Читать книгу The Riddle of the Rail - Fred M. White - Страница 10

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"And very well you seem to have done it," Norcliff said, "if you will allow me to say so. I haven't much time for that sort of thing, but the garden strikes me as charming. Those wonderful roses in the porch, for instance. And I suppose that the rest of the property is just in as perfect order."

"Well, we do our best," Sylvia laughed. "And my brother helps as far as he can. But, of course, we have to have a man in three days a week, and he works here under my supervision."

"Mr. Farr ought to be greatly obliged to you," Norcliff said. "It must save him a good deal of trouble. I wonder if he would allow me to go into the house and write a few lines."

"Oh, you can go into the house," the girl said. "But Mr. Farr is away. He locked up the place last Saturday, and sent his old housekeeper home for a day or two. I don't suppose he will be back for another few days, but he will write to us beforehand."

"Quite a good chap, Farr," George Marchmont said, more or less incontinently. "I met him after I came back from a voyage that I took to the South Pacific, and he has been kindness itself ever since. I ran up against him quite by accident, and we have been seeing one another very often lately. In fact, it was my suggestion that he should come down here and take a furnished house whilst he looked about him for a poultry farm, not so much because he needed anything of the sort, but so that he could be within reach of Sylvia and myself. He has practically decided upon a place, and I believe that he is now in Birmingham seeing the owner."

Trumble listened to all this more or less impatiently. For some absurd reason, which he only realised faintly himself, he was feeling just a trifle jealous of this amiable Mr. Farr. There had been a time when he had hoped to establish something like permanent relations with Sylvia, but they had contrived in some mysterious way, to drift apart. Perhaps it was because the girl was wrapped up in the hospital work which she had commenced in those hectic days in France, and perhaps it was because he, Trumble, had been so careless with the conventions. Moreover, Sylvia intensely disliked his slack and untidy habits, which he persisted in, apart from his professional enthusiasm, and, more than once, she had been driven to expostulate with him. It was the motherly instinct that every woman has for the man for whom she cares, and perhaps she had gone a little too far. She realised if Trumble did not, that a man occupying as distinguished a position ought, at any rate, to try and dress up to it. And Trumble was the last man in the world to realise that, properly dressed, he was a man of quite outstanding and distinguished appearance. At any rate, there it was, and Trumble had almost got over the sore that he had felt at the time, but it was all back again now when he found himself face to face with this amazing and attractively pretty girl who smiled so sweetly at him, as if there never had been any cause of ill-feeling between them. Neither did she look a day older; indeed, Trumble asked himself indignantly why she should. She could not be a day over twenty-four, and there was nothing whatever about her to suggest that she had seen so much of the loathsome side of human nature. And this Farr, what sort of a man was he? Did he entertain any hopes that sooner or later, he and Sylvia......

Then Trumble put the matter out of his head entirely. There were far more important things to think of than that, though, for the moment, the man Farr was more interesting as an individual under suspicion than as a potential lover of the pretty girl who stood there smiling into Trumble's face.

It was Norcliff who brought him back to himself again.

"It seems to me," the latter said, "that we are wasting our time here. I don't think we need worry about leaving a note for Mr. Temperley, and, at any rate, I can write him at our hotel. We are staying at the 'White Hart,' Miss Marchmont."

"Oh, really," the girl cried. "That is on our way home. Our house is not more than a mile farther down the road. I was wondering, if you gentlemen had nothing better to do, if you would care to come along to our cottage and have tea with us."

"Personally, I should be delighted," Norcliff said, before Trumble could put in a word. "But if you don't mind, I should like to walk down the garden and have a look round. Please don't trouble to accompany me, Miss Marchmont. You can stay here and sit on this rustic seat and talk over old times with my friend the doctor here, whilst I am pottering about in the back."

