Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 14

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IT was the third day of Betty Carew's ordeal, and she groaned as she turned into Duke Street, and saw the little knot of curious sightseers waiting before the store window with its drawn blinds. That morning, almost every newspaper had published the "red-haired girl" paragraph, with or without variations. The previous afternoon, a string of reporters had arrived, and she had dreaded to look at the morning newspapers. For the worst had happened; she was identified. One newspaper had made a column story headed:

Actress Finds More Lucrative Occupation Than Stage Life

Distress among mummers induces Miss Carew to take show-girl's job in desk store.

Another journal carried a three-column photograph of her at work. Mercifully her back was turned, and the intervention of a plate-glass window had made recognition impossible. She found one result of the publicity; when she arrived there were three letters, all delivered by hand, from theatrical managers, offering her engagements. One undertook to produce a sketch for the road entitled "The Girl in the Window," with herself as the central figure. She tore up the letters in disgust, and, bracing herself, stepped into the window and turned her back to the crowd.

She could not go on; this thing was unendurable. Pulling open one of the drawers of the desk (the difficulty she had in opening it was no kind of advertisement for the merits of this marvellous piece of furniture) she took out a letter. It was the "message" that was to be delivered to the unknown caller. What would happen when he came? Would her trial be at an end? She had asked Laffin the night before, when he had come for her, but he had made no reply.

It was towards noon, when, out of the tail of her eye, she saw a car come slowly up the street and stop just short of the crowd. This was not unusual, for curiosity was not confined to the masses. She was conscious that somebody was pushing a way through the crowd, but did not turn her head, until somebody rapped at the window gently with the head of an umbrella, and, turning, her face went crimson. She was looking into the eyes of La Florette, and the smile on the dancer's face was maddening. Quickly she brought her attention back to the desk, trying to forget the woman, malignantly triumphant. And then the door of the shop opened, and there came to her the faint fragrance of La Florette's favourite perfume.

"How very sweet!"

The little door of the window front had been opened. La Florette, bubbling with malicious laughter, was watching her.

Betty sprang up from her chair, and in two strides had crossed the window floor and slammed the door behind her.

"Do you want to buy a desk?" she asked, her flaming eyes fixed on the woman.

La Florette shrugged her thin shoulders.

"My dear, what should I do with a desk?" she asked sweetly.

"That occurred to me, but even the illiterate must have some place to scrawl," said Betty.

Under the rouged cheeks the colour came and went.

"You insolent little beast!" she spat. "You—you shop-girl!"

"I can't tell you what you are," said Betty calmly, "because the only words I could use are forbidden in decent society. Do you want to buy a desk?" she asked again. "If you do not, there's the door!"

"I shall report you to your employers—" began La Florette.

"I'd almost forgive you if you would," said Betty, so earnestly that the woman stared. "Have you any business here at all? Because, if you haven't, go with the crowd, where you belong, Miss Florette, or Simkins or Snooper, or whatever your real name may be. All Limehouse is outside; you can see the marks of their unpleasant fingers on the glass. One more or less doesn't matter to me."

It was a long time before La Florette could articulate. Queer little sounds of rage and venom came from her thin lips, and she glared murderously.

"You're in your proper place now, Carew," she said shrilly, "where you belong—a show-girl—an exhibition, a common advertising woman." She choked with rage. "I'm going outside," she went on, "I'm going to stand and tell people who you are, and what a rotten actress you were. Even the newspapers say that you were such a bad actress that you had to take this job!"

Suddenly Betty jerked open the door, caught the woman by the arm with a grip that surprised the pseudo-French dancer, and thrust her into the street, slamming the door behind her. And then, with no fear, no apprehension, no qualms, Betty Carew stepped back into the window and smiled down into the distorted face of this exotic, rooted in the slums, and drawing her sustenance from the refuse of a Dutch ghetto.

For fully a second they looked at one another, and then La Florette darted into the crowd, pursued by the cheers of the quick-witted gamins who had noted her hasty exit and had divined the cause. For the next hour Betty had a sympathetic audience.

The second of the visitors, less welcome, came while she was eating a hasty luncheon in the deserted showroom. She heard the quick step and looked up into the troubled eyes of the best-looking man in London.

"Why, Clive," she faltered, "I thought you promised me you would not come?"

