Читать книгу A Queen's Error - Henry Curties - Страница 7

I took a note of the number of the house—it was 190 Monmouth Street—and gazed a little while at its neglected exterior before I walked away into the mist towards my hotel.

Over the whole of the front windows faded Venetian blinds were drawn down; it was one of those houses, sometimes met with, shut up for no apparent reason, and without any intention on the part of the owner, apparently, to dispose of it, for there was no board up. It was not until later that I learned that the house belonged to the old lady herself.

I returned to my hotel, that luxurious resort of the wealthy and rheumatic, its well furnished interior looking particularly comfortable in the ruddy glow of two immense fires in the hall. I had left it early in the afternoon, before the lamps were lit, tired of being indoors; the change was most agreeable from the damp, misty atmosphere without.

I betook myself to the smoking-room, and, being a lover of the beverage, ordered tea, with the addition of buttered toast. Delighted with the big glowing fire in the room, and believing myself to be alone, I threw myself back luxuriously into a big, saddle-bag chair.

As it ran back with the impetus of my descent into it, it jammed into one behind, and from this immediately arose a very indignant face which looked into mine as I turned round. It was a dark, foreign-looking face, the red face of a man who wore a black moustache and a little imperial, and whose bloodshot brown eyes simply glared through a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez. There was something very strange about these eyes.

"I really beg your pardon," I said. "I didn't know you were there!"

The fierce expression of the bloodshot eyes changed to one of somewhat forced amiability.

"Pray don't apologise," he answered, with just the merest touch of a foreign accent in his voice, that sort of undetectable accent which some men of cosmopolitan habits possess, though they are rarely met with.

"I think I must have been asleep," he added, "and the little shock awoke me from a disagreeable dream. There is really so little to do in this place besides bathing and sleeping."

"And water drinking," I suggested, with a smile.

"I do as little of that," he answered hastily, with a grimace, "as I possibly can. By the bye though," he continued, wheeling round his chair sociably beside mine, "do you know that the Bath water taken hot with a good dash of whisky in it and two lumps of sugar is not half bad?"

I took a good look at his face as he sat leering at me through his glasses. From the congested look of it, I could quite believe that he had sampled this mixture, or others of a similar alcoholic nature, sufficiently to give an opinion on the point; his bloodshot eyes also testified to the fact.

But concerning these latter features, the reason of the curious look about them was solved by the firelight; one of them was of glass! I saw that it remained stationary whilst the other leered round the corner of the gold-rimmed pince-nez at me. It was a very good imitation, and was made bloodshot to match the other.

My tea and buttered toast arrived now, and I made a vigorous attack upon the latter.

"The idea of mixing whisky with Bath water," I replied, laughing, "never struck me. It appears novel."

"I can assure you," continued my new acquaintance, "that many of the old men who are ordered here to Bath do it, and I should not be surprised to hear that it is a practice among the old ladies too. Look at their faces as they come waddling down to table d'hôte!"

This appeared to me rather a disrespectful remark with regard to the opposite sex, and I answered him somewhat stiffly, "I hope you are deceived."

He was not a tactful person by any means: he made an observation then concerning my tea and buttered toast.

"I really wonder," he said, "how you can drink that stuff," with a nod towards my cup. "It would make me sick; put it away and have a whisky and soda with me?"

I naturally considered this a very rude remark from a perfect stranger.

"I am much obliged," I snapped, "but I prefer tea."

At that moment I put my hand in my pocket for my cigarette case. I thought I would give this man one to stop his tiresome talking; as I pulled it out the key of the safe which the old lady had given me fell out with it. Before I could stoop and pick it up myself the man with the glass eye had got it. He put it up close to his good eye and examined it critically. "What an extraordinary key!" he observed. "Where did you get it?"

Then he saw the letter C which was worked among the elaborate tracery of the handle, and he became greatly agitated.

"Where did you get this from?" he repeated abruptly.

I did not answer; I got up from my seat and took the key out of his hand; he was by no means willing to part with it.

"Excuse me," I said.

Then with the key safe in my pocket and my hand over it, I walked out of the smoking-room, leaving behind me two pieces of buttered toast and perhaps a cup and a half of excellent tea all wasted.

