huh!" He tossed the document aside. "To read this report you'd think there was no silver in Canada at all, let alone on your property. Besides, this is ten years old."

"If there was no silver there ten years ago, Jerry, there's no silver there now. The engineer who made the survey—"

"Who was he?" demanded Muller. He picked up the document, turned the page, and made a grimace. "Vinereau! Good God!"

"What's wrong with Vinereau?"

"Nothing, I guess, except that he was generally drunk and died in delirium tremens. You're not accepting him as an authority? If he had found silver he wouldn't have known it."

"A pretty good metallurgist in his day, Jerry."

"Sure," agreed Muller. "But you can take it from me that this"—tapping the report—"wasn't his day." He opened his attaché case, took out a document, and tossed it on the desk. "Well, there's the lease, Selby. It'll need to be registered at Canada House. But remember that if you're fool enough to sign it, it's dead against my advice. Still, if you're set on being a philanthropist, I guess it's no use wasting any more breath on you. You were always a sentimental old fool, and it's too late now, I suppose, to think of curing you."

Clive smiled.

"Young O'Ryan is a decent sort of fellow, Jerry," he said, "and I'd like to do him a good turn if it's possible."

"You'll be doing him a good turn all right. You'll be leasing him silver at the price of lumber, and I guess he won't lie awake at nights thinking how unkind you've been to him. You always did have an unholy horror of anyone thinking you'd been hard-hearted enough to look after your own interests, didn't you? Damn it, man, just for once, set your teeth and be businesslike. Lease him the lumber and keep the mineral rights for yourself."

"It's not worth while, Jerry."

"It's worth a million dollars."

The other shook his head.

"Get the idea out of your head that there's silver in Tamagari, Jerry," he said. "There isn't. Vinereau may have been all you say, but I'm not relying only on his report. O'Ryan has had the land surveyed—by a friend of his—and the report says there's no sign of minerals." Muller removed his cigar from his mouth and smiled at it.

"Sure," he said. "And that settles it—eh, Selby? Well, if I were a buyer, I'd naturally hire a friend who would find no sign of minerals. If he did, he'd be no friend of mine. All right; have it your own way. There's no reason why you shouldn't give away a million dollars if it'll make you happy."

"You're a suspicious old devil, Jerry."

"I'm a lawyer," said Muller, "and a lawyer's job is to make provision against something that couldn't possibly happen. It's generally the first thing that does happen. If you've forgotten that, Selby, you've got a darned bad memory. Who is this O'Ryan fellow?"

"He's a gentleman, anyway. Rather amusing. Nita finds him terribly amusing."

"Huh! I don't like wives who are terribly amused. Start a woman laughing and you never know where she'll finish."

Clive frowned. "When you talk like that, Jerry, you make me ill."

"I'm the only misogynist I've ever met."

"Since when? Don't tell me you hate women."

"No, I don't hate 'em," admitted Muller, "but I should hate to like 'em. There was a fortune-teller in a bazaar at Montreal who said I'd be married twice. M'm! I wasn't satisfied till I'd got him a month's hard labour. It ought to have been ten years: I did my best."

"You probably will marry twice," said Clive. "It's the thing that can't possibly happen that generally happens first, Jerry. I never dreamed that I should marry twice, but I did."

He rose from his desk and began pacing the room. Muller's shrewd blue eyes followed him.

"Anyway, Selby, there's no sense now in wishing you hadn't."

Clive paused, frowning.

"Listen, Jerry," he said. "We're old pals and can be perfectly frank with each other. You don't like Nita."

"The one thing that it's not safe for a man to be frank about even with an old pal is to disillusion him about his womenfolk." He waved his cigar deprecatingly. "Anyway, I don't understand women, my boy, and that's all there is to it. I'm the only man I've ever met who doesn't understand 'em and who admits it. Anyway, I guess a man's wife is his own private load of mischief."

"Nita's not terribly in love with me," said Clive, talking more to himself, it seemed, than to his friend. "I've always known that and—made allowances. I'm not the sort of man to inspire that kind of love. Women aren't afraid of me; and you can't love people unless you're a little bit afraid of them."

"You're crazy. Fear's hate."

"It's love, too," said Clive thoughtfully. "There's no love without fear of something or other, Jerry—fear of losing a man, hurting him, displeasing him, rousing him. If a woman isn't afraid of you she probably despises you, and then—"

He paused, frowning thoughtfully. Muller rose. "Well, that seems a pretty easy way of making yourself solid with a woman," he said with a smile. "All you gotta do is to sit down and pull faces at her."

He went up to Clive and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Now, listen," he said gravely. "You think I'm a damned interfering old busybody, don't you? Well, I guess you're right. You're not the only one who thinks that, but I shan't lie awake at nights fretting over it. I'm your lawyer as well as your friend, and a lawyer's no sort of right to call himself a lawyer if he shirks telling unpleasant truths to his client, any more than a friend has any right to call himself a friend if he's afraid of getting a snub for straight talking. Fortunately, I've a toughish sort of hide, and provided you listen to what I'm telling you, you can let off at me as much as you like afterwards. And I'm telling you, as I told you on the telephone this morning, that if you aren't clean crazy you'll have the whole thing out with your wife once and for all. There's only one way to deal with a woman—"

Clive cut him short with a gesture.

"Thanks, Jerry," he said. "You've done your bit in telling me what you have told me, and I'm grateful. But it's entirely a matter between Nita and myself, and you must leave me to deal with it in my own way." Muller shrugged and turned away.

"If you're going to sign this damn-fool lease," he said, "I'll phone Canada House and have a word with them about the registration."

Clive nodded.

"You'll find the telephone in the hall."

Muller picked up the document from the desk and went towards the door. He paused, with his hand on the knob, and glanced back at Clive as he stood staring thoughtfully into the garden.

"Selby, you may not scare your wife," he said, "but you scare me sometimes."