Читать книгу The Valley of Ghosts - Edgar Wallace - Страница 9

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Andy spent two unprofitable days at Beverley Green—unprofitable because the person he had come to meet had studiously avoided him. Once he saw a girl walking on the other side of the green. She was accompanied by two dogs, which ran erratically before and behind, and occasionally around her, and, quickening his steps, found that it was a Miss Sheppard, a girl to whom he had been introduced on the links.

He dined the first night with Mr Merrivan and Sheppard, the architect, a man of such elusive personality that thereafter Andrew could never form a mental picture of him. Mr Merrivan was a bachelor, he told them; not an incorrigible one by any means. He was open to conviction, and, if he dare talk about himself, though he was sure nobody was particularly interested, he had been convinced.

"Indeed?" said his guests, variously impressed.

Andy wondered what kind of woman his host would marry. Mr Sheppard did not speculate. He gave the impression that he had stopped thinking when he had made sufficient money to retire from his profession.

Andy recalled the great architect as a round-faced man, but was uncertain whether he had a moustache or was cleanshaven.

He wore a large gold stud, flat, and resembling a button. It had a small black stone in the centre. It was the only hint of his personality that Andy could ever recollect.

"The fact is, gentlemen," said Mr Merrivan, lowering his voice as if he were revealing a great secret, "beautiful as this place is, and charming as the community is and always will be, I am sure, I have planned an existence even more—ah—serene. Do you know Lake Como, Dr Macleod?"

Andy knew it rather well.

"I have purchased a villa—the Villa Frescoli—a little place where I hope to find even greater happiness than has been my lot at Beverley."

Andy was thoughtful. The Villa Frescoli, so far from being a little place, was a palace, and Mr Merrivan was not the kind of man who would boast; a big white marble palace, he remembered, because the title of villa had seemed so inadequate to him when it had been pointed out.

There was a woman in the party that day on the lake, a woman with a practical housekeeping mind.

"They call it a villa," she said, "but it would require a staff of a hundred servants to run it."

She had been over the place, which had been built for a Russian Grand Duke.

Mr Merrivan assumed a new interest in Andy Macleod's eyes. He had spent the evening wondering whether the Nelsons would drop in after dinner, for such was the practice amongst members of the 'community'. But life ran much more conventionally than he had supposed, and, really there had been no reason why he should expect it to run otherwise. Neighbours did not call on one another. Beverley Green kept itself to itself.

Mr Sheppard left early, and, at the invitation of his host, Andy took his coffee into what Mr Merrivan called his 'den'. He found himself in the room where Merrivan and Wilmot had been when he had overheard their conversation on the previous night. In some respects it was a remarkable apartment. It was long, and also appeared narrower than it was. It ran from the front to the back of the house, and was lighted from both ends by two tall windows. In the very centre was a big carved fireplace, which would have been more in keeping with a baronial hall, and it was probably due to this feature that the room seemed out of proportion and the ceiling unusually low.

Oak panelling covered the walls, and the first thing Andy noticed was the absence of books. Evidently Mr Merrivan was not a literary man and made no attempt to deceive a casual caller into believing that he was. The pictures on the wall were mostly etchings, and very valuable. Andy noticed some priceless examples of Zohn's works, and Mr Merrivan pointed out to him, with justifiable pride, a cartoon of Leonardo da Vinci.

For the fireplace he apologised. He had bought it from the executors of Stockley Castle. The coats of arms of the Stockleys appeared on the entablature. The furniture was good and modern—two deep settees fitted into the window recesses, and besides Mr Merrivan's desk, which was in that portion of the room at the front of the house, there was a long table at the other end, a beautifully carved cabinet of Eastern origin, and a sprinkling of most comfortable armchairs.

"I am a simple person with simple tastes," said Mr Merrivan complacently. "My nephew thinks that the apartment is more like an office. Well, I have been very comfortable in offices. You smoke, doctor?"

Andy selected a cigar from the silver case that was pushed towards him.

"Do you find our community restful?"

Andy smiled.

"It is a delightful backwater," he said, and Mr Merrivan purred.

"I take a great deal of credit upon myself for its creation," he said. "I acquired these houses one by one. Some of them are very old, though you may not think so, and it was I who laid out Beverley Green as you now see it, I sold every house and made not a penny profit, sir, not a penny," he shook his head.

