Читать книгу Great Porter Square: A Mystery. Volume 3 - Farjeon Benjamin Leopold - Страница 5

MY DARLING – What has occurred to-day must be related with calmness, although my mind is in a whirl of excitement. The presentiment I felt last night that we were on the threshold of an important discovery has come true. A discovery has been made which neither you nor I could ever have dreamt of, and we have to thank Fanny for it. How wonderfully all the circumstances of life seem to be woven into one another! Little did I think, when I first met the poor, hungry little girl, and was kind to her, that she would repay me as she has repaid me, and that we should owe to her, perhaps, the happiness of our lives. I may be mistaken; I may be speaking more out of my heart than my head, more out of my hopes than my reason. But surely what Fanny has discovered will lead to a discovery of greater moment. It is, as yet, the most important link in the chain. We must consider what is best to be done. At noon, Fanny said to me:

“I want a holiday; I’ve got something to do.”

She spoke abruptly, and with great earnestness.

“You don’t intend to run away from me, Fanny,” I said, and immediately repented my words, for Fanny seized my hands, and kissed them, with tears running down her face.

“Run away from you!” she cried. “Never – never – never! How could you think it of me. I would die for you – indeed, indeed I would!”

I quieted her, trying to excuse myself by saying that it was only because she was keeping something secret from me that the words escaped me.

“But I’m doing it for you,” she said. “To-night I’ll tell you everything.”

Now, read how Fanny passed the day. I will relate it as nearly as possible out of her lips.

“When I went into Mr. Pelham’s room, yesterday,” she said, “in Buckingham Palace Road, I didn’t suspect anything at first. I didn’t like his looks, but that was nothing. There are lots of people I don’t like the looks of. I remained there while he threw away the letter, and while he drank and smoked. He was drinking wine, and he emptied three glasses one after another. It wasn’t till he got up and went to his desk that I noticed something – a twitch of his left shoulder upwards, just as a man does when he shrugs his shoulders. But Mr. Pelham did not shrug his two shoulders, he shrugged one – the left one. I only knew one other man who did with his left shoulder what Mr. Pelham did, and I thought it funny. While he was writing his letter he threw away his cigar, and took a cigarette, and the way he put it into his mouth and rolled it between his lips was just the same as the other man who twitched his shoulder as Mr. Pelham did. Well, as I walked back to Mrs. Holdfast’s house, I seemed to see the two men – Mr. Pelham and the other, shrugging their left shoulders, and rolling their cigarettes in their mouths, and what they did was as like as two peas, though they were two different men, though one was poor and the other rich. I couldn’t help calling myself a little fool when the idea came to me that they were not different men at all, and I said to myself, ‘What do they mean by it? No good, that’s certain.’ So I made up my mind to do something, and I did it to-day.

“First, there was Richard Manx. I watched him out of the house. He came down from his garret a little after twelve; I stood in the dark passage, and watched him coming downstairs; he seemed to be out of temper, and he gave the wall a great blow with his hand. I think he would have liked to hear it cry out, so that he might be sure he had hurt it. I thought I shouldn’t like him to strike me in that way – but I don’t suppose he would if any one was looking. He would have hit me as he hit the wall, if he had known what I was up to – that is, if nobody was near.

“He went out of the house, closing the street door, O, so quietly behind him. Have you noticed how quietly he does everything? He walks like a cat – well, so can other people. I waited a minute after he closed the street door, and then I slipped out after him. I looked all ways, and I saw him just turning out of the Square into Great King Street. I soon turned the corner too, and there I was walking behind him on the other side of the way, with my eyes glued to him. Well, as good as glued. I can walk a long way behind a person, and never lose sight of him, my eyes are so sharp, and I didn’t lose sight of Mr. Richard Manx, as he calls himself. He walked Lambeth way, and I noticed that he was looking about in the funniest manner, as though he was afraid he was being watched. The farther he got from Great Porter Square the more he looked about him; but no one took any notice of him – only me. Well, he went down a street where half the houses were shops and half not, and at the corner of the street was a coffee-shop. There were two doors facing him, one going into the shop where people are served, and the other going into a passage, very narrow and very dark. A little way up this passage was a door, which pushed open. Mr. Manx, after looking about him more than ever, went into the narrow dark passage, and pushed open the door.

