Читать книгу The Clue of the New Pin - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

Table of Contents

MR. JESSE TRASMERE sat at the end of a long, and, except in his immediate vicinity, bare table. At his end it was laid, and Mr. Trasmere was slowly and deliberately enjoying a lean cutlet.

The room gave no suggestion of immense wealth and paid no silent tribute either to his artistic taste or his acquaintance with China. The walls were innocent of pictures, the furniture old, European, and shabby. Mr. Trasmere had bought it second-hand and had never ceased to boast of the bargain he had secured.

If there were no pictures, there were no books. Jesse Trasmere was not a reader, even of newspapers.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and through the folds of his dressing-gown the grey of his pyjama jacket showed open at his lean throat, for Mr. Trasmere had only just got out of bed. Presently he would dress in his rusty black suit and would be immensely wakeful until the dawn of to-morrow. He never went to bed until the grey showed in the sky, nor slept later than two o'clock in the afternoon.

At six-thirty, to the second, Walters, his valet, would assist him into his overcoat, a light one if it was warm, a heavy fur-lined garment if it was cold, and Mr. Trasmere would go for his walk and transact whatever business he found to his hand.

But before he left the house there was a certain ceremonial--the locking of doors, the banishment of the valet to his own quarters, and the disappearance of Mr. Trasmere through the door which led from his study-dining-room to the basement of the house. This done he would go out. Walters had watched him from one of the upper windows scores of times walking slowly down the street, an unfurled umbrella on one hand, a black bag in another. At eight-thirty to the minute he was back in the house. He invariably dined out. Walters would bring him a cup of black coffee, and at ten o'clock would retire to his own room, which was separated from the main building by a heavy door which Mr. Trasmere invariably locked.

Once in the early days of his service Walters had expostulated.

"Suppose there is a fire, sir," he complained.

"You can get through your bath-room window on to the kitchen, and if you can't drop to the ground from there you deserve to be burnt to death," snarled the old man. "If you don't like the job, you needn't stay. Those are the rules of my establishment, and there are no others."

So, night after night, Walters had gone to his room and Mr. Trasmere had shuffled after him in his slippered feet, had banged and locked the door upon him and had left Walters to solitude.

This procedure was only altered when the old man was taken ill one night and was unable to reach the door. Thereafter a key was hung in a small glass-fronted case, in very much the same way as fire-keys are hung. In the event of his illness, or of any other unexpected happening, Walters could secure the key and answer the bell above his bed-head. That necessity had not arisen.

Every morning the valet found the door unlocked. At what hour old Jesse came he could not discover, but he guessed that his employer stopped on his way to bed in the morning to perform this service.

Walters was never allowed an evening off. Two days a week he was given twenty-four hours' leave of absence, but he had to be in the house by ten.

"And if you are a minute later, don't come back," said Jesse Trasmere.

As the old man's valet Walters had exceptional opportunities for discovering something more about his master than Mr. Trasmere would care to have known. He was for a very particular reason anxious to know what the basement contained. Once he had met a man who had been engaged in the building of the house, and learnt that there was a room below, built of concrete; but though he had, with the greatest care and discretion, searched for keys which might, during the daily absence of his employer, reveal the secret of this underground room, he had never succeeded in laying his hand upon them. Mr. Trasmere had apparently only one key, a master-key, which he wore round his neck at night, and in the same inaccessible position in his clothing during the daytime, and Walters' search had been in vain, until one morning, when taking Mr. Trasmere his shaving-water, the servant found him suffering from one of those fainting fits which periodically overcame him. There was a cake of soap handy, and Walters was a resourceful man...

Mr. Trasmere looked up from his plate and fixed his servant with his grey-blue eyes.

"Has anybody called this morning?"

"No, sir."

"Have any letters come?"

"Only a few. They are on your desk, sir."

Mr. Trasmere grunted.

"Did you put the notice in the paper that I was leaving town for two or three days?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said Walters.

Jesse Trasmere grunted again.

"A man is coming from China; I don't want to see him," he explained. He was oddly communicative at moments to his servant, but Walters, who knew his master extremely well, did not make the mistake of asking questions. "No, I don't want to see him." The old man chewed a toothpick reflectively, and his unattractive face bore an expression of distaste. "He was a partner of mine, twenty, thirty years ago, a card-playing, gambling, drinking man, who gave himself airs because--well, never mind what he gave himself airs about," he said impatiently, as though he anticipated a question which he should have known never would have been put to him. "He was that kind of man."

He stared at the fireless grate with its red brick walls and its microscopic radiator and clicked his lips.

