Читать книгу The Seven Sleepers - Francis Beeding - Страница 5

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On reaching my room, I carefully examined the pocket-book.

It contained nothing but a sheet of stout note-paper, one side of which was half covered with figures arranged in groups. It was obviously some sort of cipher, but the document was signed by seven persons whose autographs were en clair. I did not, however, take the trouble to examine it any further that night, but soon turned in and slept soundly.

I was tired, and the peculiar events at the Moulin Rouge had not sufficed to do more than ruffle the surface of my good spirits. Anyhow, I could do nothing about it till the morning, and during the War I had acquired the habit, which remains with me still, of putting off till to-morrow the things which cannot be done to-day. I like to think that this is a habit which I share with all the more attractive people of the earth. My dear mother calls it laziness, and Uncle James of Jebbutt and Jebbutt frequently prophesies that it will land me and mine in the office of the official receiver.

I awoke rather late on the following morning, and I had not yet begun to think of the little Jew and his pocket-book when my coffee arrived, with hot water and a letter.

I opened the letter sleepily, without stopping to consider how odd it was for me to receive one when, as far as I was aware, no one knew my address. It was written in German, and was as follows:

“Pension Ephesus,

December 11th.

“My dearest Grandson,

“I am glad to know that you have arrived at last in Geneva. I am sorry, dearest boy, that circumstances, which you say in your telegram were inevitable, have caused you to be two days late. I trust, however, that you will lose no further time in coming to see me.

“I am accordingly expecting you to take tea with me this afternoon at 4 p.m. precisely, at No. 140, rue Etienne Dumont. Uncle Ulric and Uncle Fritz will be there, and we must have a nice little chat together. We have quite a number of things to say to you.

“I am anxiously awaiting the little present which you tell me you are bringing me. As it is small, I hope you will take the greatest care of it and that it will not be lost.

“I should add, dear boy, a word of warning, which I hope you will not misunderstand, since you know my great love and affection for you. You are of a high-spirited nature, and, as the city of Geneva is at the moment en fête, you may be tempted to indulge those high spirits of yours in the company of the other participants in the carnival. Now, the police here are lenient, but they do not permit undue brawling or noise in the streets. I therefore beg you most earnestly to be careful not to let your excitable nature run away with you, and thus bring you into unpleasant contact with the guardians of the law.

“Assuring you once more of my great affection, and of the warmth of the welcome which you may expect to receive,

“I am,

“Your loving,

“Grandmother.”

To say that I was astonished by this letter is to put it mildly.

I read it through twice, and my first conclusion was that I must be the victim of a practical joke, but a moment’s reflection showed me that there could be no one in Geneva who would wish to play such a trick on me. Lavelle, my French friend on the Secretariat of the League, was the last person from whom I should expect anything of the kind, and Beatrice Harvel had too excellent a sense of humour to prepare an elaborate hoax. Besides, neither of them yet knew that I was in Geneva.

My second thought was that the letter was directed to someone else, but, on turning to the envelope, I saw it was correctly addressed to “Herr Thomas Preston.”

I read it once more, carefully, and noted that my estimable grandmother, whoever she might be, was evidently very anxious to receive the small present of which she spoke. The words of warning about not losing it, which one would not expect to find in an ordinary letter, were evidently meant to emphasise the importance of the gift. This seemed fairly clear, but the reference to the police and to the fact that I was two days late was beyond me.

“Two days late!” Where had I heard that phrase before? Then I remembered that the little Jew had opened upon me with precisely those words on the previous evening. “You’re two days late,” he had said, and he had added that I should hear of it from Ephesus.

Well, here was a letter addressed to me from the Pension Ephesus. Evidently there was a connection between this letter and the little Jew and the document he had thrust upon me in his panic.

But how on earth had he found me out, and who in heaven’s name was my grandmother—not to mention Uncle Ulric and Uncle Fritz. I had apparently spent the night in acquiring a number of anxious relatives who were entirely strange to me.

I took the document out of the pocket-book and examined it. Of the cipher I could make nothing, but the signatures were more illuminating. Five of the names were unknown to me, but the sixth and seventh I seemed to identify. “Von Bühlen” I knew I had come across, though I could not remember where, and “Von Stahl” was even more familiar. Then, in a flash, I remembered where I had seen the latter.

We had had some dealings with German firms after the War, and I recalled a small order from Germany for hardware of some kind—I forget what—which had passed through my hands. The various documents in connection with it had been signed “Von Stahl.” My uncle had told me at the time that he was perhaps the richest man in Germany, but that he was very little known and kept himself entirely out of politics. A dangerous man, my uncle had said, because he was so quiet and appeared to do nothing, although he was reputed to be very influential.

