Читать книгу The Valley of Ghosts - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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In nelson's house you stepped from the street to a big hall, around three sides of which ran a gallery reached by a broad flight of stairs.

Nelson was standing at an easel examining a picture, and his face was hidden from her. But there was no need to see his face. The attitude was eloquent. He turned and surveyed her with a certain strange hauteur which a king might reserve for unwelcome intruders. He was a man with a narrow face, slightly bald. The nose was thin and aristocratic, the chin and mouth a little weak. A thin brown moustache, turning grey, gave him a quasi-military appearance, in keeping with a mood which at the moment was certainly militant.

"Well," he said, "you have come back."

He stalked slowly towards her, his hands behind him, his thin shoulders thrown back.

"Are you aware that I have had no lunch?" he asked ominously.

"I told you I was going to town this morning. Why didn't you ask Mary?"

She dreaded the reply.

"I have discharged Mary," he said, and Stella groaned inwardly.

"You haven't discharged the cook by any chance?" she asked.

"I have also discharged the cook."

"Did you also pay them their wages?" she demanded, angered beyond restraint. "Oh, Father, why do you do these things?"

"I discharged them because they were impertinent," said Mr Nelson with a gesture. "That is sufficient. I am master in my house."

"I wish you were a little more master of yourself," she said wearily, as she walked across to the mantelpiece, took down a bottle, and held it to the light. "Why do you always discharge the servants when you are drunk, Father?"

"Drunk?" he said, shocked.

She nodded.

In such moments as these she did not use euphemisms, it was not the occasion for delicacy.

"Tomorrow you will tell me you have no recollection of anything that happened, and you will be very penitent. But I shall have to go into Beverley and find two servants who have not been discharged by us. They will be difficult to find."

Nelson raised his eyebrows.

"Drunk?" he repeated, but she took no notice of him, and presently, in the kitchen, where she was preparing her meal, she heard him going up the stairs, repeating "Drunk" and laughing sardonically at intervals.

She sat by the spotless kitchen table and made her meal of a cup of chocolate and a slice of bread and butter. She looked for the cheese, though she knew her search would be fruitless. It was another characteristic of Mr Nelson that in his 'cups' he had a partiality for cheese. If he had done any work—she went out into the studio at the back of the house. The canvas she had placed for him that morning had not felt so much as the touch of a charcoal suck. Stella Nelson sighed.

"What's the use?" she asked, addressing her query to one of the many half finished studies that hung on the wall.

She was working at her household accounts at a small writing-table in a corner of the studio when she heard the bell tinkle, and went to the front door. It was dusk, and the figure of the man who had rung had retreated some half a dozen paces from the door, so that at first she could not distinguish him.

"Oh, is that you, Arthur? Come in, won't you? Father's gone to bed."

"I guessed he had."

Mr Arthur Wilmot waited until she had switched on the light in the studio before he came in.

"You went to town today?"

"Did you see me?" she asked quickly.

"No. Somebody told me; I think it was Merrivan. And did you hear about our Canadian geologist? He is quite an important burglar; important enough to have a man like Andrew Macleod looking for him. He's the pathologist."

"Who is Andrew Macleod?" she asked. She knew at once that Andrew Macleod was the man with the grey eyes, but she wanted to be sure.

"He's a detective. Well, he's not exactly a detective; I believe he's a doctor—a pathologist. He only takes the big cases, and the professor is a pretty big man in his business. 'Scottie' I think they call him; at least, that is how Mr Macleod addressed him."

"I must have seen him at the station," she said; "rather a good-looking man with peculiar eyes."

"I wouldn't call Scottie good looking," said Wilmot, and she was so confused that she did not correct the mistaken impression he had formed.

"I can't ask you to stay very long," she said. "We have lost our domestic staff."

"Again?" he said in surprise. "Oh no, that's too bad! Really I think your father is impossible. That means you've got to be cook and housemaid until you get somebody in."