"I had to come. Did you see the papers this morning?" he asked savagely, and, without waiting for her to reply: "This is monstrous, Betty! I'm not going to allow it! I'll see that old scoundrel to-day"

She shook her head.

"It's perfectly useless seeing 'the old scoundrel'!" she said, with a little smile. "Clive, I've got to go through with it."

He was stalking up and down the room, his hands tragically clasped behind him, a frown upon his face.

"Have you seen anything of that brute from Pawters?"

"Holbrook?" Again her lips twitched. "I'm beginning to think he's not such a brute as I believed," she said, and told him of the little scene that had occurred between Joshua Laffin and the man from Pawter's. "I am sure he was speaking the truth when he said that he had no responsibility for this freak of Dr. Laffin's."

"He was responsible for the paragraphs in the newspapers," growled Lord Lowbridge.

"He told me about them, and I believe that, if I had insisted, he would not have circulated the story," she said. "Clive, have you the slightest idea why the doctor is doing this? I think I could bear the indignity if I were performing some useful service, but we haven't had so much as an inquiry about the desk," she said ruefully.

His moody eyes were surveying her.

"How long are you allowed for lunch?"

"Just as long as it takes to eat. The doctor says I mustn't be out of the window for more than ten minutes at a time, and that means that by the time my engagement is through I shall have a red nose from indigestion!"

"I suppose you'd better stick it," he said, after a while, "though I just hate the thought of your being turned into a puppet show. Has anybody come for the precious message?"

He laughed softly.

"No, and I don't think they will. I sometimes think that the doctor is mad—for the past year he has become obsessed with his theosophical ideas. He was always a difficult man to live with, delighting in horrors and gloom, but since he has taken up his study of the unknown he has become simply awful. I'm afraid I must go now, Clive," she said, rising. "You won't stay and stare at me, will you? No, of course you won't!" She squeezed his arm affectionately. "Now go. I want you to be well out of sight before I assume my great role of Diana at the Desk!"

She could treat the matter flippantly in his presence, but when he had gone there came a return of her despair, and it was with a heart as heavy as lead that she dragged herself into the public gaze, and resumed the soul-destroying occupation of doing nothing.

She had put her watch on the desk, and there were times when she thought that it had stopped, the hands moved so slowly. Two o'clock came, and three. She kept her thoughts upon La Florette, the most occupying subject of any. What a day of joy for the dancer, despite her unceremonious exit from the scene! Betty did not doubt that the woman would collect every friend, every acquaintance that she had, and bring them to swell the curious throng before the window. And in this she was not far wrong, for at that very moment La Florette was telephoning to Van Campe, busy with the final rehearsal of the Girl from Morocco, which he was sending on the road.

"I want every principal and every chorus boy and girl to go round and take a good look at Carew," she said. "I don't care what you're doing; they've got to break off some time. Give them an extra half-hour"

But before the first of the theatrical contingent arrived, the crisis had occurred.

It was nearing four o'clock, the hour at which she left her post, and the manager had sent her in a cup of tea. She had almost become hardened, she thought, as she sipped the hot, refreshing liquid, to the entertainment of her audience. Drinking tea was easier than doing nothing.

She put the cup away, and had gone back to her aimless scrawlings, when, looking round, she saw that for the moment attention had been diverted from her to the newest and strangest of spectators.

He was a gaunt man of middle height; his white face would have attracted notice, even had he not chosen to appear in a black cassock buttoned from neck to feet. His head was bare, and his hair hung over his collar, a cascade of iron-grey. Leaning on a long staff almost his own height, he was gazing, spellbound, and it seemed to Betty that he was taking in every detail of her face, her dress, her hair, the simple ornamentation of the desk.

So startled was she by this unexpected apparition that she half-turned to face the street, and met his gaze full. Slowly he moved toward the door, and, looking down, she saw that his feet were bare, protected only from the road by thin sandals that were strapped across the instep and fastened with a leather thong about the ankle. The door opened, and, with a thumping of heart, Betty realised that the crucial moment was at hand—that it was the man who Dr. Laffin had promised would call, the man to whom the message was to be delivered.

With trembling fingers she took the envelope from the drawer, and, without waiting, stepped out of the window in time to confront him. He stared at her in silence.

"Do you want me?" she asked breathlessly.

Twice the heavy eyelids blinked.

"O wondrous day for me!" he said in a hushed tone. "Speak Golden Voice of the Absolute, speak and tell me the hour of my death!"