Now that I had placed Von Stahl, I remembered at once that Von Bühlen was the head of the big armaments firm which had constructed most of Germany’s guns and munitions, and it was fairly certain that the enormous profits which the War had brought to the firm had been invested abroad and had not suffered from the collapse of the mark. Von Bühlen must still be fabulously rich.

This then appeared to be a document of some importance, and I soon came to the conclusion that the little present, to which my grandmother referred with such solicitude, was none other than the sheet of paper which had been so queerly thrust upon me at the Moulin Rouge. I had no idea what it meant, but clearly it was of value. Otherwise, the little Jew would not have been so eager to get rid of it before his arrest, and my “grandmother” would not have taken steps so promptly to retrieve it.

Here was a touch of mystery that set the wits pleasantly to work. I thought it over while I was shaving and decided to talk to Beatrice about it—a notion which gave to the problem an added attraction.

I dressed as rapidly as possible and rang her up at the Secretariat. It was pleasant to hear the cry of astonishment with which she recognised my voice, and still more pleasant to reflect that she recognised it at all—on the telephone, too—after so long an interval. I answered about thirty-five questions in as many seconds (or so it seemed) and then asked her to come to lunch with me. Luckily she was disengaged, and we arranged to meet at the grill-room of the Hôtel du Lac at one o’clock.

As I was leaving the telephone, I met the proprietor of the pension, who hoped that I had received the note which had been delivered for me that morning. The person who had left it had informed him that it was extremely urgent.

I took the envelope out of my pocket, and saw that what I had first thought was an ordinary letter did not bear a stamp.

I enquired who had brought it to the pension, and was told that it had been delivered by a lady who had come early that morning, before I was awake, about eight-thirty. She had given instructions that the note should be taken to me the moment I was called.

I asked what the unknown messenger had looked like. The proprietor said that he had not taken particular notice of her, but that she had been slight in appearance. He could remember no detail of what she wore except that, as she paused an instant in front of a mirror, to arrange her hat, he had remarked that it was trimmed with a pheasant’s feather.

“You are sure she was young?” I queried

“One can never be sure,” replied the proprietor. “Not more than twenty-five, I should say.”

“She was not by any chance old enough to be my grandmother?” I suggested.

“Certainly not,” said the proprietor.

I thanked him for his information and prepared to go for a stroll, before meeting Beatrice, to see the town and to think at leisure over possible ways and means of solving my mystery.

The rain of the previous day had ceased, though heavy clouds were still hanging over the city. I need not trouble you with a description of my walk, beyond saying that I set out vaguely in the direction of the university and eventually found myself in the Jardin des Bastions, marvelling at an incredibly ugly monument. Calvin, Beza, Knox and Farel, twice the size of life, looked out from the wall with a fixed uncomprehending stare, flanked by other figures and scenes in low relief. Among them I noticed the regicide Cromwell and his secretary, John Milton.

Suddenly a hand clapped me on the shoulder, and turning round, I found myself face to face with Jerry Cunningham.

Jerry had been the best of my battery subalterns, and I had not seen him since the day when he had been carried off, a blood-stained wreck of a man, from the remains of Number 3 gun, which had stopped a five nine on “the glorious 1st of July, 1916.”

I was shocked at the change in his appearance. He had been something of a dandy, particularly about the cut of his tunic, and excessively proud of his field boots, which had been made by the most expensive bootmaker in London. Now I saw before me a medium-sized man, thin in the face, his forehead puckered with hard lines. He was slovenly dressed, although the clothes he wore were well cut, and he leaned heavily on a rubber-shod stick.

“Good lord, Jerry!” I exclaimed. “What on earth brings you to Geneva?”

“And what might you be doing?” he countered.

We walked across the gardens to a café where Jerry said the beer was from Munich, and, as he limped slowly by my side, he told me of his life since our last meeting. I found him as changed in spirit as in appearance. He had been the gayest and most delightful of companions. Now, every word was bitter and disconsolate. Nor was this to be wondered at.

After spending months in hospital, he had eventually been discharged with a pension of a hundred a year and a permanently game leg (poor old Jerry, the finest athlete of his year at Oxford). He had tried various jobs, but never for very long. Having a little money of his own, he had contrived to manage somehow. At the moment he was acting as tutor to two boys, sons of a rich French war-profiteer, who was anxious that they should learn English, and had made sufficient money out of the War—said Jerry with a savage sneer—to justify the employment of an ex-officer as a kind of superior servant. He had taken the job out of general boredom. He was in Geneva with his youthful charges, he explained, for a fortnight or three weeks, before taking them up to the mountains for the winter sports.

