Читать книгу Mystery in White - J. Jefferson Farjeon - Страница 7

Table of Contents

The first thing David did on emerging from the front door was to pitch head first into a mound of snow. For a moment or two he nearly suffocated, while countless soft, icy pellets invaded his back as though he were being bombarded by silent salvos from heaven. Then he scrambled out, and strained ears choked with snow for a repetition of the shout. Already he had lost his sense of direction, for all he could see was a bewildering succession of snowflake close-ups, almost blinding vision.

During the forty-five minutes he had been in the house the weather had travelled from bad to worse. Snow rushed at him unbelievably from nowhere caking him with white. He would have retreated promptly saving for the knowledge that somewhere in this whirling maelstrom was a man in a worse plight; but how to find the man, if his despairing cry was not repeated, seemed a stark impossibility.

He made a guess, plunged forward, and sank waist-deep. Some one helped him out. It was Thomson, trembling and gasping. They stared at each other, their faces close. And, as they stared, the voice that had brought them from the warmth of the fire summoned them again.

“Help! Some one! My God!”

The voice sounded a long way off, but actually it was close. Stumbling towards it, Thomson suddenly went flat. The mound he had fallen over writhed. Two rose where one had just fallen.

The addition was the elderly bore.

He was hatless, blue, and frozen. He tried to speak, and failed. The snow that melted round his staring eyes had a suspicious resemblance to tears. The man who had pooh-poohed English snow was receiving more than his deserts.

“Come on!” shouted David, flinging an arm round him.

Clinging to each other grotesquely, they swerved round and began stumbling back. The bore went down twice, the second time bringing his rescuers with him. When they were once more on their feet, they found a vague feminine form before them.

“Go back, you idiot!” croaked David. “Which way?”

“Not the way you’re going, idiot yourself!” retorted Lydia.

She directed them back. Inside the hall they sank down and gasped.

“Well, what about Dawson City now?” panted David.

The bore offered no reply. Even if he had been physically capable of speech, his bemused brain could not have directed his tongue. He lay in the large chair in which he had been deposited, his eyes fixed vacantly on the ceiling, his face a mess of melting snow. Not attractive at the best of times, he now presented a most unsavoury appearance, and was temporarily too distressed to worry about it.

“This house is becoming a hospital!” Lydia whispered to Mr. Maltby.

The old man did not hear her. He was gazing towards the closed front door. The wind was rising, sending doleful music round the house, and periodically rattling the windows as though trying to get in. Suddenly, unable to stand it, Lydia dived towards a lamp and lit it. The illumination glowed on a strange scene. Three exhausted men, recovering at various rates of progress, but none in a hurry; Jessie Noyes, with her bandaged foot, and struggling against a return of fear; Lydia herself, frowning and tense; and the old man still gazing at the closed door.

“What is it? Do you hear anything?” demanded Lydia.

“I hear a lot of things,” answered Mr. Maltby. “But not our friend Smith.”

“No, he’s gone, and good riddance,” said David.

“Very good riddance, if he’s gone,” replied Mr. Maltby. “We are to take it that he has succeeded where the rest of us would fail.” He gave a little shrug, and turned to the latest addition in the arm-chair. “When you have got your wind back we would like your story, sir. Meanwhile, to save your inevitable questions, here is ours. We all got lost. We all came upon this house. Necessity drove us in, and necessity retains us here. And apparently there is no one in the house excepting ourselves.”

“Then, how the devil did you get in?” the bore managed to gulp at last.

“The door was not locked.”

The bore gazed round, and began to take notice.

“Making yourselves at home, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Thoroughly,” agreed the old man. “Will you have a cup of tea?”

“My God! Will I?” Lydia poured him out a cup. He swallowed it too quickly and choked. “I don’t suppose anybody could rake up a towel?”

This time Thomson obliged, fetching one from the kitchen.

“And what time would you like your shaving-water in the morning?” inquired Lydia.

In the process of mopping his face, the bore paused and looked at her suspiciously.

“I’m glad you think it’s a joke,” he muttered.

“The thought, I’m sure, is entirely self-defensive,” interposed David. “You remember, Tommy made jokes in the trenches. Or—er—don’t you remember?”

“I expect I remember better than you do, young man,” retorted the bore, showing definite signs of recovery through the tea and the towel. He did not mention that his speciality during the war had been the making of munitions a long way from the sound of them. “But I am afraid my sense of humour isn’t any too bright at the moment. I’ve been through a hell of a time.”

He glanced at Jessie, as the only possible source of sympathy. Nice little thing, that blonde ... nice to get to know....

“Yes, will you tell us about the time?” asked Mr. Maltby. “We are curious to know why you left the train.”

“You left it,” answered the bore.

“And we were not thought highly of for doing so,” remarked David. “I seem to remember an uncomplimentary observation.”

“Are you trying to pick a quarrel, young man?”

“If you continue to call me ‘young man,’ I shall certainly pick a quarrel. Please remember that we’ve been through the hell of a time, too, and had the hell of a time lugging you out of a snowdrift.”

“All right, all right, I apologise,” grunted the bore. “We’ve all been through the hell of a time. And, if you want the truth, I left the train to escape another hell of a time.”

