Читать книгу Big Foot - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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"GO back an' rustle some clothes. I'll want your help, anyway. All my men are down in the Farnham area arrestin' the wrong people. If I'm not here, wait for me."

Jim was glad to obey the order, for the morning was chilly and he was shivering. In five minutes he was back to where he had left the superintendent, but that worthy man had disappeared, nor did he show himself for ten minutes.

"This time he's gone," he growled. "Must have heard you gettin' into the concert."

"Gone—how?"

"The wood runs down to the boundary wall. There's thick bush on the other side—that's where I heard him moving. I'll blow down to the main road, but he's as cunning as a monkey. Anything new?"

"Hannah Shaw is going away," said Jim, and told what he had seen during the night.

Sooper scratched his grey head. "I'll bet Cardew doesn't know she's goin' for keeps," he said. "That'll be the best bit of news the poor fis—Mr. Cardew's had in years. Wish I'd caught young Tetr'zini." He shook his head regretfully.

He was half-way down the gate road when he turned and came back. "You got a motor-car, Mr. Ferraby?"

"Yes—but not here. I came down by train."

Sooper nodded. "Might bring it along to my stationhouse tonight—somewhere round dusk. I'm thinking of goin' down to Pawsey. It's off my ground, and that skinny-gutted deputy at the Yard's certain to raise hell if anything comes out. But I despise him, an' when I despise a man, the grave's his only hope. I'd like to take you along with me to get the proper psychology of the position—I'm short on that." Sooper did his best laughing with his eyes—he was laughing now.

Apparently nobody in the house had heard the singer, and Jim returned to his room unchallenged by anxious inquiry. Sleep was impossible now, and he shaved and dressed at leisure. He was down in the garden by the time the sun was on the lawn, and he strolled round the house to kill time. From the rear of Barley Stack he had a clear view of Hill Brow, the lordly house of Mr. Elson, a sprawl of red brick topped by a square and architecturally pleasing tower.

What freakish whim had induced this American to settle down in surroundings which had no pleasure for him? A man of the people, self-made, without culture or refinement.

When he came back to the lawn he saw a slim figure in grey walking away from him, and his heart raced for a second or two.

"Yes, I am early—I didn't sleep very well."

Elfa gave her hand with a smile that dazzled him. Never before had he seen her under the sunny skies and at an hour which few women choose to submit their charms to the critical eyes of men.

"Is it permissible to offer my arm?" he asked boldly.

"Permissible but unnecessary," she laughed quietly at his embarrassment. "I am full of courage this morning. Did you sleep well?"

"To be truthful, I didn't sleep at all," he admitted, and she nodded.

"My room is next Miss Shaw's, and she was moving about all night," she said.

He could have confirmed that information, but she went on: "I shall be glad to get back to my own little apartment. Barley Stack and Miss Shaw have a very bad effect on my nerves. I've only spent one night in the house—a year ago; and that was a most unpleasant experience. Do you mind my telling you this?"

Did he mind! He could have listened to her all morning. He suggested as much.

"Miss Shaw was in worse than her usual bad temper. She wouldn't speak to me or to poor Mr. Cardew. She shut herself up in her room and refused to come to meals because, Mr. Cardew told me, she thought he had slighted her. And then she did an extraordinary thing. Very early in the morning, when I woke up and looked out of the window on to the little side lawn, I saw the letter 'B' picked out on the grass with dark paper. There was something rather familiar about those little oblong slips, and I went downstairs to make sure. The pieces of paper were hundred-dollar bills—there must have been fifty of them, and they were fastened to the earth with long black pins!"

Jim could only look at her incredulously.

"Did Cardew know?"

"Yes, he'd seen them from his window, and he was furious."

"Was anybody else staying here at the time?"

She nodded and made a little face. "Mr. Elson. His house was in the hands of the repairers and Mr. Cardew asked him to come and stay. I don't think he's been here since until last night. It was Miss Shaw's suggestion that he came at all—he told me that."

"But how do you know Hannah marked the lawn with bills—it may have been a freak of Elson's: I can well imagine his doing such a crazy thing."

She shook her head. "It was Miss Shaw. She came and gathered up the money after Cardew sent for her. He pressed her for an explanation but she would give none—she wouldn't even tell him where she got the money."

