Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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DR. LAFFIN, in the brighter light of the dressing-room, was revealed as being a little above middle height, but he was so very thin that he appeared taller. He was dressed in a funereal black; all the bitter years Betty had known him he had worn nothing else. A black, unrelieved except by the thin edge of white collar that showed above his high cravat, and the occasional appearance of a rim of white cuff at his wrists.

"Good-evening, child. Why are you not playing?" he asked.

"Because Van Campe has discharged me," she said recklessly.

To her surprise his face did not change.

"Discharged you? Well, well!" And then, remembering the opportunity which this piece of news gave to him: "I took a great deal of trouble to find this position for you. Still it may be for the best. You will return home now?"

She shook her head.

"No, I shall find other work."

Sitting down at her dressing-table, he subjected her to a long scrutiny, his fingers drumming absent-mindedly on the table-cover.

"I shall not be able to make you an allowance this time," he said.

Betty did not expect that he would.

"I have a little money—" she began, when he interrupted her.

"Happily, I can save you trouble. I seem to have spent my life—saving you trouble. It would be wiser if you came home. The house in Camden Town has not been quite the same since you left. And the other matter is definitely settled."

He took from his pocket a printed leaflet, and laid it on the table before her. She braced herself for the coming struggle. Vulture! He was all that. Disaster brought him unerringly to the spot; it was as though her dismissal had been arranged by him for that night.

She read the pamphlet and looked up.

"This is an advertisement of a desk," she said innocently.

"Mortimer's Multiple Desk," he murmured. "There is no desk on the market like it. But to the outward eye, and at first glance, it appears to be no different from other desks. Suppose, however, a beautiful young lady is seen in a shop window sitting at that desk. Can you picture the hurrying crowd to whom shop-windows are such familiar—"

She interrupted him.

"You mean that you still have that absurd scheme—that you want me to sit in a store window to exhibit myself?"

And, when he nodded:

"It may sound a revolting suggestion to one who is a great actress." He mouthed the words with a certain satisfaction. "It may seem almost a desecration of her art to lower herself to the level of an exhibition. And yet, what are you but an exhibitor, Elizabeth?"

"Of course, I'll do nothing of the kind," she said. Her face was flushed, her eyes unusually bright. "I told you on Monday night—I will not do this."

"The pay is amazingly attractive." Dr. Laffin was apparently oblivious to her rising anger. "It is no less than fifteen pounds a week. Your duties begin at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and end at four o'clock in the afternoon. You need not look at the gaping crowds which will, very naturally, gather to witness so remarkable a spectacle."

"I'll not do it!"

He looked at her.

"I fear you have no choice. I wish it. I, who took you from the workhouse, where you were supported by charity, and gave you a house, an education, and the illusion of parenthood."

She mastered her anger with an effort.

"Dr. Laffin, I will do anything in reason. It isn't necessary to go over the old ground and tell you that, in spite of the material advantages you gave me, my life has been wretchedly miserable. I won't ask for your help, and I can get a part in De Fell's new play—he has half promised me."

He seated himself, carefully dusting the chair with a dark-coloured silk handkerchief, that he drew from his sleeve.

"By the most fortunate chance I have become acquainted with a young man, who will be of the greatest assistance to you when your engagement is concluded—he is an authority on the subject of publicity"

"Oh!"

In a flash she remembered the objectionable youth who had haunted the stage door for weeks, and, if she had any doubt at all, it was to be dispelled immediately.

"My young friend is waiting outside; I will take the liberty of bringing him in."

He moved in his furtive, noiseless way to the door, opened it, and looked out.

"Come in, please," he said.

It was the young man; she recognised him immediately. He was not in evening dress; she would have been surprised if he wore anything so civilised. His tweed waistcoat was untidy with cigarette ash, his tie had slipped down, exposing the brass head of a stud, and his hair needed the attention of a brush. To these was added an inkstain at the corner of his mouth.

"I think I've met you before, Miss Carew," he said briskly. "The doctor asked me to see you about this desk they're booming. I understand that your name hasn't to appear. That is good publicity wasted"

"Mr?" She paused inquiringly.

"Holbrook—William. Bill to my friends," he said promptly.

"Mr. Holbrook, I want you to understand clearly that I shall do nothing so utterly humiliating as you have suggested."

