Читать книгу The Traitor's Gate - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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THE telephone bell rang for the third time; it conveyed a sense of impatience. Diana Montague deposited the fluffy little Pom on a cushion and reached out lazily for the instrument. It was Colley, of course, querulous, rather inclined to waste time in bewailing the length of time she had kept him waiting.

"Had we known it was your serene highness, we should have leapt to the first tinkle," said Diana ominously. It sounded ominous to Colley, who hated sarcastic women.

"Can you meet me at Ciro's for lunch?" he asked.

"No, we cannot meet you anywhere for lunch," she answered. "I am lunching here with Mr. Graham Hallowell."

Evidently the news was a surprise to him.

"Hallowell? I really can't hear you distinctly, Diana, are you smoking?"

She blew a grey cloud to the ceiling, tapped the ash of her cigarette into the crystal tray.

"No," she said, "but I am a little inarticulate this morning. The prospect of being alone with a gentleman who has just come out of prison is a little overpowering. He doesn't run true to type, Colley. In the first place, he wasn't wrongly convicted—"

"Listen, Di—"

"Don't call me Di!" she interrupted angrily.

"Diana. The Big Fellow wants to meet you—honest. He said so."

"Tell the Big Fellow that I don't wish to meet him," she said, calmly again. "One criminal a day is quite enough thrill."

He was silent for a second. Then:

"Oh, say! Being funny, aren't you? I don't believe that you are lunching with Hallowell!"

She put the receiver down on the table and resumed her book. When Colley Warrington was rude or trying she invariably put the receiver on the table and just let it buzz.

And Colley could be very trying. He was occasionally in love with her and as occasionally he fell into violent jealousies. He was in love with her just now and she was rather bored.

A soft tap at the door: Dombret came in with a swish of her taffeta skirts—Diana invariably dressed her maids in purple taffeta and insisted upon musical comedy aprons and teashop head-dresses. Dombret, being twenty and pretty, carried taffeta well, and the high cap gave her something of the appearance of a Russian Madonna.

"Would you see Miss Joyner, mademoiselle?"

"Miss Joyner!" Diana stared at the maid. "Are you sure—Miss Joyner?"

"Yes, ma'am'selle. A very pretty young lady."

Diana thought quickly.

"Ask her to come up, please."

Dombret was out of the room a few seconds.

"Miss Joyner."

Diana crossed the floor, one hand out-thrown, a dazzling smile on her normally pale face. She knew just exactly how she looked, being self-conscious in the confident sense of the phrase, and well aware of her perfect lines and the red splendour of her hair.

"This is most delightful of you, Miss Joyner."

Hope Joyner took the hand, her clear grey eyes met Diana's in a look that was neither antagonistic nor suspicious. She was three years the younger, at the age when it is difficult to remember just what she looked like a year ago; when girlhood had acquired a certain mystery and reticence and the lank body that could only be guessed behind loose-fitting jumpers is formless no more.

"I wondered if you would mind my calling," she said.

So this was Hope Joyner? She was lovely. Diana was a hard critic, most difficult to please, but she found nothing to criticise in shape or voice or colouring.

"I'm awfully pleased—sit down, won't you?"

She grabbed the drowsy little dog from the couch; he protested shrilly and was cuffed to silence. Cuffs and pettings were the alternates of Togo's experience. But Hope remained standing, one white hand resting on the billowy end of the couch.

"I had a letter from you—rather a curious letter," she said. "May I read it—perhaps you have forgotten what you said."

Diana never forgot such things, but she offered no objection, watching the girl with a detached interest as she opened her handbag, took out an envelope and produced from the cover a sheet of heavy grey note-paper. Without preamble, she began to read:

Dear Miss Joyner: I trust you will not think it impertinent of me to write to you on a matter which touches me very closely, and I know enough of you to believe that you will respect my confidence. Briefly, I am in this embarrassing position. Until you appeared on the scene I was engaged to be married to Sir Richard Hallowell—although just now we are estranged on a family matter which would not interest you. You have been seen about with him very frequently of late and people are talking rather unkindly about you—asking who you are, where you come from, what is your family. That, however, concerns me—

She stopped to turn over the closely written sheet.

—concerns me less than my own prospects of happiness. I love Dick very dearly and he loves me, though for the moment we are scarcely on speaking terms. Might I not appeal to your generosity and ask you to give us the opportunity of renewing our friendship?

