Читать книгу Send for Paul Temple - Francis Durbridge, Francis Durbridge - Страница 10

Paul Temple picked up his last fragment of toast and proceeded to double its size with butter. Then he carefully scraped up the marmalade left on his plate and lowered it gradually on to the precarious foundation. As the butter began to ooze on to his thumb and forefinger, he inserted it in his mouth and began to chew contentedly. Then he swilled it down with strong black coffee.

Paul Temple had finished his breakfast.

It was a little after nine on the Thursday morning after the death of Superintendent Harvey. Much had taken place during those two days, but little towards helping the police in elucidating the mystery. Nevertheless, his death and the subsequent police investigations were making admirable breakfast-time reading for some millions of honest, hardworking Britons. The case helped to stimulate their minds gently back to the realities they would have to face during the coming day.

Pryce, Paul Temple’s manservant, was regaling his master by reading out to him the accounts in the morning papers. Papers of various political hue and of various degrees of sensation were propped up on the table, against the marmalade jar, against the coffee pot, in fact, against every convenient object against which they could be propped. Nevertheless, Temple found it easier, conducive to good digestion, and infinitely preferable to have the accounts read aloud to him.

He had a vast desire for the better things of life, and preferred to give his concentration to his bacon, toast and marmalade, and to gaze out of the French windows of his breakfast-room at Bramley Lodge on to the great trees and lovely undulating country outside. While Pryce was reading, he did not therefore have to yield him his full, undivided attention, but could take in the main essentials more or less subconsciously.

Pryce picked up one of the more sober of the morning papers, circulating only in the Midlands, and started reading.

‘In a locked room at the police station here tonight, Chief Inspector Dale discussed with Mr. Paul Temple, the celebrated novelist, the incidents leading up to the tragic suicide of Superintendent Harvey of Scotland Yard. It is believed that, shortly before his death, Superintendent Harvey discussed with Mr. Temple the mysterious—’

But Temple had had enough. ‘Righto, Pryce!’

‘Shall I read you what the Daily Page says, sir?’ asked Pryce.

‘No. I think we’ll leave that to the imagination.’ Temple poured himself out a little more coffee.

‘Did anyone call yesterday while I was at the station with Inspector Dale?’ he asked.

‘Several reporters, sir. Oh, and a rather elderly lady by the name of Miss Parchment.’

Temple looked up in surprise. ‘Miss Parchment!’ he echoed, almost to himself. ‘Now what the devil does she want?’

‘The lady didn’t leave a message, sir.’

Paul Temple extracted a cigarette from a nearby box, finished off his coffee, and strolled towards the open window. Below him, worn stone steps descended to a carefully planned garden where early flowers were already adding colour to a picturesque setting. The velvet lawn, its grass thick and smooth with the careful cutting, rolling and general tending of centuries, attracted him. Temple looked at a world far removed from the world of robbery and sudden death. But he was not allowed to digress for long. Pryce’s voice was recalling him back to reality.

‘I’m afraid several of the reporters will be returning this morning, sir. They seemed quite determined to have a word with you.’

‘I don’t want to see any of them,’ said Temple impatiently. The Press men had one by one been giving up their quest. They had found it far too unprofitable lying in wait for Paul Temple. Nor could they even obtain any pointers from his movements. Nevertheless, the bigger, sensational papers and the agencies had kept their men on in the hope that they might suddenly get a lead towards really big news. Most of the men were fairly certain that Harvey’s death was no suicide, and that it was closely bound up with the ‘Midland Mysteries’.

Suddenly, a memory of something that seemed to belong to a bygone age came to Temple and he changed the topic.

‘By Timothy, I must get down to that serial, Pryce. I promised to let “Malpur’s” have the first instalment by the end of May.’

But Pryce was not so easily led astray from the reports he had to make to his master. He had a very high idea, and ideal, of his duties as a manservant. Temple, he felt, needed a little guidance from time to time, especially with that section of his affairs over which Pryce held charge. The serial could wait. There were still weeks to go, not merely days. A long session with a dictaphone would very quickly see the end of the first instalment.

‘There was one reporter who seemed very insistent, sir,’ said Pryce. ‘She simply wouldn’t take “No!” for an answer.’

Temple smiled. ‘Wouldn’t she, Pryce?’

‘A very pretty girl, too, sir,’ added Pryce. ‘If—er—I may say so?’

