Читать книгу The Terror and Other Stories - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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IT was a beautiful spring morning. There was a tang in the air which melted in the yellow sunlight.

Mr. Goodman had not gone to the city that morning, though it was his day, for he made a practice of attending at his office for two or three days every month. Mrs. Elvery, that garrulous woman, was engaged in putting the final touches to her complexion; and Veronica, her gawkish daughter, was struggling, by the aid of a dictionary, with a recalcitrant poem—for she wooed the gentler muse in her own gentler moments.

Mr. Goodman sat on a sofa, dozing over his newspaper. No sound broke the silence but the scratching of Veronica’s pen and the ticking of the big grandfather’s clock.

This vaulted chamber, which was the lounge of Monkshall, had changed very little since the days when it was the anteroom to a veritable refectory. The columns that monkish hands had chiselled had crumbled a little, but their chiselled piety, hidden now behind the oak panelling, was almost as legible as on the day the holy men had written them.

Through the open French window there was a view of the broad, green park, with its clumps of trees and its little heap of ruins that had once been the Mecca of the antiquarian.

Mr. Goodman did not hear the excited chattering of the birds, but Miss Veronica, in that irritable frame of mind which a young poet can so readily reach, turned her head once or twice in mute protest.

“Mr. Goodman,” she said softly.

There was no answer, and she repeated his name impatiently.

“Mr. Goodman!”

“Eh?” He looked up, startled.

“What rhymes with ‘supercilious?’” asked Veronica sweetly.

Mr. Goodman considered, stroking chin reflectively.

“Bilious?” he suggested.

Miss Elvery gave a despairing cluck.

“That won’t do at all. It’s such an ugly word.”

“And such an ugly feeling,” shuddered Mr. Goodman. Then: “What are you writing?” he asked.

She confessed to her task.

“Good heavens!” he said despairingly. “Fancy writing poetry at this time in the morning! It’s almost like drinking before lunch. Who is it about?”

She favoured him with an arch smile. “You’ll think I’m an awful cat if I tell you.” And, as he reached out to take her manuscript: “Oh, I really couldn’t—it’s about somebody you know.”

Mr. Goodman frowned.

“‘Supercilious’ was the word you used. Who on earth is supercilious?”

Veronica sniffed—she always sniffed when she was being unpleasant.

“Don’t you think she is—a little bit? After all, her father only keeps a boarding house.”

“Oh, you mean Miss Redmayne?” asked Goodman quietly. He put down his paper. “A very nice girl. A boarding house, eh? Well, I was the first boarder her father ever had, and I’ve never regarded this place as a boarding house.”

There was a silence,’which the girl broke. “Mr. Goodman, do you mind if I say something?”

“Well, I haven’t objected so far, have I?” he smiled.

“I suppose I’m naturally romantic,” she said. “I see mystery in almost everything. Even you are mysterious.” And, when he looked alarmed: “Oh, I don’t mean sinister!”

He was glad she did not.

“But Colonel Redmayne is sinister,” she said emphatically.

He considered this.

“He never struck me that way,” he said slowly.

“But he is,” she persisted. “Why did he buy this place miles from everywhere and turn it into a boarding house?”

“To make money, I suppose.”

She smiled triumphantly and shook her head.

“But he doesn’t. Mamma says that he must lose an awful lot of money. Monkshall is very beautiful, but it has got an awful reputation. You know that it is haunted, don’t you?”

He laughed good-naturedly at this. Mr. Goodman was an old boarder and had heard this story before.

“I’ve heard things and seen things. Mamma says that there must have been a terrible crime committed here. It is!” She was more emphatic..

Mr. Goodman thought that her mother let her mind dwell too much on murders and crimes. For the stout and fussy Mrs. Elvery wallowed in the latest tragedies which filled the columns of the Sunday newspapers.

“She does love a good murder,” agreed Veronica. “We had to put off our trip to Switzerland last year because of the River Bicycle Mystery. Do you think Colonel Redmayne ever committed a murder?”

“What a perfectly awful thing to say!” said her shocked audience.

“Why is he so nervous?” asked Veronica intensely. “What is he afraid of? He is always refusing boarders. He refused that nice young man who came yesterday.”

“Well, we’ve got a new boarder coming to-morrow,” said Goodman, finding his newspaper again.

“A parson!” said Veronica contemptuously. “Everybody knows that parsons have no money.”

He could chuckle at this innocent revelation of Veronica’s mind.

“The colonel could make this place pay, but he won’t.” She grew confidential. “And I’ll tell you something more. Mamma knew Colonel Redmayne before he bought this place. He got into terrible trouble over some money—Mamma doesn’t exactly know what it was. But he had no money at all. How did he buy this house?”