She finished reading, restored the letter to her bag and closed it gently.

"I don't think that is an unreasonable request," said Diana coolly.

"That I should obliterate myself?" asked Hope in her quiet, incisive way. "But why should I? You have all the opportunities you need, and aren't you presuming a great deal?"

Diana bit her lip thoughtfully.

"Perhaps I am—it was a silly letter, but I was distracted. Of course, it doesn't mean because you're a friend, that you care for him—"

Hope shook her head.

"I didn't mean that. What I intended was to ask you whether you weren't presuming an enormous capacity for sacrifice on my part?"

Diana's eyes narrowed.

"You mean—that you love him?"

Hope Joyner nodded. Her eyes did not waver.

"That is what I mean," she said.

The confession took Diana's breath away, and it was some time before she recovered her voice.

"How very touching!" she said, but Hope Joyner was impervious to the sneer. "So I presume that my very reasonable request to you will not affect your"—she paused deliberately—"ambitious plan?"

"Is it very ambitious?" asked Hope with a certain baffling innocence. "I mean, to like or love Dick Hallowell?"

Diana kept a tight hold of herself. She had not expected much good to come from her letter; indeed, the writing of it had been the merest whimsical impulse. Perhaps she had wanted to hurt Dick Hallowell, to annoy him. And now, facing the girl, so radiant in her beauty, so confident in her love, she saw a challenge in the girl's very presence; in the unwavering, unfearing steadfastness of her eyes—and Diana was a bad person to challenge.

It was curious how, in that moment, all the dead resentment came to life, and the dead ashes of rage which had consumed her four years ago glowed red and hotly. Across bleak skies showed the blurred shadow of might-have-beens... Hope saw her swallow, saw the teeth meet even as Diana smiled.

"I will show you something."

The voice that spoke was strange even to Diana, yet it was her own. She was gone from the room for a few seconds and came back holding between finger and thumb a small leather case. Snapping open the catch, the lid flew back and revealed a ring of three brilliant diamonds. Slipping the ring from its support, she thrust it into Hope's unwilling hands.

"Will you read what is inside, please?"

Mechanically the girl obeyed, though she was not very curious. Engraved on the inside of the lid were the words: "Dick to Diana, 1922"

Hope handed the ring back to the woman.

"Well?" demanded Diana.

"An engagement ring?"

The other woman nodded. Hope was looking at her, puzzled.

"Does it really—affect the situation?" she asked. "Is that a more convincing argument than any you have used why I should not see Richard Hallowell? I know you were engaged to him: he told me—at least, he told me he was engaged to somebody. Most people are engaged more than once, aren't they? Honestly, Miss Martyn, I don't know whether I'm being a cat or whether I'm just being awfully sane, but do you seriously expect me not to see Richard Hallowell again?"

"I expect you to do as you please." Diana's voice was almost tart. "Obviously," with a shrug, "it is a matter of taste and good breeding. You cannot expect me to think for you."

Her eyes were on her bag.

"Perhaps it was an indiscreet letter to write," she said, and held out her hand. "May I have it back, please?"

Again their eyes met, and then, opening her bag, Hope took out the letter, tore it in four pieces and put the scraps of paper upon the table. With a nod she turned and left the room, so unexpectedly that the inquisitive Dombret, with her ear glued to the keyhole, almost fell into the room as she opened the door.

Diana walked to the window to catch another glimpse of her as she left the house, but was unsuccessful.

Why on earth—?

Diana Martyn was puzzled at herself; could not construe her own motives. She had given up all thought of Dick Hallowell years before—he was as remote a factor as any in her life. She tried to remember why the letter had been written. There was a streak of impishness in Diana Martyn, a curious perversity of reasoning that had led her before into many minor and one great scrape. She did not like to think about this letter, for it had to do with Dick Hallowell. She had written the letter mischievously, never doubting that Hope would show it to the man most interested, expecting from Dick one of those storming epistles of which he was capable; she had certainly never expected the appearance in her exquisite drawing-room of this girl with her calm, provocative beauty.

She was trying to get in order the basic causes of her present emotions, when Dombret came into the room to announce a caller, who followed on her heels. Diana was sitting on one of the broad window-seats that commanded a view of Curzon Street, her arms folded, one white finger at her lips; and now she scrutinised critically, unmercifully, the shabby man who strode in, a scowl on his face, his hands thrust in his pockets. Waiting until the door closed on Dombret, she asked:

"Why?"