“Not much good to me, old boy,” he said; and I remembered how he had won the golden skis at Villars in 1913.

As we were about to enter the café, Jerry turned to me and said jokingly, “Who’s the lady?”

I looked at him in surprise.

“My dear chap,” I protested, “I only arrived last night. Give me at least a morning to myself.”

“You may not know it,” said Jerry, “but all the time we’ve been walking along a girl has been following us at a distance of about fifty yards and she has a friendly eye for you.

“There she is,” he continued, with a jerk of his head in the direction of a public building on the other side of the road.

I looked across and saw on the pavement opposite a small slim girl dressed in brown, and wearing a brown hat with a pheasant feather in it.

“Do you mean that girl over there in brown?” I asked.

Jerry nodded.

“I’ve never seen her in my life,” said I. “Come into the café and I’ll tell you about it.”

We entered and sat down in front of two chopes of what proved to be excellent beer. I then told him all that had happened to me since my arrival in Geneva.

As I proceeded with my narrative, the look of boredom vanished from his face, and before I had finished he was eager to see the document.

“Here it is,” I said, handing him the pocket-book beneath the table, “but don’t display it too much. I’m beginning to feel that it has a way of exciting inconvenient interest in unexpected quarters.”

“What are you going to do about it?” Jerry asked, after he had examined the document.

“It seems to me,” I suggested, “that I ought at any rate to keep the appointment with my grandmother. The old lady arouses my curiosity.”

Jerry again examined the document, but could make no more of it than I could, except that he identified another of the signatures as that of Herzler, who he said was a South African diamond magnate of German origin, and he thought of German nationality.

He was eager to accompany me to the tea-party, but I pointed out to him that my grandmother evidently desired to see me alone.

“Oh, all right,” he said crossly. “After all, a lame fellow’s not much good in a crisis.”

“Confound you, Jerry!” I almost shouted. “Don’t be a fool; you know very well that it isn’t that.”

We compromised by agreeing to dine together at the Plat d’Or whose filet madère Jerry assured me was one of the few good things in Geneva.

We sat on and discussed other matters till close on one o’clock. Then we left the café and, summoning a taxi, drove off to the grill-room of the Hôtel du Lac, arranging to drop Jerry at the Hôtel de France, where he was staying, on the way.

As we got into the taxi, I noticed that the woman with the pheasant feather was standing quite close to us, about five yards away, in fact, and just as we moved off she stepped forward with the evident intention of speaking to me. By this time, however, the taxi had gathered speed. Glancing back I saw her looking after me, and a moment later she waved her hand.

It has never been my habit to snub a friendly gesture, and I instinctively waved back at her.

“We’ll stop if you like,” said Jerry, with a touch of the old mischief.

“Not now,” said I. “I have a presentiment that, whether I like it or not, I shall meet that lady again. She’s evidently one of the family—Uncle Ulric’s niece, or something of that kind.”

We parted at the Hôtel de France, and a moment later I was shaking hands with Beatrice in the vestibule of the Hôtel du Lac.

Beatrice Harvel is one of the prettiest girls I have ever seen. Sitting up flat-backed opposite me, at a little corner table, in her trim coat and skirt, her dark hair neat and close beneath a small French hat, which set off her vivid eyes and colour, she presented a charming picture of an English girl who, while remaining essentially English, had none the less realised that in the art of dress the French have little to learn.

In mind, as in form and feature, she was compact and competent, her forearm drive at tennis having the same quality of precision and judgment as her observations on things and persons in general. In the first days of our acquaintance she had rather daunted me. She was so terribly adequate and assured. There was nothing about her in the least dependent or justifying a scorn of the weaker sex. I had felt the natural distrust of the gallant male for the girl who never pleads for a handicap. But I had soon found that with Beatrice there were moments that showed her unusually sensitive and intensely feminine.

I began by asking about her life at the Secretariat.

“They call me a bilingual stenographer,” she explained, as a sole skilfully smothered in mushrooms made its appearance.

“That’s a mouthful,” I said.

“It means another fifty francs a month,” she rejoined.

“I’ve heard all about you people in Geneva,” said I. “You do hardly any work and you spend several guineas a week on silk stockings.”

“You’re going to correct that rumour, Tom. It annoys me. We live in a horrid little pension in a city which sees the sun one day in ten. The place is dull and drear and we work like Negroes. I should have left a year ago, only I was made private secretary to rather a nice Frenchman.”