Mr. Goodman beamed.

“Now that I happen to know all about! He came into a legacy.”

Veronica was disappointed and made no effort to hide the fact. What comment she might have offered was silenced by the arrival of her mother.

Not that Mrs. Elvery ever “arrived.” She bustled or exploded into a room, according to the measure of her exuberance. She came straight across to the settee where Mr. Goodman was unfolding his paper again.

“Did you hear anything last night?” she asked dramatically.

He nodded.

“Somebody in the next room to me was snoring like the devil,” he began.

“I occupy the next room to you, Mr. Goodman,” said the lady icily. “Did you hear a shriek?”

“Shriek?” He was startled.

“And I heard the organ again last night!”

Goodman sighed.

“Fortunately I am a little deaf. I never hear any organs or shrieks. The only thing I can hear distinctly is the dinner gong.”

“There is a mystery here.” Mrs. Elvery was even more intense than her daughter. “I saw that the day I came. Originally I intended staying a week; now I remain here until the mystery is solved.”

He smiled good-humouredly.

“You’re a permanent fixture, Mrs. Elvery.”

“It rather reminds me,” Mrs. Elvery recited rapidly, but with evident relish, “of Pangleton Abbey, where John Roehampton cut the throats of his three nieces, aged respectively, nineteen, twenty-two and twenty-four, afterwards burying them in cement, for which crime he was executed at Exeter Gaol. He had to be supported to the scaffold, and left a full confession admitting his guilt!”

Mr. Goodman rose hastily to fly from the gruesome recital. Happily, rescue came in the shape of the tall, soldierly person of Colonel Redmayne. He was a man of fifty-five, rather nervous and absent of manner and address. His attire was careless and somewhat slovenly. Goodman had seen this carelessness of appearance grow from day to day.

The colonel looked from one to the other.

“Good-morning. Is everything all right?”

“Comparatively, I think,” said Goodman with a smile. He hoped that Mrs. Elvery would find another topic of conversation, but she was not to be denied.

“Colonel, did you hear anything in the night?”

“Hear anything?” he frowned. “What was there to hear?”

She ticked off the events of the night on her podge fingers.

“First of all the organ, and then a most awful, blood-curdling shriek. It came from the grounds—from the direction of the Monk’s Tomb.”

She waited, but he shook his head.

“No, I heard nothing. I was asleep,” he said in a low voice.

Veronica, an interested listener, broke in.

“Oh, what a fib! I saw your light burning long after Mamma and I heard the noise. I can see your room by looking out of my window.”

He scowled at her.

“Can you? I went to sleep with the light on. Has any one seen Mary?”

Goodman pointed across the park.

“I saw her half an hour ago,” he said.

Colonel Redmayne stood hesitating, then, without a word, strode from the room, and they watched him crossing the park with long strides.

“There’s a mystery here!” Mrs. Elvery drew a long breath. “He’s mad. Mr. Goodman, do you know that awfully nice-looking man who came yesterday morning? He wanted a room, and when I asked the colonel why he didn’t let him stay he turned on me like a fiend! Said he was not the kind of man he wanted to have in the house; said he dared—‘dared’ was the word he used —to try to scrape acquaintance with his daughter, and that he didn’t want any good-for-nothing drunkards under the same roof.”

“In fact,” said Mr. Goodman, “he was annoyed! You mustn’t take the colonel too seriously—he’s a little upset this morning.”

He took up the letters that had come to him by the morning post and began to open them.

“The airs he gives himself!” she went on. “And his daughter is no better. I must say it, Mr. Goodman. It may sound awfully uncharitable, but she’s got just as much——” She hesitated.

“Swank?” suggested Veronica, and her mother was shocked. “It’s a common expression,” said Veronica.

“But we aren’t common people,” protested Mrs. Elvery, “You may say that she gives herself airs. She certainly does. And her manners are deplorable. I was telling her the other day about the Grange Road murder. You remember, the man who poisoned his mother-in-law to get the insurance money—a most interesting case—when she simply turned her back on me and said she wasn’t interested in horrors.”

Cotton, the butler, came in at that moment with the mail. He was a gloomy man who seldom spoke. He was leaving the room when Mrs. Elvery called him back.

“Did you hear any noise last night, Cotton?”

He turned sourly.

“No, ma’am. I don’t get a long time to sleep—you couldn’t wake me with a gun.”

“Didn’t you hear the organ?” she insisted.

“I never hear anything.”

“I think the man’s a fool,” said the exasperated lady.

“I think so too, ma’am,” agreed Cotton, and went out.