Читать книгу The Traitor's Gate - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

Table of Contents

THERE were those who thought that His Excellency the Prince of Kishlastan lacked something more than a sense of discretion. A tall, thin man, with the facial characteristics of the typical Easterner, he was for the moment not only under the ban of the French Government, but was extremely unpopular with the Government of India. Though nominally a French subject, since he took his title from a small patch of territory which impinged upon French possessions—a territory he so misruled that he had been brought before the Governor of Pondicherry—he had, to the embarrassment of the British Government, acquired vast estates in British India.

"Riki," as they called him, came to London with a confused grievance; and since he was a man of enormous wealth, found many sympathisers in that stratum of society which is ready to excuse the eccentricities of native rulers.

He was a daily visitor to the Row, an indefatigable firstnighter, and his dinner parties were marked by a luxury and profusion which had no exact parallel amongst the season's entertainments. It is true that no official from the Foreign Office attended these functions, that he was not to be met with in the circles associated with the official world; but though it withheld its countenance, yet, in a remote fashion the Foreign Office was inevitably represented on Riki's more elaborate occasions.

Dick Hallowell received a card of invitation to the reception which His Excellency was to hold, and at the same time he was privately notified that his presence at Arrid's Hotel would not be unfavourably regarded by the powers that be. Dick had spent four years of his childhood in India, had acquired a working knowledge of Hindustani which had been improved through his love of the language. He was in India acting as aide-de-camp to the Governor-General of Bengal when his father's death had brought him home to assume the responsibilities of the title and the task of settling up an estate which was in some ways slightly involved.

He strolled into Bobbie Longfellow's room, and found that lanky young man reclining in a deep chair, engrossed in the study of a sporting newspaper.

"Good Lord, you poor old soul!" said Bobbie when he read the card; and then his jaw dropping: "But you don't want me to meet that mad devil again, do you?"

Dick smiled.

"I don't know why you call him 'mad.' But I did think it would be an idea if you came along. I shall be bored stiff."

"Mad!" scoffed Bobbie. "Of course he's nutty! Why I'd hardly put my foot in this castellated slum before I was told off to show him round the jewel House. I don't know the jewel House from a chicken run, but one of those ancient birds in the ridiculous uniform of Elizabeth—what do you call 'em, meat-eaters?"

"Beefeaters," said Dick.

Bobbie nodded.

"One of those old creatures put me right, and I had to totter up those ghastly stairs and show him the royal jewels—I'd never seen 'em myself; so it really wasn't so bad."

"Why do you call him mad?" asked Dick.

Bobby nodded vigorously.

"He's mad on the question of jewels. Simply couldn't tear him away from the crown. He just hung on to the rails and glared at it. The things he said to the other Indian were terribly interesting, only I didn't understand them. He spoke in Hindustani. Wish you had been there, Dick. One of his people told me that he's crazy about diamonds, that he's got, in a room in Kishlastan, stones you couldn't buy for ten million sterling! And when he came out of the jewel Tower, he was so upset that he was as limp as a rag. He wanted to give me two pearl ear-rings as a souvenir, but I told him, 'My dear rajah, I've given up wearing ear-rings—they haven't been fashionable for years.'"

Dick laughed softly.

"Anyway, you're going to be a good boy and come along to Arrid's to-night," he said. "I've had a request to be civil to His Excellency, and we needn't be there more than half an hour."

Bobbie groaned, threw his paper on to the nearest settee and drew his long form erect.

"Shall I wear my pearl necklace or my ruby bangle?" he demanded sardonically. "And I'd fixed to go to a theatre with one of the sweetest little things—"

"You can still go," said Dick. "We shan't be at Arrid's more than half an hour."

When they arrived that night at the hotel they found the broad stairway leading up to the first floor crowded with a brilliant and slowly-moving throng. All that was nearly great in London was there: Members of Parliament, ex-Cabinet Ministers who represented a party not likely to return to office for many years and therefore enabled to show themselves without compromise to their principles, ladies who appeared everywhere except at Court, elderly Indian officers (themselves with grievances), a journalist, a writer or two—these they recognised as they progressed with the throng.

