Читать книгу The Other Man - Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

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The fog was still heavy and the blurred street-lamps looked ghastly in the yellow mist when the young messenger, the first half of his mission performed, struck briskly riverward to complete his business. He disposed of his violets at a corner stand, hailed a passing hansom boldly, and after a low consultation with the driver, got in. They drove steadily for an hour. The gas-lamps grew fewer, and the streets more narrow and gloomy.

Suddenly the man drew up with a jerk.

"Here ye be," he called huskily.

The boy sprang to the ground and peered about him. "It'll do," he announced, and then briefly, "Wait 'arf an hour."

He plunged down a dark and crabbed way, glancing warily behind him now and then to see if he was being followed.

Here, between invisible walls, the fog hung thick and warm and sticky, crowding up close, with a kind of blowsy intimacy that whispered the atmosphere of the place. Occasionally, close to his ear, snatches of loose song burst out, or a base, coarse face loomed head-high through the reek.

But the boy was upon his native heath and scuttled along, whistling softly between closed teeth, as, with a dexterity born of long practice, he skirted slush and garbage sinks, held around the blacker gulfs that denoted unguarded basement holes, and eluded the hideous shadows that lurched by in the gloom.

Hugging the wall, he presently became aware of footsteps behind him. He rounded a corner, and turning swiftly collided with something which grappled him with great hands. Without hesitation, the lad leaned down and set his teeth deep into the hairy arm.

The man let go with a hoarse bellow of rage, and the boy, darting across the alley, could hear him stumbling after him in blind search of the narrow way.

Thin shivers of excitement rippled up and down his spine and his blood crinkled in his veins. Squatting close to the sloppy wall, he thrust out one leg and waited. He could feel the quarry come on, the big blowing body of him, the groping, outstretched arms. His leg stiffened rigid as a bar of iron. With a crash the man fell headlong across it. The boy laughed aloud and sheered aside, barely missing a knife which hurtled past and stuck quivering in the opposite wall.

As he sped along, a door suddenly opened in the blank wall beside him, and a stream of ruddy light gushed out, catching him square within its radiance, mud-spattered, starry-eyed, vivid.

A man stood framed in the doorway.

"Come in," he commanded briefly.

The boy obeyed. Surreptitiously he wiped the wet and mud from his face and tried to reduce his wild breathing.

The room which he entered was meagre and stale-smelling, with bare floor and stained and sagging wall-paper; unfurnished save for a battered deal table and some chairs.

He sank into one of them and stared with frank curiosity past his employer, who had often entrusted him with messages requiring secrecy, past his employer's companion, to the third figure in the room. A prostrate figure which lay quite still under the heavy folds of a long dark ulster with its face turned to the wall.

"Well?" It was a singularly agreeable voice which aroused him, softly modulated but with a faint foreign accent. The speaker was his employer, a slender dark man, with a finely carved face, immobile as the Sphinx. He had laid aside his Inverness and top hat, and showed himself in evening dress with a large buttonhole of Parma violets, which sent forth a faint, delicious fragrance.

Of the personality of the man the messenger knew nothing more than that he was an aristocratic young nob, eccentric in a quiet way, who lived in a grand house near Portland Place, and who rewarded him handsomely for his occasional services.

He related his adventures of the evening, not omitting to mention his late pursuer. "The keb's waitin' now, outside, sir," he concluded.

The man listened quietly, brooding, his elbows upon the table, his inscrutable face propped in the crotch of his hand. A ruby, set quaintly in a cobra's head, gleamed from a ring upon his little finger. Presently he roused.

"That's all to-night, my boy," he said gravely. "You've served me well."

He drew out his purse, extracted two sovereigns, and laid them in the messenger's hand.

"And this," he said softly, holding up a third gold piece, "is for—discretion! You comprehend?"

The boy shot a swift glance, not unmixed with terror, at the still, recumbent figure in the corner, mumbled an assent, and withdrew. Out in the dampness of the fog, he took a long, deep breath. After all, he reflected, such affairs were not in the province of a night-messenger. They belonged to Scotland Yard. And certainly the man paid well.

As the door closed behind him, his employer leaned back in his chair, and smiled into the sombre eyes of his companion.

"At last!" he breathed softly. "The thing moves. The wheels are beginning to revolve!"

His friend nodded gloomily, his glance straying off toward the corner of the room.

"They've got to revolve a mighty lot more before the night's done!" he replied with heavy significance.

He was a tall, lean man and wore a brown overcoat with the collar turned up sharply about his throat, and a derby hat still glistening from the mist. His voice, which was flat and rasping, betrayed his transatlantic origin.

"It's my opinion," he continued bluntly, "that you stick right here at this end of the line and see the game through. You can present your excuses to Lady Dinsmore to-morrow. I needn't tell you that we must move in this venture with extreme caution. A single misstep at the outset, the slightest breath of suspicion, and pff! the entire superstructure falls to the ground."

"That is doubtless true, Mr. Baggin," murmured his companion pleasantly. He leaned down to inhale the fragrant scent of the violets. "But you forget one little thing. This grand superstructure you speak of—so mysteriously—" he hid a slight smile, "I know it not. You have seen fit, in your extreme caution, to withhold all knowledge of it from me."

