Читать книгу The Last Adventure and Other Stories - Edgar Wallace - Страница 5

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THOMAS, the footman, sidled into the library, stood for a moment surveying the room with a critical eye, then, walking slowly to the fireplace, took up the silver tongs and daintily lifted three pieces of coal from the old-fashioned wooden scuttle. This done, he arranged the newspapers on the long table, pulled back one damask curtain which arrested a few inches of spring sunshine, and was gazing through the long window across the stretch of the deer park when the muffled click of the door-handle turning brought him round, alert and busy.

The member of the household who came into the big panelled room did not so much as look at the servant. He crossed wearily to the chair behind the empire writing-table and fell rather than sat into it.

A thin, weedy man, ungainly of build and awkward of movement, his yellow, haggard face was disfigured by a perpetual frown; the eyes under the straight black brows were small, lustreless, suspicious. This morning there were two distinct pouches beneath them, and the hand that reached out to take his letters was shaky. A weak chin, disfigured with a deep cleft, and a lower lip so full that it seemed to be swollen, added to his unattractiveness.

He opened one letter and threw it aside with an exclamation of disgust, and for a while sat staring across the room at the fire, stroking his little black moustache.

“Has my—has Mr. Calthorpe been in?”

“No, my lord.”

Selwyn Earl of Heverswood never spoke of Johnny Calthorpe as his brother except in moments of absent-mindedness.

“What the devil do you want?” he snapped, as Thomas waited.

“Your lordship asked me to remind you of something.”

Selwyn’s frown grew deeper.

“Was it you who let me in ... umph ... pretty well stewed, wasn’t I? Did my mother hear me?”

“No, my lord. I have not seen her ladyship this morning, and she did not ask her maid what time your lordship returned.”

One side of Lord Heverswood’s mouth twisted up in an unpleasant smile.

“If my—if Mr. John asks you, you can say I came in early—that will do.”

Long after the footman had gone, he sat with his head in his hand. Even when his mother came into the room he did no more than look up.

A tall, stout woman of sixty-five, with a dead white face, her Ups were a vivid carmine, her hair as vivid a red. People meeting the Dowager Countess of Heverswood for the first time were repelled, then amused, by her blatant artificiality—their last impression was one of vague fear, for there was a malignity in her coal-black eyes, a cruel purpose in the set of her thin lips, that made sensitive men and women shudder.

Her servants hated her; the very woman who spent an hour making up her mistress’s face had a secret loathing of the work which transformed this ugly virago into the semblance of beauty.

She walked to the fire. Not all the massage in the world could make plump the withered hand she held to the warmth. Her fingers were laden with costly rings that twinkled and flashed in the light of the dancing flame. About her neck was a double row of exquisitely matched pearls. There were diamonds in her ears, on her broad bosom, in the thickly jewelled bangles about her wrists.

“What time did you come home, Selwyn?” she asked harshly.

“About one o’clock “ he began.

“You’re a liar.”

She did not turn her head or raise her voice: she spoke without heat or passion.

“It was near four, and you were drunk. I heard you. Be careful!”

Again that unpleasant smile of his as he smoothed his sleek black hair.

“Mary Predelle took a lot of landing, Selwyn,” she went on. “Even now, if she hadn’t a father who is itching to get his daughter into the peerage, she would be man-shy—if you were the man.”

He was biting his nails nervously.

“I’m not a bit keen on marriage—I have a lot of good women pals “

“Keep them.” Lady Heverswood’s eyes went back to the fire, and he experienced a sense of physical relief. “Be discreet—but keep them. You will be able to afford your little amusements. Has John been here?”

He shook his head.

“I hope he has fallen into one of his barges and broken his neck,” she said calmly, and he was neither shocked nor amused: he had heard those ungentle sentiments before.

“I wish to God he’d get some sort of fever and die,” she went on in her high, even tone. “He is always on and off these foreign ships, but he catches nothing.”

“What’s the trouble now?” asked Selwyn curiously. His mother never attacked even the hated John at random.