Without waiting for any response, Norcliff turned away from the rest and went round to the rear of the house past a tennis lawn and then down a short flight of steps into the kitchen garden. There was a flagged path, straight down the middle of this, which ended in a thick quickset hedge which was already beginning to show signs of bud. In a short time it would be in full bloom, but, for the present, the buds hung in green clusters half hidden under the leaves which had been cut back after the manner of a yew hedge, so as to resemble a well kept emerald wall. And there, presently, Norcliff noticed, right at the bottom of the path, two or three withered sprays which had, comparatively recently, been broken off the living fence. The hedge itself was not more than four feet in height and a foot in thickness, so that, by leaning against it, Norcliff could see on to the ground on the far side. And there, again, he noticed a handful of the immature blooms and some odd leaves that had faded since they had been torn off.

"Very strange," he muttered to himself. "And very significant. However, that can remain for the present. It's a clue, anyway, or if it isn't that it's an indication. I don't think I can do anything further now until I can get into the house."

With that he turned and strolled back to the house where the others awaited him and, a little later, they were walking down the road in the direction of Marchmont's cottage, Trumble a little ahead with his old friend and Norcliff behind with Sylvia. It was easy enough for him to gather all the information he wanted from the girl, who chatted in the most unaffected manner.

"Yes, of course, it is a terrible misfortune from which my brother suffers," she said, in response to a remark from her companion. "And yet, at one time, he thought he was quite cured. Dr. Trumble's treatment was absolutely wonderful. He was so pleased about it, too, because the three of us were such great friends. And I am sure my brother will be able to see as well as you or I if he had only been content to stay in England instead of wandering abroad."

"Very fond of travelling, I suppose," Norcliff murmured.

"No, I don't think that was quite it," the girl replied. "You see, George had been knocking about the world for some few years before the war broke out. Australia and New Zealand and all over the Pacific. But I think he would have come back and settled down if my father had not lost nearly all his money through the war. Then there was not much left, only sufficient to keep us in fair comfort. And that if we stuck together. But then, you see, that is rather difficult, because people want to get married and all those foolish things. Of course, I don't really mean that, Mr. Norcliff, but you will see where the difficulty came in. So, before his eyes were really right, my brother set out travelling again, and found himself, eventually, in the South Pacific. I stayed at home, and went on with my hospital work until the great trouble happened. George was thousands of miles away when his sight suddenly failed him, so he had to be sent home, and I was compelled to turn my back upon my own profession and look after him. That is why, after a time, we came down here and bought the cottage in which we live. So long as we live together there is just a little more than enough for our wants, and, on the whole, we are far from being unhappy. It is a dreadful misfortune for George, all the same. He doesn't like anybody to allude to it, but there are times when he speaks freely, and I expect he will tell you all about it, now that he has come so happily in contact with his old friend Dr. Trumble again."

Norcliff nodded understandingly. In fact, he understood a great deal more than Sylvia imagined. So they chatted on in the friendliest possible way until they came, at length, to a small old-fashioned thatched cottage at the end of the lane with a rock garden in front of it, and a perfect deluge of spring flowers behind.

"Here we are," Sylvia said. "This is our little cottage. If you will sit outside in the sunshine, I will go in and get the tea. We only have one sitting-room, and that is why I shall ask you to stay outside until I am ready to receive you in state."

Norcliff sat there, forgetting, for a moment, his professional duties and the call that had brought him so far from Scotland Yard. It was quite enough for him, for the moment, that he should lie back in his seat and smoke one cigarette after another. It was a warm and drowsy afternoon for the time of year, so that Norcliff was perfectly content to lounge there and listen.

"You will have to come up to town," Trumble was saying. "I must have another look at those eyes of yours. My dear fellow, I can't understand it at all. When I saw you last you were practically as well as I am. All you had to do was to take care of yourself and not run any risks. I mean, risks of catching severe colds or any sort of diseases such as scarlet fever, for instance. If you had anything like this, then, of course—"

"But I didn't," Marchmont smiled. "I haven't had a day's illness since I left France."

"Do you really mean that?" Trumble asked. "It seems impossible to me. I had diagnosed your case so completely that I had nothing else to learn about it. There must have been some reason, some powerful reason why your sight failed. An accident?"

Marchmont shook his head smilingly.

"It was no accident," he said. "The thing was done designedly."

"What, do you mean you were purposely blinded?"

"Something like that," Marchmont said. "I don't mean to say that the man actually meant to deprive me of my sight—at least, not permanently. It was red pepper that did it."