He paused and regarded his companion with a level, steady gaze. A faint, ironical smile played about the corners of his mouth.

"Is it not so, my friend?" he asked softly. "I am—how you say—left out in the cold?"

His countenance was serene and unruffled, and it was only by his slightly quickened breathing that an acute observer might have said that the conversation held any unusual significance.

The American stirred uneasily in his chair. A dull flush mounted to his temples.

"There are some financial matters——" he muttered sullenly.

"You admit it, then—this high scheme has to do with finance, with the finance of nations—the finance of the world!"

"Hush!" whispered Baggin hoarsely. He glanced about, half-fearfully.

The younger man ignored the outburst. He laid a persuasive hand upon his companion's arm.

"My friend," he said gravely, "let me give you a bit of good advice. Believe me, I speak disinterestedly. Take me into your counsels. As a Russian nobleman and distant kinsman of his Imperial Majesty the Tsar, I have the entrée to the most exclusive houses of London. Politics I know a little, and the politicians extremely well. Twice I have been a guest at Sandringham. I am a person of diplomacy, resolution, power. In brief, Mr. Baggin, I am intelligent, and I know too little or too much for you. Too much for an outsider, too little for a friend and—ah—conspirator. With half my knowledge, I could make you, or break you like glass. Candidly, I have not the heart for the latter. I would be rather a—a friendly power." He leaned forward suddenly. "Make me," he said softly, "a member of your Committee of Nine."

Baggin shrank back. "You—you know that?" he gasped.

"I know many things," was the quiet reply, "but not all."

The American looked at him doubtfully. The man seemed limpid. Was he, in truth, as Grayson had once said, as deep as the bottomless pit? Grayson, he knew, had favoured him.

"You have no money," he objected, finally.

"I have something better."

"What?" In Baggin's mouth the question was an insult.

"Genius!" returned the young man simply.

He disregarded Baggin's scornful ejaculation, and continued impersonally, as if reading aloud from a book.

"Genius, my friend! Genius is as high above mere money as the stars wheeling in their celestial courses are above the earth. It is human electricity—the motive power of the world. With my power, the spark I feel within me here"—he touched his white shirt-front—"I could wipe out kingdoms and principalities, change the map of Europe more drastically than Napoleon—and bloodlessly! Think of it a moment, my prosaic, financial friend! I who sit here in this room, with you and a dead man, can do these things! Just one little pawn in the game is missing. Money. A few million pounds for running expenses and for salaries to my—er—myrmidons! That item, Mr. Baggin, I expect to be supplied by you."

He laughed outright at Baggin's frowning, mistrustful face, crossed one leg over the other, and clasped his silk-clad ankle with a shapely hand.

Baggin noted the boyish action. It at once irritated him and determined his course.

"Unfortunately," he replied drily, "we have already chosen our president and voted upon the immediate use of the fund. The map of Europe, I fear, must for the present remain unaltered——" He glanced up and added hurriedly, "I—regret this—— Perhaps at our next meeting—— The membership, as you perhaps know, is—er—limited."

The young man sprang to his feet. His face was bronze.

"It is of no consequence, my friend." He laughed softly. "Simply, the scheme appealed to me. It fired my imagination. I am, as you know, a dreamer.

"'If you can dream, and not make dreams your master,'" he murmured.

He walked over to the corner of the room, picked up his Inverness, and stood looking composedly down upon the figure which it had concealed.

"Salve, my friend! You go down the river tonight, wiser than all the kings of earth."

He slipped into his coat and turned toward Baggin, who had also risen.

"You will see that it gets into the morning papers," he said. "I could wish to write it myself," he added pensively, drawing on his gloves. "It has possibilities. So: 'Grayson a suicide. Great financier shows himself at the opera, bids the gay world good-night, and throws himself in the Thames. A flying rumour breathes money troubles as a cause for the tragedy.' Wait!" he fumbled in his breast pocket, "I'll write a note to pin to his clothes."

He scribbled hastily in his memorandum book, tore out the leaf, and handed it to his companion. "He confesses his sins and commends his soul to 'le bon Dieu.'" He laid a hand upon the door.

"You will leave me here—alone?" asked Baggin.

"But yes! Nothing can harm you from within, and you bolt the door from without—until the preconcerted signal. It should not be long now." He drew out his watch.

"But—I wish you to remain—I command it!" Despite his efforts at composure, Baggin's voice quavered.

His companion laughed. "A Roland for your Oliver, my friend!" he cried. "Favour for favour! You grant my small request?"

Baggin shook his head.

"You will be king, eh?—and alone? Good!"

He put on his top hat, adjusted his silk muffler about his throat, and with an amiable nod to his companion, stepped out into the night.

The fog had thinned to a nebulous haze, fine as a lady's veil, and the young man strode along briskly. Ten minutes brought him to the waiting hansom.

"Covent Garden," he directed the driver. He sprang in and leaned back against the cushions.

"So Baggin would be king!" He smiled with a certain grimness.