“What, did the train get on fire?”

“It did not.”

“What happened?”

“Perhaps I could tell you if I wasn’t interrupted every other word.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t mention.” He turned to Mr. Maltby. “Did you happen to see into the compartment next to ours, by any chance?”

“Which one?” inquired Mr. Maltby. “There were two. The one you were sitting back to?”

“Yes! How did you guess?”

“You wouldn’t understand if I told you. No, I didn’t see into it.”

“Did any of the rest of you?”

They shook their heads.

“Ah! Well, you were spared something. At least—well, that depends on—on the time it——”

He stopped, and glanced again at Jessie. Her wide blue eyes were apprehensive.

“Wonder if I’d better go on,” he muttered.

“I think you had,” replied the old man. “If it is self-defensive to joke, it is also self-defensive to get used to shocks. The shock you are about to give us is unlikely to be our last.”

“Oh, you know I’m going to give you a shock, then?”

“There is nothing occult in my perception of that.”

“Perhaps you know what the shock is?” exclaimed the bore, stiffening suddenly.

“My dear sir,” remonstrated Mr. Maltby, “do not look at me as though I were a murderer! I did not kill the person in the next compartment.”

The bore became limp again as Jessie stifled a little shriek. He flopped back in his chair, and gave another mop to his face with the towel.

“Who—who told you—any one had been killed?” he gasped.

“You did,” answered Mr. Maltby smoothly. “Emotions very highly developed frequently render words unnecessary. They progress along an ever-narrowing path, until at their peak they cease to be personal and achieve a universal aspect. We in this room merely appear to be different from each other when engaged on small concerns, but when we are fundamentally affected—with horror, love, excessive pain, excessive bliss—we are all the same.”

“What the devil are you talking about?” muttered the bore.

“Homicide,” replied Mr. Maltby. “Who is this person who has been killed?”

“Oh, you don’t know that?”

“I would not ask if I did.”

“Well, I don’t know either. I mean, just some fellow or other. The guard found him. As a matter of fact I was out in the corridor when he came along—the guard—and I asked him a question, but he didn’t answer. When I repeated it, he still didn’t answer, and I found him staring into the compartment, so I joined him, and there was this man, lying on the ground—dead.”

“Look here, hadn’t we better have the rest of this later?” interrupted Lydia, glancing at Jessie, whose eyes were dilating.

But Jessie herself protested against a postponement.

“Why does everybody think I can’t stand anything?” she demanded. “It’s only my foot that keeps on twinging! Please go on!”

“I don’t know that there’s much more to go on about,” answered the bore. “He was dead, and you can’t bring a dead man to life again.”

“Did you find out how he had been killed?” inquired Mr. Maltby.

“No.”

“Have you any theory?”

“Is this an inquest?”

“Were there any signs of a struggle?”

“I don’t know! I’m not a detective!”

“Detectives are not the only people with opinions. What did the guard think? Or do? Or say? I don’t suppose you both stood there and played ‘Buzz’?”

“Look here, I want to forget it!” retorted the bore. “Can’t you see, I’m nearly dead myself? How do I know what the guard thought? All I know is that we soon had a crowd round us, and—and that while they were all staring and gaping, it seemed to me we wanted a policeman.”

His tone took on a little flourish of triumph, as though he had suddenly justified himself in a company of doubters.

“I see,” nodded the old man. “And that’s why you left the train.”

“That’s it.”

“While we sought a railway station, you sought a police station.”

“Couldn’t put it more neatly myself.”

“Only you mentioned the word ‘escape.’ ”

“Eh?”

“ ‘I left the train to escape another hell of a time.’ That was your expression.”

“What are you getting at?” exclaimed the bore.

“I don’t know that I am ‘getting at’ anything,” replied Mr. Maltby, rather acidly, “but I suggest that, when you are telling a story of some importance you choose your words a little more carefully. Whether you actually left the train to assist the situation or to escape from it probably makes only a spiritual difference, for we may assume the material result would have been the same in either case, but in judging a man his point of view is more important than his action. Your own action, sir, unless the guard asked you to go for the police, or unless there is some vital factor of which we have not been informed, seems to have been definitely idiotic.”

The bore glared.

“If you mean that it was idiotic to face this damned weather——!” he began.

“No, I did not mean that,” interrupted Mr. Maltby. “I meant that a man in the next compartment is found dead, and you promptly leave the train.”

“Come to that, we all left the train,” said David.

“Thank you,” muttered the bore. “So we all had a hand in it and that’s settled!” He jumped up from his chair nervily, and then sat down again. “Look here, I feel dizzy. I’ve been nearly buried alive! If I’m not in for pneumonia, my name’s not Hopkins!”

Thomson sneezed.

“Hallo, some one else getting pneumonia?” queried Hopkins.

“I should think we’ll all get pneumonia,” added Lydia. “Isn’t that what inevitably happens when cold clothes dry on a numb body? I feel like hot ice!”

“So do I!” murmured Jessie.

“I’m sure you do. David, do you think you could carry her again? Upstairs, this time. And perhaps you could manage our suitcases, Mr. Thomson without a p. I don’t care what anybody says, we’re going to find a nice warm bedroom, and we’re going to get properly rubbed down and dry!”