“The command performance—I wrote for tickets and got a polite letter from the duke: he regretted, et cetera. He is John’s uncle. It was the same when I applied for the Royal Enclosure tickets for Ascot. ‘The Duke of Taunton regrets that all the available tickets have been allotted’,” she mimicked, and then, with a snarl of rage which undid all the beautifying processes of her overworked maid:——”They never forgive—never forget! Cursed lackeys like Taunton! I wish John Calthorpe was in hell!...”

The girl who came into the room at that moment was pretty in a pale, disdainful way, a girl of languid carriage and mien.

“Well?” Lady Heverswood snapped the query.

“The secretary of the New Arts Club wishes to know how many tickets he is to reserve for your ladyship: they are two guineas “

“None!” Lady Heverswood fired the answer without looking up at her private secretary. “Have I nothing to do but to waste my money on that kind of nonsense? They ought to be glad to send me tickets for their wretched ball free! Two guineas indeed! The advertisement of having us there should be enough.”

Still Alma Keenan waited.

“I ordered them, mother,” said Selwyn. It required an effort to say this. “Everybody will be there. I thought of going as a pierrot—”

“An original idea!” sneered her ladyship. “If you want them, buy them. If you imagine that I am going to mix with the scum of the earth, you’re mistaken. Buy one for John Calthorpe! He will be in his element! All right—don’t drape yourself over that chair, Miss Keenan. Order the tickets for his lordship. And for God’s sake shut the door after you.”

The secretary glided from the room.

“She’s not a bad girl, that,” grumbled Selwyn. “I wonder you’re not a little more decent to her.”

“She is leaving next week,” was the unexpected reply, and Selwyn’s eyebrows rose.

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

The old woman glowered round at him.

“Because she’s too pretty—and you’re too impressionable.”

Lord Heverswood’s face went red.

“I’ve never spoken a dozen words to her,” he protested hotly, “and she’s engaged to some fellow in London.”

“Let her marry him,” said the woman icily. “And here is John Calthorpe—smelling of wood shavings!” John came into the room unannounced. His visits to the castle were few and far between—he would gladly have dispensed with those, but the announcements he had read in yesterday’s newspapers had made the call an urgent necessity.

“Shut the door,” snapped the woman, scarcely raising her eyes, “and the next time you come in, have the goodness to ask the footman to announce you!”

John Calthorpe said nothing in direct answer to this. He was that exasperating kind that could not be exasperated. He strolled across to a shelf and took down a book, examining the pages idly. Lady Heverswood had seen that action before. John had something to say— something unpleasant. She trembled with anger in anticipation. The sight of him never failed to arouse in her a storm of unreasoning hate. One fear obsessed her, that Selwyn would die before he had a son to take the title. It was a fear that kept her awake at nights and was accentuated every time the tanned, healthy face of her stepson came into her vision.

“Answer me when I speak to you I” She mastered her insane rage with an effort. “You come in and out of this house as though you owned it. My God! Things have come to a pretty pass if the son of a brainless interloper—“

He turned and met her malignant gaze: black eyes glowing and smouldering with hate; grey eyes as cold and merciless as death. And yet the words he said were in themselves without offence.

“I would like you to think kindly of my mother, Lady Heverswood; if that is impossible, and you cannot even speak kindly, would you please give her the charity of your silence?”

There trembled on the edge of her tongue a phrase coarse, vile, hurting, but his gaze did not falter. She saw something bleak, as though his eyes mirrored an Arctic desolation, and that froze the words on her lips.

Followed a long and awkward silence.

“How is the timber business?” Selwyn was heavily jocose.

“Flourishing,” said John with the faintest of smiles. “We had another consignment of yaga wood this morning, and it was sold before the ship made fast at Dockhead; come up to-night and I’ll show you some encouraging figures.”

Lord Heverswood’s face lit up with a new interest.

“Put that infernal book down and talk,” he complained. “I can’t see you to-night; I am dining at Madame Bonnigea’s—a party of friends. Can’t you bring the figures down here? After all, it is our business, John. I mean, the mater and everybody is in it. We put up the money.”

John replaced the book he had been reading.

“It really doesn’t matter who found the money,” he said good-humouredly, “and even the question who found and tamed the yaga tree—“

“Of course you found that, old man,” said Selwyn, with an apprehensive glance at the old woman by the fire. She displayed no resentment at his friendly tone, though he was certain she was listening. “Deuced clever of you, too. At the same time, anybody else who went mucking about in British Honduras would have found it—if he went far enough into the forest—but you were lucky. You’ll admit we put up the money for the trip. I scraped together a hundred and the mater promised a hundred.”