And then Jim remembered what the lawyer had told him.

This, then, was the 'stupid joke' which had nearly led to a domestic breach.

"I think she is a little mad," said Elfa, "and that is why I hated the thought of coming to Barley Stack. It was only when I heard—" She ended the sentence abruptly, but a warm glow came over the young man and his pulse beat a little faster.

There was nothing to betray her energetic night in Hannah's face when she appeared at the breakfast table. The dark eyes were as birdlike as ever; she was a model of composure and self-possession. Cardew, on the other hand, was irritable and snappy, though apparently he had slept well enough. He was one of those admirably-tempered individuals who bring the essence of their grievances to the breakfast table, The day dilutes them down to their normal strength and importance, but in the first hour of waking they overcloud the morning sun.

"Even now I'm not sure that this pestiferous fellow hasn't been playing a joke on me. I personally saw nothing, and I think my eyesight is as keen as anybody's. If there had been a man in the shadow of the hedge, as he suggested, why is it that nobody else saw him?"

Jim was on the point of telling about the song that so startled him at dawn, but remembered that Sooper had asked him to say nothing about that strange occurrence.

"As to the—er—magazine, well, that might have been part of the stupid joke," said the suspicious Mr. Cardew. "I may not have had a great deal of criminal practice, but I've come upon some very remarkable cases of deception even in the Chancery Court. You remember, Miss Leigh, the story I told you about a client of mine who concealed his assets in bankruptcy and nearly earned for me a reprimand from the judge!"

Miss Leigh had heard the story: she had heard it many times. It was the one purple patch in Mr. Cardew's humdrum law practice.

"What time do you go, Hannah?" He looked over his glasses at the stolid woman.

"At eleven."

"You are taking your machine? Thompson tells me that the hood needs repair."

"It is good enough for me, and should be good enough for Thompson," she said shortly, and thereafter Mr. Cardew's interest in her plans ceased.

He himself was going into town to get his letters, and offered to drop Jim at his flat in Cheyne Walk. "As soon as breakfast is over," he said, and it appeared to Jim Ferraby that he had fixed the hour so as to be out of the house before his sour housekeeper.

There was only a brief opportunity for seeing Elfa before he left, and this Jim seized, to find her busy in Cardew's study, a dozen heaps of books on the library table and a look of tragic despair in her eyes.

"He wished me to get them finished before he returns," she said helplessly. "There are two days' work here—and I'm determined not to spend another night in this house! You are going, Mr. Ferraby?" Her tone was one of disappointment, and Jim revelled in the unaccustomed prospect of being missed.

"Yes, I'm going, but I want you to give me your address, so that I can find out if you have reached home safely."

She laughed. "That is one of your lamest excuses. But I will give you my address." She scribbled it down on a piece of paper and he put it into his pocket. "I'm not worrying about getting home safely, because Mr. Cardew told me I could leave, even if I was not finished, at four, and he had not returned."

"I'll call—" he began.

She shook her head. "You'll find my 'phone number on that piece of paper," she said, her lips twitching. "Perhaps I will let you call one day and take me to a theatre, if it will not jeopardize your position—they tell me you are something very special in the Prosecutor's Department."

"My position is so hopelessly compromised," said Jim firmly, "that my only chance of getting back is to be seen in respectable company."

He held her hand quite as long as was necessary, perhaps a little longer, and carried away with him the most fragrant memory, and at the same time the most extraordinarily exalted views of womanhood that his heart had ever held.

Throughout the journey to the City, Jim had a confused idea that Mr. Cardew was talking about Superintendent Minter, or it may have been Mr. Elson; but all that he heard he instantly forgot. His heart was singing a wild and dangerous tune, his head swam in the amber clouds of romance. Which is not the most profitable environment for an official of the Public Prosecutor's Department.

It was when Cardew switched to the subject of Hannah that Jim came slowly to earth.

"I have been thinking the matter over very carefully and very thoughtfully," said the lawyer, "and I have decided that I cannot go on in the way I have been during the past few years. I have tolerated Hannah because she is at heart a good girl. But I've only just begun to realize how tremendously my whole life is determined by her whims and fancies. And then there is this infernal mystery, and I will not have mysteries—at least, not at Barley Stack. There is another thing: I cannot help thinking that there is something between Elson and Hannah. You may think that is a preposterous idea?"

