Читать книгу The Bedford Row Mystery - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 4

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Up to that hour of his life Richard had never known what it was to be faced by a really awkward situation. He had had a very easy time of it. The only child of wealthy parents, who had both died while he was still a boy, leaving him under the guardianship of his Uncle Henry, he had come at twenty-one into the uncontrolled possession of a very considerable fortune. Thanks to Henry’s tutelage, and not a little to his own natural inclinations, he had never been likely to make ducks and drakes of it. His tastes were simple, and mainly for outdoor pursuits. Cricket in summer, football in winter, travelling at odd moments—these were the things he cared for, and until recently he had found nothing to affect his pursuit of them. But now there was a change. He was undoubtedly in love, and already knew that the girl he loved was also in love with him. And if her father turned out to be the man of whom Henry Marchmont had just told him—why then, indeed, he said to himself bitterly, there was going to be the very deuce of a mess!

Richard had been in the middle of a pleasing romance during the last few weeks. The more serious business of the cricket season being over for him early in September, he had amused himself during the last half of that month with a little country-house cricket, and in the course of this picnic-like diversion had met, at an old house in Surrey, the home of a big City magnate, a very pretty girl who was introduced to him as Miss Lansdale, and whose Christian name he quickly discovered to be Angelita. They met again—at another country house—and yet again—by their own appointment, in Kensington Gardens, and they had gone on meeting; they were meeting now, nearly every day. Bit by bit, Richard had learned a good deal about his lady-love. She appeared to be pretty much her own mistress. From what he had gathered from her own lips she, like himself, was an only child. Her mother was dead—had died years ago. She had been born in South America—in the Argentine; the mother had been of old Spanish ancestry; hence Angelita’s name, and dark eyes, and dark hair, and rich colouring. In the Argentine Angelita had lived all her twenty years until recently, when she and her father had come to England, on business. Her father was English; that much Angelita knew, but it seemed to be about all that she knew of him, except that he was a very busy man, much concerned in financial matters, and always going into the City, or away for days together to places like Birmingham, or Manchester, or Sheffield, leaving her comparatively alone in the suite of rooms at a fashionable hotel which they had occupied since their arrival in England.

Angelita knew scarcely anybody save a few people who were really financial acquaintances of her father—and since becoming interested in Richard she had not cared to enlarge her circle; Richard, with his thoroughly English matter-of-factness, his cool, good temper, and suggestion of protection, appealed to her. It had been what Richard called a dead-sure business with these two from the very first, and the time was now come when he wanted to settle things with Angelita’s father. But that individual had been so far something of a will-o’-the-wisp; it was difficult to get hold of him, for his daughter scarcely ever knew where he was to be found, or when he could be seen; all she knew was that he lived in a whirl of business, supplied and surrounded her with every luxury and comfort, stuffed her purse with money, and left her to herself. Still—he had got to be run to earth, said Richard: Richard was getting impatient.

And, in truth, he had gone to Bedford Row that morning with the intention of telling Henry Marchmont all about it, and making Henry go with him to see Angelita’s father. He had reserved his communication until after lunch; he had a full share of English reserve, and knowing his uncle to be a confirmed old bachelor and a bit of a cynic, felt somewhat shy and bashful about telling him that he had fallen in love. Then, before he could begin, Henry had started out on his own story—to wind it up with a dramatic conclusion that made Richard feel as if ice-cold water had been poured suddenly down his spine. For Lansdale is not a very common name, and taking all the other features of the story into consideration—the dinner of financial men, the fact that Lansdale was spoken of as a man from abroad, and that he was mixed up in big financial affairs—Richard found it impossible to avoid the conclusion that the man of whom his uncle told was any other than Angelita’s mysterious father.

He sat for some time, his hands plunged in his pockets, his chin sunk in his collar, his cigar gone out, thinking. If Henry Marchmont’s story were all true—and he knew it would be true enough in Henry’s opinion—and Lansdale was Land, then Lansdale, twenty-five years before, must have been a shady sort of person, if not actually a bad lot. Nay, if what Henry had hinted at were true, Lansdale must be liable to prosecution—hadn’t Henry used certain words, all the more significant as coming from a lawyer? ‘I suppose I ought to tell the police’ he had said. That was enough to show that Henry regarded Lansdale as a criminal escaped from justice.

Richard knew little of law, but in common with most Englishmen he was aware that lapse of time is no bar to criminal prosecution, and that a man can be as readily arrested for a crime committed years before as for one committed yesterday. It was a strange business, an unpleasant combination of circumstances, and there was only one crumb of comfort in it—at which Richard, thinking things over, was eager to snatch. That was—would any man in his common senses who knew that a criminal charge hung over him, in a country from which he had long escaped, be such a damned fool as to return to that country under circumstances which must needs bring him into prominence? Richard thought not—and it seemed to him that if Lansdale, the financier, were really Land, the quondam stockbroker of Clayminster, Land’s doings in that sleepy little town, even if doubtful, must have been regular and within the law—or he would never have dared to return to England.

