Читать книгу The Square Emerald - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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LESLIE MAUGHAN came striding briskly along the Thames Embankment. It was a bitterly cold night, and the nutria coat was not proof against the icy northerner which was blowing. The man who walked by her side was head and shoulders taller than she. He had the gait of a soldier, and his umbrella twirled rhythmically to his pace.

"Suicide on the left," he said pleasantly, as though he were a guide pointing out the sights.

The girl checked her pace and looked back. "Really? You don't mean that, Mr. Coldwell?" Her eyes were fixed upon the dark figure sprawling across the parapet, his arms resting on the granite crown, his chin on his hands. He was a gaunt figure of a man, differing in no respect from the waifs who would gather here from midnight onward and strive to snatch a little sleep between the policeman's visits.

"It is any odds," said Mr. Coldwell carefully, "when you see one of these birds watching the river in that way, he is thinking up a new way of settling old accounts. Are you interested—sentimentally?"

She hesitated. "Yes, a little. I don't know whether it's sentiment or just feminine curiosity."

She left his side abruptly and walked back to the man, who may have been watching her out of the corner of his eyes, for he straightened himself up quickly.

"Down and out?" she asked, and heard his soft laugh.

"Down, but not out," he replied, and it was the voice of an educated man, with just a trace of that drawl, the pleasant stigmata which the Universities give to their children. "Did I arouse your compassion? I'm sorry. If you offer me money I shall be rather embarrassed. You will find plenty of poor beggars on this sidewalk who are more worthy objects of —charity. I use the word in its purest sense."

She looked at his face. A slight moustache and a ragged fringe of beard did not disguise his youth. Chief Inspector Coldwell, who had come closer, was watching him with professional interest.

"Would you like to know what I was really thinking about?" There was an odd quality of banter in his voice. "I was thinking about murder. There is a gentleman in this town who has made life rather difficult for me, and I had just decided to walk up to him at the earliest opportunity and pop three automatic bullets through his heart when you disturbed the homicidal current of my thoughts."

Coldwell chuckled.

"I thought I recognized you; you're Peter Dawlish," he said, and the shabby figure lifted his hat with mock politeness.

"Such is fame!" he said sardonically. "And you are Coldwell; the recognition is mutual. And now that I have hopelessly committed myself, I presume you will call the nearest City policeman and put me out of the way of all temptation."

"When did you come out?" asked Coldwell.

The girl listened, staggered. They had been discussing this man not a quarter of an hour before; she had spent the afternoon thinking of him, and now to meet him on that wind-swept pavement, he of all the millions of people in London, was something more than a coincidence. It was fatalistic.

"Mr. Dawlish, I wonder if you will believe me when I say that you're the one man in London I was anxious to meet. I only knew to-day that you were—out. Could you call and see me to-night?"

The man smiled.

"Invitations follow thick and fast," he murmured. "Only ten minutes ago I was asked into a Salvation Army shelter. Believe me, madam—"

"Mr. Dawlish"—her voice was very quiet, but very clear —"you are being awfully sorry for yourself, aren't you?"

She did not see the flush that came to his face.

"I suppose I am," he said, a little gruffly. "But a man is entitled—"

"A man is never entitled to be sorry for himself in any circumstances," she said. "Here is my card."

She had slipped back the cover of her bag, and he took the little pasteboard from her hand, and, bringing it close to his eyes, read, in the dim light that a distant standard afforded.

"Will you come and see me at half-past ten? I shan't offer you money; I won't even offer to find a job for you cutting wood or sorting waste-paper—it is a very much bigger matter than that."

He read the name and superscription again, and his brows met.

"Oh yes—really—yes, if you wish."

He was, of a sudden, awkward and uncomfortable. The girl was quick to recognize the change in his manner and tone.

"I'm afraid I'm rather a scarecrow, but you won't mind that?"

"No," she said, and held out her hand.

He hesitated a second, then took it in his. She felt the hardness of the palm, and winced at the thought of all that these callosities signified. In another second she had joined the waiting Coldwell. Peter Dawlish watched them until they were out of sight, and then, with a little grimace, turned and walked slowly towards Blackfriars.

"I knew about the smallness of the world," said Coldwell, swinging his furled umbrella, "but I had no idea that applied to London. Peter! It's years since I saw him last. He was rather a weed five years ago."

"Do you think he really is a forger?"

"A jury of his fellow-countrymen convicted him," said Mr. Coldwell cautiously, "and juries are generally right. After all, he needed the money; his father was an old skinflint, and you cannot run a hectic establishment and escort pretty ladies to New York on two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. He was a fool; if he hadn't taken that three months' holiday the forgery would never have been discovered."

"Who was she?" Leslie asked; she felt that this question was called for.

"I don't know; the police cherchezed la femme—forgive my mongrel French—but they never ran her to earth. Peter said it was a chorus-girl from the Paris Opera House. He wasn't particularly proud of it."

The girl sighed.

"Women are hell," she said profanely.

"Both places," suggested Mr. Coldwell, and twirled his grey moustache. "Both places!"

Near the dark entrance of Scotland Yard he stopped.

"Now," he said, standing squarely before her, "perhaps you will cease being mysterious, and tell me why you are so frantically interested in Peter Dawlish that you have talked Peter Dawlish for the past three days?"

She looked up at him steadily from under the lowered brim of her hat.

"Because I know just why Peter Dawlish is going to kill and whom he is going to kill," she said.

"Druze—a child would guess that!" scoffed the detective. "And he is going to kill him because he thinks Druze's evidence sent him to gaol."

She was smiling—a broad smile of conscious triumph.

"Wrong!" she said. "If Druze dies, it will he because he doesn't love children!"

Mr. Coldwell could only gaze at her.