Читать книгу The Red Symbol - Ironside John - Страница 1

“Hello! Yes – I’m Maurice Wynn. Who are you?”

“Harding. I’ve been ringing you up at intervals for hours. Carson’s ill, and you’re to relieve him. Come round for instructions to-night. Lord Southbourne will give them you himself. Eh? Yes, Whitehall Gardens. Ten-thirty, then. Right you are.”

I replaced the receiver, and started hustling into my dress clothes, thinking rapidly the while.

For the first time in the course of ten years’ experience as a special correspondent, I was dismayed at the prospect of starting off at a moment’s notice – to St. Petersburg, in this instance.

To-day was Saturday, and if I were to go by the quickest route – the Nord express – I should have three days’ grace, but the delay at this end would not compensate for the few hours saved on the journey. No, doubtless Southbourne would expect me to get off to-morrow or Monday morning at latest. He was – and is – the smartest newspaper man in England.

Well, I still had four hours before I was due at Whitehall Gardens; and I must make the most of them. At least I should have a few minutes alone with Anne Pendennis, on our way to the dinner at the Hotel Cecil, – the Savage Club “ladies” dinner, where she and my cousin Mary would be guests of Jim Cayley, Mary’s husband.

Anne had promised to let me escort her, – the Cayley’s brougham was a small one, in which three were emphatically a crowd, – and the drive from Chelsea to the Strand, in a hansom, would provide me with the opportunity I had been wanting for days past, of putting my fate to the test, and asking her to be my wife.

I had thought to find that opportunity to-day, at the river picnic Mary had arranged; but all my attempts to secure even a few minutes alone with Anne had failed; though whether she evaded me by accident or design I could not determine, any more than I could tell if she loved me. Sometimes, when she was kind, my hopes rose high, to fall below zero next minute.

“Steer clear of her, my boy,” Jim Cayley had said to me weeks ago, when Anne first came to stay with Mary. “She’s as capricious as she’s imperious, and a coquette to her finger-tips. A girl with hair and eyes like that couldn’t be anything else.”

I resented the words hotly at the time, and he retracted them, with a promptitude and good humor that disarmed me. Jim was a man with whom it was impossible to quarrel. Still, I guessed he had not changed his opinion of his wife’s guest, though he appeared on excellent terms with her.

As for Mary, she was different. She loved Anne, – they had been fast friends ever since they were school-girls together at Neuilly, – and if she did not fully understand her, at least she believed that her coquetry, her capriciousness, were merely superficial, like the hard, glittering quartz that enshrines and protects the pure gold, – and has to be shattered before the gold can be won.

Mary, I knew, wished me well, though she was far too wise a little woman to attempt any interference.

Yes, I would end my suspense to-night, I decided, as I wrestled with a refractory tie.

Ting … ting … tr-r-r-ing! Two short rings and a long one. Not the telephone this time, but the electric bell at the outer door of my bachelor flat.

Who on earth could that be? Well, he’d have to wait.

As I flung the tie aside and seized another, I heard a queer scratching noise outside, stealthy but distinct. I paused and listened, then crossed swiftly and silently to the open door of the bedroom. Some one had inserted a key in the Yale lock of the outer door, and was vainly endeavoring to turn it.

I flung the door open and confronted an extraordinary figure, – an old man, a foreigner evidently, of a type more frequently encountered in the East End than Westminster.

“Well, my friend, what are you up to?” I demanded.

The man recoiled, bending his body and spreading his claw-like hands in a servile obeisance, quaint and not ungraceful; while he quavered out what was seemingly an explanation or apology in some jargon that was quite unintelligible to me, though I can speak most European languages. I judged it to be some Russian patois.

I caught one word, a name that I knew, and interrupted his flow of eloquence.

“You want Mr. Cassavetti?” I asked in Russian. “Well, his rooms are on the next floor.”

I pointed upwards as I spoke, and the miserable looking old creature understood the gesture at least, for, renewing his apologetic protestations, he began to shuffle along the landing, supporting himself by the hand-rail.

I knew my neighbor Cassavetti fairly well. He was supposed to be a press-man, correspondent to half a dozen Continental papers, and gave himself out as a Greek, but I had a notion that Russian refugee was nearer the mark, though hitherto I had never seen any suspicious characters hanging around his place.

But if this picturesque stranger wasn’t a Russian Jew, I never saw one. He certainly was no burglar or sneak-thief, or he would have bolted when I opened the door. The key with which he had attempted to gain ingress to my flat was doubtless a pass-key to Cassavetti’s rooms. He seemed a queer person to be in possession of such a thing, but that was Cassavetti’s affair, and not mine.

“Here, you’d better have your key,” I called, jerking it out of my lock. It was an ordinary Yale key, with a bit of string tied to it, and a fragment of dirty red stuff attached to that.

The stranger had paused, and was clinging to the rail, making a queer gasping sound; and now, as I spoke, he suddenly collapsed in a heap, his dishevelled gray head resting against the balustrade.

I guessed I’d scared him pretty badly, and as I looked down at him I thought for a moment he was dead.