"I didn't—" he began, but she signalled him to be silent.

"I have no illusions about my work," she said. "I am not a brilliant actress, and I never dreamt that I was. But I have enough respect for myself and my—my art to reject this suggestion. I have no intention of sitting in a shop window"

"Furnished in the semblance of a handsome library," murmured the doctor.

"I don't care how it is furnished. I will not do anything so—so undignified. It would ruin whatever chance I had in this profession, and advertise my incompetence."

Mr. William Holbrook passed his fingers through his untidy hair in perplexity.

"I am rather surprised," he said. "I thought the matter was settled, Miss Carew. 'Pips' have only got the publicity end of the desk. We are the advertising agents, and this stunt is a new one on me."

She looked at him suspiciously.

"Isn't this your idea?"

"No, my love." It was the doctor. "It is not Mr. Holbrook's idea. It is mine. Will you excuse me, Mr. Holbrook?—I will see you in the morning."

When they were alone, he took up his silk hat, and smoothed the glossy nap meditatively.

"The window will be set on Tuesday," he said. "It is in a side street leading from Piccadilly. A very select neighbourhood."

She shook her head.

"I will not do it," she said. "I am seeing Mr. De Fell on Monday, and I hope to open with his new piece."

The doctor lifted his shoulders in a slow shrug.

"Open by all means," he said, "and the night you appear there will be men outside the theatre distributing handbills telling the world that you are the daughter of a man who was hanged at Oxford Prison for the murder of your mother." The girl turned white.

"You would not dare it would be cowardly, brutal... you would not dare!"

Dr. Laffin never smiled. When he was amused, the skin about his eyes wrinkled for a second, as it wrinkled now. With that slow deliberation, which marked his every movement, he put his hand in his breast pocket and took out a leather case.

"I have never shown you this," he said, and unfolded a newspaper cutting. "Listen!"

"'This morning at nine o'clock, James Setherby Caren, a butler, of Nash Terrace, Bath, suffered the extreme penalty of the law at Oxford jail, to which he had been transferred after his sentence at the Bath Assizes. It will be remembered that Caren, who had been drinking heavily, shot his wife in a moment of drunken frenzy. The child, Elizabeth, who was such a pathetic figure at the trial, is now an inmate of Bath Workhouse. Caren, who expressed his penitence for his crime, walked firmly to the scaffold, and death was instantaneous. The man, who seems to have been above the average order of intelligence, enjoyed some local fame as an inventor.'"

Dr. Laffin folded the paper, and replaced it in the case. "You were rather young to remember the trial," he said, "but I dare assert that you remember how a disinterested physician rescued you from a pauper home, and gave you the advantages of an education?"

She did not answer. Young as she had been, she remembered that vividly. Remembered the pallid man in the dock, the red-robed judge, the bustle of the little courthouse. She recalled a chill morning when the workhouse matron had come to her and patted her head kindly and given her an apple. There was a little gutter child in the same dormitory, who, when the matron had gone, pointed a skinny finger at her, and shrieked with elfin laughter:

"Her father got hung this morning!"

She did not know what "getting hung" meant at the time—she knew it was something very final, because the matron told her, to her relief, that she would never see the big, wicked man who beat her mother any more. For this she was glad, but she wanted to see her mother, and cried and cried at nights because there was no rough hand to hold hers, and no thin, weary voice to tell her fairy stories.

"I will dispel any mistaken ideas you may have as to my motive," the doctor went on. "You were an experiment: I wanted to see how impressionable was the plastic mind of childhood. As an experiment you were a failure. You have now an opportunity of repaying me for the care I have shown and the expense I have incurred on your behalf. The desk you will advertise was one of your late father's precious inventions. It is valueless."

She shuddered, in spite of herself, and in that moment she hated him with a hatred that overmastered all other emotions.

"You will do as I wish?"

Controlling her voice, she said:

"If I do this, it will be the last service I will render you." Again the skin about his eyes wrinkled.

"Not the last. There is yet one more—a negative service. Now and for ever you will forget that I was ever stopped on Dartmoor one stormy night. You understand? You will forget also about a certain gold buckle you saw. If you ever speak to a living soul about that, you will speak no more!"