“What I had to do now was to wait until he came out, and to dodge about so that I shouldn’t be seen or caught watching for something I didn’t know what. It was a hard job, as hard a job as ever I was at, and it was all that I could do to keep people from watching me. I waited an hour, and another hour, and another hour, and Mr. Manx never came out of the coffee shop. I was regularly puzzled, and tired, and bothered. But I didn’t know what a little fool I was till after waiting for at least four hours I found out that the coffee shop had two more doors on the side facing the other street; doors just like the others, one going into the shop, and the other into a narrow dark passage. When I found that out I thought that Mr. Manx must have gone in at one door in one street and come out at the other door in the other street, and I was regularly vexed with myself. But that didn’t help me, and I walked away from Lambeth towards Buckingham Palace Road. I wanted to see with my own eyes if Mr. Pelham was at home. He was; I saw him stand for a minute at the window of his room on the front floor. Then I set to watching him. I wanted to find out where he was going to, and what he was up to. I suppose it was seven o’clock, and dark, before he came out. He walked till he met a cab, and as he got in I heard him give the direction of Mrs. Holdfast’s house. That was enough for me; I followed him there, my feet ready to drop off, I was that tired. But I wasn’t going to give up the job. No one came out of Mrs. Holdfast’s house till nine o’clock struck; then the street door was opened, and Mr. Pelham walked into the street. He stood still a little, and I thought to myself he is thinking whether he shall take a cab. He didn’t take one till he was half-a-mile from Mrs. Holdfast’s house. I ran all the way after it. It was a good job for me that the cab was a four-wheeler, and that it went along slow, for running so hard set my heart beating to that extent that I thought it would jump out of my body. I scarcely knew where we were going, the night was that dark, but I knew it was not in the direction of Buckingham Palace Road. Mr. Pelham rode about a mile, then called out to the cabby, and jumped on to the pavement. He paid the man, and the cab drove away, and then Mr. Pelham walked slowly towards Lambeth, looking about him, although the night was so dark, in exactly the same way as Mr. Manx had done when I followed him from Great Porter Square. I had been on my feet all the day, and had walked miles and miles, and I hadn’t had a bit of bread in my mouth since breakfast – but when I was certain that Mr. Pelham was walking to Lambeth I didn’t feel hungry or tired. I said to myself, ‘Fanny, your idea was right; but what does it all mean?’ Well, I couldn’t settle that; all I had to settle was that the two men who shrugged their left shoulders, and who rolled their cigarettes in their mouths in the way I had noticed, were not two men at all, but the same man, living in one place as a gentleman and an Englishman, and in another as a poor foreigner without a shilling. So I was not at all surprised to see Mr. Pelham, dressed like a swell, stop at the coffee shop at which Mr. Manx had stopped, and push through the dark passage by the door I had not noticed when I was waiting in the street this morning for Mr. Manx, and I wasn’t at all surprised that Mr. Pelham didn’t come out again. The man who came was the man I wanted, and I followed him home here to Great Porter Square, and he is in the house now.” And here Fanny concluded the account of her day’s adventures by asking, “Who came in five minutes before I did?”

“Richard Manx,” I replied.

“It’s all one,” said Fanny, triumphantly; “Richard Manx is Mr. Pelham. There’s no difference between them, except that one wears a wig, and paints his face, and talks like a foreigner, and that the other lives in a fine house, and drinks wine, and dresses like a gentleman. That was my idea last night. That was what I had to do when I asked you this morning to let me go for the day. There’s something in it; I don’t know what – that’s for you to find out. Are you pleased with me?”

I pressed the faithful child in my arms, and she gave a sigh and fainted. She was so eager to tell me of her discovery, and I was so anxious to hear it, that we both forgot that for fifteen hours not a morsel of food had passed her lips.