Читать книгу Captains of Souls - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

Table of Contents

IT was a Monday morning and a bank holiday. A few regular habitues of the park, to whom the word 'holiday' had no especial significance, had overlooked the fact and took their cantering exercise a little self-consciously under admiring eyes of the people who seldom saw people riding on horseback for the pleasure of it. The day was fine and warm, the hawthorn trees were thickly frosted with their cerise and white blossoms; stiff crocuses flamed in every bed, and the banners of the daffodils fluttered in the light breeze that blew half-heartedly across the wide green spaces. On every path the holiday-makers struggled, small mothers laden with large babies; shop-boys in garments secretly modelled on the supermen they served; girls from the stores in their bargain-price finery; young men with and without hats, the waitresses of closed tea-shops, and here and there a pompous member of the bourgeoisie conscious of his superiority to the crowd with which, in his condescension, he mingled.

There is one shady place which faces Park Lane—a stretch of wooded lawn where garden-chairs are set six deep. Behind this phalanx there is an irregular fringe of seats, usually in couples, and greatly in request during the darker hours. In the early morning, before the energies of the promenaders are exhausted, the spot is deserted. But two young people occupied chairs this morning. There was nothing in the appearance of the girl that would have made the companionship seem incongruous. In her tailored costume, the unobtrusive hat and the simplicity of the toilette, she might as well have been the youngest daughter of a duke, or a work-girl with a judgement in dress. Her clothes would not be 'priced' by the most expert of woman critics, and even stockings and shoes, the last hope of the appraiser, would have baffled.

No two glandes would have been required to put the man in his class. If he was a thought dandified, it was the dandification of a gentleman. He looked what he was, a man of leisure; the type which is to be found in the Guards, or the smartest regiment of cavalry. Yet Ronald Morelle was no soldier. He had served during the war, but had seen none of its devastations. He hated the violence of battle and despised the vulgarity of a noisy patriotism. His knowledge of Italian had secured him a quasi-diplomatic appointment, nominally at Italian headquarters, actually in Rome. He had used every influence that could be employed, pulled every string that could be pulled, to keep him from the disorder of the front line, and fortune had favoured him to an extraordinary extent. On the very day he received instructions to report to the regiment with which he had trained, the armistice was signed... he saw the last line of trenches which the British had prepared, but never occupied, south of Amiens, saw them from the train that carried him home, and thought that they looked beastly uncomfortable.

The girl by his side would not be alone in thinking him good-looking. He was that rarity, a perfectly-featured man. His skin was faultless; his straight nose, his deep-set brown eyes, his irreproachable mouth, were excellent. The hypercritical might cavil at the almost feminine chin. A small brown moustache was probably responsible for the illusion that he favoured the profession of arms. Evie Colebrook thought he was the most beautiful man in the world, and when he smiled, as he was smiling now, she dared not look at him. He was talking about looks, and she was deliciously flattered. "How ridiculous you are, Mr. Morelle," she protested. "I suppose you have said that to thousands and thousands of girls?"

"Not quite so many, Evie," he answered. "To be exact, I can't remember having been so shamelessly complimentary to any girl before. You need not call me 'Mr. Morelle' unless you wish to—my friends call me 'Ronnie'."

She played with the handkerchief on her lap. "It seems so familiar. Honestly, Ronnie, aren't you rather...what is the word? The book you lent me...a play?"

"A philanderer?" suggested the other. "My dear child, how silly you are. Of course I'm not. Very few people have impressed me as you have. It must have been Fate that took me into Burts—I never go into shops, but Francois—that's my man—"

"I know him," she nodded, "he often comes in. I used to wonder who he was."

"He was out and I wanted...I forget what it was I wanted, even forget whether I bought it. I must have done, otherwise I should not have found myself staring over a pay-desk at the most lovely girl in all the world."

She laughed, a gurgling laugh of sheer happiness, and looked at him swiftly before she dropped her eyes again. "I like to hear that," she said softly. "It is so wonderful...that you like me, I mean. Because I'm nothing, really. And you, you're a...well, gentleman. I know you hate the word, but you are. Miles and miles above me. Why, I live in a miserable little house in a horrible neighbourhood...full of thieves and terrible creatures who drink. And my mother does odd jobs for people. And I'm not very well educated... really. I can read and write, but I'm not half so clever as Christina, that is my sister. She's an invalid and reads all day, and all night too, if I'd let her."

