Читать книгу The Valley of Ghosts - Edgar Wallace - Страница 7

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Waiting on the station platform, Scottie had grown suddenly communicative, even rhetorical.

"You think that you're tolerably well acquainted with all the dirt of life, Macleod; because you know the hot spots in town, the Chink pipe cellars, and the silk curtains and divan emporiums, that you know it all. I admit you're not so hell-sure as some of those misapplications they call detectives, and your doctoring has taken you down to the lining of things, but you don't know it all."

"I don't," confessed Andy.

"That is where some of you people go wrong—not you, I admit, but some of you coppers. It isn't the dive and the thieves' kitchen, or the place where the scum and scrapings are found—little hooks who reckon they're Rothschildren when they touch a fiver—it isn't these that are the bad places." He looked round. The county policeman who was escorting him to town was not listening. "If you want to find tabulated hell, go to Beverley Green!"

Andy eyed him keenly and felt an inexplicable thrill run down his spine.

"What do you mean? Did you hear anything?"

Scottie conveyed a negative with a curl of his lips. "No, nothing; but I smelt it. I'm sensitive to—what'n hell's the word? Atmosphere, that's it. You'll snigger at that, but it was a fortune to me in what I might term my unregenerate days. I'll let you snigger now, but you won't laugh when you see the size and appearance of my alibi. In those days that sort of creepy feeling has saved me many a long stretch of wasted time. I've been in a prison when they brought in a man to be hanged. Nobody knew he was there; he was transferred the day before his execution, because the flooring of the death house caught fire. Fact! And I knew he was in the prison, knew the hour he came in. That is how I feel about Beverley Green. There is something—evil about it. Queer word for me to use, Macleod, eh? They touch your elbow as you walk—ghosts! Laugh! But I tell you there's a bunch of 'em. That's how I've named it the Valley of Ghosts! Now I'll tell you something that would look bad against me if you put it in the charge. But I trust you, Macleod, because you're different to the general run of bulls; you're a gentleman. I carried a gun. Always had one in my kit, but never carried one in my jeans before. I did. I had it on me when you pinched me. I chucked it away as we drove into Beverley. I won't tell you where, for you didn't see me do it.'

"When you pretended to yawn as we were coming round the bend into the town," said Andy. "But we won't mention that, and I'll countermand the order I gave to search the ditches. Why, Scottie, you're not easily scared."

Scottie clicked his lips. He was quite serious.

"I don't know. I'm not nervy; never was. Not afraid of anything human. It was just—well—shooting stars used to give me the same creep. It was a fear. I let it out yesterday to Merrivan, the Community-Barker—"

Andy grinned at the tribute to Mr Merrivan as the advertising agent of, and guide to, Beverley Green.

"Not a bad fellow. He's forgotten how to learn, but that comes with fat. Not a bad fellow. He said the same thing—after I'd said it. Agreed with me. Maybe he'd agree with anybody; he's accommodating. But it seemed to me that I'd put into words all that he would have thought if the Lord had given him the power of thinking. Macleod, go and stay a day or so in Beverley Green and smell it yourself—something brooding, the dead silence before the flash of lightning that hits your house—and here's the train. If you're called to give evidence about me, say the good word."

"Have I ever said anything against you, Scottie?" asked Andy reproachfully. "Good luck to the alibi!"

Scottie winked.

It was at that moment that the train stopped and Stella Nelson got out. Andy's eyes followed her until she was out of sight.

"And she's in it somewhere," whispered Scottie, almost in his ear. "So long, Macleod."

So Scottie went off to the bar of justice, a less disastrous experience than he had anticipated, for his alibi was well and truly laid, and the evidence of four apparently respectable persons who were playing cards with him at the moment the crime was committed was unshaken by the scorn of the prosecution and unmoved by the deft questions of a sceptical judge.

Andy had promised himself the pleasure of a moonlight drive across country to the holiday place whence he had been dragged. Evidence of arrest would be given by the inspector in charge of the case, to whom the receiving of the prisoner from the county policeman constituted arrest. If Andy's presence was necessary in court it would only mean a day in town.

Scottie's words had bitten into the surface of his mind as acid bites into a plate. When he went back to the inn where he had garaged the car he had no intention of leaving Beverley, although he was embarrassed to discover that his identity was public property, and the sparse but human population of Beverley turned to look awefully after him as he passed.

