Читать книгу The Gunner - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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For two days Margaret Leferre moved in a world of hideous unreality. Strange people interviewed her: a tall, big-framed man, who was strangely sympathetic in his heavy way, a bank manager who talked wildly and incomprehensibly until Danty appeared and whisked him off.

One thunderous fact hammered night and day at her weary brain—Rex was dead by his own hand, and the man she was to marry, the man who, frantic with anxiety, was calling three times a day and being refused admission to her, was the cause.

Money was his god!

It was hard to adjust her views of him, harder still to comprehend the callous brutality that had sent a young soul wandering into the eternal night.

This engagement of hers had been a thing of natural growth: the families had been friends for years; she had known Luke Maddison since she was a child. There had been no sudden meeting, no violent kindling of a consuming flame—she hardly remembered the time she did not like him—but could not place her finger upon the month and the year when liking was love.

This was the real calamity of her situation if only she could realize it. She remembered now all that Rex had said of him—he was a 'tight wad'...She had always thought Luke was generous to a point of imbecility. But that was the facet he presented to her—men knew better. She set her teeth and brought herself to asking a question of Danty, who had come strangely near to her in these ugly days.

Danty shrugged his shoulders.

"I am afraid it is a fact—Maddison thinks too much about money. I saw him the other day, and the only thing he said about Rex was how lucky for everybody it was that Rex was insured." (Here he spoke the truth, for Luke had referred to the insurance as a protection against the girl being saddled with her brother's debts.) "He is fanatical on the point. Naturally he doesn't appear that way to you. You are his second obsession." He saw her wince and went on quickly: "That is a horrible thing to say, but it is true—except that I am not so sure that at the moment you aren't the first." It was after this that her cold hatred of the man whose name she was to bear began to take definite shape. She could not know how much this almost insane resentment owed its growth to the ingenuity of her new counsellor.

Danty was clever—diabolically ingenious. He thought quickly, planned quickly, acted as he planned. The idea came to him on the night of Rex's death. It seemed too fantastic for accomplishment. He allowed the whirling nebula of it to retain its shapelessness until he had sounded her. If she loved Maddison in the proper way, she would take a view charitable to his intentions; she would endorse, however halfheartedly, the conventional mercy of a coroner's jury and put Rex's letter in the category of his minor derangements. This would have dissolved the nebula of Mr Morell's plan to nothingness. But he found Margaret in a mood to believe the worst, receptive, indeed eager. And then the nebula solidified into form.

"Money is his god," was his text; he worked harder on that theme than he had ever worked in the days when he lived on the credulity of chance-found strangers.

All the tricks of his profession, all the eloquent persuasions which can be best exercised by innuendo rather than bald statement, all the craft of suggestion—they were exercised.

"At the moment, I should imagine he is so keen to marry you that he would sacrifice every penny he has. I honestly believe that if you asked him to assign you his fortune—as of course you could in your ante-nuptial contract...I mean, it is frequently done—he would sign without hesitation. He would hate it afterwards, and I dare say the honeymoon wouldn't be over before he induced you to reassign every penny to him. I often wonder what some of these over-generous lovers would feel like if their wives refused to be so accommodating..."

She stared past him through the window. She was lovely; it was not the bold loveliness of Millie Haynes, who died in an infirmary, but something so delicate and unblemished that it caught his breath. He allowed his eyes to rove the field of her physical perfections. He was gambling on her strength of character—on Luke Maddison's weakness. There was something of the weakling in Luke, or he was greatly mistaken—and Mr Danton Morell was seldom wrong in his appraisement of men.

"It is almost incredible," she said slowly. "If I thought..." The nebula had not only solidified, it was shaped.

"About money being Maddison's god?" His tone was one of surprise: he was almost hurt that this characteristic of her fiancé was not as patent to her as to himself. "Good Lord! I could give you a dozen proofs..." He supplied, not a dozen, but sufficient. Danty's inventive power needed the least stimulation.

"I know a man in Norfolk—one of Maddison's best friends...Maddison was landed with a block of shares in an oil field that had practically run dry. One night he asked this fellow to dinner, and before the night was over had transferred nearly a hundred thousand perfectly worthless shares to a man who trusted him as...well, as you trust him! Another case—and this was common property in the City—was a man who..." The second lie came as glibly as the first. It was all very crude, and on a balanced mind must have produced no effect but scornful unbelief. A week before, had he dared presume upon the mushroom friendship, he would have found himself on the wrong side of the door. But Rex lay shrouded in a mortuary chamber, and a coroner's officer was already gathering twelve good men and true to pass judgment on the mind that had willed a revolver to explode.

Danty saw the red lips grow straighter...

He had a servant who was a sometime confederate. Pi Coles had been a cardsharper until providence smote his hands with rheumatoid. He was an undersized little man, completely bald, with a face wrinkled with pain and age. To him Danty confided most of this thoughts—but obliquely, for he never mentioned names.

"It's queer, Pi, how the mugs fall for any good story! Do you remember when you and I were on the same landing in Strangeways Gaol? Doesn't seem eight years ago, and here am I in society, giving advice to people with hundreds of thousands—people who know the top-notchers!"

"You always was a gentleman, Larry—I've never known you when you didn't dress for dinner," said the sycophantic Pi.

"Not so much of the 'Larry'," warned Mr Morell.

He could sit in his comfortable room and muse on the favours which fate had shown to him. His position was not altogether unique—had not a famous confidence man once been the guest of an Illustrious Foreign Personage and been presented at one of the few European courts as a friend of Royalty?