‘By all means say so, Pryce. A very pretty girl who wouldn’t take “No” for an answer. Sounds interesting.’

Pryce was endeavouring to remember the young lady’s name. He had made a particular note of it at the time because he thought it had sounded a rather peculiar name for a member of the opposite sex.

‘Ah, I remember, sir,’ he said suddenly, ‘it was Trent. Miss Steve Trent.’

Temple was not greatly interested but he forced himself to reply.

‘Well, if Miss Steve Trent calls round again you can tell her—’

He did not complete the sentence. An electric bell started ringing. It was the bell to the front door.

‘It’ll be Inspector Dale,’ said Temple, as Pryce moved towards the hall.

Temple stretched forth his arms in a mighty, luxurious yawn, tossed the cigarette he was smoking into the hearth, and proceeded to fill his pipe. One or other of his big briars was his constant companion. He went through an ounce and a half of tobacco every day although a doctor had warned him long before that two ounces a week should be his limit if he wished to keep his heart sound. The warning, like most other warnings he had received during his life, had not frightened him.

His cultured manners and his breeding formed the best disguise and mask he could desire. There was nothing blunt about Paul Temple. To the casual acquaintance, he even seemed soft-hearted. But behind that smooth exterior was a forceful character and a courage that few even suspected the existence of. It showed only in his strange calmness which nothing could upset.

He sat down on the slope which led down to the garden and savoured the fresh warm air of the new day. His dreams were cut short by the sound of excited voices in the hall. He listened and distinguished Pryce’s voice raised in loud expostulations while a woman’s voice alternated in more subdued tones.

‘I’m very sorry, madam,’ he heard Pryce saying, evidently trying to preserve his normal dignified bearing while at the same time forcibly trying to carry out his master’s bidding. ‘Mr. Temple is out.’

Once again came the lower undertones of a woman’s voice, but Temple could not catch what she said. His curiosity was aroused, however, and he strode to the door and opened it to find Pryce barring the way to a pretty girl who did not look as if she were much more than twenty. Pryce was clearly not above using force. In fact, as Temple appeared, he was actually trying to push her out of the hall.

But she had the advantage of youth and agility against Pryce’s age and bulk, and she had managed to make considerable progress through the hall when Temple came to see what was happening.

‘What the devil is all this?’ he exclaimed.

Pryce was very illuminating.

‘It’s the young lady, sir,’ he managed to exclaim.

‘Which young lady?’

‘The—er—the reporter, sir.’

Temple remembered Pryce’s description of the girl ‘who wouldn’t take “no!” for an answer,’ and smiled.

‘Oh. Oh, I see,’ he said quietly.

The girl was smiling too.

‘May I come in?’ she asked pleasantly.

Temple hesitated. ‘Yes, I think perhaps you’d better,’ he said at last.

He led the way into the comfortable lounge where he had entertained Dr. Milton and Diana Thornley two days before. Unconsciously, he bowed his strange visitor into a comfortable armchair and produced Turkish and Virginia cigarettes for her to smoke. Miss Trent took one of the latter, lit it and smiled happily at him.

‘He’s very determined, isn’t he,’ she said, referring to Pryce.

Temple, normally the most self-possessed of men, was taken aback.

‘Yes—er—yes, very.’ Then suddenly he remembered that even though his charming visitor was certainly more good-looking than Pryce had led him to expect, she had literally broken into his house.

‘I say, look here,’ he expostulated, ‘you can’t come bursting into people’s houses like this!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she started without seeming to display any great depths of misery, ‘but—’ And her voice tailed away as if she had other and far weightier topics to think about and discuss.

‘You are Paul Temple, aren’t you?’ she asked, almost abruptly.

‘Yes,’ said Temple quietly.

Miss Trent had a knack of putting herself so completely in the right that Temple began to feel almost as if he were the offender.

‘I tried to see you yesterday, but your man said you were out.’

‘Well—er—what is it you wanted to see me about?’

Steve Trent looked up at the man she had forced to be her host, and her face gradually became very serious.

‘Do you think Superintendent Harvey committed suicide?’ she asked.

Temple looked at this pretty girl sitting before him with sudden interest. She was certainly a very earnest reporter.

‘My dear Miss Trent, I don’t see that it makes a great deal of difference what I think,’ he said non-committally.

But Miss Trent was not so easily evaded.

‘Please! Please, answer my question. Do you think Superintendent Harvey committed suicide?’

The words came with a rush. There was deep emotion in her voice.