“And the trip cost me ten thousand.”

John Calthorpe’s eyes twinkled.

“Well, you had it!” protested his brother. “Your... er ... your mother left you money—“

“There will be a dividend next month,” the other cut short this everlasting wrangle.

There was no company—none knew that better than Selwyn. This amazing wood which his brother had found, and which sold at fancy prices to the furniture-makers, was his own concession, bought, shipped and landed with his own money. The business for which his half-brother expressed an amused contempt was nearly the sole source of revenue which the family enjoyed.

“Next month,” grumbled Selwyn, “and I’ve got a bill from my bookmaker that must be settled before Friday or he’ll post me!”

“In that case you shall have money before Friday,” was the good-natured reply.

And then the tone of the second son changed.

“Is it true that you’re engaged to Mary Predelle? I only saw it in the morning paper.”

“True?” The still figure at the fire asked the question shrilly. “Why shouldn’t it be true?”

John turned to look at her ladyship before he answered.

“There is no reason, madam. She is a very charming girl. It will be a distinction to claim her as a sister-in-law. Only ...”

“Only what?” The thin voice was almost a hollow whistle of sound.

“She seems rather ...” He paused.

“Too good for Selwyn?” she rapped.

“No ... I hardly know Selwyn’s degree of excellence—nobody is too good for anybody if they love each other.”

He had taken a second book from the shelf and was turning the leaves as he spoke—an action that roused the old woman to a cold fury.

“Be so good as to give me your entire attention, John Calthorpe!” Her voice had the menacing quality of an enraged wasp. “What do you mean when you say, ‘She seems rather ...’?”

He put down the book and stood looking at the powdered face of the woman.

“She seems rather too tender a plant to grow in this cactus bush,” he said deliberately. “I’m sorry if I annoy you, but you asked me. She has a lot of money, hasn’t she? At least, her father has. Madam, in two years I shall—we shall be rich. I could even rush things so that the big money came next year. Is it necessary to sacrifice this girl for the sake of a few hundred thousand pounds— which is certain to come, anyway?”

“Sacrifice!”

Lady Heverswood was standing bolt upright, her black eyes blazing.

“Sacrifice... to marry your brother?”

Selwyn watched the scene apprehensively.

“Is that what you mean? A sacrifice for any girl to marry an Earl of Heverswood? Explain yourself.”

“That is what I meant.” John Calthorpe’s voice had a metallic ring: the grey of his eyes was drear and comfortless; she hated him worst when he had that look —hated him worst because she feared him most. “Her father adores her: he’s the type of American who lives for his children, spoils them with his generosity, cloys them with service. She isn’t spoilt so far as I’ve been able to learn from those who know her. She’s just a sweet, natural, sensitive girl. What sort of husband are you giving her? Selwyn!”

The natural red was showing through her cheeks: her mouth drooped till he saw the line of her teeth, clenched in a grin which in any other person would have been ludicrous. And the second son went on:

“Selwyn’s all right—he’s a man-about-town with his own code and his own ideas of decency. I have hoped he would meet some hard-riding woman of his own class —his own ideals: somebody with the intellect of a master of foxhounds and the broad view of a society lawyer—“

“Stop!” She foamed the word, and her skinny hands clawed at the air. “Stop I You ...!”

Only for a fraction of a second did the corner of his lips twitch.

“I’m not that, madam—whatever else I may be. And I’m not being wilfully offensive. I like old Selwyn— I’d go a long way to help him to happiness. And I know my position. I’m the second son. I’m proud of it. I’d rather be the son of Adelaide Countess of Heverswood than I’d be the duke, her brother. But I want no brokenhearted woman to curse this house. If she is to be happy—all right. If Selwyn is the kind of man she would marry, if she were a kitchen maid and he the footman— God bless ‘em, let them get on with it! But this exchange of money for title, and title for money—it is unclean, beastly.”

She did not speak as he walked to the door.

“I’m going to my room,” he said. There was a challenge, in the words if not in the tone.