Читать книгу A Shadowed Love - Fred M. White - Страница 9

Table of Contents

The keen eye of a detective would have noticed certain anomalies in Herr Max Greigstein's modest sitting-room. For instance, the table linen was very fine, the cutlery and plate, which the German preferred to clean himself, were of silver and fine steel mounted on ivory. These are things not unusually found in obscure bed-sitting rooms at nine shillings a week, and though the once exclusive cigarette is now given over to the multitude, they do not usually smoke a 'Nestor' at eleven shillings a hundred, such as Greigstein had between his lips at present.

The modest breakfast things were pushed away, and Greigstein was frowning over his ruminative cigarette. There was an excuse for his laziness this morning, as he had no scholastic engagement on Saturday. Greigstein was thinking aloud—a favorite habit of his—but the door was closed.

"You are a fool," he told himself, "you think you have yourself well in hand, but that is where you make the mistake. Come, why did you let Dick Stevenson see that you were interested in that photograph?"

Greigstein frowned at himself in a little mirror opposite.

"That is a clever boy," he went on, "he has intuition. Only he has the bad taste not to like Herr Greigstein. He will tell me nothing about the original of that fascinating photo. With a lad of meaner instincts I should try bribery. But I shall find out, yes, I shall find out."

There was a gleam in Greigstein's eyes as he spoke. A moment later he was deeply engrossed in his cases of moths and butterflies as if they were of all-absorbing interest. Then he put his breakfast things outside the door and locked it after him. He carried a net and a specimen case with the simple air of a man who is going on an innocent holiday. The door of Stevenson's sitting-room was open.

"May I come in?" Greigstein asked, and entered the room without waiting for a reply. "What is the news, my young hero? Good, I imagine, by the expression of your face. That interview with the newspaper magnate, for instance. In my mind's eye I can see Dick Stevenson, editor of 'The Times.'"

Greigstein's glasses twinkled as he spoke, and Dick was disarmed. He was in a mood to be charmed with all the world this morning. The stuffy, evil-smelling rooms in Pant-street would soon be a thing of the past. Already there were visions of a charming house in the country presided over by a sweet-faced, blue-eyed girl who was none the less beloved because she was blind.

"Three hundred a year," Dick said, with a poor assumption of indifference; "I have got an appointment on the literary staff of 'The Record.' And I shall have plenty of time for my fiction writing besides. It isn't very often that one gets a good appointment and an excellent plot of a strong novel in one week."

Greigstein's congratulations were obviously sincere. At the same time there was a strange gleam behind his spectacles. There was a story here that the German was anxious to know, otherwise Dick would have said nothing about the plot of a novel. Greigstein passed his cigarette case across the table.

"I should like to hear more of your good fortune," he said, quietly. "I am glad for your sake and the sake of your charming and most courageous sister. So your good fortune was the result of an adventure?"

"Who told you so?" Dick asked with a smile.

"Why, you did yourself. You say it is not often one gets a good appointment and a good plot in the same week. Obviously, the good fortune in your case follows the good plot—the adventure, that is. That is the way, my good friend, to write a good novel. Personal experience, nothing like personal experience. I should like very much to hear all about those personal experiences. Now my butterflies—"

"Never mind the butterflies," Dick said, hastily; falling into the trap that Greigstein had laid for him. "But I'll tell you my adventure if you like."

Not all of it, Greigstein told himself. For instance, he knew perfectly well that he would hear nothing as to the photograph and its charming original, and in this the German was perfectly right, for Mary Gay was not mentioned.

"I think I have really interested you," Dick said, presently.

Greigstein nodded. Dick would have been fairly startled to know how deeply his companion was interested. All the same, he had wisely said nothing as to the identity between Mr. Spencer and the excited stranger in Cambria Square. It was this half-truth that so sorely puzzled Greigstein and led him into so wide a labyrinth later on.

"And where did all this happen?" Greigstein asked, vaguely. "Cambria Square? Ah, I got a magnificent specimen of the silver-haired moth there a week or two ago. Your friend was a friend of Mr. Spencer, then, and thus your new appointment?"

"You may put it that way with truth," Dick replied, with a feeling that he had better have kept the whole story to himself. At any rate, he had concealed the fact that his benefactor was one of the actors in the strange drama. "Now, you can give me a clue to the real situation? For the purpose of fiction, I want to know why two men should act in so strange a manner."

Greigstein laughed, and professed the matter to be entirely beyond him. His face expressed a pleased and amiable curiosity. Yet he passed a hand over his face to conceal the strange, quick quivering of his lips.

"Alas! I am no novelist," he cried. "That you must work out for yourself, young Dick. And now I must be going. To-day is a holiday for me; I get away from those dreadful boys and forget that I am a mere drudge who imparts a mother tongue for a mere pittance."

He slipped out of the room with a thoughtful expression on his face. He saw nothing of the crowded streets; he pushed along mechanically.

"So they are both close at hand," he said to himself; "the one fleeing from a phantom the other pursuing an empty vengeance! And my young friend blunders into them and he finds the girl as well! Well, everything comes to the man who can afford to wait. On the whole, I can do no better than go down to Stanmere."