He was watching her as she spoke. The play of colour in her pretty face, the rise and fall of her narrow chest, the curve of chin and the velvet smoothness of her throat...he marked them all with the eye of the gourmet who watches lambs frisking in the pasture and sees not the poetry and beauty of young life, but a likeable dish that will one day mature. "If you were a beggar-maid and I were a prince..." he began.

"I'm not much better, am I?" she asked ruefully, "and you are a prince, to me, Ronnie..." She was thinking.

"Yes?"

"How can anything come right for us? I don't want to think about it, and I try ever so hard to keep it out of my thoughts, I'm so happy...meeting you...and loving you...and tomorrow never comes, but—"

"You mean how will this dear friendship end?" She nodded. "How would you like it to end?"

Evie Colebrook poked the ferrule of her sunshade into the grass and turned up a tuft of clover. "There is only one way it can ever end—happily," she said in a low voice, "and that is well, you know, Ronnie."

He laughed. "With you in a beautiful white dress and a beautiful white veil and a wreath of orange blossom round your glorious hair, and a priest in a surplice reading from a book; and people watching you as you go down the aisle and saying—well, you know what they say. I think a wedding is the most uninteresting function which Society affects."

She said nothing, but continued prodding at the turf. "It can be done quietly," she said at last.

Leaning toward her, he slipped his hand under her arm. "Evie, is love nothing?" he asked earnestly, "isn't it the biggest thing? Which is the best, a wedding between two people who half hate one another, but are marrying because one wants money and the other a swagger wife, or an everlasting love-union between a man and a woman who are bound with bonds that cannot break?"

She sighed, the quick, double sigh of one half convinced. "You make me feel that I'm common and...and brainless, and, anyway, I don't want to talk about it. Ronnie, I suppose you're awfully busy this morning?" She looked wistfully at the big Rolls that was drawn up by the side of the road.

"I am rather," he said, "I wish I weren't. I'd love to drive you somewhere—anywhere so long as you were by my side, little fairy. When shall I see you again?"

"On Sunday?" she asked, as they strolled toward the car.

"Why not come up to the flat to tea on Saturday afternoon?" he suggested, but she shook her head.

"I'd rather not, Ronnie—do you mind? I...well, I don't want to somehow. Am I an awful pig?"

He smiled down on her. "Of course not...oh, damn!" A girl on a horse had just cantered past. She saw him and lifted her whip to acknowledge his raised hat.

"Who is that?" Evie was more than curious.

"A girl I know," he said suavely. "The daughter of my doctor, and rather a gossip."

"You're ashamed of being seen with me."

"Rubbish!" he laughed. "I am so proud of you that I wish she had stopped, confound her!" He took her hand and smiled into her eyes. "Good-bye, beloved," he breathed.

Evie Colebrook watched the car until it had turned out of sight. It was following the gossiping girl, but she did not care. She went home walking on air. At the corner of the Row, the big car drew abreast of the rider. "Why on earth are you riding on Bank Holiday, Beryl—the park is full of louts, and there aren't half a dozen people in the Row!"

Beryl Merville looked at him quizzically. "And why on earth are you in the park, Ronnie; and who was your beautiful little friend?"

He frowned. "Friend...? Oh, you mean the girl I was speaking to? Would you call her beautiful?...yes, I suppose she is pretty, but quite a kid. Her father is an old friend of mine—colonel—I forget his name, he is something at the War Office. I have an idea they live near the park. I saw her walking, and stopped the car to talk to her. Frankly, I was so bored that I almost fell on her neck. I wasn't with her for five minutes."

Beryl nodded and dismissed the matter from her mind. She was more interested in another subject.

"Yes, dear, I had your letter. I'm an awful brute not to have come over and seen you. But the fact is, I have been working hard. Don't sneer, Beryl. I really have. Sturgeon, the editor of the Post Herald, has discovered in me a latent genius for writing. It is rather fun...apparently I have a flair for that kind of work."