"Why what?" he demanded roughly.

"Why this general threadbareness?"

Graham Hallowell looked down at his soiled clothing and grinned.

"I forgot to change," he said.

She nodded slowly.

"So you've been to see the great Richard—and was the great Richard duly impressed by the evidence of your poverty?"

He dropped down on the big settee, took a paper packet of cigarettes from his pocket, and lit one, making no reply.

"Is there any particular reason why you should appear in Curzon Street got up like a scarecrow—I at any rate am not impressed."

"Neither was he," he said, puffing a cloud of smoke to the ceiling and watching it dissolve. "He gave me a mouldy fifty. I nearly chucked it at him."

"But you didn't quite," she said.

He had long ceased to be irritated by the undercurrent of sarcasm in her tone; it was part of her mental and moral make-up. There was a time when these subtle sneers of hers enraged him to the point of madness. But that was long ago.

"I suppose," she said thoughtfully, "you banked on his paying you any sum you asked in order to get rid of you, and of course he didn't! I wish you knew Dick as well as I."

"I know him too well," he growled. "The Pharisaical swine!"

She delayed her answer to this for a considerable time, her white teeth working at her lower lip.

"Pharisaical? No! Dick isn't a Pharisee." After a pause: "I suppose he didn't mention me?"

"He said he didn't want to hear about you, if that is any satisfaction."

She nodded.

"Which means that you did the speaking?"

"He's got a new girl," broke in Graham, "and she's a beauty! I saw them draping themselves sentimentally over the execution place."

She did not appear to be interested, and, looking round the apartment, he framed the question that he would have asked the previous night, but his nerve had failed him, for he stood in some awe of this woman.

"You've got a beautiful place, Diana. I'm not especially curious, but I'm wondering how it is done. If I remember rightly, you were living in furnished rooms when I went away. I noticed your change of address, but this magnificence is rather staggering."

She had, as he knew, an income of a few hundreds a year, barely sufficient to pay the rent of this apartment. She wrote a little, was on excellent terms with Fleet Street, but her natural indolence made this source of revenue a meagre one. She smiled a little sourly.

"You fear the worst? Well, you need not. I am being rather industrious just now. Have you heard of the Prince of Kishlastan?"

He shook his head.

"You haven't?" She waved her hand around the room. "Behold his largesse!"

She laughed at the look of consternation that came to his face.

"I'm his press agent," she said coolly. "That doesn't sound a very high-class job, but it has been worth the better part of four thousand a year to me, and I think I've earned my money. The Prince has a grievance against the world, and against the Government in particular. Colley Warrington introduced him to me two years ago. I think he'd been trying to bleed our friend, who, by the way, is painfully rich, and had failed, and he thought of working me in as a sideline, and of course I was terribly sympathetic with his excellency, and it didn't take very long to discover the chinks in his golden armour. He has lost two guns—"

"Two what?" asked the puzzled Graham.

"Two guns," she said. "Apparently the French governor allowed our friend to be saluted with nine rounds of blank cartridge, but he got into some trouble, there was a scandal of sorts, and the salute was reduced to seven. You wouldn't think it possible that that sort of thing would bother a grown man, but it's evidently a terribly important matter in India. And he's a lunatic on the question of precious stones. He has the most wonderful collection in India."

"Is he married?" asked Graham suspiciously.

"Nine deep," she replied calmly. "I haven't met any of his wives; they are kept strictly purdah—that is the term, I believe. I really have been very useful to him—I've interested our ambassador in Paris, and I've written or inspired innumerable articles about him."

He was looking at her suspiciously, fingering his chin. She laughed.

"You have an East-is-East-and-West-is-West look in your eyes, Graham," she said, "and I have a feeling that you are going to develop into one of your censor-of-behaviour moods."

"It is queer, that's all," he said, and lit a cigar.

Her attitude was not friendly; he felt that. Presently he threw the cigar into the fire-place with a curse.

"I'll go home and change," he growled as he rose. "And this press agent business—I'm not so sure that I like it, Diana."

"That will hardly keep me awake," she answered coolly. "I suppose you realise that the four hundred pounds a year which was once mine is mine no longer. In a moment of mad optimism I loaned the capital to a young gentleman with a great scheme for getting rich quickly—incidentally, I lost a perfectly good fiancé."

