Читать книгу The Road to London - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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RAIN was happening rather than falling as the mud-covered racing car turned into the smelly drabness of Seven Sisters Road. There was just enough mist to surround every street lamp with a ghostly nimbus, just enough rain to keep the ground mist in movement.

The big machine roared up the glassy hill to Finsbury, skidding a little on the tramlines and more than a little when the brakes went on in obedience to the traffic policeman's signal. The driver, wet to the skin, stared gloomily ahead. His unshaven face was ludicrously mud-stained. The red-bearded man huddled up by his side scarcely opened his weary eyes. He had touched the deeps of physical discomfort: wet, chilled to the bone, every muscle in his body aching, he could sleep—if such a coma into which periodic flashes of reality penetrated could be called sleep.

The policeman waved them on, and with a splutter the car headed for the Holloway Road; came presently to the gloom of the Outer Circle about Regent's Park, turned through the gate that leads to Avenue Road, and stopped in the middle of the road before a small house that stood apart from its fellows. The passenger was nudged to wakefulness and, climbing down, the driver unlocked the door of a garage that was flush with the house and, sending the machine in a semi-circle, drove into the dark interior. The folding doors closed behind them.

"Put the light on." said the passenger hoarsely. He had not spoken since they had left Royston.

His companion answered in a queer, quavering voice that was made up half of fear and half of sheer sickness.

"Where? Where's that switch? ... God, isn't it cold and horrible! Here it is."

A light glowed overhead and the driver got down painfully, stretched his back with a grimace and groaned.

"I'm wetter than you if it comes to that... she's probably dead! That's what I bin thinkin' all the ways from Bishop's Stortford. Suppose she's dead... an' suppose we're held up by some fool policeman... you know what these Essex coppers are... s'pose they take a peek inside the boot, hey? An' suppose she's dead... Mr. Byrne!"

He wiped the back of his hand across his face and left a blacker smear. His age was something more than forty. A thin face, the valleys of flesh emphasized by high and prominent cheek-bones, and two small pale eyes set close together, were amongst his unattractions. It was rather difficult to recognise Milton the inscrutable. His companion, for all his fortitude, had the appearance of a drowned rat. He had stripped his thin, inadequate waterproof, his sleeves were clinging wetly to his bony wrists.

"Say, if she's dead, she's dead," he said shortly, dived into his waisted pocket and produced a key.

In the streamlined back of the car was a square trap door which, raised, in ordinary cars forms a seat. Unlocking this, he pulled up the flap. But no seat came in to view. In the commodious well was the cramped and huddled figure of a girl. She lay as he had placed her. The doubled-up cushion that braced her back against the side of the machine had not moved.

Kneeling astride of the cavity, he stooped and drew up head and shoulders. The driver helped awkwardly, and stood watching fearfully as Red Beard examined the figure they had laid on the concrete floor of the garage.

October's face was colourless; there was no movement of breast or pulse. Red Beard let the cold hand fall. The driver, scanning his face anxiously, saw doubt written there.

"We ought to have bored a hole in the side—but there was air enough. Lift her up, Mr. Byrne. Martha had best see her."

Red Beard lifted the girl with scarcely an effort and, leading the way, the passenger passed through the back door of the garage along a narrow garden path, and presently his key slipped into a lock.

"Don't forget the step," he warned. "I'll put a light on as soon as I've shut the door. Martha!"

He called softly. Somewhere at the end of the passage a crack of yellow light appeared as a door opened cautiously.

"It's me," said Milton, as he closed the door on Red Beard and his burden. "We've got her."

The room door opened wider. The woman he addressed stood aside and watched incuriously as the silent figure was laid on a red velvet sofa.

Martha was very stout—her pale-blue kimono made her appear even stouter than she was. Her hair was brushed back daringly from a high forehead—daringly because attention was invited to a big and shapeless face.

"I got through to Four Beeches to-night," she said. Her voice was very deep and hoarse and yet monotonous. "I told 'O' to get the place ready. Is the governor going down?"

"Yes, yes," said Milton testily. "Just take a look at this girl. Is she dead?"

Martha bent over the girl.

"If she's passed over, it's written," she said sombrely. She was a dabbler in spiritualism. "I had a message to get into touch with a newcomer to-night. Maybe it's her."

"'She'", snarled Milton. "How many times have I told you not to say 'her' when you mean 'she'?"

Red Beard blinked from one to the other. He was a man of action and realised that this was not the moment for pedantry. "Say, take a good look!" he said. "Try" her heart Martha fingered the bosom of the stained dress.