Andy was surprised.

"That was unbusinesslike of you."

"Not a all, not at all," said Mr Merrivan, shaking his head. "The idea is to get the right kind of people here. I am afraid they are not all quite the right kind. People are not all they seem, and character deteriorates. But in contrast to your own active life, doctor, Beverley Green must be very restful."

They passed on to a discussion of crime and criminals, a discussion which, in the main, took the form of questions on the part of Mr Merrivan and answers, long and short, according to the interest he had in the particular object of Mr Merrivan's research, from Andy.

"Have you ever met in your travels," Mr Merrivan hesitated, "a man named Abraham Selim?"

"Somebody else was asking me that very question," said Andy. "Now who was it? Anyway, I have not met him, Mr Merrivan. He is rather a bad egg, isn't he?"

"He is a usurer, and, as I have every reason to believe, a blackmailer," said Mr Merrivan soberly. "Happily I have not been in his clutches, although other people—can you remember who spoke about him? It was not Nelson, by any chance?"

"No, it was not Nelson," said Andy. "I think it was Mr Boyd Salter who asked me whether I had met him."

"Our feudal lord," said Merrivan humorously. "A very nice man, Mr Boyd Salter. Do you know him very well? I was not aware that you had met him when I was speaking to you the other day."

"I met him the same afternoon," said Andy. "I had to get his signature as Justice of the Peace before I could remove my prisoner."

"A charming fellow; we see too little of him," said Merrivan. "He is a nervous wreck in these days, I am told."

Andy remembered the soft-footed servant and the silence of the house and smiled. He left soon after. Mr Merrivan would have accompanied him to the guest-house, but this Andy declined. He was anxious to be alone; he wanted to make the journey at his leisure. The Nelson house could only be seen from one part of the green.

"I seem to spend my time listening at people's doors," thought Andy. He was standing opposite the gate, a very amazed man, for from within there reached him the sound of a man's violent raving. Suddenly the door was flung open and two women came flying out, blubbering in their rage. Behind them, with long strides, came Nelson. He was dressed in his shirt and trousers and slippers. Andy guessed he was drunk, but although he had seen many drunken men, he had never met one who walked so steadily as he followed the women outside the gate, or whose voice and enunciation were so clear.

"Don't ever let me see you again, you—" He broke into a volley of vilest abuse.

"Father!" The girl was at his side and had slipped her arm into his. "I think you had better come back."

"I will not come back. I will do as I wish. Stella, go to your room!" He pointed dramatically. "Am I to be talked to by these sluts, these scourings of the gutter, I, Kenneth Nelson, an Associate of the Royal Academy? I'll not stand it!"

"Will you please come into the house, Father, or are you anxious to let Beverley Green—"

"Damn Beverley Green! I am superior to Beverley Green! A lot of retired jam manufacturers! Go to your room, Stella." But she did not move, and then Andy thought it was a propitious moment to make his influence felt.

"Ah, Mr Macleod." Nelson was geniality itself.

"Good evening, Mr Nelson. I wanted a little talk with you."

He took the arm of the man and led him unresistingly into the house, and the girl followed.

She was grateful, but she was frightened, curious to know more of him, to see him at closer quarters, and humiliated by the circumstances under which they met. First she recognised—and herein her gratitude was founded—the strength of him. He was one who had handled men before. She sensed something of his magnetism, and perhaps gave him greater credit for the docility of her father than he was entitled to.

"I have just dismissed two impertinent members of the lower classes—two infernal domestic servants, Mr Macleod," said Nelson, with a return of his old hauteur. "The lower orders are becoming more and more unbearable. My dear," he looked reprovingly at his daughter, "I cannot congratulate you on your selection. I really cannot. Now get Mr Macleod something to drink, and I will have just a little tot to keep him company."

"Then we'll have a tot of water, Mr Nelson," said Andy, smiling.

"Water!" Kenneth Nelson did not attempt to disguise his contempt for the suggestion. "Whilst I have a house and a cellar, my dear friend, no guest goes away from here without a beaker of the good yellow wine of Scotland. Ha, ha!"