“Indeed,” said I, suddenly wondering why I had postponed this meeting for nearly two years. “So you endure all these horrors for his sake.”

“He’s the best of the bunch,” said Beatrice.

She always ignores sarcasm and never takes any occasion to be arch about her dealings with my interesting sex.

“Name, please,” I demanded.

“Henri Lavelle. He’s a member of the department that deals with political questions. Full of brains, and his work is most terribly interesting; among other things he’s our cipher expert.”

I breathed again. This was my old friend Lavelle of the French Army—the only man I knew in the Secretariat.

“A splendid fellow,” I magnanimously testified. “I can just bear you to be his secretary. I’m coming to see him soon. In fact——”

I stopped. It occurred to me that here was a chance of light on my mystery.

“Do go on,” said Beatrice. “You look as if you had something to say.”

“Lots,” I replied.

I told her then of all that had happened to me since I arrived in Geneva.

She took it much more gravely than I expected. In fact, it was the expression of her face when I had finished my story that first made me think that the affair might be really serious.

“I don’t like it, Tom,” she said. “All sorts of queer things are happening just now, and Geneva is always full of international agents of every kind.”

“International agents!” I exclaimed. “But this is real life. I’ve got a British passport and I’m Thomas Preston of Jebbutt and Jebbutt.”

“Don’t make any mistake,” said Beatrice. “My chief has told me a good deal about these things. He used to be in the French Intelligence Department.”

“I don’t see how on earth it can possibly concern me,” I objected.

“You are going to this place in the rue Etienne Dumont?” she asked.

“Why not?”

“Be careful, Tom.”

She laid her hand on my arm as she spoke, and I realised on meeting her eyes that she was really anxious. I think it was that instinctive anxiety for my safety and not the excellent Margaux, which suddenly made the world seem a better and brighter place.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” I assured her. “Geneva seems to have a sufficient number of gendarmes to the square mètre to keep everybody safe and sound. And they’re all very splendidly dressed.”

“You say the document is in cipher,” said Beatrice, still serious.

“Yes. And I was about to suggest that Lavelle should have a look at it.”

I put a hand into my pocket, but before I could take out the paper Beatrice suddenly nudged me under the table. I looked at her and saw she was gazing with an admirable affectation of no interest a little to my right.

I glanced casually round.

A couple of tables away were seated two men who were taking luncheon. The one nearer to me was tall and heavily built, with a closely-shaven head and light blue eyes. His face was criss-crossed with numerous scars, and I should have known him anywhere for a Prussian of the type which was caricatured in the Allied Press throughout the War. The scars were from the “Mensur” fights of his student days. Opposite him sat a man of middle age. He had a fine silky beard, neatly trimmed and of a bright gold, a broad forehead and well-set eyes, a straight nose, and a complexion almost feminine in its delicacy. At the first view he suggested an intelligent and sensitive philanthropist, reclusive in temperament. He had that air of distinction which surrounds the man who pursues some solitary purpose with little regard for the vulgar preoccupations of the worldly.

As I was secretly examining him he gave an order to the waiter, and I noted that the language he used was German. Then he became aware that I was gazing at him and turned his eyes in my direction. They were dark and the pupils were abnormally large. He favoured me with a short stare, penetrating but curiously soft and insinuating, and I caught myself staring back at him quite foolishly, seemingly without the power to withdraw my gaze. Then he dropped his eyes to his plate and I looked away, feeling as though I had been suddenly released.

The man affected me strangely. It may have been his eyes, or the abrupt warning conveyed by Beatrice as I had been on the point of producing the document, but somehow my disposition to make light of the adventure was shaken. I felt strangely called upon to behave like a conspirator; and, in the tone of a man discussing the rognons brochette, which the waiter had just placed on the table, I turned to Beatrice and enquired why she had assaulted me.

“They’ve been watching us for some time,” she said in a low voice, “and I believe they’re trying to listen to what we’re saying.”

“You may be right,” I replied, “in which case I mustn’t let them see me give you the document.”

I beckoned to the waiter and asked him for the carte du jour. Taking it into my hand, I held it between me and the occupants of the other table and affected to be absorbed in its contents. With my right hand I extracted the pocket-book from the hip pocket, where I had concealed it, and pushed it up my sleeve, into which it fitted easily. A moment later I had slipped it into the card and handed the whole thing across to Beatrice, saying:

“You choose, my dear, but I recommend the tarte de la maison.”

She picked up the card, and instantly bent down, apparently busy with her vanity bag. Then she agreed with my choice and we went on with our luncheon.

