Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9

Table of Contents

BETTY CAREW might have prayed, and did pray, for deliverance from many evils, great and small. That she had failed to include a supplication for quittance of an untidy young American, who spent his work days in the office of Pawter's Intensive Publicity Agency, and his Sundays in inexpensive exploration, was brought home to her with force on the sunny Sabbath that followed her interview with Dr. Laffin.

Betty was on one side of the Thames, Bill Holbrook on the other, and Betty was surrounded by a large wasp. Betty hated wasps, and apparently this particular wasp hated Betty, for its "z-u-u-u!" held a ferocity of purpose which was terrifying.

"Vespa vulgaris!" murmured Bill with satisfaction "A hymenopterous insect of the family vespidae."

It pleased him immensely that from the lumber room of his mind he could withdraw that stick of superior nomenclature.

And then Betty gave a scream. To her, vespa vulgaris was just plain wasp, and it had made an angry dart toward her face. She shrank back, one foot went into the water, but by an effort she recovered her balance. In another second Bill had leapt across the Thames to her side, and with one sweep of his soft hat had sent the vulgar vespa to destruction.

"Saved," he said, made a false step and went calf-deep into very cold water.

"You might have come before," she said tartly. "You saw the horrid thing attacking me."

His eyes looked a reproach.

"Not every man would leap across the Thames—that river which carries the commerce of the world upon her broad bosom"

Betty Carew was not amused. They were perched precariously on the rocky edge of a little pool that flowed through a grating to a mill pond. Above the grating, a grey-green stone announced in stately Latin:

"Here, Father Thames, are Thy sevenfold springs."

For this was the source of the historic river, and about them were the rolling hills of Gloucestershire.

"Anybody could jump the Thames here," she said scornfully. "A rabbit could jump it!"

"Put me down as being no better than a rabbit," he said with a quiet dignity. "And as to your ingratitude, we will overlook that. One doesn't expect it nowadays. The war has changed people's manners and cut away much of the silk linings of behaviour. Fortunately I was here. People have been killed by wasps. I know a man who never passes a wasp-hive, or whatever they live in, without turning pale. Personally, the wasp was never hatched that could scare me. May I see you home?"

Betty at the moment was accepting the temporary use of his arm to reach the edge of the pool,

"No, you may not see me home. I don't live here—as you well know," she said a little breathlessly. "I am greatly obliged to you, but I don't think you ran much risk."

He looked down at the soaked trouser leg and lifted his eyebrows significantly.

"Any man who saves a popular actress from the malignant pursuit of a wasp deserves well of his country, Miss Carew," he said, and she went pink with annoyance. "I should have recognised you, even if I hadn't met you last night," said Bill, wagging his head. "There's nobody in the world with hair like yours. Think better of it, Miss Carew. Place yourself in the hands of Pips, or, better still, in mine, and I would make you famous in a month. I'm the man that put Stop-Leak Waxoline on the top of the market. You know Waxoline—the Putty with a Punch?"

She had disliked him instinctively before; she hated him now. He was so young, so horribly self-satisfied and so terribly common. Nor did his frank admiration of her hair soothe her. Betty's hair was admittedly wonderful. It had the colour and bloom of sunset corn, a red through which the gold shone so insistently that the redness did not appear until it was caught by a ray of light. And under the hair were features that could not be faulted, and a skin of delicate texture—such skins as that colour of hair so often favour.

"I think you should know that I can find my way back to the—the car without assistance," she said coldly, as, against her will, he helped her up the steep slope to the road.

She was a little out of breath from the stiff climb, uncomfortably warm and feeling something at a disadvantage.

"I'll come round and talk this over with you, Miss Carew," he said gravely. "Pips can give you fame. A corporation like ours that can make people look for the label on a paint can, wouldn't have much trouble in placing your name in half-watt blinders—and Pips are reasonable. So far as I am concerned, it will be a labour of love—and for fear I raise your hopes, I will add that 'love' is only used in a Pickwickian sense. What I mean is—"

But she was walking rapidly down the road to the little village where the joy wagons were parked, and her fury was only discernible by the vigour and length of her stride.

Stillwell's Select Charabanc Tours had brought her that Sunday the hundred miles which separated the head of the Thames from the City of the Eighteen Bridges—which is London. These same tours, but a different car, were also responsible for the presence of Bill Holbrook. They ran from Trafalgar Square on Sunday mornings, and for a ridiculously small sum one might be insured of a day in the country and the association of a superior company—for these were select tours. The employment of that qualifying adjective suggested that Mr. Stillwell spent his time between tours examining the social credentials of his clients.

Unfortunately, Mr. Stillwell must have been ill during the week preceding this particular Sunday, and handed over this selective function to a careless subordinate, since the people who rode in Betty's coach were members of no exclusive social set. There were stout women who brought luncheon baskets and ate throughout the journey, riotous young men who carried refreshments in bottles, mothers of families who brought their responsibilities with them, a vinegary spinster or two who complained about the hardness of the seats and the dustiness of the roads and their bitter humiliation at finding themselves in such low company; but there was no social leader of any standing.