"But, Ronnie, this is great news! Stop your car by the corner and find a man to hold my horse...there is an awful lot I want to talk to you about." He parked his car, and, helping her dismount, handed the reins to an idle groom. A watchful attendant drew near. "You will have to pay for the seats, Ronnie, I have no money."

"Happily I have two tickets," he said, and realized his mistake before he drew them from his pocket.

"I thought you hadn't been with your colonel's daughter more than five minutes?" she challenged, and laughed. "I sometimes think that you'd rather lie than eat!"

"My dear Beryl." Mr. Morelle's tone revealed both shock and injury. "Did I say that I didn't sit with her? I couldn't be so uncivil as to expect her to stand. The fact is, that she hinted that she would like me to drive her round the park, and I had no wish to."

"Never mind your guilty secret," she said gaily, "tell me all about your new job. Poor Ronnie, so they have made you work at last! I feared this."

Ronnie smiled good-naturedly. "It is amusing," he said. "I was always rather keen on that kind of work, even when I was at Oxford. Sturgeon saw some verses of mine in one of the quarterlies, and asked me if I would care to describe a motor-car race...the Gordon Bennett Cup. I took it on and he seemed immensely pleased with the account I wrote. I feel that I am doing some poor devil out of a job, but—"

"But it doesn't keep you awake at nights," she finished. "But how lovely, Ronald. You will be able to describe Mr. Steppe's trial...everybody says that one of these days he will be tried..."

Ronald Morelle was not amused. She saw a frown gather on his forehead and remembered that he and Mr. Steppe had some association. "Of course I'm joking, Ronnie. How awfully touchy you are! Mr. Steppe is quite nice, and people invariably say unpleasant things about a successful man."

"Steppe..." he paused. There was a nervousness in his manner and in his tone which he could not disguise. "Steppe is quite a good fellow. A little rough, but he was trained in a rough school. He is very nearly the cleverest financier in this country or any other." He would have changed the conversation had she not interpolated a question. "I do not know him...Sault you said? No, I've never met him. He does odd jobs for Moropulos. A half-caste, isn't he? What a nerve the fellow had to come to the house! Why didn't you kick him out?"

"It is obvious that you haven't seen him or you wouldn't ask such a question," she replied, her eyes twinkling.

"I don't know what he does," Ronnie went on. "Steppe has a good opinion of him. That is all I know. He has three decorations for something he did in the war. He was in the Field Ambulance and brought in a lot of people from No- Man's-Land. He is quite old, isn't he?" She nodded. "Moropulos isn't anything to boast about. Steppe likes him, though." Apparently the cachet of Mr. Steppe satisfied Ronnie in all things. "He's a Greek...you've met him? A sleek devil. They say that he's afraid of Sault, except when he is drunk."

"Ronnie!"

"A fact. Moropulos drinks like a fish. Absinthe and all sorts of stuff. Steppe told me. That is why this nigger fellow Sault is useful. Sault is the only man who can handle him. He's as strong as an ox. There isn't a smarter devil than Moropulos. He has the brain of a Cabinet Minister, and is as close as an oyster. But when the fit is on him he'd stand up in the street and talk himself into gaol. And others...not Steppe, of course," he added hastily, "Steppe has nothing to be afraid of, only...well, Moropulos might say things that would look bad."

"And is that all?" she asked, with an odd sense of disappointment. "Doesn't Mr. Sault do anything else but act as an sort of keeper?"

Ronnie, already weary of the subject, yawned behind his hand. "Awfully sorry, but I was up late last night. Sault? Oh yes, I believe he does odd jobs. He is rather an ugly brute, isn't he?"

She did not answer this. Her interest in the man puzzled her. He appealed in a strange fashion to something within her that was very wholesome. She was glad, very glad, about his war decorations. That he should have done fine things...she liked to forget Ronnie's war services. "I wish I had decided to ride this morning," complained Ronnie. "I never dreamt you would be out on a day like this. Why I came into the park at all I really do not know. I didn't realize it was a bank holiday and that all these dreadful people would be unchained for the day. How is the doctor—well?" She nodded. "He looked a little peaked when I saw him last. Look, Beryl...Steppe!" A car, headed for Marble Arch, had swerved across the road in response to the signal of its occupant. It pulled up behind Ronald's machine, and Mr. Steppe, with his queer sideways smile, alighted, waving a white-gloved hand. "Oh, dear," said Beryl plaintively, "why did I get off that horse? I could have pretended that I had not recognized him."

