Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 12

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DR. LAFFIN lived in a large and gloomy house in Camden Town. It was a property he had bought when he came to London, and had furnished according to his own bizarre tastes. In this house Betty Carew had spent most of the years of her conscious childhood. She had a dim recollection of having been brought from Bath, and of the terror that this establishment had inspired in her youthful heart. It was a very home of shadows and strange apparitions. You came upon great bronze Buddhas in unexpected alcoves; hideous masks, collected from the witch doctors of Central Africa, hung on the walls; uncouth wooden figures of ju-jus appeared in odd corners; whilst the furnishing of the doctor's own sanctum might have been the habitation of some ancient sorcerer.

On the day appointed she called at Camden Road, and found Laffin in a condition of cold rage. And standing with him in the centre of his strange room was a very' interested man, notebook in hand—his attention equally divided between his queer surroundings and the narrative that the doctor was pouring out in a stream of malignant eloquence.

"If I had seen him, there would have been one burglar less in this world, Sergeant. Such men should be marked that they can be recognised. I would have them blinded as the stealers of deer were blinded in the old days; or so maimed that they carried the proof of their villainy through eternity. Let the thieving hands be shorn from the body... that is justice."

"Yes, yes, Doctor." The detectives of the Metropolitan Police are famous alike for their patience and politeness. "I daresay that would be an excellent idea, though the finger-print department would kick. When did you first discover your loss?"

"Last night—late," snapped Laffin. "But the notes might have been taken three nights ago—I locked them in my safe at five o'clock on that evening."

"But something besides the notes are missing?" suggested the detective.

"Yes, a gold statuette of Set, the Egyptian God, a cabalistic ring reputedly worn by Darius the Great, a silver chalice used in one of the first Eastern churches... but the notes are important."

"What are they about?"

Dr. Laffin's basilisk eyes seemed to burn.

"They were just notes on four sheets of paper," he said evenly, "notes for my play."

Betty smothered an exclamation. His play! Joshua Laffin, who hated the theatre and all that pertained thereto—to whom Shakespeare's only merit was that he belonged to the past!

"Little is to be gained by discussing the matter," said the doctor coldly. "The theft of those papers was a freak which shall cost this man dear."

"If there was nothing of value in 'em, I'm afraid that you may consider them as destroyed," said the detective.

His sympathy was unconvincing, thought Betty.

She stood aloof from the discussion, for, though Laffin had seen her, he took no notice of her presence. At last the detective made his escape, and then the old man condescended to favour her with his attention. He made no reference to the robbery. She would have been surprised if he had, knowing him.

"Are you ready?" he asked harshly, and without any further preliminary put on his hat and led the way into the street.

The store had been newly furnished and reeked with the smell of drying varnish. With the exception of the big window, which had been carefully furnished, as he promised, to resemble a small study, the room behind the big window was practically empty. At the back of the shop was a smaller apartment; into this, Dr. Laffin, who had evidently been here before, conducted her. Opening the door, she found, to her surprise, that it was a dressing-room, furnished with mirror and unshaded lights, whilst over the back of a chair lay a handsome dark-green dress.

"But I can't possibly wear that," she said, aghast. "It is an evening dress."

As usual, Dr. Laffin made no reply.

"You'll find a string of pearls on the dressing-table. Be careful with them; they are real," he said, in his precise way. "There is another matter on which I have already instructed you, Elizabeth; you will find on the desk in the shop window a small jade vase, with one red rose. No more than one red rose must ever appear in that vase, which must always be on your desk. Do you understand? It—must—always—be—on—your—desk."

The position or permanence of the rose did not for the moment interest her.

"But I cannot wear this dress," she said, determinedly. "I refuse to wear it."

He picked up the gown, looked at it disparagingly.

"We will get you another," he said.

And then, as he was going out of the room, she stood before the door and blocked the way.

"I am going to know what this all means," she said; "why you are so insistent upon my taking this position, why this store is new, and why I am to appear in a shop window for the amusement of a Cockney crowd. There is something in this which you have not told me."

"There is a fortune in it; I think I have told you that," he said. "Further, I can make no statement. It is my whim, perhaps—"

"Then it is your store?" She took the point instantly.

"And if it is?" he asked, his black eyebrows rising.

