Читать книгу The Phantom Car - Fred M. White - Страница 8

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Roy Manthon had been using no mere figure of speech when he had promised Trevor Capner that he would keep an eye on Peggy. All the same, it was going to be no easy task, because when a young man is deeply in love with a girl, even though that girl happens to be engaged to his dearest friend, it is a trying ordeal and likely to strain loyalty to the breaking-point. And now that Trevor Capner was out of the way, it was even more difficult than it had been before.

For if the misunderstanding between the lovers had remained and never been healed, then Manthon might have felt himself justified in putting his own fate to the touch. But now that Trevor was no more, he realised that Peggy would make a martyr of him and probably remain faithful to his memory for all time. Because Peggy was just that sort of girl—romantic and rather mystic and fully persuaded that it was her fault because Capner had gone to his death.

She had said so more than once, in as many words to her aunt, Miss Sarah Bancroft. Naturally, Miss Bancroft, who was the soul of kindness and good nature, had been deeply grieved when she had heard the Admiralty announcement; but in spite of her amiability and rather limited understanding, she was not altogether devoid of common sense, and it did not take her long to realise that Peggy must not be allowed to get into a condition of morbid sensibility, because Miss Bancroft knew that this was a weakness which had displayed itself more than once on Peggy's side of the family with disastrous results. So that when Peggy proclaimed herself to be little less than a murderess and talked rather wildly of getting in touch with her dead lover on the other side of the borderland, it seemed to the elder lady that it was quite time to call in some outside assistance, if this deplorable state of things was to be nipped in the bud without further delay.

"I think, my dear, you are taking an altogether extreme view of the case," she ventured to say to Peggy, a week or two later. "I may be wrong, of course, but I cannot see how you can possibly be blamed. Let us look at the matter as if it were an outside case. You know perfectly well that our poor dear Trevor made you a distinct promise. Carelessness, or something like that prevented him from carrying out his promise. If he had done so, then there would have been an end to the matter, and he would have been perfectly justified in refusing to start on that last flight. As things turned out, he could not have done anything else."

"Oh, I know that," Peggy cried. "But I could have stopped him. I am sure that he would have listened to me if I had been a little more considerate. But now he has gone, and I feel as if I had deliberately sent him to his death. Oh, if only I could recall that cruel letter I wrote to him! I must get in touch with him auntie, I must."

"And how are you going to do that, my dear?"

"Don't ask me, because I cannot tell you. But such things have been done. Oh, you may shake your head, auntie, but it is true. Look at the eminent people in the world who firmly believe that we can get in touch with those who have passed over. Mr. Wilde believes it for one."

"Oh, you have been talking to him, have you?" Miss Bancroft said, with a touch of shrewdness. "Of course, I know he is a wonderful man, but I was not aware that he was a spiritualist."

"He isn't," Peggy said. "That is, not a professing one. But he knows all about the science; in fact, there is hardly anything he does not know. And he has read all the books on the subject that ever were written."

"And some of those he has lent to you?" Miss Bancroft suggested. "Yes, I happened to see one or two in your bedroom. Send them back, Peggy, send them back. It is all very well for Mr. Wilde, with his calm, logical mind, but that sort of thing spells madness for a highly-strung girl like yourself. Get rid of those books at once, I implore you. I will speak to Mr. Wilde myself. He has no business to encourage you in such wicked nonsense. And it is wicked nonsense, because the vicar told me so only a few days ago. Get out in the fresh air, go back to your tennis and golf and put such dreadful thoughts out of your mind. Really, I tremble for you, Peggy."

"You are quite wrong, auntie," Peggy said. "Mr. Wilde has not been encouraging me. I don't suppose he would ever have mentioned the subject of spiritualism if I had not introduced it myself. On the contrary, he has advised me not to have anything to do with occultism. Of course, he knows all about spiritualistic manifestations and mediums and all the rest of it, because, at one time, he studied the subject. You don't suppose a man like that would try and deceive me?"

Rather wisely, Miss Bancroft said no more. But she took the first opportunity of seeing Roy Manthon and unburdening herself with regard to what she considered to be a danger lying ahead of Peggy.

"Of course, I will do what I can," Manthon said. "But it is not going to be easy. Long ago I noticed that peculiar mystic strain in Peggy's temperament. But I said nothing about it, because her surroundings were so healthy and normal, that it did not seem worth while. Besides, she was quite happy as long as poor old Trevor was alive, and there seemed to be no cloud upon the horizon. But what you tell me is rather disturbing. Anyway, I will do what I can. Leave Peggy to me and, if I can interest her in the old pursuits, I will. I am going over to Clyde Court this afternoon to play tennis with Basil Faber and his sister Maud, and I will try and induce Peggy to make up a four. It will do her all the good in the world. I will drop in after lunch and ask her to come along with me."