In truth Jim Ferraby thought it extremely preposterous, for at that time Sooper had not taken him wholly into his confidence.

"I have intercepted glances between them. Once I came upon them talking at the end of the road. They saw me and scuttled like rabbits, and to this day they're under the impression that I did not see them. I don't know what this Elson is, whether he is a bachelor or whether he is married. He is a very disagreeable person, yet, if he has any liking or affection for Hannah—which is extremely doubtful, for such a man could not have any true affection for anybody but himself—well, I should be very glad. On one point, however, I am determined: Hannah—must—go." He struck the floor of the car with his umbrella to emphasize each word. "She is getting on my nerves," he went on. "I would willingly pay a thousand pounds if she decided to take another position."

"You know, of course, that she has packed all her boxes?" began Jim, when the older man jerked round at him.

"Packed her boxes?" he almost squeaked. "How do you know?"

"I saw her in the night through my window. She made no attempt to hide the operation. She cleared all her dresses out of the wardrobe, and, so far as I could see, packed them in her trunk."

Mr. Cardew was silent for a long time. His ordinarily smooth brow was wrinkled in the scowl which accompanies concentrated thought.

"I don't think there's anything in that," he said at last. "She has packed her trunks before, when she has been annoyed with me, and like an everlasting fool I have invariably gone down on my knees to her, metaphorically speaking, and begged her to stay. But this time..." The wag of his head was ominous.

He dropped Jim in Whitehall, and for the next two hours Mr. Ferraby was wholly occupied with an accumulation of correspondence. There were statements to be examined, prima facie cases for arrest to be digested, and, in the absence of his chief from town, he had his lunch brought in and cleared off all arrears by three o'clock in the afternoon, when he strolled up Pall Mall to his club.

His work might have been easier and more expeditiously concluded if there had not been, between the paper and his eyes all the time, the vision of a face that had no definite form or shape, but was stabilized by a pair of steadfast grey eyes, set widely apart. Once his typist brought back a document and asked him coldly who "Elfa" was, and he discovered that he had so christened a notorious car-stealer whose case was up for consideration.

He found that she lived in Bloomsbury. There was no real reason why he should take a cab to Cubitt Street to look at the house from the outside. It bore a striking resemblance to every other house in the street. But there was some satisfaction in deciding that the window with the little white curtains was her room, and he felt a strange friendliness towards a billboard advertisement of a corn cure which must meet her eyes every morning. Not till some days later did he learn that she slept in a room at the back of the house, which was visible from no angle of the street.

At four o'clock he telephoned her: she had not returned. Since she did not intend leaving Barley Stack until four o'clock, it was unlikely that she had. At five o'clock there was no news of her. At half-past five, when he had worked himself up into a condition of panic, and his big black car was quivering and rumbling at the door of his club, ready for a lightning spin to Barley Stack to rescue her from unimaginable dangers, her cool voice answered him.

"Yes, I'm back...no, Mr. Cardew has not returned. He telephoned to say that he was staying in town for the night."

"Won't you come and have tea?"

He heard her laugh. "No, I'm going to have a quiet evening, thank you very much, Mr. Ferraby. It is lovely here."

"I should say it was!" said Jim fervently. "I can't imagine any place where you are—"

Click! She had hung up on him. Nevertheless, he went home in a state of elation that bordered upon imbecility.

There was a visitor, he was told by his chauffeur, who was also his valet and his butler. It was Mr. Cardew, very much at a loose end.

"Your man tells me you're going out tonight," he almost complained. "I came along to ask you if you would come to the Opera House: they are playing 'Faust' tonight, and I bought two seats in the hope that you'd be able to accompany me."

"I'm sorry," said Jim, "but I've an engagement."

"Could you come to dinner?"

Again Jim made his apologies.

"I'm unfortunate," said Cardew, running his fingers through his hair. "I can't do much else but go back to Barley Stack tonight." And then, miserably, "I wonder what the devil Hannah is doing at Beach Cottage tonight—I'd give a lot of money to know."

Jim might have promised to supply the information, but discreetly he refrained.