I am a delicately constituted individual, and I preferred smoking my cigarette all alone in a corner of the big hall, to consuming my usual allowance of tea and buttered toast in the society of the glass-eyed person in the smoking-room. I considered that I was doing a little intellectual fast all by myself.

I saw nothing more of my friend of the false brown optic that evening, except that I observed his bloodshot eye of the flesh fixed scathingly upon me from a remote corner of the great dining-room, where he appeared to be dining mostly off a large bottle of champagne.

I sauntered away my evening as I had done the others of my first week's "cure" in Bath, making a fair division of it between the dining-room, the smoking-room and the reading-room. I did not go near the drawing-room; its occupants consisted solely of a few obese ladies of the type referred to by the gentleman with the glass eye, wearing such palpable wigs that my artistic susceptibilities were sorely wounded at the mere sight of them, and my sense of decency outraged.

I went to bed in my great room over-looking the river and the weir, and I lay awake listening to its rushing waters, for the night was warm and almost summer-like, as it happens sometimes in a fine November, and my windows were open.

I suppose I fell asleep, for when I was again conscious, the Abbey clock struck four; at the same moment I became aware that some one was in my room. I could discern the figure of a man in the shadow of the wardrobe near the chair on which I had placed my clothes when I took them off. I leant over the side of the bed and switched on the electric light; the figure turned. It was the dark man with the glass eye!

"What the devil are you doing in my room?" I asked in none too polite a tone.

He was not at all disconcerted, but stood looking at me, replacing his pince-nez.

"Well, really," he replied, "wonders will never cease. I thought I was in my own room!"

I knew he was lying.

"I fail to perceive," I said, sitting up in bed, "in what manner you could have mistaken this room for your own. In the first place the door is locked."

"Just so," remarked my visitor, "that's exactly where it is; I came in at the window."

"The window?" I repeated.

"Yes, the window. I couldn't sleep, so took a stroll up and down the balconies, and when I returned to my room, as I thought, I came in here by mistake."

The excuse was plausible, but I didn't believe a word of it. I was in a dilemma, and sat scratching my head. I could not prove that the man was lying, and therefore had to take his word.

"Very well, then," I said in a compromising tone, "having made the mistake, and it being now nearly five, perhaps you will be able to find your way back to your room and go to sleep."

I thought I was putting the request in as polite a manner as possible, and I expected him to move off at once.

He did nothing of the kind. With a quick movement of his hand to his hip, he produced a revolver and covered me with it.

"Where's that key?" he asked.

He took my breath away for a few moments and I couldn't answer him, then I regained my presence of mind.

"What key?" I asked, though I had a pretty shrewd idea as to the key he wanted.

"The key which dropped out of your pocket this afternoon."

"I don't keep it in bed with me," I replied. "I'll get out and fetch it for you, you are quite welcome to it."

I temporised with him, but I was perfectly determined in my own mind that he should never have it while I lived.

I slipped out of bed and he still held the pistol pointed towards me but in a careless way. I think he was thrown off his guard by my apparent acquiescence.

The clock of the Abbey struck five and he involuntarily turned his head at the first stroke; in that moment I made a sweeping blow with my left arm and knocked the revolver out of his hand; it fell with a crash on the floor. Then I seized him by the throat and tried to hold him. He was, however, like an eel; he wriggled himself free and struck me a heavy blow on the chest which sent me backwards, then he turned and darted towards the window, but as he did so I heard something fall on the floor. For one second his hand went down on the floor groping for it, then, with a curse, he snatched up the revolver, which lay near, and darted out of the window on to the balcony. It all occurred in a few moments, and I followed him as quickly as I could, but when I reached the window I saw him flying along the balcony; he had already cleared several of the little divisions railing off one apartment from another, and I could see it would be useless to follow him.

As I turned and re-entered the bedroom something lying on the floor caught my glance and I stooped and picked it up.

It was the man's glass eye, it had dropped out!

"Now," I said to myself, surveying the bloodshot counterfeit orb as I held it under the electric light. "Now I shall be able to trace him by means of his missing eye and hand him over to justice."

I was fated to be disappointed.