"If it is, it is not your money," she said quietly. "You are almost penniless. Tradesmen who know my association with you have been to see me at the theatre. There are sheriffs' writs against you; one of the tradespeople told me this."

He frowned at her.

"Who has been talking about me?" he asked sharply, forgetting for the moment his precision of speech. "I demand his name! I will punish him—"

"Why pretend?" she asked bitterly. "You forget that I have been through this before, Dr. Laffin. You haven't forgotten one week when we were almost starving, because you had come back from Monte Carlo with every penny of your credit pledged?"

He did not answer her, but stood looking down at the floor, his hands tightly clasped behind him, his unpleasing face further disfigured by a scowl.

"You know a great deal too much, my friend," he said.

He went out, and returned with a weedy little man, whom he introduced as the manager of the store.

"You'll take no orders from him," he said, in that gentleman's presence. "You're practically your own mistress. You will come on duty at eleven and go off at four o'clock in the afternoon. If the crowd stares at you, there is no occasion for you to stare back. I will see that nobody speaks to you when you leave the store at night, and a car will be waiting for you to take you home."

It was useless to question him any further. She knew him too well, had lived under the same roof too long, to hope that he would be any more communicative.

The first hour of her ordeal was an agony. She had been given account books, paper, and began to write aimless letters to nobody in particular, trying to forget the existence of the crowd which was gathering, and which, from time to time, was moved on by a disapproving policeman.

She tried hard to concentrate her mind upon some tremendous matter; to make up stories, pleasant and unpleasant, which would grip her attention and make her forget the grinning faces that stared through the glass. About Dr. Laffin and his burglary. Who had been the unlucky thief, she wondered, or tried to wonder. It was no use. Try as she did, most desperately hard, she could not bring her thoughts from her humiliation. It pleased Mr. William Holbrook that morning to make a visit of inspection.

The store that had been taken for the New Desk Company had a thirty foot frontage on one of the most expensive thoroughfares in the West End of London. Yet, though it was expensive, it was not, from a shopper's point of view, the most desirable site. The headquarters of those corporations and houses which would be most likely to patronise this brand-new establishment were very remote from Duke Street; and as he came abreast of the house agent's office, Holbrook remembered that he had a friend at court in this establishment, and went in.

The junior partner, a man of his own age, expressed all the surprise that Holbrook had felt.

"Why, they've hired that shop front, heaven only knows," he said. "As a matter of fact, we rented it to them, and I told them at the time that it wasn't the best position for a concern of that kind, but they insisted."

"For how long have they taken the store?" asked the interested Holbrook. "And who are 'they'?"

"'They' is Dr. Laffin," replied the agent, "and he has taken the place for three months certain, and the right to renew for a further period. The store, as you may guess, was already let when they applied, and Laffin is merely the sub-tenant. The real occupiers are not moving to Duke Street until the beginning of next year, so that they were quite glad to rent it to these crazy people. By the way, I'm not so sure that they are as crazy as we think; they've got a most amazing display in the window—probably you saw the crowd on the sidewalk?"

"I saw the crowd," said Bill, "and guessed the reason. A lady is working in the store window?"

The house agent nodded.

"They say she is a very well-known actress," he said. "I went down and had a peep at her, and whether she can act, or whether she's merely a musical comedy artiste, she is most decidedly a beauty."

Bill Holbrook grunted. Betty Carew's beauty did not interest him as much as the novelty of her position, and the peculiarly unsatisfactory nature of his own—in so far as he represented Pips.

A few minutes later he stood on the outskirts of the crowd and looked into the shop front. In the centre of the "room," at a small and very ordinary-looking writing-table, sat Betty Carew, and it was not necessary for him to make personal inquiries to see that she was intensely distressed under the stares of a London crowd. Her face was averted from the street, but the heightened colour of her cheeks, the nervousness of every gesture, told its own tale.

To Betty every moment of that day had been an agony; the clock scarcely seemed to move. She felt as if she could die of shame, and once she half rose, determining to run away, anywhere, rather than submit for another moment to the humiliation which had been put upon her. Her one fear was that Clive Lowbridge should see her, and she found her only (and dismal) amusement in the thought of what he would do when he made the discovery.

"Miss Carew!"