Her tone was light, but there was an underlying sourness in the words, and he shifted uneasily.

"You'll get all that back. I get twenty thousand on my next birthday—"

"So you said before," she bantered him; "and there is your mother's will to prove it! Unfortunately, you've already mortgaged that legacy, as I discovered after you went to prison." And then, with a change of voice: "Go home and get into respectable clothes, and be back by one o'clock." She glanced at the jewelled watch on her wrist. "You haven't much time—hurry! I am expecting Colley to call. If he finds you are not here he will think I have been lying to him."

She walked with him to the door of the room and closed it after him, a little too soon for his dignity, and with a grimace she came back to the couch and was apparently absorbed in the newest and most hectic of novels when Colley was announced.

Colley Warrington was a painfully thin man with a painfully narrow head, sparsely covered with yellow hair in quantities hardly sufficient to hide his incipient baldness. His face was long and furrowed, he had the appearance of a man who was prematurely old. People who hastily generalised called him dissipated, and wondered where the money came from to dissipate at all.

There are in London, in New York—indeed, in every centre of society the world holds—a sprinkling of men who make all people's business their own. Especially those people whose names are to be found in those volumes devoted to haut ton.

Colley knew everybody—could without reference to any guide-book rattle off their titles to greatness, who were their mothers and other relations, even to the remotest cousins, so long as the remote cousins had also some claim to importance. He knew their incomes to an nth, the state of repair or disrepair in which their properties stood. Walk Bond Street with him and you had comedy and tragedy at your elbow, for in the common objects he saw a significance beyond the ken of the average.

"... Lily Benerley in her Rolls—a fellow at the Egyptian Embassy gave her that—a fearful outsider. There's old Lady Vannery, drinks like a fish but she's got half a million; her nephew, Jack Wadser, inherits it when she pegs out—he married Mildred Perslow—the girl who ran away to Kenya with Leigh Castol, Lord Mensem's son... "

Uncharitable folks hinted that Colley found his instinct for scandal a source of profit: "crook-bred and crook-minded" a certain Lord Chancellor had described him, not inaptly. There had been some sort of scandal at the Paddock Club—a card-room dispute. Colley had resigned quietly. There was no fuss. He was on the fringe of the Torkinton blackmail case, and found it convenient to rusticate at Aix-en-Provence whilst the trial was in progress. No reference was made to him by name in court, but when a learned counsel asked "There was, I believe, Another Person in your confidence when you wrote those threatening letters?" everybody knew who Another Person was.

Such a man was Colley Warrington, who came scowling into the drawing-room and stood gloomily surveying Diana.

"'Lo, Diana!"

There was no extraordinary enthusiasm in the greeting.

"Sit down and don't scowl."

"Where's Graham?" he asked.

"Gone home to change."

He seated himself carefully on the edge of a chair and lifted his perfectly creased trousers, displaying a pair of white silk socks above the polished radiance of his enamelled shoes.

"You're a fool to have anything to do with Graham—you know his reputation."

"He knows yours," she answered with a half-smile; "and I gather that your views as to who is, and who is not, a desirable companion, have something in common with Graham's, except that he feels that you are the man of all men that no decent woman could be seen around with."

Colley said something under his breath.

"Don't swear, don't be bad-tempered; I want to ask you something. You're an encyclopaedia, Colley, and I've never consulted you before. Who is Hope Joyner?"

His ruling passion was strong enough to obliterate his ill-temper.

"Hope Joyner?" he repeated. "That's the girl with a big flat in Devonshire House, isn't it? She has two cars, a Rolls and a big Yankee car; pots of money, and she is a friend of Dick Hallowell's... "

"I know all about that," she said impatiently; "but who is she?"

He shook his head.

"I don't know. She sort of appeared from nowhere. Went to a good school, I believe—one of those swagger establishments at Ascot, where lineage is spelt with a L. It's queer you should be interested in her! I was only talking about her the other day to Bobbie Longfellow, the Guardsman—"

"I didn't know you were a friend of his," interrupted Diana quickly.

"I'm not," he admitted frankly; "but even one's enemies talk. She's an orphan; her father was a Chilian, who left her all his fortune. It's administered by Roke & Morty, and why Roke & Morty should be trusted to administer an estate of that kind the Lord knows."

She frowned at this; the name was unfamiliar, and he went on to explain.