Temple stared at her with surprise in his eyes. ‘By Timothy, you are a remarkable young woman! First of all you insult my…’

Miss Trent interrupted him.

‘You haven’t answered my question!’ she said firmly.

Temple had encountered many reporters in the course of his career, but this girl was something new in his experience. That she was extremely pretty, Temple had seen as soon as he set foot in the hall during Pryce’s severe efforts to restrain her. But then many girl reporters are pretty. And like the beautiful, glamorous women spies of popular fiction, they can often use that beauty with great advantage, both while extracting information from unwilling victims and coping with recalcitrant editors!

But there was something about Steve Trent that distinguished her from other women reporters in Fleet Street. Her eyes shone clear and bright, with no hard sophistication to mar them. Yet they spoke of experience, of difficulties, even dangers encountered. They were dark-blue eyes, one curiously lighter than the other, and they sparkled with the vivacity of her nature.

She was now wearing an elegant costume of dark-green tweed under which the lustrous silk stockings that emphasized the contours of two admirable legs looked slightly incongruous. A rather shapeless deerstalker type of hat crowned her luxuriant blonde hair. In every respect, as Temple and everyone else who met her thought, she was an eminently attractive young woman, in dress, appearance and character. The sort of woman for whom Elizabethan poets would have torn their hair out searching for epithets sufficiently far-fetched.

Temple took it all in, as he sat on the settee opposite her, wondering exactly what to make of this lovely young criminologist. At length he answered her question.

‘No!’ he said quietly. ‘I think Superintendent Harvey was murdered.’

‘I knew it! I knew it!’ exclaimed Steve Trent, her voice raising to a high pitch in sudden, unwonted excitement. ‘I knew they’d get him!’

‘Why do you say that?’ asked Paul Temple with surprise.

‘Gerald Harvey was…a…friend of mine,’ said Steve Trent slowly.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ he apologized. ‘My man told me that you were a reporter and…’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ she interrupted. ‘I’m on the staff of The Evening Post, but that’s not why I wanted to see you.’

Again Temple looked at her queerly.

‘Why did you want to see me?’ he asked at length.

Steve Trent appeared to think for a moment.

‘Because I need your help,’ she answered suddenly, ‘because I need your help more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life before.’

Temple was obviously impressed by the urgency in her voice.

‘Was Harvey a great friend of yours?’ he asked.

Steve nodded. ‘He was my brother,’ she said softly.

‘Your brother!’ exclaimed Temple, then: ‘When I suggested that your brother might have been murdered, you said: “I knew it! I knew it! I knew they’d get him!” What did you mean by “I knew they’d get him?”’

Steve Trent, alias Louise Harvey, paused a moment, then asked him a question in return.

‘Why do you think my brother came to see you, Mr. Temple, the night he was murdered?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘I’m not at all certain that he had any particular reason.’

‘He had,’ she answered, ‘a very good reason.’

‘Well?’

‘My brother was investigating the mysterious robberies which have been occurring. He had a theory about these robberies which I believe he wanted to discuss with you.’

‘A theory?’ queried Paul Temple.

Slowly at first, then gradually gaining confidence, Steve Trent proceeded to tell him her story. It was the life history of herself and of Superintendent Gerald Harvey, the police chief. She had come to see Paul Temple, the novelist and criminologist, not as a reporter after a ‘story’, but to ask his help.

‘About eight years ago,’ she explained, ‘my brother was attached to what was then called the Service B.Y. It was a special branch of the Cape Town Constabulary. At this particular time, a very daring and successful gang of criminals were carrying out a series of raids on various jewellers within a certain area known as the Cape Town–Simonstown area. My brother and another officer, whose name I forget at the moment, were in charge of the case. After months of investigation, they discovered that the leader of the organization was a man who called himself the Knave of Diamonds, but whose real name was Max Lorraine.

‘Lorraine apparently was a well-educated man who at one time had occupied an important position at Columbia University. Eventually the organization was smashed – but the Knave had laid his plans carefully and he escaped. Two months later, the officer who had assisted my brother in the investigation was murdered. It was not a pleasant murder. This was followed almost immediately by two attempts on my brother’s life.’

She paused. Paul Temple could see the look of horror in her eyes as the recollection of those terrible days came back to her.

‘Please go on,’ he said to her at last.

Steve Trent looked up at him gratefully, then resumed her story. The circumstances of the murder of her brother’s fellow officer could never be explained.

