Читать книгу Two-Face - Ernest Dudley - Страница 6

CHAPTER 3

“She is a quaint little thing!” said Julia Green, as she fitted a cigarette into a long ivory holder and put it between her red lips. She was gracefully tall, and dark and attractive.

It was after dinner.

Larry, Leo and Julia were lounging comfortably in deep arm-chairs in the delightfully furnished sitting-room of the Greens’ flat. Julia had just come in from the visitor’s bedroom where she had tucked Mitsi in bed and given her a sleeping-draught.

Larry was smoking a pipe, and his eyes were closed. Leo also smoked a pipe, a heavy curved affair which hung from his teeth against the short, pointed beard which he affected. He had a pad perched on his knee, and was sketching on it, stopping every few minutes to survey his handiwork with a critical eye.

Julia looked at the two men, neither of whom made any reply to her remark. Smiling affectionately in the direction of Larry, she picked up a magazine and idly turned the pages.

There was a little silence.

Suddenly Leo, without looking up from his pencil, said:

“I think she has an amazingly interesting face—the bone structure’s grand.”

“Oh, do you think so?” his sister asked.

“Don’t you?”

“Yes… I think I see what you mean…in a way.”

“Which means you don’t see anything of the sort, my dear!”

Leo made a sucking noise in his pipe. He turned to Larry.

“D’you see, old man?”

“Oh, don’t wake the poor darling up, he’s having such a lovely nap!” Julia cried.

Larry opened his eyes and grinned.

“Liar! I was thinking,” he said. “What did you say, Leo?”

“I said this Linden kid has an amazingly interesting face. I also said the bone structure was all right, too, but you wouldn’t know anything about that!”

“Uhuh! painter-of-pretty-pictures!” the other jibed. “I know plenty about bone structure. But, no, I can’t say the child’s a ravishing beauty!”

“She’s very sweet and very pathetic,” put in Julia.

“I might have known,” muttered her brother. “You’re a pair of undiscerning fools!”

“Charming brother of mine!”

“Bah!” ejaculated Leo, and made irritable strokes on his drawing-pad.

Larry laughed good-humouredly. He knew Leo Green’s moods, his irritation with people who failed to see eye to eye with him about painting. Not that he was a highbrow, but his ideas were extremely original, and rather difficult to grasp at first acquaintance. But he was a brilliantly clever artist, and a good-hearted chap all right.

“I hope she sleeps well,” he said to Julia.

“Like a top, she will!”

“You’ve been a darling to her. I’m awfully grateful to you and Leo for rising to the occasion so superbly. Bless you both!”

“Silly!” she laughed.

There was a hidden tenderness, though, in her laughter, but it escaped him. And she felt the thin stab of pain in her heart, as she always did when she realized that to him she was no more than a good friend, a grand person to drop in and see now and then.

“Poor kid! She’s had a hell of a time…”

“She’s been lucky to have had you to play ministering angel. And that’s a thing I’ve never known you do before, Larry. Feel friendly towards a young woman, like you’ve done about her. You used to say women made you sick!”

He made a little grimace at her.

“Well, you’re the only woman I know whose company I can bear for five minutes. And that still holds good—because our visitor from Switzerland isn’t a woman. She’s just a kid, and a darned pathetic one at that. What else could I have done? Tough, hard-boiled newspaperman as you would have me seem, I’m not so flint-hearted I could leave a baby alone and helpless like she was.”

“You’re nice, Larry.”

Something like a sigh of relief escaped her. For one heart-chilling moment the suspicion had entered her mind that the girl, unattractive and drably forlorn as she was, had in some way made an appeal to him. His words had reassured her, and she was thankful.

At that moment the telephone rang. She crossed to the jangling instrument in the corner of the room.

“Hullo?… Yes… All right, I’ll hold on.” She turned to Larry. “Call from London. For you?”

“That’ll be the paper. I left word they could probably get me here if I wasn’t back tonight.”

He got up and stood by her. She spoke again into the mouthpiece.

“Hullo? Yes. Yes, this is Julia Green speaking. I can hear you perfectly well. Who is it?… Yes, he is here—will you hold on?…”

She handed the phone to him. “Bob Raymond himself would like a word with you,” she smiled.

“Bob! Good heavens, what the deuce does he want?”

“He’ll probably tell you, my pet, if you’ll take hold of this little toy.”

“Hullo, Bob. What’s on your mind? Sure I’ll help you, if I can. I’m listening. Bad luck, darned bad luck. Yes, I know. All very difficult. Well, yes, I do know her. I’ll see what I can do. And I’ll try and think of someone else if she can’t make it. I’ll phone you to-morrow as soon as I know anything. Yes… G’bye, Bob, don’t worry! It’ll all come right in the wash!”

He replaced the receiver.

“So sorry for all that,” he said, coming back to his chair.

“All sounds most odd!” Julia murmured.

Leo looked up from his sketching.

“There’s been a lot of talking going on,” he growled. “What’s it all about?”

“Bob Raymond’s in the soup. You know he’s opening his own night-club next week—going to be the brightest spot in London, and all that…”

“Horrible!” groaned Leo.

“Well, he’d got Rosy Gordon—”

“The new American singer?” put in Julia.

Larry nodded.

“Revolting!” moaned her brother, and returned to his work.

“She was to have appeared at Bob’s club, but she’s got pneumonia, or mumps, or run off with some millionaire, or something! Anyway, she won’t be there!”

“Bad luck.”

“Yes, it’ll ruin his opening night. She was the big attraction.”

“What’ll he do?”

“That’s what he’s called me about. Wants me to talk to Mirielle, the Bright Girl of Paris. Try and get her to appear at his club.”

“But she’d want the earth!”

“Rosy Gordon was to get that! Money’s no object with Bob. Got plenty of cash behind him. He wants the biggest drawing-card possible, and he’ll pay for it! But I’m pretty sure Mirielle won’t be any use. She’s under contract here, sure as anything. There’s no one else I can think of.”

“What a nuisance the tall, dark and handsome Bob Raymond is!”

“You’ve met him, haven’t you?”

“And heard all about him, too! Champion breaker of women’s hearts!”

“He’s a gay young lad! I don’t mind him, he’s amusing.”

“And so terribly attractive!”

“A poisonous reptile!” muttered Leo, without taking his eye from his pencil.

Julia and Larry laughed. Larry’s grin turned into a yawn.

“Well, I’m hitting the hay! Sorry to be unsociable, and all that! But I’m tired.”

“Yes, of course, dear. You go on along—you can worry about young Raymond’s pretty lady in the morning…”