"With a penitent parent most anxious to assist," she said savagely, "and all the time getting in my way! It is one of the crosses we have to bear, and father is really a wonderful darling when—"

It was on the tip of the young man's tongue to ask when was Mr Nelson ever completely sober. He was too wise, however, to let it go any further. Yet not so wise, as it transpired.

"To what part of the city did you go?" he asked.

She was over by the desk, tidying her papers.

"Why?" she asked, looking across at him.

"Oh, I—just asked—" he said lamely. "I wish I'd known you were in town. We'd have gone to lunch somewhere."

"I have a soul above food when I go to the city," she said. "What is it you do, Arthur?" she went on. "I have asked you that question more or less obliquely before. Permit me the luxury of a real indiscretion. Is it an indiscretion to ask you what you do for a living?"

He was silent.

"I just do things," he said vaguely.

"Have you an office?"

He hesitated, then nodded.

"Yes, I have an office," he said.

"Where?"

She saw the quick pucker of brow, and then:

"Mostly I use other people's offices. I have any number of friends, and my—" he stopped again. "I see my clients as near their homes as I can."

"You're not a lawyer and you're not a doctor." She ticked off the two professions on her fingers. "You're not a broker. Really, Arthur, you're almost as mysterious as"—a silence—"as Mr Scottie, as you call him, our poor professor. And now," she said briskly, "I think you had better go. I am not a stickler for the proprieties"—there was a bump overhead, and she looked up—"but when my parent has finally retired—I think he is just taking his boots off—you will have to retire also."

"I suppose," he began awkwardly, "you haven't thought any more—about—I don't want to rush or take advantage of—of things—"

She looked at him kindly enough, and took him in from the top of his tidy hair to the points of his polished shoes. He had a broad face and a small black moustache (it sometimes reminded Stella of a black caterpillar that had come to rest across his upper lip), and there were times when he appeared a little ridiculous. For some reason he was not so tonight and her heart went out to him in sympathy.

"I have thought about it, Arthur," she said quietly, "but it is wholly impossible. I really do not want to marry anybody. And now go home and forget all about it."

He sat, his eyes looking at the floor, his fingertips touching, and a silence followed, she did not care to break in upon thoughts which she guessed were not too happy.

Suddenly:

"Now, Stella, perhaps you had better drop that little-boy-don't-bother attitude," he said. "You're a woman and I'm a man. I'm offering you something. I'm not exactly empty-handed as it is, but when Merrivan dies—well, I'm his only relative. You're broke, and you've been up to some damned folly. I don't know what it is, but I'll know sooner or later. You can't stay in Beverley Green much longer. Your father has drunk two mortgages on to this house and he'll drink the furniture before he's through. I dare say you think it will be fine and large to earn your living, but it isn't. Five employers in seven will want to cuddle you, I know. I'm willing to put that poor soak into a good inebriates' home. It will be kill or cure, and, anyway, it has got to come to that. I'm speaking plainly. I've tried the other way and it hasn't worked. You're woman enough to see that it is kindest to be cruel. I want you, Stella, I want you more than I've wanted anything. And I know!"

This significantly. Her lips moved; but the question she put had no sound.

"I know just how bad your affairs are, and I tell you that I am going to use my knowledge to get you. There isn't a low-down thing on earth that I won't do to get you. That's straight?"

They had been on such good terms that the reticences which separate ordinary friends from one another had been thawed away. He was the only man in the world, with the exception of her father, who addressed her by her Christian name. She called him "Arthur" naturally. To Stella Nelson he was a type of young business man who played tennis, danced well, talked about himself with satisfaction and owned a mid-opulent car. He was the most engaging of that type she had met, and she had studied him sufficiently well to know exactly what he would do in any given set of circumstances.