She looked round. The sham door of the study was ajar, and she saw the concerned face of William Holbrook. It needed but this last trial to turn her misery to madness.

"Lay off, won't you?" he begged. "I want to talk to you."

"Please go away." Her voice vibrated with anger. "How dare you come and gloat over your wretched work!" Bill glared at her in amazement.

"Woman, you're mad!" he said. "Me—or I, as the case may be? Come out!"

His voice was authoritative, his gesture almost imperious. Without knowing exactly why, she obeyed him, and could have sobbed in her relief to be out of the range of the eyes.

"Now, what's this stuff about this being my idea?" he demanded.

"Dr. Laffin said so."

"Dr. Laffin is a lying crow," said Bill calmly. "He's a prevaricating ghoul! He called us in to run the stunt, and then did it himself. The only thing we've got to do is to send out a par to the papers—he even wrote that."

"What is the paragraph?" she asked quickly. "About me—oh no, not about me?"

Bill fished out a dozen envelopes from his pocket, and tore open one.

"It doesn't mention your name," he said, unfolding the contents. "Listen:

"The Red-Haired Girl.

"Passers-by in Duke Street are afforded an unusual spectacle. A window of one of the stores in the thoroughfare has been fitted up like a study, and at a table-desk sits an extraordinarily pretty girl with hair of a most amazing red. On the desk at which she sits is a green jade vase containing one red rose. The lady is apparently, advertising the desk at which she writes, but the effect is a singularly striking one."

"And what good that is, except to bring a crowd, I don't know. Not a word about the desk. I think that doctor is—" he tapped his forehead.

"Must this go in?" she asked, with a sinking heart, as she realised the new crowds which that notice would bring.

"I hope so," said Bill, "but the 'must' is a matter for a number of city editors of divers temperamentalities. Excuse me talking like a burglar."

She thought that this was some catch phrase, but he went on:

"Met a regular burglar professor the other day—he talked like Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases—"

She hoped that this hateful young man, at any rate, would go on talking. Every second was a second's respite from the dreadful ordeal of the window.

"Half of 'em won't take the par because there's a business end to it. Nowadays, the only way you can get free publicity about almost anything is to kill somebody with it. But I'm going to tell—good-morning, Doctor."

It was Laffin, who had strode through the door, and his lips were quivering with fury.

"Why aren't you at your post?" he asked, quietly enough.

"Because I asked Miss Carew to come out—that's why," said Bill coolly. "See here, Doctor, you've got me guessing. What—is—the—grand—idea?"

"Your business—" began Laffin.

"Don't do it, doc," implored Bill. "I know what my business is, and I'm attending to it; but there's something behind this window show that isn't straight publicity."

He prodded the old man's waistcoat with an inkstained finger.

"If I wasn't publicity, Laffin, and I was just a low-down reporter, like I am at heart, I'd be down at Central Office at this very minute, saying 'Captain, I've got a good story—but it's too good for newspapers; send a sleuth, or inspector, or whatever you call your high-class cops down to question old man Laffin, and maybe he won't come back alone."

Slowly the colour was leaving Joshua Laffin's cheeks; from yellow to grey, from grey to dirty white. By the time Bill had finished, the old man's lips were the colour of lead.

An hour later, Bill Holbrook walked unannounced into the office of Mr. Pawter.

"Your wish has come true, Uncle Pips," he said.

"Are you resigning?" asked Mr. Pawter, hopefully.

Bill nodded.

"I've signed on with the Dispatch-Herald. I'm crime reporter, and you'll be wise not to start anything, for you're practically at my mercy; if it wasn't a crime for a bald head to market Gro-Kwik Rejuvenates Tired Follicles, I don't know what was."

Mr. Pawter lay back in his chair, aghast.

"Are you serious? Don't be a fool—I'm not referring to your cheap jest about one of the best hair preparations ever put into the hands of the public—but about this crime reporting. Why? You're getting a good salary...."

"Little, but good," corrected Bill. "No, salary doesn't matter. Pips, I'm on the trail of the biggest story I've ever smelt. And, Pips, I'm going to do a good turn to the only policeman that has ever stepped to the witness stand and perjured himself in a good cause."

Mr. Pawter glanced up at the clock.

"The saloons do not open until twelve," he said offensively. "You've been drinking out of hours!"