Over coffee we settled that I should ring her up later on in the afternoon, about six she said. I was to tell her of the result of my visit to the rue Etienne Dumont and to ask whether Lavelle had succeeded in solving the riddle of the cipher. It was further arranged that, before calling on my grandmother, I should go to the police and make enquiries about the little Jew, who had been arrested on the previous night.

I drove her back to the Secretariat and left her at the gate of a terrace garden, which gave upon a desolate quay and a mournful lake. But I had no eyes for the dismal prospect. The moment had come for Beatrice to depart into the vast building, all windows, in which the Secretariat was housed.

There was a disposition to prolong that departure. We stood for a moment on the pavement, Beatrice smiling at me in the old friendly way, and yet with a slight embarrassment which was new, but which I felt in an equal measure.

At last I said, most inadequately:

“Beatrice, it’s terribly good to see you again.”

Her smile deepened.

“Next time,” she said, “you won’t perhaps leave it for two years.”

She left me at that, and I directed the taxi-man to drive me to the Bureau Central de Police, which was apparently in the Hôtel de Ville. We were soon proceeding slowly through the steep, narrow streets of the old town, where it is for a moment possible to recapture in a certain degree the charm of a vanished age.

After some difficulty, I arrived at a kind of municipal office, where I asked to see an inspector, and was shown into a small room with the usual official furniture. There I interviewed a typical policeman. Police officials are the same the whole world over, whatever their nationality. This man was enormous, with huge feet, and a black curling moustache. He seemed quite ready to answer my questions.

I explained that I had been in the Moulin Rouge on the previous evening, when, at about 11.30, a small dark man, who looked like a Jew, had been arrested by the police just at its entrance. As I had had some little conversation with him prior to the arrest, I was, I said, anxious to ascertain what was being done about his case.

He heard me to the end and pressed a bell, telling the clerk who entered to bring the police report of the previous day.

On receiving it, he studied it attentively for some moments and finally said:

“Three arrests took place last night outside the Moulin Rouge, Monsieur, but all were later on, between two and three o’clock in the morning—all women faisant du scandale in the street.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I was certainly under the impression that the man I met had been arrested. The chasseur told me so.”

“The chasseur was lying,” said the official. “C’était probablement une blague. When the town is en fête many strange things happen, and there are always persons ready to play tricks on strangers.”

I thanked him and took my leave. Outside I passed, uncertain what to do. I did not like this new development. The chasseur had lied to me once when he had denied that the little Jew had left the dancing hall. Apparently he had lied again. The Jew had not been arrested. He had simply disappeared, and he had disappeared in the company of two men of whom he was obviously terrified.

As it still lacked half an hour or so of the time fixed for tea with my grandmother, I accordingly decided to find the chasseur.

I walked straight down a steep street to the Place Neuve, crossed it and soon arrived at the Moulin Rouge.

I found the chasseur in a dirty little hole behind the vestibule, alleging as an excuse for my visit that I had lost an article of value and wished to see him about it.

He eventually appeared, in his shirt sleeves, heavy with sleep and inclined to be surly. I saw he was the sort of man that has to be bullied, as well as bribed.

“Why did you lie to me last night?” I began abruptly.

He started to protest, but I cut him short.

“The little dark man who left this building about 11.30 yesterday evening was not arrested. I know that perfectly well. What really happened to him?”

“I know nothing,” said the man. “Monsieur is mistaken!”

“I’m sorry you know nothing,” I replied. “I want to know what happened to that man, and I’m ready to pay for the information.”

I produced a twenty-franc note.

“That’s all very well,” grumbled the man, “but in my position one must be discreet. I can speak when it is necessary and I can keep silent when it is necessary.”

“Speak then,” I said, and handed him the money.

“Well, Monsieur, you are right,” he said. “The gentleman was not arrested; he came out in the company of two friends, the tall Monsieur in a harlequin dress and the clown. They were holding him between them, and they led him to a big automobile. They pushed him into it, and Monsieur l’Harlequin, turning to me, gave me ten francs to hold my tongue, saying that the gentleman whom they were taking away was a well-known person, who had been making a night of it and it would not do to have any scandal; so they were taking him home.”

I saw the man was at last speaking the truth. I could even see the scene—the little Jew, hustled and trembling, carried off by those fantastic figures to some unknown destination.

I walked straight out through the vestibule and pushed open the outer door leading to the street.

I had not gone a yard when I found myself suddenly accosted by the girl in brown with the pheasant feather in her hat.

A taxi with its door open stood by the curb.

“Kommen sie schnell, Karl,” she said. “I am waiting to take you to your grandmother.”