If he had no intention of leaving Beverley that night, he had less thought of paying a visit to Beverley Green. Subconsciously he may have already decided his action, but consciously he was obeying a sudden impulse, when, after dinner, he had his car out and drove towards the happy community. He turned at the guest-house, shut off his engine, and extinguished his lights. The moon was at its full, and its magic was working powerfully within him.

He stood for a long time greedily absorbing the delicate beauty of the scene, and then he crossed the green, and again subconsciously his feet carried him in the direction of the Nelson home.

An oblong of yellow light suddenly appeared; the door had opened, and he stopped in the shadow of a clump of rhododendrons, one of many that edged the village green.

He saw a man come out, and there was something in his gait that immediately attracted Andy's attention. It was literally true of Andy that his study of mankind was man. A grimace, a movement of the hands, the very way a man sat down to table and unfolded his napkin, had a meaning to this student.

"There goes one who is in a very bad temper," he thought, and watched the form of Arthur Wilmot as he strode wrathfully along the gravelled road. He threw open the gate of his own house and paused. As if a thought had struck him, he came out again, closed the gate, and continued his walk, turning into a house that stood at the corner of the lane—Mr Merrivan's house, Andy noted, and remembered that they were uncle and nephew.

He walked on, still keeping to the shadow of the bushes. Something—a twinge of apprehension—had communicated itself to him. He was imaginative in a practical way, but he was certainly not as susceptible as Scottie claimed to be. He had passed the burglar's narrative under review, and, allowing for certain natural extravagances of language, there remained his natural sincerity. Andy had discounted the fear which the man had so graphically described as part and portion of the extravagance, but now he himself was experiencing something of the same vague dread. It was as though his soul was passing under the shadow of a menace. He conceived that menace in the shape of a gigantic figure with an upraised sword, and smiled to himself at the romantic conceit.

Nevertheless, he kept to the shadows, and stopped opposite Mr Merrivan's house. What made him do it he never knew. He was jeopardising a better acquaintance with the people of Beverley Green, and, by all standards of behaviour, he was acting unpardonably. The gate of Mr Merrivan's house was open as Arthur Wilmot had left it, and, crossing the road, he passed through, walking on the grass border of the drive.

It was a house of many windows, he saw, when he was clear of the obstructing trees—white, owlish windows, which the moon had transmuted into polished silver. There was no sign of light, and he followed the border until he stood under a window on the entrance floor, and then, with startling clearness, he heard a voice.

"You won't! By God, you won't! I'll see you dead before you do!"

It was not Merrivan speaking. He guessed it must be the visitor. Presently he heard a murmur of sound. The window was opened a few inches at the top. Behind, he guessed, were heavy curtains, and the speakers were in this room. And now he heard Merrivan distinctly.

"You're ridiculous, you're absurd, my dear man. I am not afraid of your threats. And now I will tell you something—something that will surprise you. I know—mysterious occupation in the city—"

And then the voices dropped, and although Andy put his ear to the pane, he could not distinguish anything more, only he heard the quick, urgent murmur of the visitor's voice, and once Mr Merrivan laughed.

Then he caught the moving of a chair and went back the way he had come, standing by the bushes until Arthur Wilmot came out, and, walking more slowly, disappeared into his own house.

Family jars can very well seem more important, more tragic than they are. But this was an unusual quarrel. What was this mysterious occupation of Mr Arthur Wilmot, the very mention of which had reduced him from a hectoring bully, breathing fire and slaughter, to a murmuring supplicant?

He waited until the door of the Wilmot house closed, then he stepped down to the gravel and paced slowly back. As he came to the Nelson residence he stopped and looked, and his heart beat a little faster. He saw the girl distinctly. The moonlight gave her beautiful face a delicacy which was unearthly. He saw her draw back and the window slowly close, and knew that she had seen him. Was she afraid? Had she recognised him? It was queer, he told himself, as he drove back to Beverley, and queerest of all was the sudden lightening of spirit and the rolling away of a sense of impending trouble which he experienced as his car turned into the main road. If there was a devil at Beverley Green he was a most potent devil. For a second he had scared Andrew Macleod.