Читать книгу Private Selby - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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LADDO was standing on the edge of the pavement near the Broadway when arrested. Cowley did the trick, crossing the road, and nodding cheerfully. At the sight of him Laddo's face went white and his lips twitched nervously.

"Cheerio, Laddo," said Cowley brightly, "I want you."

"What for, Mr. Cowley?"

"Oh, lots of things. Just step round to the station with me," said the detective.

"What is it for?" said the other doggedly.

"Smashing and—"

Laddo shot out an arm savagely.

"Take me," he said, and ran.

Cowley picked himself up and two uniformed men caught Laddo, though he fought desperately.

At the station he grew penitent, and was tearfully apologetic to the detective. Mr. Cowley was strangely good-natured, for Laddo was one of a gang that distributed spurious coin of the realm, and although most of them had been captured certain weak points in the available evidence had been pointed out by the Director of Public Prosecutions. So Laddo was treated with a consideration which at once astounded him, and aroused his suspicions. More than this, Mr. Cowley paid him a visit in his cell with the object of making the time pass. When he came out, the Inspector of Blackheath Road Police Station sent a message to Scotland Yard, which was brief and to the point.

"Laddo has turned King's evidence."

"Laddo is taken!" Somebody told the news to Dick, as he walked impatiently up and down the strip of pavement outside New Cross Station. It interested him very little. There were greater happenings that day. Not only was there a chance that he might see the Brown Lady, but he had taken the plunge. Four pounds drawn from the Post Office Savings Bank supplemented by a sovereign he had secured by the pawning of such superfluous articles as his watch and chain and overcoat, had gone into the hands of an enterprising Middleburg bookmaker.

If "The Snooker" won... Canada and the new life. He would tell the Brown Lady everything—his hopes, his plans, his faith, his love. If she would give him one word of encouragement he would succeed.

A boy came blundering up the stairs from the platform, a bundle of pink papers under his arm. Dick bought a copy, and with a sensation of sickness, opened it.

2—0 (off at 2—4)

Longwind.......... 1

Charter's Boy..... 2

The Snooker....... 3

He stared at it, read it again. Then dully and mechanically he read the betting beneath:—

"9 to 4 Longwind, 7 to 1 Charter's Boy, 33 to 1 The Snooker."

Five pounds at 33 to 1 would bring £165—but "The Snooker" had not won. Still, if it had won... but it hadn't. So that dream was all tumbled, and the money had gone. He was in the rut still, and there was no way out. He saw an everlasting Deptford before him, year upon year of Friendly Street.

It did not seem quite right. He read the paper again. He felt no resentment against Old Cull: the evidence of his bona fides was apparent: "The Snooker" was third.

He folded the paper methodically and walked away. He walked for a long time thinking, not, remarkably enough, of the money he had lost, but of the money he hadn't won.

He found himself climbing a hill; later, he observed half stupidly that he was on Blackheath. There was space here; space to think largely. This was the very place for generous planning. Now if "The Snooker" had won! What fine schemes might not have been evolved hereabouts!

Then he saw the Brown Lady walking slowly to meet him, and he stopped dead. It came to him then why he should be on Blackheath—he had come in the expectation of seeing her. But the downfall of his hopes had dazed him. He felt no pleasure at the meeting: he was conscious only of a dull fear.

"You have come?" she said.

He nodded. Up to that moment he had not regarded her message as an invitation.

She looked very kindly at him. "My brother has got away to France," she said.

He did not even know that she possessed a brother.

"He was the other," she said sharply.

She turned and looked across the heath. "We are going to leave here," she said; "my father—"

She paused, then she fixed those eyes of hers on his. "You look like a man in a groove," she went on, "but not our groove. You may escape from yours because you have no baggage to carry, that is what father always used to say to Tom—my brother. Father was an officer till something happened. Something is always happening," she added bitterly.

Dick wondered what could possibly happen to a man who lived in a big house, with servants and a brougham, and she must have read his thoughts.

"Father calls me the 'O.C' because I have the worry and the management of it all. It is I who see the process servers and lie to them. I, who arrange for father's interviews with half the blackguards of London. I who—" She changed the subject abruptly.

"Listen," she said, speaking rapidly, "I can trust you. You wonder how I came to be at the coiners' when it was raided, why I was in boy's dress—no, no!" she said, for he was protesting, "let me tell you. I went there because Tom was there, because—because my father was there "—her face was white now—" because we people who live in the fine house are criminals, coiners, forgers, the associates of thieves, using our respectability to cloak our criminal practices."

"For Heaven's sake, stop," he cried, for the anguish in the girl's face cut him like a knife.

"They took my father this afternoon—some man has turned King's evidence. They took him because he is 'Mr. Fox'—the head of—"

She reeled and he caught her.

They had reached an unfrequented part of the heath. Nobody was in sight and he laid her gently upon the grass.

She opened her eyes, and tried to sit up.

"Dick," she whispered, and the name on her lips thrilled him, "help me out of my groove."

"If I only could!" he groaned.

"You can, you can," she said eagerly, "there is a way out for you and for me—we've both got a long way down the wrong road. We'll start all over again. Dad's gone and Tom's gone, and the O.C is left without anyone to manage." She smiled piteously. "Dick Selby, let me make you a man."

"How—in the Lord's name, how?" he demanded bitterly.

Before she could reply there was a crash of music behind them and they turned.

It was a gallant sight that held and fascinated them, as they knelt together, hand in hand.

A battalion of infantry, their arms glinting in the sunshine, were swinging back to barracks, behind their band. Ahead of them on a big horse, rode a man, solitary, aloof.

"The O.C," she whispered, pointing, "that is the man who makes men—there is the way out, Dick, for you and for me!"