Читать книгу Penelope of the Polyantha - Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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The days passed with amazing rapidity. Penelope found that there was much more work than she had anticipated. A room on the ground floor had been set apart as a study, and generally she occupied this alone.

After breakfast, taken in the panelled low-ceilinged dining-room, she went to the study, and from then until lunch-time she was engaged in an examination of leases and other documents pertaining to estates in various parts of the country.

She noticed that they were not original documents, being for the main part certified copies which had apparently been secured by a legal agency in London. Her task was to reduce to an understandable and tabulated form the cash values of the properties to which they referred. For her guidance she had innumerable sale catalogues, reports of auctions, returns of land values.

“Of course, I can’t expect you to get the exact value of every one of these properties,” said Mr. Dorban the first morning she began her work, “and it is going to be a devil of a job to get even the approximate value, but prices are fairly steady, and what one farm will fetch in Norfolk is, roughly the value of another.”

To assist her further, the estate pages of The Times and other newspapers were sent to her from day to day. The remainder of the newspapers she never saw. Indeed, all the time she was at Stone House, a newspaper never came her way.

She found it a little difficult to reconcile Cynthia’s description of her husband as a student with facts as she discovered them. There were not twenty books in the house. Cynthia was a subscriber to a local library, and there was generally a supply of the latest novels, which neither she nor her husband ever read; Pen had an idea that the subscription to the library was taken out solely on her own account, and in this she was not mistaken. She never spoke to the servants, for the excellent reason that she could not speak their language, for all the domestics of the house, except the gardener, were French, in which language Penelope was indifferently proficient.

The afternoons and the evenings were her own, and yet not her own. She was never allowed out to go to the village alone: either Cynthia or Mr. Dorban accompanied her. Sometimes he would drive her about the country, sometimes the three would go out for a sea trip on the Princess, his motor-boat. She had the uncomfortable sensation that she was being guarded, and this she resented.

And then a new, and perhaps inevitable, complication appeared.

One day when Cynthia had gone to London on business she was working in her study when Mr. Dorban walked in. He was, as usual, spick and span.

“Leave those wretched things and come fishing,” he said.

Penelope hesitated. His attitude towards her had been scrupulously correct. She made some excuse, which he overrode.

“Nonsense,” he said. “That can wait till to-morrow. You have two years to get those beastly papers in order.”

“I often wonder why you did not do all this work yourself,” she said, as they made their way down the steep steps to the beach. “It is not really very difficult, and you know so much more about the subject than I.”

He was whistling softly to himself, a characteristic of his, and he did not answer for some time, until they had reached the boathouse.

“I hate figures,” he said. “I hate office work of any kind. God made me for the free and open spaces of the world, for the sea—”

“I thought you disliked the sea.”

“I dislike big ships; I dislike long voyages,” he answered briefly, and changed the subject.

The boat chugged out into the placid waters of Borcombe Bay, Penelope steering, the fastidious Mr. Dorban, who had covered himself with a white overall, attending to the powerful engines.

They were three miles from shore when he stopped the engine and sat down.

“Well, what do you think of England?” he asked.

“Aren’t you going to fish?”

He shook his head.

“I have brought no lines,” he said simply. “Fishing bores me. Come for’ard.”

The forepart of the boat was comfortably upholstered, and there was a small folding table, which was now extended.

Again she hesitated. She had a feeling that something unpleasant was going to happen, and she wished she had not come.

Mr. Dorban was crouched up over the table, and in his thin hand was a pack of cards, which he shuffled mechanically. His melancholy brown eyes were gazing shoreward, and his thin lips were down-turned as though, of a sudden, a weight of a great sorrow had fallen upon him. The change was so remarkable that she looked at him fascinated, and then suddenly he turned and looked at her.

“What do you think of Cynthia?” he asked surprisingly.

“What a curious question!” Penelope forced a smile.

“It isn’t curious; it is very natural,” he said. “Look, I will show you a trick. Shuffle those cards.”

He pushed the pack toward her, and she took it.

“Shuffle,” he said almost impatiently, and she obeyed.

“Cynthia is rather a cold-blooded mortal,” he said. “I suppose that fact has struck you. She is a mind, and minds are rather trying things to live with.”

“Here are your cards,” said Penelope.