I went up the stairs, and rang Cassavetti’s bell. There was no answer, and I tried the key. It fitted right enough, but the rooms were empty.

What was to be done? Common humanity forbade me to leave the poor wretch lying there; and to summon the housekeeper from the basement meant traversing eight flights of stairs, for the block was an old-fashioned one, and there was no elevator. Besides, I reckoned that Cassavetti would prefer not to have the housekeeper interfere with his queer visitor.

I ran back, got some whiskey and a bowl of water, and started to give first aid to my patient.

I saw at once what was wrong, – sheer starvation, nothing less. I tore open the ragged shirt, and stared aghast at the sight that met my eyes. The emaciated chest was seamed and knotted with curious scars. I had seen similar scars before, and knew there was but one weapon in the world – the knout – capable of making them. The man was a Russian then, and had been grievously handled; some time back as I judged, for the scars were old.

I dashed water on his face and breast, and poured some of the whiskey down his throat. He gasped, gurgled, opened his eyes and stared at me. He looked like a touzled old vulture that has been badly scared.

“Buck up, daddy,” I said cheerfully, forgetting he wouldn’t understand me. I helped him to his feet, and felt in my trouser pocket for a coin. It was food he wanted, but I had none to give him, except some crackers, and I had wasted enough time over him already. If I didn’t get a hustle on, I should be late for my appointment with Anne.

He clutched at the half-crown, and bent his trembling old body again, invoking, as I opined, a string of blessings on my unworthy head. Something slipped from among his garments and fell with a tinkle at my feet. I stooped to pick it up and saw it was an oval piece of tin, in shape and size like an old-fashioned miniature, containing a portrait. He had evidently been wearing it round his neck, amulet fashion, for a thin red cord dangled from it, that I had probably snapped in my haste.

He reached for it with a quick cry, but I held on to it, for I recognized the face instantly.

It was a photograph of Anne Pendennis – badly printed, as if by an amateur – but an excellent likeness.

Underneath were scrawled in red ink the initials “A. P.” and two or three words that I could not decipher, together with a curious hieroglyphic, that looked like a tiny five-petalled flower, drawn and filled in with the red ink.

How on earth did this forlorn old alien have Anne’s portrait in his possession?

He was cute enough to read my expression, for he clutched my arm, and, pointing to the portrait, began speaking earnestly, not in the patois, but in low Russian.

My Russian is poor enough, but his was execrable. Still, I gathered that he knew “the gracious lady,” and had come a long way in search of her. There was something I could not grasp, some allusion to danger that threatened Anne, for each time he used the word he pointed at the portrait with agonized emphasis.

His excitement was so pitiable, and seemed so genuine, that I determined to get right to the root of the mystery if possible.

I seized his arm, marched him into my flat, and sat him in a chair, emptying the tin of crackers before him, and bidding him eat. He started crunching the crackers with avidity, eyeing me furtively all the time as I stood at the telephone.

I must let Anne know at once that I was detained.

I could not get on to the Cayley’s number, of course. Things always happen that way! Well, I would have to explain my conduct later.

But I failed to elicit much by the cross-examination to which I subjected my man. For one thing, neither of us understood half that the other said.

I told him I knew his “gracious lady;” and he grovelled on the floor, clawing at my shoes with his skinny hands.

I asked him who he was and where he came from, but could make nothing of his replies. He seemed in mortal fear of some “Selinski” – or a name that sounded like that; and I did discover one point, that by Selinski he meant Cassavetti. When he found he had given that much away, he was so scared that I thought he was going to collapse again, as he did on the staircase.

And yet he had been entrusted with a pass-key to Cassavetti’s rooms!

Only two items seemed perfectly clear. That his “gracious lady” was in danger, – I put that question to him time after time, and his answer never varied, – and that he had come to warn her, to save her if possible.

I could not ascertain the nature of the danger. When I asked him he simply shook his head, and appeared more scared than ever; but I gathered that he would be able to tell “the gracious lady,” and that she would understand, if he could only have speech with her. But when I pressed him on this idea of danger he did a curious thing. He picked up Cassavetti’s key, flattened the bit of red stuff on the palm of his hand, and held it towards me, pointing at it as if to indicate that here was the clue that he dare not give in words.

I looked at the thing with interest. A tawdry artificial flower, with five petals, and in a flash I understood that the hieroglyphic on the portrait represented the same thing, – a red geranium. But what did they mean, anyhow, and what connection was there between them? I could not imagine.

Finally I made him understand – or I thought I did – that he must come to me next day, in the morning; and meanwhile I would try and arrange that he should meet his “gracious lady.”

He grovelled again, and shuffled off, turning at every few steps to make a genuflection.

I half expected him to go up the stairs to Cassavetti’s rooms, but he did not. He went down. I followed two minutes later, but saw nothing of him, either on the staircase or the street. He had vanished as suddenly and mysteriously as he had appeared.

I whistled for a hansom, and, as the cab turned up Whitehall, Big Ben chimed a quarter to eight.