"If he comes, he is not to be admitted. If he asks questions, you're not to answer. You know nothing...about anybody. Why he's coming at all...well, that doesn't matter. He's just trash, a soakin' dope. He had his chance, got under it, and went to sleep. Phew! That fellow! He might have been rich, but he sold all his shares. A soak! Rather drink than sit in the Empress of China's council...she's dead. White trash...nothing...h'm."

He glared up of a sudden and asked harshly:

"Why the hell are you listening?"

"Sorry, sir, I thought--"

"Get out!"

"Yes, sir," said Walters with alacrity.

For half an hour old Jesse Trasmere sat where the valet had left him, the red end of his toothpick leaping up and down eccentrically. Then he got up and, going to an old-fashioned bureau, opened the glass front.

He brought to the table a shallow bowl of white porcelain half filled with Indian ink. His second visit to the secretaire produced a thick pad of paper. It was unusually large, and its texture of a peculiar character. From an open-work iron box he took a long-handled brush, and sitting down again dipped the fine point into the ink.

Another long interval of inaction and he commenced to write, beginning at the top right-hand corner and working down the page. The grotesque and intricate Chinese characters appeared with magic rapidity. He finished one column and commenced another, and so until the page was covered except for two spaces beneath the last and the penultimate line.

Laying down the brush he felt, with the slow deliberation of age, in his right-hand waistcoat pocket and pulled out an ivory cylinder as big round as a large pencil. He slipped one end out and pressed it on the paper. When he took the stamp away there appeared within a red circle two Chinese characters. This was Jesse Trasmere's "hong," his sign manual; a thousand merchants from Shanghai to Fi Chen would honour cheques which bore that queer mark, and those for startling sums.

When the paper was dry he folded it into a small compass and getting up, went to the empty fireplace. Outside on the stairs a deeply interested Walters craned his neck to see what happened. From his position, and through the fanlight above the door, he commanded a view of at least a third of the room.

But now Jesse had passed out of sight, and although he stretched himself perilously he could not see what was happening. Only, when the old man reappeared the paper was no longer in his hand.

He touched a bell, and Walters came at once.

"Remember," he rasped, "I am not at home--to anybody!"

"Very good, sir," said Walters, a little impatiently.

Mr. Trasmere had gone out that afternoon when the visitor called.

It was unfortunate for the old man's scheme that the China mail had made a record voyage and had arrived thirty-six hours ahead of her scheduled time. Mr. Trasmere was not a reader of newspapers, or he would have learnt the fact in that morning's paper.

Walters answered the bell after some delay, for he was busily engaged in his own room on a matter that was entirely private to himself, and when he did answer the tinkling summons it was to find a brown-faced stranger standing on the broad step. He was dressed in an old suit which did not fit him, his linen was stained, and his boots were patched, but his manner would not have been out of place in Lorenzo the Magnificent.

With his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, his soiled soft hat on the back of his head, he met the inquiring and deferential gaze of Walters with a calm and insolent stare, for Mr. Brown was rather drunk.

"Well, well, my man," he said impatiently, "why the devil do you keep me waiting on the doorstep of my friend Jesse's house, eh?" He removed one of his hands from his pocket, possibly not the cleanest one, and tugged at his short grey beard.

"Mr.--er--Mr. Trasmere is out," said Walters, "I will tell him you have called. What name, sir?"

"Wellington Brown is my name, good fellow," said the stranger. "Wellington Brown from Chei-feu. I will come in and wait."

But Walters barred the way.

"Mr. Trasmere has given me strict orders not to admit anybody unless he is in the house," he said.

A wave of anger turned Wellington Brown's face to a deeper red.

"He has given orders!" he spluttered. "That I am not to be admitted--I, Wellington Brown, who made his fortune, the swindling old thief! He knows I am coming!"

"Are you from China, sir?" blurted Walters.

"I have told you, menial and boot-licking yellow-plush, that I am from Chei-feu. If you are illiterate, as you appear to be, I will explain to you that Chei-feu is in China."

"I don't care whether Chei-feu is in China or on the moon," said Walters obstinately. "You can't come in, Mr. Brown! Mr. Trasmere is away--he'll be away for a fortnight."

"Oh, won't I come in!"

The struggle was a brief one, for Walters was a man of powerful physique, and Wellington Brown was a man nearer sixty than fifty. He was flung against the stone wall of the porch and might, in his bemused condition, have fallen had not Walters' quick hand grabbed him back.

The stranger breathed noisily.

"I've killed men for that," he said jerkily, "shot 'em down like dogs! I'll remember this, flunkey!"

"I didn't want to hurt you," said Walters, aggrieved that any onus for the unpleasantness should rest on him.

The stranger raised his hand haughtily.

"I will settle accounts with your master--remember that, lackey! He shall pay, by God!"

With drunken dignity he walked unsteadily through the patch of garden that separated the house from the road, leaving Walters a puzzled man.