"There is Diana Martyn," said Bobbie suddenly, and Dick, looking up, saw her on the landing above, leaning on the balustrade and talking to Colley Warrington. As he made to pass her she favoured him with a smile and a cool little nod.

"This is an unexpected pleasure, Dick," she said, very self-possessed.

It was difficult even for Dick to believe that he had once been engaged to this calm and beautiful girl, or that their parting had ever been a tragedy to him. He could meet her without embarrassment, could even be mildly admiring, for in her jade dress, with a chain of big emeralds about her throat, her perfect skin and grave eyes, she was as beautiful a woman as a man might hope to meet in the course of a day's march through Mayfair.

"You're not married yet?" She smiled her inquiry;

"Not yet," he answered with perfect gravity.

"A little bird whispers that you contemplate—" She did not complete the sentence.

"Your little bird for once speaks truth," he said, meeting her challenge.

"How perfectly wonderful!" she murmured, and in another second they were separated, as he pushed forward to the open doors of the salon where His Excellency met his guests.

They cleared the fringe of people at the door, and then Dick halted, struck dumb with astonishment. In the centre of the room stood the rajah in an amethyst silken robe, girt at the waist with a broad sash of silver, and about his neck rope upon rope of pearls; but it was not the magnificence of the Easterner that transfixed the visitor.

Talking to him was a slim girl in white. Her back was turned to Dick, but he recognised her instantly.

"Good Lord!" gasped Bobbie. "That's your Hope, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you mean about 'my Hope,'" said Dick, with unnecessary irritation. "It is Miss Joyner, I think."

At that moment she turned her head and greeted him with a smile as he advanced to make his stiff obeisance to the Indian.

"It is delightful of you to come, Sir Richard," said the Prince in his mincing way, the lazy, heavy-lidded eyes surveying Dick with no especial favour. "I hoped to see you when I was at the Tower, but it was my misfortune that you were away. Do you know Miss Joyner?"

Dick smiled at the girl.

"An old friend—yes?" said the Prince, with just a hint of suspicion in his voice. "You are greatly privileged."

Another name was announced. Dick drew the girl from the circle, to the rajah's annoyance.

"What on earth are you doing in this galley?" he asked in amazement, and she laughed softly.

"I'm one of the world's workers: didn't you know that, Dick?" she replied. "I'm in the Oriental Woman's movement, though I can't say that I'm far in it. Lady Silford asked me to join her committee."

Dick knew Lady Silford very well for a woman with inordinate social ambitions and with a most meagre income to support them. She was by repute one of the many subsidised by this wealthy Indian, and he could have no doubt in his mind that though Lady Silford had issued the invitation, she had acted according to instructions. For a second he was a little perturbed, for he knew something of the rajah's private reputation.

"I don't think I should have much to do with these so-called movements," he said. "There are quite a number of genuine societies which are doing really good work, but the Oriental Woman's Association is a fake—so much so that the police refuse permission to make collections on its behalf."

"I'm not terribly interested," she confessed as they strolled towards the door.

Outside in the broad corridor they came face to face with Diana, and Diana greeted the girl with all the aplomb and enthusiasm which a close and lifelong friendship might excuse.

"Why, it is our little Hope!" she bantered. "And is this the—'contemplation', Dick?"

It was Hope who saved him the embarrassment of replying.

"I saw you as I came up the stairs, but hadn't a chance to speak to you, Miss Martyn," she said. "'I wanted to give you something."

She opened her jewelled bag and took out a flat leather case.

"This came to me by special messenger just before I left Devonshire House," she said. "The rajah's card is inside, but I thought some mistake had been made, and that perhaps you would rectify it for me. Will you?"

Diana took the package reluctantly.

"I don't know what it's all about," she began. "What is this?"

"A string of pearls," said the girl quietly. "Would you tell His Excellency that it isn't customary in England for a lady to receive presents—even from princes of the Golden East?"

Dick saw the tell-tale flush come to Diana's cheeks.