"She's alive," she said. "What did you give her?"

"The needle—the other side of Royston. She came round from the dope, so I gave her the needle."

Milton ran his hand through his scanty hair with a grimace of pain. It was as if he had remembered something unpleasant. Martha was still staring blankly at the girl on the sofa.

"She'd be called pretty, I suppose," she asserted. "Thin—I wish I was thin. She's got a fateful face. I'll bet she's psychic. Them kind of faces frequently is."

Milton groaned.

"'Them'! Listen. Get my box. And have the little room ready. You'll have to sit up with her till morning. She goes on to Hampshire to-morrow night."

Red Beard was drying his nose with a handkerchief.

"Maybe you can fix her so that she can start to-night," he suggested. "I got to get along."

Milton and the woman looked at one another dubiously, and Red Beard went on:

"He said he'd have a proper car calling for her about one in the morning. That's in a few hours. He'd have sent her down that way from Newmarket, only he didn't want his car to be recognised."

"What about the servants?" asked Martha. "They'll talk.' Milton's nerves were a little frayed.

"Servants!" he snarled. "Are there any servants at Market Chase? You know they come from the village every morning."

Red Beard intervened again.

"I've got work to do. Gotta meet a guy who ought to come one way and is coming another, see?"

Milton did not see. Martha was busy with the unconscious girl.

"He ought to come Boo-loyne, but Lenny says he's doubled back to Havre."

"What are you talking about?" he asked Milton impatiently.

Red Beard vouchsafed no explanation.

At one o'clock in the morning a policeman patrolling Avenue Road saw a big closed car draw up to a house which he knew had been let furnished a week or two before. It was not unusual to see cars, closed or otherwise, in this exclusive thoroughfare at such an hour. In view of the rain that pelted down, he would have been surprised if it had not been a closed car. He made the circuit of his beat, and came back to find that the machine had disappeared. It was well on its way to Hampshire, with a girl who was still half-conscious and wholly miserable. She did not know that the arm that supported her was the arm of an expert gunman, or that the broad shoulder that supported her head was the shoulder of Red Beard. If she had known, she would not have cared.

She woke dizzily on a morning, to find herself in a small attic room, poorly furnished. The one high window that admitted light was heavily barred, and when she dragged herself on shaking limbs to the door, she discovered it was locked.

For an hour October Jones lay motionless, catching wildly at the threads of reality. And then Martha came in with a tray. She knew Martha, with her oily face and her pince-nez, and did not greet her. The woman put the tray on a small table and drew it to the side of the bed.

"Here's your breakfast, Mrs. Loamer," she said shrilly.

The girl sat up quickly, her head reeling.

"Mrs. Loamer?" she repeated in a cracked voice.

Martha nodded, evidently with satisfaction.

"You've been two days down here," she said. "You were married to Mr. Loamer last night by special licence. I'm surprised you don't remember."

She went out quickly, closed and locked the door behind her, and left October Jones to grapple with her grotesque problem.

First of all she had drunk a cup of coffee at Market Chase. Then she was lying very uncomfortably in a sort of box, and something sharp pricked her forearm... then she was in a car. These were the fragments from which she must rehabilitate the lost hours. The tea revived her. She nibbled at a piece of toast, but could not eat.

And then she saw on the tray a folded envelope, the cover unfastened. She pulled out the paper inside and read the long slip uncomprehendingly. It was a marriage certificate, as far as she knew what marriage certificates were. A marriage performed between... There was her name, and "George Augustus Loamer, bachelor, of independent means." And a flourishing signature at the bottom.

It wasn't possible—it couldn't be. She was dreaming. Presently she would wake up at Market Chase...

The key turned in the lock. It was Martha, and Martha evidently primed to supply such information as was requested.

The girl's head ached no longer; she was still a little dizzy, and although her heart thumped with unpleasant distinctness, she had regained something of her normal calm.

"I've brought you a paper." Martha's thumb dug into an announcement on the front page of the sheet she laid on the bed. "There's the announcement."

October took up the journal mechanically. "Loamer-Jones. By special licence..." She put the paper back on the bed and asked no questions. The stout Martha was obviously disappointed.

"It happened in this very house—" she began.

"Thank you, I don't want to know anything about it," said October. "Am I to be kept in this room?"

Martha hesitated.

"You can come downstairs if you like, but you'll have to stay with me all the time. Mr. Loamer isn't coming back till this afternoon."

"Where is this place?"