"They're criminal lawyers—almost crooks themselves, I believe, but they're in most of the big cases that come to the Old Bailey. If a fellow gets into bad trouble they're the people to engage."

"What is her history?" asked Diana, cutting short an interesting biography of these legal gentlemen.

"Blest if I know." Colley rubbed his thinly-covered head. "She used to live at Monk's Chase, a property down in Berkshire. Rather a nice old house; it goes back to the last Henry... "

"For God's sake don't talk architecture to me, or I'll scream!" said Diana.

"Anyway, she used to live there," Colley went on, anxious to appease one who had before exhibited a gift for unpleasant repartee. "She was under the charge of a man called Hallett, an old gentleman. I think she must have been there for years. Hallett was in America most of the time, and the girl was under the care of his housekeeper. When she left Monk's Chase she went to school, and from school to Paris for a finishing course. She's always had money, stacks of it! Roke & Morty fixed up the flat for her; that's all I know. Why are you so infernally interested?"

Diana blew a long spiral of smoke from her lips before she replied.

"I am interested," she said, "because this young and charming lady has to be scientifically but effectively suppressed."

Colley stared in astonishment, then grinned.

"She is going to take a lot of suppressing, my dear, and there's a man in London who is mad crazy about her."

"I know," she interrupted roughly. "Dick Hallowell."

"Dick Hallowell!" he scoffed. "I'm not thinking about him."

It was her turn to be astonished.

"Whom do you mean? Who is in love with her?"

Colley was inclined to be theatrical; he was theatrical now, and he struck an attitude.

"Our exalted master and friend, His Excellency the Prince of Kishlastan."

The Prince! Diana did not believe him; thought he was indulging in an ill-timed jest.

"But he doesn't know her," she said.

Colley nodded.

"He has seen her, my dear, and to see is to love, as the poet says. He goes down to the Row regularly every morning to watch her ride; pays people to discover what theatre she goes to, so that he can sit in a box and gloat over her; thinks almost as much of her as he does of his precious guns and his quarter mile of pearls. And tonight he's meeting her."

"Tonight? How—at the reception?" she asked quickly.

Colley nodded.

"The reception is arranged especially to afford Riki a chance of meeting this divinity. Why else do you think? He hates the English, and would no more think of giving a party than I should think of paying for one. He got to know Hope by the simple process of interesting her in the Oriental Women's Association. You know the kind of bunk—save our brown sisters from the horrors of polygamy. It is a very simple matter to get to know any girl you like."

Diana rose and walked slowly up and down the room, her hands clasped behind her.

"He has said nothing to me," she repeated.

"Why should he?" drawled Colley. "After all, men do not as a rule consult their—press agents about their love affairs."

"You're very crude," said Diana.

She walked to the door, intending to go to the bedroom to get a handkerchief. As she turned the handle and threw the door open, she stood petrified with astonishment.

Standing outside was a stout, middle-aged woman with a big frame and a powerful nose, and two eyes that twinkled with amusement.

"Who—who are you?" gasped Diana.

"Good morning, ma'am. My name's Ollorby."

She fumbled in her bag, took out a large card and handed it to the girl, who was too astonished even to examine the pasteboard.

"I've got a servants' agency. Any time you want a maid or a cook, I'll be glad if you'll ring me up. Three-seven-nine-four Soho... "

"How did you get in?" demanded Diana and then her anger rising: "How dare you come into this flat without permission?"

She looked round for Dombret.

"It's my fault entirely," said Mrs. Ollorby, almost humbly. "The door was open, and I couldn't make anyone hear, so I just walked in. Any time you're in want of a servant—"

"I don't want a servant and I don't want you!" Diana pointed to the outer door of the flat, and in no wise abashed, Mrs. Ollorby walked out with a briskness that was unexpected in one of her years. Diana slammed the door and went back to Colley.

"What's the trouble?" he asked lazily.

"A wretched servants' agent!"

She rang the bell furiously, and after a while Dombret came in.

"How dare you leave the door open?"

"But I didn't, madam," protested the maid.

"Don't lie!" stormed Diana. "You left the door open and a wretched woman wandered in—heaven knows how long she was waiting... "

The providential arrival of Graham cut short the indignant Dombret's ordeal. Thereafter Diana dismissed the pushful agent from her mind and throughout lunch discussed mainly one topic—the Prince of Kishlastan and his passion for gewgaws, material and human.