‘A farmer came upon his lifeless body in a ditch by the roadside,’ she went on. ‘He had suddenly noticed a car by the roadside, apparently abandoned, but with its engine still running.

‘There were two bullet wounds in the head. One in the back which had evidently felled him, and one in his forehead, which might have been fired as he lay on the ground.

‘The attempts on Gerald’s life might quite well have been accidents. But somehow I don’t think they were. The first time, a large black saloon car, driven at a high speed, swerved and nearly knocked him down. That was just outside Cape Town.

‘In the other case, a large wooden crate containing a piano was being lowered from the upper floor of a house. Gerald happened to be passing: the house was only two or three doors from where he was living at the time. Suddenly, a rope slipped and the crate crashed down immediately in front of him.’

Paul Temple muttered his interest. He waited for Steve to go on with what she had to say.

‘From the very first moment when Gerald was put in charge of this Midland case,’ she continued, ‘he had an uneasy feeling at the back of his mind that he was up against Max Lorraine. I saw him a few days before he came up to see you, and he told me then that he was almost certain that Max Lorraine, alias the Knave of Diamonds, was the real influence behind the robberies which he and Inspector Dale were investigating.’

Steve paused. Then added, softly: ‘I think he was a little worried – and rather frightened.’

For a long time Temple said nothing. He realized, only too well, the value of the story Steve Trent had poured out to him.

‘Had your brother discussed with Sir Graham, or any of his colleagues, his theory regarding this man Lorraine?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Miss Trent replied. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he knew only too well that they would never believe him.’

‘Never believe him?’ repeated Temple, puzzled.

‘The Knave is hardly the sort of person one can talk about – and sound convincing,’ she answered. ‘He’s like a character snatched from the most sensational thriller and inspired with a strange, satanic intellect.’ Steve Trent spoke in a slow monotone, as if reciting a well-learned lesson. She paused and looked up at Temple curiously.

‘You think that sounds silly, don’t you?’ she asked with a half-smile.

‘Well, er—’ Temple felt a little embarrassed to have his feelings so accurately analyzed, ‘it sounds a little unusual!’

At all cost Steve Trent wanted Paul Temple to believe in her. To have complete faith in her story.

‘Mr. Temple!’ she spoke with the deepest emotion in her voice. ‘Do you believe me? Do you believe my story about this man – Lorraine?’

Temple had been wavering. Now he made up his mind.

‘Yes.’ He paused. ‘Yes, I believe you. But tell me, did your brother ever see him; did they ever meet?’

‘No!’ she replied. ‘No, not once. But he knew his methods – he knew everything about him – and he was afraid.’

Paul Temple at last put his pipe down; it had grown cold some time before. Now he plunged his hands into the pockets of his well-worn tweed jacket and finally brought out with some triumph a cherry-wood pipe. This he proceeded to fill with great deliberation. Filling a pipe was a very serious business with Paul Temple. If careful filling were going to provide him with a better smoke, then carefully filled it should be. He applied the Principle of the Conservation of Energy to himself very literally, and had no intentions of wasting energy that could be better devoted to other purposes. After a few seconds had elapsed he pressed the bell-push by the side of the mantelpiece.

Pryce’s face showed the surprise he felt when he came in. Fully convinced of some strange romance suddenly blossoming forth, his respect for the mental powers of the man he almost worshipped, decreased very violently. Although Miss Trent was very nearly thirty, Pryce numbered her with the bright young things, of whom he heartily disapproved.

As soon as Pryce had received his instructions, Temple came back to the subject.

‘That night your brother came to my house, he told me that he was firmly convinced that a well-directed criminal organization existed. But he didn’t mention anything about this man – Max Lorraine. Why not, I wonder?’

‘I don’t know,’ replied Steve Trent. ‘He intended to, I’m sure of that. He wanted your help over this case. He had a very great admiration for you.’ Then she produced another surprise.

‘It was Gerald who persuaded me to start the “Send for Paul Temple” campaign in The Evening Post!’

The victim began to laugh. ‘By Timothy, you certainly started something.’ Then he again became very serious. ‘A little while ago, you said you chose the name of “Steve Trent” not only for professional reasons, but partly for another reason too. What did you mean by that?’

‘Gerald was terrified that Lorraine might find out that he had a sister,’ she replied quietly. ‘Even in Cape Town, Gerald made me live with relatives under an assumed name.’