Again Martha seemed reluctant to speak. "Somewhere in the country," she said vaguely.

And then an inspiration came to the girl.

"Is this Four Beeches?" She knew of Mr. Loamer's Hampshire farm, and had once expressed a desire to accompany him on one of his infrequent visits.

"Yes, this is Four Beeches. You can see the trees from your window. But don't you try to wander round, Miss Jones."

"It was Mrs. Loamer a little time ago," said the girl coldly.

"I mean Mrs. Loamer," said Martha, in perturbation. "There's bogs all round. One of my cows got drowned there last week. This is the wildest part of Hampshire; we're only a few miles from Salisbury Plain. If you want to go downstairs I'll come back for you in a few minutes."

October nodded, and when the door was locked upon her, climbed to a chair and looked out of the barred windows. The prospect was bleak and comfortless; rain was still falling, but it was warmer. She looked across a stark stretch of uncultivated land to a ridge of wood-covered hills. There was no sign of road, or any other human habitation.

She poured water from a ewer into a shallow basin and bathed her face: and the cold of the water revived her. It was an altogether different October Jones (or was it Loamer?) who went down the narrow stairway to a paved hall and was ushered by her custodian into a stuffy little sitting-room.

If she had any doubts as to her liberty of movement, those doubts were soon removed. Martha left her alone in the room but she locked the door on her, and despite the closeness of the day the windows were fastened and apparently immovable.

October Jones had brought the newspaper with her and now read the notice through word by word. It was not possible. The whole thing was a fantastic invention. What minister would marry an unconscious girl? She tossed the paper aside, and presently, in utter boredom, retrieved it and skimmed the news.

It was then that she read the little paragraph about the tramp who had broken into a Southampton store and stolen a pistol. By a trick of mind, this was the one item in the newspaper which remained with her, though why she should be interested in the picturesque thefts of tramps she could not divine.

At midday Martha served her lunch, and graciously permitted her the run of the house. She saw no other servants, but she heard a man's voice speaking through a closed door, and she thought she recognised Milton, and this recognition was justified a little later, when she caught a glimpse through the window of a man's back as he passed rapidly across the stable yard and disappeared behind the heavy door of a barn.

It was four o'clock that afternoon when George Loamer arrived, and there was nothing of the Mr. Loamer she had seen at Newmarket. His step was jaunty, his manner bright, affable, self-assured. Whatever was the stimulant which produced this new return to his old confidence, it was effective.

He came into the little sitting-room as he might have stepped into his own office, silk-hatted, frock-coated, an incongruous figure in such rural surroundings.

"Ah, my dear October!" He greeted her with the warmth of a best friend. "So you are yourself again! Well, well, that is splendid—and how wonderful of you to agree at the last moment. You have saved me from a very embarrassing situation."

He was expecting an outburst, she guessed, and was disconcerted by her silence.

"As I said before," he went on, and this time it needed an effort to maintain his manner of assurance, "the marriage is a mere matter of convenience. Possibly in a year or so you would like a—um—divorce." In spite of himself he winced at the word, for Mr. George Loamer was a highly respectable man.

"Will you tell me just what the position is, Mr. Loamer?" she asked. "Of course I'm not married to you: that stupid certificate wouldn't deceive a child. You can buy the blanks for a penny each at any law stationer's."

He was taken aback at this, winked at her quickly, as a man might wink who was suddenly confronted with a light of devastating brightness.

"Eh? Law stationer's? Come, come, October." He made an heroic effort to recover his lost ground.

"You brought me here—why? Of course you drugged me: my head was horrible this morning. And you know better what are the consequences than I. I think they are rather serious, aren't they? If you will take me back to London now, I am prepared to say no more about the matter."

"You were married to me—" he began shrilly.

She shook her head with a little smile.

"It is a little childish, isn't it? I don't know in what bright mind this stupid plan was conceived, or who was the tragic fool—"

His face went suddenly red.

"You will be careful how you speak, October," he said sharply. "I will not allow you to insult...."

He stopped suddenly and went off at a tangent.

"You're married, and that's the end of it. You will stay here for a few days, before we go to the Continent together. Our marriage was announced in the daily press."

She could have laughed in any other circumstances. It was inconceivable that a man of his age and experience could be so desperately foolish. And yet there was something more than folly in the situation, she realised; a danger more sinister than she would admit to herself.

The interview was not prolonged. She excused herself and went back to her room, to be summoned to dinner a few hours later. In that time she had made a reconnaissance of the room. The lock was a cheap one, and, had she the strength, she could have broken it. It was while she was making an examination that she remembered something that the village carpenter who had been called in to repair a door at Market Chase had said.