It was the third day following the tragedy. The twelve good men and true were to be assembled that afternoon. It was not the happiest day in Danty's life. A message came to him the night before from Luke Maddison, and there was something peremptory, almost unfriendly, in the summons; and what it was all about Danty knew too well, only he had hoped that his presence at the bank one snowy afternoon had been unobserved by the cashier.

Luke had his office in Pall Mall, an out-of-the-way place for a man engaged in financial transactions; but Maddison's Bank had owned the site on which the modern building stood for two hundred years, and that modest room overlooking Waterloo Place had been the "master office" from those far-off days when they overlooked a country vista.

Luke had been at his office since eight o'clock, an hour before the arrival of the staff, and here his bearded manager found him, sitting at his table, his head in his hands, his personal letters unopened.

Maddison looked up with a start as the manager entered.

"Hullo!" he said awkwardly. "Is there anything wrong?" There were many things wrong from the point of view of Mr Stiles, that shrewd man of affairs. He laid a small sheaf of papers on the table and detailed the contents of the documents briefly.

"Here are four or five transactions that ought to be closed today, Mr Maddison. I am rather worried about them. The Gulanga Oil account should be settled. We made a very considerable loss there."

Luke nodded impatiently. "Settle it," he said. "No message from—from Miss Leferre?" It was a stupid question to ask, for he had a private 'phone and he knew that any message that came from Margaret would be put through to him direct.

The manager shook his head gloomily. "A bad business, sir. I have not spoken to you about it because I realize how badly you must be feeling. The Northern and Southern have been on the 'phone again this morning about that cheque—you remember they queried the signature yesterday?"

"Yes, yes." Luke's usually gentle voice was harsh. "Tell the manager it is all right."

"I told him yesterday, as a matter of fact." Mr Stiles was inclined to linger on a subject which was hateful to the other. In desperation Luke reverted to the question of the Gulanga Oil Concession, and for once Mr Stiles' fatherly interest in the business irritated him.

"Of course, sir, I know that Maddisons is as sound as a bell of brass, but there is no getting away from the fact that we have been making rather heavy losses during the past six months, and I am afraid I shall have to call upon your reserves. Personally," he went on, oblivious of Luke's growing resentment, "I have always believed we made a mistake in not selling out to a joint stock concern. In private banking businesses the personal security plays too big a part for my liking—" Mercifully the house 'phone rang at that moment.

Luke snatched up the receiver and listened with a frown. "Yes, show him in, please." And, as he replaced the receiver: "I am seeing Mr Morell and I do not wish to be interrupted," he said.

Mr Stiles made a little grimace. He had been all his life in the firm of Maddison & Sons, and he did not feel called upon to disguise his dislike of the caller. "There is something about that fellow that I dislike very much, Mr Maddison. I hope we are not going to carry his account?"

Luke shook his head and nodded towards the door.

Mr Danton Morell came into an atmosphere which he, sensitive to such matters, realized was charged with hostility. Nevertheless he was his smiling self, and laid his carefully brushed silk hat upon the table. Luke did not fail to notice that he wore a mourning tie, and that, for some reason, was a further strain upon his jangled nerves.

"Sit down, will you?" His manner and voice were brusque. "You were a friend of poor Rex?"

Danty inclined his head sorrowfully. "Yes, I was completely in his confidence," he said. "I think I told you the day following his unfortunate—"

Luke cut short the recollection. "Were you so much in his confidence that you accompanied him to the Northern and Southern Bank three days ago when he cashed a cheque for eighteen thousand five hundred pounds?"

Danty opened his eyes wide in well-simulated surprise. "Why, of course," he said. "Rex had made very heavy losses in the City, and advised him to see you. I understood you gave him a cheque for that amount—"

"Did he tell you that?" Luke's blue eyes did not leave the man's face.

"Certainly. Why, what was wrong? I saw the cheque myself."

There was an uncomfortable pause, and then: "Did you see him sign it?" asked Luke deliberately.

Danty's gaze did not falter. "I am afraid I do not understand you," he said evenly. "I saw him endorse it—"

"My name was forged to it. I did not give Rex a cheque for that amount. I have been making enquiries. I find that he was heavily involved in a derelict West African gold-mining syndicate, most of the shares in which you bought for a song less than a year ago. He has been buying these shares on margin and they have been steadily dropping in value. On the day he paid you eighteen thousand five hundred pounds there came another demand for a larger amount."

Danty's heart sank, though he gave no visible evidence of his perturbation. This man knew more than he had dreamed could be known. Here was a crisis in Mr Morell's affairs which might easily lead him to ruin and bring undone all those fine schemes of his.

"I do not exactly know what you are suggesting," he said. "My interest in the company is a very slight one, and I was horrified when I learnt that Rex had been gambling in the shares. I give you the fullest permission to make any investigation you wish."

Luke opened the drawer of his desk and took out a cheque. From where he sat Danty thought the signature was a tolerably good forgery. He had thought so when Rex had brought the cheque to him. It is the simplest thing in the world to forge a name, and so far as he had been able to judge there were no flaws in Rex Leferre's essay in that dangerous game.

"You realize what is wrong with this cheque?" asked Luke.

The other shook his head. "Are you suggesting that I knew that cheque was forged?" he asked.

Before he could reply there was a tap at the door and Luke looked up angrily.

"Come in," he said.

It was the apologetic manager. "I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Maddison, but will you see Mr Bird of Scotland Yard?" In spite of his self-possession Danty half-rose from his seat. The Sparrow was the last man in the world he wanted to meet that morning.

Luke thought for a while.

"Just a moment."