Читать книгу The Three Oak Mystery - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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"THE WOODLANDS," John Mandle's home, was delightfully sited on the slope of a hill. Four acres of pine and gorseland surrounded it, and the house itself was invisible from the road.

It stood a mile away from Hindhead and from its sloping lawns John Mandle could command a view over miles of pleasant country.

He sat in his drawing-room, a thick rug over his knees, gazing gloomily through the French windows at the pleasant countryside. A grim grey man with a strong face, and a heavy jaw, he communicated some of his own gloom to his surroundings.

A girl who came in with his letters stood meekly by whilst he glanced through them.

"No wire from Smith," he growled.

"No, father," said the girl quietly.

Socrates Smith had not exaggerated when he described her as lovely. Ordinarily, loveliness is a little inhuman, but this girl radiated humanity. In the presence of her step-father she was chilled, repressed, and as near to being colourless as it was possible for her to be. She feared the man—that was apparent; hated him a little, probably, remembering the hardness of her dead mother's lot and the tyranny which she had inherited.

Mandle had no children of his own and never seemed to feel the need for them. His attitude to the girl was that of a master to a superior servant, and in all the days of their acquaintance he had never once shown her the least tenderness or regard.

His caprice had taken her from a good boarding-school and the pleasant associations of children of her own class and age, and had brought her to the strained atmosphere of "The Woodlands," to the society of a nerve-racked wife and a glowering unreasonable man, who would go for days without speaking a word. She felt that he had cheated her—cheated her of the happiness which her school had brought to her, cheated her of the means by which she could have secured a livelihood and independence, cheated her of all of her faith in men and much of her faith in God.

"Are the two rooms ready?" he barked.

"Yes, father," she replied.

"You have got to do your best to make them comfortable," he ordered. "Socrates Smith is an old friend of mine—I haven't met his brother."

A faint smile played about the corner of the girl's mouth.

"It's a curious name he has," she said.

"If it's good enough for him, it's good enough for you" said John Mandle.

The girl was silent.

"I haven't seen Socrates for ten years," John Mandle went on, and she felt that he was really thinking aloud, for he would not trouble to take the girl into his confidence. "Ten years! A clever fellow—a wonderful fellow!"

She made another attempt to enter into conversation.

"He is a great detective, isn't he?" she asked, and expected to be snapped up, but to her surprise he nodded.

"The greatest and the cleverest in the world—at any rate in England," he said "and from what I hear, his brother is likely to follow in his footsteps."

"Is the brother young?"

John Mandle looked up under his shaggy brows and eyed her coldly.

"He is twenty-five," he said. "Now understand once and for all that I'll have no philandering, Molly."

Molly's lovely face flushed red and her round chin rose with a jerk.

"I am not in the habit of philandering with your guests," she said, her voice trembling with anger. "Why do you say such beastly things to me?"

"That will do," he said, with a jerk of his head.

"It will do for you, but not for me," said the girl hotly. "I have endured your tyranny ever since poor mother's death, and I have come to the end of my patience. You have made this beautiful place a living hell for me, and I will endure it no longer."

"If you don't like it, you can get out," he said, without turning his head.

"That is precisely what I intend doing," she replied more quietly. "I will wait till your guests have gone, and then I will go to London and earn my own living."

"And a nice job you'll make of it," he sneered. "What can you do?"

"Thanks to you I can do nothing," she said. "If you had left me at school I should at least have had an education which would have fitted me for a teacher."

"A teacher," he laughed harshly. "What rubbish you talk, Molly. You understand that if you leave me in the lurch you get not a penny of my money when I die."

"I don't want your money—I have never wanted your money," she cried passionately. "My mother left me a few trinkets—"

"Which I bought her," growled the other. "She had no right to leave my property to you."

"At any rate I haven't seen much of them," replied the girl.

She was turning to leave the room when he called her back.

"Molly," he said, in a softer tone than she had ever heard him use, so unexpectedly gentle that she stopped, "you've got to make allowances for me—I'm a very sick man."

She softened at this.

"I'm sorry, father," she replied. "I ought to have remembered that—are your knees very bad?"

"So bad that I can't stand," he growled. "It is damned annoying this rheumatism coming on when I've invited my old friend down to see me. This means that I shall be in bed for a week. Send the men here and tell them to bring the wheeled chair; I want to go into my study to work."

With the assistance of the gardener and his valet, John Mandle was trundled into a big airy room which he had built at the side of the house on the ground floor level, a room which served as study and bedroom whenever he felt disinclined to mount the stairs to his own room, for he was subject to these rheumatic attacks.

The girl, after seeing him comfortably placed at his table, went about her household duties.

Mandle's chair was on the lawn before the house when Socrates Smith and his brother drove up that afternoon.

"Hullo," said Soc, surprised, "what's the matter with you, John?"

"This infernal rheumatism," snarled the other. "I'm glad to see you, Socrates, you look just about the same."

"This is my brother," said Socrates, and the younger man shook hands.

They did not see the girl until Lexington had wheeled the chair into the drawing-room for tea, and the sight of her took the young man's breath away.

"She's wonderful, Socrates," he said enthusiastically when they were alone after the meal.

"She's divine! Did you ever see such eyes, and the skin—my heavens! it's as pure and as speckless as a rose-leaf: and did you notice her wonderful carriage—"

"Oh, Lex, you make me tired," said Socrates wearily, "to think that I should have brought you down here and undone the work of years. After having kept you sheltered from the wiles of females—"

"Oh, shut up," said Lexington. "You know jolly well she's beautiful."

"She isn't bad," admitted the cautious Socrates; "to me she's just a girl."

"You're a heathen and a Philistine," snapped his brother.

"I can't be both," said the philosophical Soc. "What I did notice—" He stopped, out of loyalty to his friend.

"What was that?" asked Lexington, expectantly. "The way he treated her?"

Socrates nodded.

"He's a bully," said Lex, emphatically; "and a man who can be so lost to a sense of decency that he talks to a girl like that, as if she were a dog, is beyond my understanding. Did you hear him snarl at her about the sugar?"

"I think he hates her," said Socrates, thoughtfully, "and I'm pretty certain that she hates him. It is an interesting household, because John Mandle is scared."

"Scared?"

Soc Smith nodded, for he had seen the fear of death in John Mandle's eyes.