Happily, Mr. Holbrook was accommodated in another coach. Or he had been until the tour began its homeward journey. Then she saw him, wedged between two voluble ladies who shouted at one another across him; he was on the front seat of the wagon, and far enough removed from her to make conversation impossible.

The great, lumbering coach rolled across the dreary plain which separates Cheltenham from Oxford. Clouds had come heaping from the west; ahead the skies were a coppery grey. Somebody in the front seats began to sing a doleful song about mother. Betty shivered and drew her wrap a little closer, though the afternoon was warm to the point of discomfort. Once she saw the annoying young publicity agent glance round at her a little anxiously. He was wondering whether thunderstorms scared her—and that a storm was gathering he knew long before the first growl of thunder insisted above the noise of the coach, and the big spots came splashing down.

On the outskirts of Oxford the three coaches stopped, and, as usual, at a place of refreshment. Most of Mr. Stillwell's select company descended to fortify their nerves for the coming ordeal. The remainder of the journey would be even more musical thought Betty in dismay.

They were not alone in the caravan sense. Drawn up on the broad gravel campus before the Five Stars Inn were three huge joy wagons, but whereas Mr. Stillwell's select conveyances bore no more than his name in letters of modest size and irreproachable character, these charabancs wore sheets that covered the backs of each car and were lettered conspicuously:

The Proud Sons of Ragusa

(Pride of the Medway Lodge 95)

Annual Picnic

As Stillwell's wagons came to a halt, the inn was disgorging the proud children of Ragusa, and one wagon was already filled ready for departure.

A quiet, yet cheery crowd of men, women and children in their Sunday best, were these Ragusans, even if their green and gold rosettes lent them an air of hilarious gaiety.

Betty, who had got down to stretch her cramped limbs, watched them, puzzled.

"Who on earth are the Proud Sons of Ragusa?" she asked, and could have bitten her tongue when she discovered that, unconsciously, she was putting the question to the objectionable young American.

"You've asked me one too many," said Bill. "I only know that it is a society of some kind. Cute little name, isn't it? Sons of Ragusa! Name seems kind of familiar. Say, Miss Carew, what's the idea of this desk stunt? I meant to ask you before, but you were so mad at me that I hadn't a chance—"

But Betty was already moving away. Of all the things she did not wish to do, she placed an exchange of confidence between herself and Mr. William Holbrook in the forefront.

Along the road she had seen a bush pink with dog-roses, and although dog-roses are notoriously without vitality, the plucking of them would occupy time.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the offensive young man hesitating; some remnant of decent feeling restrained him, she noted with satisfaction. Perhaps she had penetrated beneath his thick skin, or, what was more likely, he had not the gift of perseverance.

She picked her roses undisturbed, save by the swift rush of a little car that came flying past in a cloud of dust which the thunder drops had not as yet laid. Then, to her surprise, the car came to a violent halt twenty yards beyond her, and began to move backward. Though it was hardly likely that the driver wanted information about his route, there seemed no other reason, until the machine was abreast of her, and a man leaned out of the window.

"Isn't that Betty?" he asked.

She gave a little gasp of astonishment.

"Clive!" She took the extended hand with a sense of deepest relief.

"Charabanc? Oh, Lord! Whatever made you do it? And I asked you to let me take you out! You don't want to go with that lot, do you?" he asked. "Jump in."

He opened the door for her, and she was by his side in an instant.

"I don't!" she said emphatically. "Providence is working for me! They are terrible!"

As the car, gathering speed, flew past the stationary coaches, she saw the young man standing in the portico of the inn, his straw hat on the back of his head, a look of utter weariness on his face.

"I've been to Witney, to my noble house," said her companion bitterly. "You've never seen it? You're lucky! It is a horror!"

She glanced round at him, inclined to be amused, but a deep frown furrowed his smooth brow, and the good-looking face was puckered in a grimace of utter disgust.

Flick... flick!

A blue ribbon of lightning quivered for the fraction of a second ahead of the car, a tree by the roadside burst into white flame—she smelt burning wood as the car spun past, and instinctively nestled nearer to Clive.

"That was a beauty," he said calmly. "We'll run out of this before we reach Oxford—I think we're on the edge of the storm. You're a bad girl to go charabanc-ing around," he said. (She thought he was trying to keep her mind off the storm, and was not far wrong.)

"I like them—the excursions, I mean. One gets into a new atmosphere and meets types. Only to-day... well, they were rather awful!"

Clive laughed softly.

"What about this show-girl idea of the doctor's?" he asked. "Do you intend humouring him?"

She nodded.

"You do? Moses!"

"I must—for reasons. And Clive, dear, you are to promise me that you will not come anywhere near the wretched shop when I am installed. I'd not survive your seeing me."

"Not me. I never go shopping. Benson does all that. Were you in one of those decorated barouches—poor dear!"

"Where—oh, you mean the big wagons with their banners? No, that was an excursion party. The Sons of Ragusa—Clive!"

She uttered a little scream. Twice, three times the lightning stabbed down, so close that Betty was for the moment blinded; above the purr of the engines, drowning all sound, the crash and boom of the thunder. For a second the car swerved—then straightened.

She looked at her companion. His face was a shade paler, his wide-opened eyes held a something she could not read.

"Sons of Ragusa!" he said jerkily. "My God... How funny!"