"Why should I be your messenger?"

"Because"—Hope was smiling—"you will find the rajah's card inside. My address is written upon it—in your handwriting!"

"Wait a moment!"

Diana's voice was hard: she put out her hand to detain the girl as she was moving off.

"I don't see why on earth you shouldn't accept a little present, if His Excellency deigns to favour you. After all"—her shrug was almost imperceptible—"you aren't anybody particular—forgive me if I'm frank—are you? I mean, one doesn't find your name in the landed gentry or in Debrett or in any of those useful books of reference."

"Nor in Carlow's List," said Hope coolly, and Diana went an angry red.

She left Diana standing with a fixed smile, but in her eyes a malignity which Dick had only seen once before.

"Who on earth is Carlow?" he demanded, when they were clear of the crowd.

"Didn't you know?" she asked innocently. "Carlow's is a big commercial agency, and they issue a list, very confidential and secret, to their clients—I am one of them. The List contains the names of everybody in England, and in London especially, who live by their wits and have been associated with criminals."

Dick gasped.

"What an extraordinary girl you are!"

"Aren't I?" she smiled, though she had never felt less like smiling in her life. "But then, I'm in rather an extraordinary position."

She refused his escort and drove home alone. Her mind was in a turmoil, for Diana Martyn had put into words all the uneasy, fretful questions she had been asking herself for the past five years.

She was "nobody"—Diana had spoken the truth. Beyond the fact that her parents were dead, that she had interests in South America, and was in receipt of a princely income paid regularly into her bank every quarter day by a firm of lawyers, who, even she knew, dealt with the shadiest of folk, she had no clue to her own identity.

She had never seen her own birth certificate, nor even knew in what country she had first seen the light of day. The mysterious Mr. Hallett might have told her, but Mr. Hallett she had never met with. She knew nothing about him except that he was an elderly man who travelled a great deal, and whose eyesight had been failing ever since she could remember. Yet she had lived in Mr. Hallett's house for years; had come there on her vacation from school; had enjoyed the run of his estate, the use of his horses, the respect and care of his servants.

A restless man, who seemed to be travelling all the time, now in India, now in America, now in Southern Europe, she had almost come to regard him as the symbol of all that was baffling in her life. Sometimes she hated him. He never answered the letters she wrote, had never addressed one kind word to her. Presents had come on her birthday, at Christmas, flowers invariably reached her on the tenth day of June of every year, but not a line of his writing had she seen. He was a man who was doing his duty mechanically, without any great heartiness, she felt, and always avoiding her. She was certain that it was no coincidence that he left Monk's Chase the day before she reached there on her summer vacation, and returned a few days after she left. Her letters to him were answered by his banker, of all people in the world, a stuffy old man who lived in a dingy office in Threadneedle Street, and who was no more interested in her than Mr. Hallett himself.

As her maid undressed her that night her mind was fixed on Monk's Chase, and the little cupboard in the library which a garrulous Nannie had once pointed out as containing all the secrets that she desired to unravel. Was it invention on the old woman's part to amuse or quieten her, or was it possible that in that cupboard—

In a moment of childish adventure she had sought all the keys she could discover for one that would unlock the cupboard; had actually discovered such a key and had turned the lock when the sound of a servant coming into the room had driven her in a panic to relock the carven oak door. All these years she had kept that tiny key in a little leather purse, and now the opportunity had passed.

A nobody! And Diana Martyn was right. A few months ago such a sneer would have provoked her laughter; but now—there was reason enough why the slur should be wiped out. She was sufficiently worldly-wise to foresee all the discreditable possibilities which might surround her birth. She knew of rich people who maintained children they might not own; and whilst there was no horror in the thought for her, there was a growing sense of dismay since Dick Hallowell had come into her life. She might tell him everything—everything she knew—and be certain of his sympathy and encouragement; she might even learn the worst and yet have no fear of his attitude and of losing his love.

She woke, thinking about Monk's Chase and the little cupboard, and in the afternoon she made her decision. Amongst her possessions was also the key of the postern door....