"My dear girl!" Ronald was genuinely distressed, and it came to Beryl in the nature of an unpleasant discovery that he was so completely in awe of the financier, that his manner, his attitude, the very tone of his voice, changed at the sight of him. And Steppe seemed to expect this homage, took it as his right, dismissed and obliterated Ronnie from participation with a jerk of his head intended as an acknowledgement of his greeting and as an excusal of his presence. Beryl could not help realizing his unimportance in the millionaire's scheme of life.

The photographs of Jan Steppe, which have from time to time appeared in the public press, at once flatter and disparage him. The lens has depicted faithfully the short black beard, the thick black eyebrows, the broad nose and the thick bull-neck of him. They missed his immense vitality, the aura of power which enveloped him, his dominant and forceful ego. His voice was thick and deep, sometimes in moments of excitement, guttural, for his grandfather had been a Transvaal boer, a byworner who had become, successively, farmer and mine-owner. Jan Cornelius Steppe, the first, had spoken no English, his son, Commandant Steppe, an enlightened and scholarly man, spoke it well. He had been killed at Tugela Drift in the war, whilst Jan the third was in England at a preparation school.

"Huh! Beryl! Very good luck, huh? I shall miss my train, but it is worth while. Riding? God! I wish I wasn't so fat and lazy. Motor-cars are the ruin of us. My grandfather rode twenty miles a day and my father was never off a horse. Huh!"

Beryl often asked her father why Mr. Steppe grunted at the end of his every question. But it was not a grunt. It was a throaty growl cut short, a terrifying mannerism of his, meaningless but menacing. She used to wonder whether the impression of ruthless ferocity which he gave was not more than half due to this peculiarity. He towered above her, a mountain of a man, broad of shoulder and long of arm. There was something simian about him, something that was almost obscene. He was fond of describing himself as fat, but this was an exaggeration. He had bulk, he was in the truest sense gross, but she would not have described him as fat.

"Sit down," he commanded, "I haven't seen you since Friday. The doctor came in yesterday morning. Nerves, huh? What's the matter with him?"

Beryl laughed. "Father receives a great deal of misplaced sympathy. He is really very well. He has been jumpy ever since I can remember."

Steppe nodded. He was sitting by her side in the chair vacated by Ronnie, and Ronnie was standing. "Sit down, Ronnie." She pointed to a chair at the other side of her. "N—no thank you, Beryl," he said hastily, for all the world like a schoolboy asked to sit in the presence of his master.

"Sit down," growled Steppe, and, to the girl's amazement, Ronnie sat. It was the only notice Jan Steppe took of his presence throughout the interview, and Ronnie neither showed resentment nor made the slightest attempt to intrude into the conversation that followed. Presently Steppe looked at his watch. "I can catch that train," he said, and got up. "You're coming to dinner with me next week—I'll fix the date with the doctor." She said she would be delighted. Something of the mastership extended to her. "You saw Sault?" He turned back after he had taken her hand. "Queer fellow, huh? Big man, huh?"

"I thought he was...interesting," she admitted.

"Yes...interesting. A man." He glowered at Ronald Morelle. "Interesting," he repeated, and went away with that. Her fascinated gaze followed him as he strode toward the car. "Paddington...get me there, damn you," she heard him say; and when the car had gone...

"Dynamic," she said, with a sigh. "He is like a power-house. When I shake hands with him I feel as though I'm going to get a bad burn! You were very silent, Ronnie."

"Yes"—absently. "Old Steppe is rather a shocker, isn't he? How did he know you had seen Sault?"

"Father told him, I suppose. Ronnie, are you afraid of Mr. Steppe?"

He coloured. "Afraid? How stupid you are, Beryl! Why should I be afraid of him? He's...well, I do business with him. I am a director of a company or two; he put me into them. One has to—how shall I put it? One has to be polite to these people. I'll go along now, Beryl...lot of work to do."

He was uncomfortable and she did not pursue the subject. The knowledge brought a little ache to her heart—that Ronnie was afraid of Jan Steppe! She would have given her soul to respect Ronald Morelle as she respected the swarthy grey-haired man whom even Steppe respected.