Late the next morning when, having passed the remainder of the night sleeplessly, I came down the main staircase into the hall, almost the first person I met was my friend of the glass eye coming in at the front door. He had apparently just left a cab from which the hotel porters were removing some luggage. He came straight to me, and, looking me in the face, had the impudence to bid me "Good morning."

"Went over to Bristol last night," he explained, "for a ball, and have only just got back. Had awful fun!"

I returned his look for some time without speaking; he had another glass eye stuck in which was the counterpart of the other. I saw now clearly that he had two or more glass eyes for emergencies.

"Bristol!" I repeated. "Did you not come into my room last night and——?"

"And what?" he asked innocently.

"And threaten me?" I added.

He seemed highly amused.

"Do you mean before I went?" he asked.

"No, about four o'clock this morning."

This time he burst out laughing.

"My dear fellow," he said with impertinent familiarity, "at four o'clock this morning I was dancing like mad with some of the prettiest girls in Bristol!"

Liar! It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him whether his glass eye had fallen out during his terpsichorean efforts! It was, however, perfectly evident to me that he intended to deny that he had been in the hotel during the night, and probably had had time to establish some sort of an alibi. I therefore decided to move cautiously in the matter.

I turned on my heel and went into the dining-room to breakfast without another word.

But I made it my business during the morning to inquire of the hall porter, who I found had been on duty up to eleven o'clock on the previous night, whether Mr. Saumarez—for that I discovered was the name he had entered in the hotel visitors' book—had left the hotel on the previous evening.

The porter unhesitatingly informed me that he had to go to a ball at

Bristol!

Really, when I left this man I began to wonder whether I had been dreaming, until I recollected the glass eye which was securely locked up in my dressing-case, such things not being produced in dreams and found under the pillow in the morning wrapped in an old telegram as this had been.

I went next to the chambermaid who presided over the corridor in which

Mr. Saumarez' room was.

Being a good-looking girl I gave her half-a-crown and chucked her under the chin.

"Look here, Maria," I said, "just tell me whether 340, Mr. Saumarez, was in or not last night. I'm rather curious to know and have got a bet on about it with a friend."

She looked at me knowingly and giggled.

"Why, out, sir, of course," she replied; "he came in at half-past ten this morning with his boots unblacked. We all know what that means."

This evidence to me appeared conclusive. I gave the chambermaid a parting chuck under the chin—no one being about—and dismissed her.

Then, it being a fine morning, I went out for a walk.

I went right over the hills by Sham Castle and across the Golf Links, being heartily sworn at—in the distance—by sundry retired officers for not getting out of the way. But I was trying to have a good think over Mr. Saumarez, his duplicate glass eyes, and the reason why he wanted the key of the old lady's safe.

I so tired myself out with walking and thinking, with no result, that when I got back and had lunched late all by myself in the big dining-room, I went into the smoking-room, which this time was quite empty, and fell asleep in front of the great fire.

My sleep was curiously broken and unrestful, and full of that undefined cold apprehension which sometimes attacks one without any apparent reason during an afternoon nap.

I awoke at last to hear the old Abbey clock striking five, and then I nearly jumped out of my seat, for I recollected my promise to the unknown old lady in Monmouth Street to visit her again that day at that very hour.

I hurried through the hall to the coat room, and, seizing my hat, rushed out and just caught a tram which was gliding past in the direction of the upper town where Monmouth Street stretched its length along the slope of the hill.

It was only three minutes past five when the gaily lighted tram deposited me at the end of my old lady's street, and I set off for Number 190, which was at the other extremity of the long, badly lighted thoroughfare, looking, with its interminable rows of oblong windows, like an odd corner of the eighteenth century which had been left behind in the march of time.

I found the house practically as I had left it; there was no fog that evening, and I had a better opportunity of observing its general appearance in the yellow flare of the old-fashioned gas lamp opposite.

The house on one side of it was to be let, with a large staring board announcing that fact fixed to the railings; the house on the other side was a dingy looking place with lace curtains shrouding the dining-room windows and a notice outside concerning "Apartments."

I drew out the latch-key, blew in it to cleanse it from any dust, then, with very little difficulty, opened the door and entered Number 190.