Her first sensation when he began to speak was one of dismay and chagrin. She was not hurt; it was a long time before she was hurt. But she was annoyed by the mistake she had made. She had felt that way when at a bridge party she had inadvertently or abstractedly led the wrong card, knowing that it was the wrong card, and had lost the rubber in consequence. She had an absurd desire to apologise to him for having misjudged his character, but, even had she not recognised its absurdity, she was incapable of speech. She was wrong, not he. He was right, natural, his own self, aggressive and 'hell-sure'. The Canadian professor had used that expression in her hearing and it had tickled her. Arthur Wilmot was hell-sure of himself, of his advantageous position, of her.

Then she found her voice.

"You'd better go, Arthur," she said gently.

In age she was little more than a child. She felt motherly towards him. He was so pathetically foolish that she felt sorry for him.

"I'll go when I want to," he said. "If you want me thrown out, call your father. Why don't you? Call the servants he fired! You think I'm being a cad, but I'm underlining and italicising the fact that you arc alone, not in this house, but in the world."

She had found her strength and her weapon.

"And you are being the strong, talkative man. The silent variety was sure to produce his opposite sooner or later," she said.

She leant against the back of a chair, her hands behind her. Her poise was disconcerting to this stormer of citadels. Neither hectic defiance nor surrender met him, but the consciousness that there was some hidden reserve. He felt it coming and was uneasy.

"I'm not frantically annoyed by your—I am trying to think of a good description—tragic clowning; clowning because it was intended to be tragic. I don't want to marry you, Arthur, because—well, you admitted that of yourself you have no particular quality or charm, didn't you? You must 'get me' by virtue of your better financial position. That is snobbish in you, isn't it? Or by blackmail, or some other thing. The villain in the melodrama does that. You should have had a green limelight focused on you—the strong, talkative man and the weak, silent woman. That would be novel, wouldn't it? You are the second drunken man I have met today, only you have swallowed a more potent intoxicant. You're vanity-drunk, and you'll find it hard to get sober again."

Her voice never lost its command of him. He writhed, made grunting little noises. Once he tried to break in on her, but in the end he was beaten down, and arrested the employment of arguments which he had so carefully thought out in a shrinking fear that they would sound silly even to himself. She crossed to the door and opened it.

"I only want to say—" he began, and she laughed.

"You still want to say something?" she asked. He walked out without a word and she crossed and locked the door, behind him.

She stood with one hand on the knob, thinking, her head bent low in the attitude of one who was listening. But she was only thinking, and still in thought she put out the lights and went upstairs to her room. It was very early to go to bed, but there was no reason why she should stay below. She undressed slowly by the light of the moon. Her room was on the top floor, on the same level as that of the servants. It was the gable window which Andrew Macleod had seen, and she chose it because it gave her a view uninterrupted by the trees.

She pulled a dressing-gown over her pyjamas and, throwing open the casement windows, leant her elbows on the edge and looked out. The world was a place of misty hues. The light flooding the central green turned the grass to a dove grey. The beams caught the white scar of old Beverley Quarry, and it showed like a big oyster-shell against the wooded slope of the hill. A night of peace; no sound but the faint screech of an owl from the hills and the crunching of feet on the gravel road. Tramp, tramp, tramp, like the measured march of a soldier. Who was abroad? She did not recognise the leisurely footstep. Then he came into view.

Looking down between the branches of two trees, she saw a man, and knew him before he turned his face inquiringly towards the house.

The detective with the grey eyes—Andrew Macleod!

She bit her lip to check the cry that rose, and, stepping back, closed the windows stealthily.

Her heart was thumping painfully; she almost heard the 'Ugh!'of it.

The detective! She crept to the windows and looked out, and, waiting, she pulled them open. There was no sound, not even the distant sound of feet on gravel. In a moment she saw him. He was walking across the grass, and soon after disappeared. There came to her the drone of a motor that died away to nothing.

She staggered to her bed and sat down.

At that moment Arthur Wilmot was torturing himself with speculations. What would she think of him? He might have spared himself that sleepless night. She had forgotten that Arthur Wilmot existed.