It took Manthon some time to arouse Peggy from her state of despondency, but at length he succeeded, and they set out together later in the afternoon to cover the mile which lay between Long Elms and their destination. It was a fine old house, standing in its own grounds where the highly successful big game hunter, Basil Faber, resided with his sister, who kept house for him. They were both comparatively young people, and on the friendliest terms with Peggy and the other favoured inhabitants of Lincombe. Both Faber and his sister were only too pleased to see Peggy looking something like her old self again, and welcomed her warmly.

It was after tea, when tennis had been abandoned for the moment, and the two men were enjoying a drink and a smoke in Faber's den, that the latter ventured to suggest that Peggy was taking her trouble more bravely than he had expected.

"But I am afraid she isn't," Manthon said. "I managed to almost shame her out of the luxury of grief this afternoon, though I don't know how long it will last. What she ought to do is to go away from here altogether. A long Continental trip or something of that sort. She isn't safe here, old chap."

"Isn't safe here. What do you mean?"

"Well, she has got a sort of leaning towards spiritualism. Wants to get in contact with Capner across the border. You know the sort of stuff they talk. And I am afraid that she has been encouraged by that wonderful chap Wilde. You know Wilde, don't you? Fellow who lives at Monkshole."

"Oh Lord, yes," Faber said. "That is, I have met him once or twice and I have been inside his house. I wanted some information with regard to some skins I had sent me by a friend of mine, who had been shooting somewhere in Africa, where a white man has never been before. The skins were quite new to me, and it occurred to me that with that wonderful general knowledge of his, Wilde might be able to throw some light on the subject. And, by Jove, he did. He told me about an animal I had never heard of before. There seems to be no subject on which he is ignorant. But, somehow, I don't like him."

"Well, now you mention it, neither do I," Manthon agreed. "I have never said as much before, and if you asked me for my reasons, I couldn't give them. He is a great man, is Wilde, but there is something wrong in his mental make up. You see, I have rather an uncanny flair for that sort of thing. A sort of second sight into human nature. And I am quite sure that man is a fanatic. If he made up his mind to go through with anything, nothing would stop him. A splendid friend, no doubt, but an equally terrible enemy. Not that he looks like it with that wonderfully benevolent head of his and his calm, philosophic manner. I tell you, Faber, that Wilde is a dangerous element in Peggy's present state of mind, and if I can keep those two people apart, I am going to do so. Of course, all this is quite between ourselves. You may regard it as the vapouring of an imaginative novelist, but it is something more than that, and I am going to ask you and your sister to help. We must keep Peggy as busy as we can, and stop her from brooding on the past. However, that will do for the present. Now, what do you say to another turn on the court before the dew begins to fall?"

Faber laid a detaining hand on Manthon's arm.

"Just one moment," he said. "I want to tell you something. You know that I am a bit of an amateur sculptor as well as a big game hunter."

"Of course I do," Manthon agreed. "Busts and plaster casts and all that sort of work."

"Precisely, my dear chap, precisely. I want to show you a plaster cast I took outside the library window a day or two ago. You know there is a balcony just over the library, and on the flower bed outside I saw some extraordinary prints. I probably shouldn't have noticed them, only the night before I fancied I heard somebody moving, so I got out of bed and switched on the lights. I suppose that frightened off whoever or whatever it was, so I went back to bed again and thought no more about it. But, after breakfast, I had the curiosity to go out and see if I could find any marks and, sure enough, on the flower bed where one of the gardeners had, a few hours before, planted out some asters, I found them."

"What, do you mean footprints?"

"Well, that is just where you have got me guessing," Faber went on. "I didn't say anything to anybody, and Maud doesn't know now. But I took a cast of those marks, and if you will wait a minute, I will go and fetch them."

Faber came back shortly afterwards and laid two plaster casts on the table in front of his guest.

"Now, what do you make of those?" he demanded. "What do you think they are? Footprints."

"Well, I should say not," Manthon said, after a close inspection. "They look to me more like large hands—big hands with long, thin fingers. But what are they?"

"I don't know," Faber admitted. "You call them hands and you are right when you say they are not feet. My idea is that they are the hands of some sort of ape."

"Ape?" Manthon cried. "What on earth would an ape be doing round here after midnight?"

"Again I don't know," Faber said. "But wouldn't it be possible to train an ape to commit burglary? But not a word of this to Maud or anybody else."