He took the pack in his slender hands, and for a moment the edges were a blur of white and gold, then he began to deal them face upwards. Ace, king, queen, jack, and so through the whole sequence of diamonds. Suit by suit he dealt, each card placed according to its value, and she looked open-mouthed, for she had shuffled the pack thoroughly, and here he was dealing them as though they had been carefully arranged by her in order.

El Slico! The deck steward’s words came back to her.

“Well?” He was smiling.

“How did you do it?” she gasped. “I’m sure I shuffled them.” In her interest she forgot her apprehension.

“Shuffle them again,” he said.

Again she shuffled, deliberately sorting out the cards so that no two suits were together, and again taking the pack from her hand, he dealt the suits in order.

“That’s the most wonderful trick I have ever seen.”

“Is it?” he asked carelessly, and slipped the cards into his pocket. “What do you think of Cynthia?” he asked again.

“That is hardly a question I expected you to ask,” said Penelope. “She has been most kind to me.”

“Cynthia is kind to nobody,” said Arthur Dorban promptly. “I sometimes wish that Cynthia was dead.” He said this so quietly that she could hardly believe her ears.

“Mr. Dorban!” she said, shocked, and he laughed.

“You think I’m a brute, but I’m not really,” he said. “I know of no other way of getting rid of Cynthia except by her dying. By that look on your face I gather that you are thinking I am contemplating an extensive use of weed-killer, which is so popular in these parts. As a matter of fact, I am not; I am merely stating an unpalatable truth. There is no way of getting rid of Cynthia. I have discussed the matter with her, you will be interested to know, and she has agreed that she is immovable. I can’t divorce her, and she would not divorce me. I can’t run away from her, for reasons which I will not at the moment discuss; I cannot ill-treat her, because it is not my nature to ill-treat women, and the very idea is repugnant to my finest feelings; and I cannot even get her certified as insane, because she is the least mad person I know. And yet,” he went on without pause, “my very soul aches for sympathetic companionship, for the love which Cynthia has never shown—Cynthia and I are only married in the legal sense—for the warmth and blind devotion of which Cynthia is wholly incapable.”

She could only listen in dumbfounded silence.

“Cynthia knows this, of course. I think she chose you because she thought that you would keep me soothed.”

“Do you know what you are saying, Mr. Dorban?” said Penelope sternly.

“I know exactly what I am saying,” said Mr. Dorban, and slowly rolled a cigarette. “I am asking you to love me.”

Penelope rose and went back to the afterway of the boat, and he followed her.

“We will go home now, I think, and since you have rejected my discreditable advances, we will not discuss the matter any more, and you may forget that I have ever spoken on the subject. If you do not trust me, and you wish to go back to Canada, I will see that you will have your fare to-morrow, in spite of Cynthia’s protests. If, on the other hand, you will take my word, and the word of El Slico—”

“El Slico!” Her mouth opened in amazement, and he chuckled softly.

“Of course, you knew I was El Slico. I saw you talking to old Beddle, who knows me quite well. And old Beddle recognized me and told you who I was. Yes, I am El Slico, but you needn’t mention the fact to Cynthia, who would have a thousand fits if she thought I had been recognized.”

“But, Mr. Dorban,” said the bewildered girl, “you can’t expect me to stay.”

“You may stay or go, as you wish,” said Arthur Dorban, starting the engine. “I strongly advise you to stay. In justice to me you will admit that I have been very frank, and that my methods have been transparently honest. I don’t think I should go back to Canada if I were you. You may please yourself as to whether you tell Cynthia—she will probably guess. I don’t think she will respect you any more for your virtues.”

She did not make any reply to this, and spent the rest of the afternoon in her room. It was a grotesque situation, and if it had happened in Canada she might have dealt with the position sanely. As it was, she was in a strange land, friendless and alone. Somehow she was impressed by the man’s candour. She did not know that the principal weapon in El Slico’s armoury was his engaging frankness. Should she take him at his word and leave, or should she stay on until she had saved a sufficient sum to enable her to take the chance of seeking her fortune in London? Rightly or wrongly, Penelope decided to stay, and remembered, as she fell asleep, that somewhere in London was Mr. James Orford, to whom she might turn in a moment of crisis.