Читать книгу The House of the Schemers - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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Ailsa stood there with a certain curious exultation in the knowledge that she was no longer afraid. Here was a real and tangible danger, so different to those suggested by the utter loneliness of the dreary old home. This was no spirit from the other world, but a real, live man, who had no business here. He was a burglar, after some of the valuables with which the house was crammed, and it was Ailsa's obvious duty to hand him over to the police without delay.

But was he no more than the average burglar? It seemed absurd to think so; but Ailsa's instinct told her that there was something more than met the eye. As she stood there she could hear the passing cabs outside and the tramp of a policeman trudging along his beat. It would have been so easy for Ailsa to slip quietly down the stairs and call the officer in.

And yet she stood there, hesitating, curious, and not afraid. If this man had been a real burglar he could have filled his pockets and departed as quietly as he had come. But he seemed to be looking about him for some definite object. As he moved again presently it struck Ailsa that he must be familiar with the house. There was none of that fumbling hesitation about the stranger. Perhaps he had forgotten his bearings for a moment, hence the striking of the match. A discharged servant, perhaps? But discharged servants do not wear diamond rings of price.

Then a sharp and sudden thought came to Ailsa. Had this man anything to do with the injury to the old woman lying in the kitchen? Susan had declared that her hurt had been caused by an accident; she had been unnecessarily emphatic on this point. Even in her semi delusion she had seemed very anxious to shield somebody. Ailsa made up her mind that she would go downstairs to make sure. It was easy to feel her way to the handrail and creep down noiselessly in her stockinged feet.

Old Susan still sat in her chair with her eyes closed. She was breathing more easily now; she seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep, the heavy sleep of intoxication as it appeared. But Ailsa knew that there was nothing of the kind here. It might be a cruel thing to do, but she laid a hand on Susan's shoulder and shook her forcibly. The old woman opened her eyes, and glared round her as if in terror.

"You'll be found out," she whispered. "He is certain to find out, and you'll go to gaol. Mind you, nothing can save you from that. But it was quite an accident."

The woman repeated the last sentence fiercely, as if trying to convince others of what she did not herself believe. Ailsa waited for the fit of anger to pass.

"What is that man doing upstairs?" she asked sternly. "Tell me at once."

Susan sat up suddenly, and her eyes gleamed. There was a look in them so cold and revengeful that Ailsa fairly staggered back. The old woman staggered to her feet, and caught the girl by her two wrists in a grip of steel. Her manly strength and vitality came positively as a revelation to Ailsa. She was terribly frightened, but she would not show it. She had read somewhere that it was the best thing to display coolness and courage in the face of dangerous lunacy, and that old Susan had suddenly gone mad she did not for a moment doubt. It cost the girl a great effort to keep back the cry of pain and fear that struggled for utterance at her lips.

And she felt quite sure, too, that old Susan knew all about the man upstairs. It was necessary to take a bold course, but Ailsa did not hesitate.

"I am not going to be put off like this," she said quietly. "There is something very wrong going on in the house—something that you are concealing from my guardian and your husband. Who is that man?"

Old Susan made no reply. She still gripped Ailsa tightly, but the look of madness was fading from her eyes, the pallid face grew less vivid.

"I don't know what you mean," she said. "You are talking in riddles. Go to bed, dearie, and leave a poor old woman alone. Was I unkind to you?"

The speaker had dropped Ailsa's hands, and stood sorrowfully regarding the hard red bands round the girl's wrists. The fit of sudden passion was passing as quickly as the dispersion of an April storm. Susan fell back in her chair again, and the dazed look was once more on her face. Evidently she had aroused herself with an effort that was utterly beyond her strength. Ailsa did not know whether to pity her or be sorry. But the girl did not mean to lose all the advantage she had gained.

"Has anybody been ill-treating you?" she asked. "Now, tell me?"

"Nobody," Susan muttered. "It was all an accident. I tell you it was an accident. And if you don't believe it, why, then, I say that you lie."

"We will not discuss that," Ailsa went on. "There is a man upstairs. He is there for no good purpose. Who is he, and what is he doing here? I am quite certain that you can give me the desired information, and I mean to have it. Tell me without any further prevarication who that man is and what he is after!"

"Nobody there," she muttered. "Nobody at all. Everything is changed, dearie, changed out of recognition. You'll want a candle, sure."

A glimmer of light flashed across Ailsa's understanding. Surely Susan was under the impression that she was talking to the man upstairs. He had had occasion to strike a match, as if he missed some familiar landmark in the dark, and here was Susan suggesting that somebody or other would certainly need a candle. From the bottom of her heart Ailsa wished that Thomas was back again. Old Susan might be seriously hurt, and yet, on the other hand, there might be nothing serious the matter with her.

"What is he looking for, and where is it?" Ailsa demanded, suddenly.

"The case," Susan said with a sudden flame of reason. "Behind one of the panels in the old Blue Room. Only it's not called the Blue Room now, dearie, it is missie's studio. But you'll never find it—he's too cunning for that."

There was sense in the speech, as Ailsa did fail to recognise. The swiftness of her question had caused Susan to betray herself. But the latter part of her speech was obviously addressed to somebody other than Ailsa. The old woman was wandering in her mind now between two people. Her head sank on her breast again, and she slumbered once more.

She was suffering from both mental and physical shock, as Ailsa could see. But she would have to be left to herself for a moment, as Ailsa's duty was upstairs. She was not in the least afraid now, she was going to see this thing through. That man was looking for something in her studio, at one time called the Blue Room. Painting was Ailsa's one joy, the blessed occupation that preserved her reason. Without it she would have passed into a green and yellow melancholy. The studio was all her own, nobody ever went there.

