Читать книгу The Green Archer - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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THE immaculate young man who had been the third of Howett's luncheon-party was older than his pink, boyish face betrayed. Valerie Howett had guessed that the day her father had introduced him. To Valerie he was at first an object of mild interest. In her travels with her father, whose interests took him frequently to America, she had met in Chicago and in New York, in every big city of the United States, the pampered sons of foolish fathers, boys who had no other thought in life than the destruction of the hours that separated them from their more lurid amusements. She knew the limitations of their interests, which usually vacillated between their fast cars and slow parties; but for the first time she was meeting the English variety of the genus.

In many ways James Lamotte Featherstone was an improvement on all the others she had known. His life was as purposeless, but he possessed the great advantage of modesty. He never spoke about himself; he could talk about other things most entertainingly.

Valerie had first tolerated him because he was more presentable than the detective her father had threatened to hire to accompany her if she persisted in her practice of taking solitary rambles in neighbourhoods of an unsavoury character. And from tolerating him she had begun to like him, despite his exquisite appearance.

On the day following the murder he called to take her to the park.

"I'm going to ask you something," she said when they had reached the sunny park and he had found her a chair by the side of the Row, "and it is very personal."

"Personalities fascinate me," he said unsmiling.

"What do you do besides run around escorting attractive young ladies?"

He looked at her hard.

"You are attractive," he said seriously. "You always remind me of Beatrice D'Este—the girl Leonardo painted—only your face is more delicate and your eyes ever so much prettier——"

She was scarlet now, and stopped him.

"Mr. Featherstone!" she said awfully. "Don't you realise I was joking? Haven't you English people any sense of humour? I wasn't speaking of myself."

"You don't know anybody else I've ever escorted," he challenged, and tactfully moved to safer ground. "No, I have nothing to do."

"You don't even crease your own trousers," she said tartly, for he had annoyed her.

"No; I pay a man to do that," he admitted. "I brush my own hair, though," he added brightly.

She laughed in spite of herself, and then suddenly became serious.

"Mr. Featherstone, I am going to ask you a very great favour," she said. "I don't know why I risked making you angry with me. My father is rather anxious about me. He is a little old-fashioned and thinks that a girl ought not to go out alone. He even went to the length of proposing to hire a detective to look after me."

"Your father is an intelligent man," said Jimmy Featherstone promptly—which is exactly what he ought not to have said.

"I suppose he is," said Valerie, mastering a retort with some difficulty, "but... the truth is that I want to be alone. I want whole days alone. Do you understand, Mr. Featherstone?"

"Yes," said the other.

"I can only really be alone, without scaring father, if he thinks you are taking me some place... the theatre or... or the museum."

"I should never take you there," protested Jimmy, and the exasperated girl sighed wearily.

"What I mean is this, and I will be very plain: I want you to come for me tomorrow and take me out. And then I want you to leave me and let me take the car where I wish. You can say that you are taking me out for the day. On the river——"

"Rather late for the river," murmured her companion.

"Well... some place. Somewhere that will keep me out all day. Daddy is leaving for Scotland on Wednesday night——"

"What you want me to do is to pretend to take you out and leave you to your own devices?"

She sighed again.

"How clever you are. Yes, that is just what I want you to do."

Jimmy Featherstone was drilling a hole in the gravel with his gold-headed cane.

"I will upon one condition," he said slowly.

She looked at him in surprise.

"Condition? What is it?"

He raised his head and looked her straight in the eyes.

"Leave the investigation of Abe Bellamy's affairs to somebody else," he said. "It isn't a woman's job. If the police had searched the plantation behind Creager's house, you would have had some difficulty in explaining your presence, Miss Howett."

For a moment Valerie stared at her companion, speechless and pale.

"I—I don't understand you, Mr. Featherstone," she faltered.

The young man twisted round and faced her with a smile, which was half good-humour and half admonition.

"Miss Howett, you've recently accused me of living a purposeless life. An idle man has plenty of time for observation. You passed my flat in St. James's Street in a taxi-cab that was following the Ford which Creager drove."

"Then you knew Creager?" she said in astonishment.

"I knew him slightly," said Mr. Featherstone, toying with his stick and avoiding her eyes. "I know everybody slightly," he added with a laugh, "and some people a lot. For example, I know that you dismissed your cab at the end of Field Road and that you walked down as far as Creager's house, and then, as though you weren't quite certain what you would do, you came to a stile which connects with a footpath running through the plantation at the end of Creager's garden. The plantation is not part of his land, and it is only in his use because he hasn't troubled to fence off the end of the garden. And in that plantation you waited until nearly eight o'clock last night."

"You're only guessing," she challenged hotly. "Father has told you that I did not come back to dinner——"

"Indeed I am not guessing," he said quietly. "You remained in the plantation because you were afraid to have your presence betrayed."

"Where were you?" she asked.

Again he smiled.

"I also was in the plantation, I'm sorry to say. Otherwise I should have seen our friend the Green Archer."

"What were you doing there? How dare you spy on me, Mr. Featherstone?"

His eyes twinkled, but not a muscle of his face moved.

"You are inconsistent, Miss Howett. A little time ago you were complaining that I did nothing; and now, because I confess to having chaperoned you on a most dangerous expedition——"

She shook her head helplessly.

"I don't know what to think. It doesn't seem like you, Mr. Featherstone. Why should you think I was following Creager?"

Very deliberately he took out a gold cigarette-case.

"May I smoke?" he asked, and when she nodded he lit up and sent a blue cloud into the still morning air.

"You followed Creager," he said slowly, "because—and here I am only guessing—you thought, in his mood of resentment against Abe Bellamy, he would betray his employer; and, incidentally, give you the information that you have been seeking for years."

She could only stare at him.

"You're looking for a woman who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, Miss Howett," said the elegant young man, tracing patterns on the gravel with the ferrule of his cane. "And, rightly or wrongly, you suspect Bellamy of being responsible for her disappearance. You have seized at wilder straws than the one you grasped yesterday. It took me a long time to reconstruct the workings of your mind; but, as I imagine it, you thought that Bellamy would follow his tool to his house, and that you would have an opportunity of hearing them speak. You waited in the plantation nearly two hours, and were on the point of going to the house when you saw the police."

He took out his cigarette and threw it away again. He had suddenly conceived a distaste for smoking.

"I'd give a lot of money to meet the Green Archer," he said softly.

"Then you believe——?" she asked in amazement.

He nodded.

"I not only believe, I am absolutely certain."

She was looking at him now with a new interest and a new understanding.

"What an extraordinary man you are, Mr. Featherstone! You are almost as clever as a detective my father intended to employ to take care of me."

He laughed.

"I have a confession to make, Miss Howett. I am the detective with that commission. I am Captain Featherstone of Scotland Yard, and I've had you under observation ever since you arrived in London."