"In an ordinary house, miss, one door key will open any lock—they're all made alike."

She wondered if this was so and, going down to dinner in the long and dismal dining-room lit by oil lamps, she made a furtive and successful effort to extract the key from the door of that room and slip it onto the bosom of her dress.

Again Mr. Loamer's mood had changed. He was taciturn and gloomy throughout the meal, drank incessantly. Not one word did he say about her affairs, and she was relieved. The only remark that he made concerned the good terms upon which he stood with the neighbouring farmers. There had been a number of tramp robberies in the district, and the police efforts to trace and capture the thieves had been ineffectual. There was some suggestion of the farmers taking the matter into their own hands. Mr. Loamer repeated this fact several times, and she wondered if there was any peculiar importance in such a decision.

Martha took her back to her room, and it was then that she discovered she was not the only inmate of the house. Again she saw the figure of Milton vanishing down the long corridor. He carried a food-laden tray in his hands.

"That's a man we're got in for the day," said Martha hurriedly, and her very anxiety to convey this information emphasised the identity of the chauffeur.

She sat down on her bed to wait. The evening had grown close and the room was almost airless. Looking up, she saw a long coat hanging behind the door. It had not been there that morning. It was her own, and by the feel and appearance of it she guessed that it had been rough-dried. She took this down. If it was raining, it might be useful.

She waited till the house was in silence, and then, recovering the key, she tried it in the door, and to her joy it turned. She fastened the lock again with a wildly beating heart, and waited for the hours to pass. Mr. Loamer's unsteady feet sounded on the stairs. They passed her door, and she heard him muttering something to himself. Then somebody called him softly, and there was a whispered colloquy in the passage. She heard his exclamation of anger, and—

"Here, in the neighbourhood? He can't have got..."

She did not hear the rest, but after a while:

"You can trust me and Lenny—yes, sir!"

Red Beard! So he was here! Why had Loamer to trust him and Lenny, the little fat Italian?

The hands of the small alarm clock on the washstand pointed to eleven when, with trembling fingers, she inserted the key in the lock. For an hour no sound had broken the silence; the house was quiet. The key turned with more quietness than she had expected, and in another second, with her coat over her arm, she was tiptoeing down the stairs. She crossed the lobby and felt for the fastenings of the great front door. It was not only bolted and chained, but locked, the key had been removed, and she had left her own key upstairs. There must be another way out. Holding her breath, she crept down the long passage—it seemed of interminable length. Presently she felt an angle of wall. Here the passage turned. She had taken two steps when—

A door opened in front of her somewhere, and the opposite wall was illuminated with a square of faint light. She drew back into the long passage, her heart racing.

"Why don't you take him by train?"

It was Milton talking in a low voice.

"Take him by train?" growled the second man. "Where's your sense?"

"What about a car?" suggested Milton.

"Put him in a car and he squeals like hell. I can take the road for it. It will be a bit of a job to get round London, but we can sleep up at night. I don't know why he shifted him at all."

Milton whispered something. There was a surly good-night. A door opened and another closed. October waited another five minutes before she moved. Looking round a corner, she saw that one of the doors was ajar. There was a pencil of light showing, and a murmur of voices came to her ears. Faint as it was, it showed her a way of escape. At the end of the passage a door was wide open. Evidently a fire was burning there, for she saw the spasmodic leap of flames, caught a glimpse of a large table. That was the kitchen, and a way out.

She took off her shoes and went softly along the passage. As she came abreast of the door that was ajar, she saw to her horror that it had swung open a little wider. She had a glimpse of the broad back and bullet head of a tall man, and beyond him, lying on a little truckle bed, staring up fearfully, a little bald, old gentleman, who was making queer whimpering sounds.

"Shut up!" growled the big man. "If you don't shut up I'll beat your head off!"

Setting her teeth, she darted into the kitchen. There was no light but the fire. She saw the yawning opening of the scullery, and guessed that the way out lay there. Later that night she was to explore yet another scullery, but in her wildest imaginings she could not have foreseen this.

The key was in the lock; she turned it, drew back the bolts noiselessly and stepped out into the open air and, stopping only to slip on her shoes, ran across the badly paved courtyard. Her foot was on a low fence when something rose up in front of her.

"Don't move or I'll shoot!" whispered a voice fiercely, and at that moment there was a flicker of lightning and she gazed into a face hideous beyond her worst dreams.