She had gathered the furniture together from different parts of the house: a Persian carpet from here, a statue from there, a suit of armour from another place. There were trophies of arms on the oak-panelled walls, old china and pictures of price. Ailsa's studio would not have disgraced the house of a distinguished and popular R.A. Even now there was a new interest added to the place in the presence of a man who was seeking for something there. Without the slightest suggestion of fear, Ailsa mounted the stairs again silently as ever in her bare feet;—she was not going to surprise the man, she had no intention of asking his business unless she was compelled to do so. But that he was going to take anything away without her consent, Ailsa denied. Probably he was in the studio by this time.

Ailsa's conclusions were absolutely correct. The man was moving about the studio muttering to himself as he came in contact with one unfamiliar object after another. He appeared to be at home, and yet he was very much abroad. A trinket fell to the floor with a crash, and the intruder swore aloud, than there was a grunt of satisfaction as the man's hand encountered a gas-bracket on the wall.

"Time enough, too," he muttered. "Well, I'll risk it. Better than breaking my neck and getting the house about me. I wonder what Colville would say if he could see me here at this moment. What on earth did I do with my matchbox?"

Ailsa slipped behind a screen by the doorway. The match flared out, there was a hissing of gas, and the soft pop of the flame as the vesta touched it. The light was very dim and low, for the gas was shaded by an opaque pink globe with a shade over it. Ailsa preferred a number of small subdued lights to one or two glaring large ones—the effect on the perfectly finished studio was much more artistic. The light was very faint, but it enabled the marauder to see what he was doing.

"I'll not light any more," he muttered. "This one is quite sufficient. By Jove, what a contrast to the last time I saw this room! Colville's ward is evidently a lady of very pretty taste. And she can paint, too, if that landscape yonder is an example of her work. Pretty things everywhere, the touch of the dainty feminine hand. Reminds me of the day when I was fit to enter decent society. Heavens! How long since was that?"

There was a tone of regret in the speaker's voice, the voice of a gentleman, as Ailsa did not fail to recognise. As she had felt from the first, this man was no vulgar midnight thief. He was on familiar ground; he was here for some definite purpose, no doubt, but Ailsa liked his voice. With his thick black hair and beard, and low hat, he looked a formidable ruffian enough; but somehow Ailsa was not in the least alarmed. She was watching the stranger through the carved scroll-work of the screen, in deep fascination.

"Where shall I begin?" he muttered. "I shall have to take these panels one by one. I hope I shan't make too much noise removing those gentlemen in armour. It may be behind the looking-glass over the fireplace. That will be a tight job. What a lot of photographs, and what pretty frames! I wonder which of those girls is my hostess. The one with the dark eyes and the serious face, perhaps. A very pretty girl, too. And here's a man. Don't like the look of him, anyway. And, good Heavens! who's this?"

The stranger's voice suddenly become hoarse and emotional. Evidently he had experienced a sudden shock of some kind. Ailsa could just see that his face was twitching. His hand trembled, too, as he took a small photograph in a gold frame from the shelf. Ailsa knew quite well whose portrait it was—a young man, with clean-shaven face and dark, fearless eyes. The chin was, perhaps, a little weak; but it was a pleasant, open face, and belonged to a man that most girls would like to call their own.

"To think of it," the stranger said, with the same pained thrill in his voice. "How did it get here? And who in the name of fortune—well, it's painful, very painful, and yet not without a suggestion of diabolical humour. Better to laugh than to cry over it."

The stranger commenced to laugh horribly. The mirth was so palpably forced that it hurt the listener crouched behind the screen. Ailsa, acting on the sudden impulse of the moment, stepped out and confronted the intruder, who had carefully replaced the portrait again. Already he had begun to tap the panels with his knuckles.

"What are you doing here?" Ailsa asked. "Why do you come at this time of night, when my guardian is away from home? And what are you interfering with my portraits for."

The man fell back as if something had stung him. Ailsa could not see his face, a part of which was masked with sticking-plaster as if he had been in some accident.

"I am very sorry," he said, "it would be too long a story to tell you. And I am afraid that you would not quite believe me. As to your portrait, I was only looking at the counterpart portrait of one whom I knew very well years ago."

Despite his rowdy, dissipated appearance, the man was a gentleman. He might have, indeed, no doubt he had, descended very far down the scale of respectability, but the fact remained.

"Ronald Braybrooke," Ailsa said with some hesitation. "Yes, I heard what you said when you looked at the picture. Ronald Braybrooke was an old friend of mine. But it is hard to believe that he could also have been a friend of yours."

A curious smile flitted over the face of the stranger. He appeared as if about to reply when the distant, sudden banging of a door sent him back in alarm. There was a cold draught of air, followed by a footstep on the stairs, and a man with a grey, somewhat forbidding face came into the studio. Before he had entered the room Ailsa was aware of the fact that her guardian was at hand. She also became conscious of her bare feet and the equivocal nature of this midnight adventure. Like a flash she darted behind the screen again, leaving her visitor alone. He hesitated just a moment, and then he stole across the room in the direction of the gas-bracket. But he was too late; Archibald Colville was already upon him.

"You here!" he cried, in a deep, pained voice. "You here, above all men. I would have given ten thousand pounds, poor as I am. And this is what you've come to, Ronald Braybrooke."

The name seemed to sting Ailsa like the lash of a whip. This Ronald Braybrooke?—this the man to whom she had years ago———? Oh, impossible! She stepped from behind the screen.

"There is some mistake," she said. "I am Ailsa Lefroy. And you are not Ronald Braybrooke."

The man hesitated for a moment. Some struggle seemed to be going on in his mind.

"No," he said, slowly. "You are quite right. I am not Ronald Braybrooke, because he is—dead——"