Andy had expected to find the girl distressed, and was shocked to note her self-possession, shocked because her very poise in this crisis was eloquent of great experience. These outbreaks of Nelson must be of frequent occurrence, he thought, and she seemed so young, such a child. He had once read in a novel of a heroine that she was flower-like, and had dismissed this description as a piece of extravagance on the part of the writer. And yet the description fitted her. The petal purity of her colouring, the stem straightness of her figure—it wasn't these things, though they were there, that he admired. She was a bud, half-revealing the splendour of the flower, and yet wholly satisfying in her immaturity. He had seen her kind in the higher forms at girls' schools—something between girl and child—so exactly satisfying as they were that you grudged their improvement.

She made no attempt to go in search of the whisky. She knew there was none in the house.

"The cellar is empty. Father," she said dryly. "There has been a strike amongst the wine miners."

Ridicule infuriated him, and he swung round on her, but something brought his eyes to Andy. They dominated and held him.

"May I see your father alone for a few minutes, Miss Nelson?" he said. "There is something I want to speak to him about."

She nodded and disappeared.

"My dear fellow," murmured Nelson in weak protest.

"You called me Mr Macleod just now. You have forgotten that I am a doctor. Have you seen a doctor lately?"

"No, I haven't. My health is perfect, perfect," said the other defiantly.

"So far from being perfect," said Andy, "you are on the verge of a complete breakdown, from which you may never wholly recover. I can tell you, without troubling to examine your heart, that you have an aneurism. That made you jump, because you know it is true. I have watched you at golf, and I know, Mr Nelson, you will not live for another year unless you stop drinking."

Nelson bunked.

"You're trying to frighten me," he said. "I know I'm a fool, but I'm not such a fool as you think. I've got a lot of trouble on my mind—Mr—Dr Macleod."

"You can get rid of the greatest by cutting out whisky—though I hate to say anything that will reduce the manufacturing output of my native land. Will you let me come over and see you tomorrow? Who is your doctor?"

"Granitt of Beverley. I have never had him for myself. He attended my poor wife."

"Well, I'll examine you and he can treat you. We'll have a second examination. I'll call in Granitt. Probably he'll want to run the rule over you himself, but that isn't going to hurt you very much."

"I don't know why—" began Nelson in his old haughty way, but Andrew overrode his objections.

"I don't want to alarm your daughter," he said, lowering his voice, "so we will not discuss it any further."

When the girl returned, she found her father almost lamb-like in his mildness. Kenneth Nelson was terribly afraid, for he had had a shock from which he was not likely to recover in a hurry. "I think I'll go to bed, Stella," he said. "I am a bit run down. I haven't been feeling so well lately."

Andrew was amused, but he did not smile. He walked with the girl to the gate, waiting on the step whilst she put on a little scarf—a black scarf, he noticed idly. There was a little red monogram in the corner. Everything about her was interesting to him. He told her as they walked down the path something of the conversation he had had with her father.

"I don't for one moment suppose he has an aneurism, but I'll see Granitt. I think I know his son rather well—he was at Guy's with me—and we can fix up something peculiarly complicated that will keep him away from drink for a very long while."

"I hope so," she said dubiously.

"You have lost faith, haven't you?"

She nodded.

"A little. One gets that way."

"I'll tell you something," he said. "There are taxi-cabs on the streets run by a man named Stadmere. The Stadmere cabs are by far the most luxurious of any. I have trained myself, when I have not been in a very great hurry, to wait for a Stadmere. It is generally a long time coming. Sometimes you can get one almost at once. But it is remarkable, if you make up your mind that you will take nothing but a Stadmere, how quickly it comes."

"That is a parable," she smiled. "But I am wanting something chat is even more rare than a Stadmere; I am wanting a miracle."

He did not say anything to this, and she was regretting that she had said so much to a stranger when he turned, holding the wicket gate with his hands.

"I have even seen miracles happen," he said. "They're worth waiting for, too, but I suppose when you're very young, very impatient, days pass so very quickly, and years are such enormous gulfs of time, that you grow tired of waiting."

"You talk like an old gentleman." She smiled in spite of herself.

"A very old gentleman, with long white whiskers, eh?" he said good-humouredly. "Old enough to be impatient sometimes. But still I can wait!"

He held her hand in his for a moment, and she watched him crossing the Green until she saw his blurred figure enter the door of the guest-house.