Richard had all the average healthy-minded young Englishman’s dislike of anything that was not in accordance with the rules, that was not playing the game, that—to use his own term—was not cricket. But he felt that the probability was that Lansdale, or Land, tackled with his sudden disappearance of five-and-twenty years before, would be able, not only to show plausible reasons for it, but to prove that he had done nothing to bring himself within the law. How else could he dare to show his face here again? Still, there was the sudden disappearance, under suspicious circumstances, and the loss of people’s money—and there was Henry Marchmont. Richard knew well that whatever specious arguments or apparently good-faith reasons Land, or Lansdale, might offer for his conduct, Henry Marchmont would not change his opinion of the man and his doings. Henry was a man of essentially conservative mind; a hard man. To him another man who behaved as Land had done, would always be an object of contempt and scorn—and Richard quaked inwardly as he fancied himself telling his uncle that he wanted to marry the daughter of the man who had absconded from Clayminster and left various folk sitting amidst the wreckage of their fortunes. Henry would screw his monocle into his eye and look....

“What a beastly situation!” muttered Richard at last. “And how the devil is one to make the best of it? Still, Angelita isn’t her father!”

With this comfortable reflection he rose and looked at his watch. As was becoming almost a daily practice, he had an appointment with Angelita, and it was time he set out to keep it. Musing and brooding over the dilemma into which their love affairs seemed likely to be plunged, he went off to his own quarter of the town, and strolling into the National Gallery found Angelita awaiting him in a quiet corner.

Richard was one of those young men who find it impossible to avoid direct issues; in the cricket field he was famous as a batsman who lost no time in getting to work on the bowling, and in life, if he had a thing on his mind, he fidgeted until he had turned it into words. And before he had been at Angelita’s side five minutes, he came to the question that was bothering him.

“Look here!” said Richard. “When am I going to see your father?”

Angelita shook her head and pursed her lips.

“The thing is—to catch him!” she answered. “During the last few days he’s been busier than ever. He was away—I forget where—for two days. Then he’s been dining out—business dinners. And now he goes away to the City, wherever that may be, so early in the morning that I scarcely see him. However, that can’t last long, because”—here she turned and regarded Richard significantly—“because he told me this morning that his principal business here would be completed in a fortnight, and then we’re to leave.”

“To leave?” exclaimed Richard. “For—where?”

“Home, I suppose,” replied Angelita. “Yes, of course, it will be home.”

“That settles it, then,” said Richard doggedly. “Got to see him at once. You must fix it!”

Angelita studied the points of her shoes.

“I—I haven’t told him anything yet,” she murmured. “I mean, about you. About—you and me.”

“Then you’d better!” retorted Richard with masculine severity. “Can’t take long, that. Then—then I’ll come in next. And I say—you’re quite certain it’ll be home when you leave?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure of it. There are things—business matters—he wants to get back to,” she answered. “We have been here now longer than he intended.”

“All right!” said Richard. “Then—I’ll go back with you. That’ll be the very thing to do! Yes—I’ll go back with you.”

He was not talking to her as much as to himself. If he went back with father and daughter to South America, he would be relieved of the difficulties which he had foreseen as regarded Henry Marchmont. It would all pan out nicely—what could be better than that he should winter across the Atlantic, and return for next year’s cricket season, bringing a bride with him. Splendid notion!—he saw it all before him like a well-thought-out campaign, on paper. But a sudden idea chilled him.

“You don’t think your father will kick me out?” he demanded suddenly.

Angelita gave him a look that made his head swim.

“Don’t think so!” she replied demurely. “Why should he? Besides, he always lets me have everything I want.”

“Sure he hasn’t got some other chap in view?” asked Richard suspiciously. “Might have some notion of a big financial union, you know: these financiers are up to all those games!”

“That wouldn’t matter,” said Angelita. “It is I who am the one to decide. Besides, you see, I know my father. It will all be like this. I shall tell him—he will listen as I have often seen him listen to business propositions—oh, yes, often! He will seem as if he did not hear at all, abstracted, blinking his eyes, so. Then he will wake up. ‘So that is it, is it?’ he will say. ‘Yes—I get you! You want to marry this young man? You are quite satisfied that it is a sound business? Very well—now go ahead!’ That is how it will be—that will be all. Then—we do the rest.”

“Sounds straightforward sort of work,” observed Richard. “Now, look here—you get hold of your father this very day—never mind if you have to sit up half the night to catch him! Tell him all about it, and all about me. And say that I’m coming to see him at your hotel at breakfast time to-morrow morning.”

He felt better when he had made this arrangement. But after he and Angelita had parted he became anxious again, remembering what Henry Marchmont had told him—that Lansdale was to visit him, Henry, at Bedford Row that very evening. What would happen there? What would Lansdale say to Henry? What would Henry say or do, in consequence? Would anything take place that would make his interview with Angelita’s father, next morning, impossible or fruitless? He had ideas of going back to Bedford Row, telling his uncle everything, and insisting that whatever Lansdale or Land’s past might be, he, Richard, was going to marry Angelita and that Henry must do nothing to rake up that past. But on reflection he thought it best to let matters take their course; he felt certain, from Angelita’s chance remarks about her father, that Lansdale, if he really was the Land of Clayminster of whom Henry Marchmont had spoken, would be well able to justify his behaviour of twenty-five years before.

So Richard turned to his club, and there he dined, and as luck would have it, after dinner he came across a noted cricketer of a previous day, who was well known to spend all his winters in the Argentine, and, with more craft than was usual with him, Richard drew him out to talk about that country, giving as his reason that he was thinking of going over there for a few months. The man of experience talked, and at last Richard put a direct question to him.

“Ever hear of a man named Lansdale out there?” he asked.

The other man’s face showed instant recognition.

“Lansdale? Oh, yes—well-known man out there. He’s a man who came there, either from here or New York, years ago, and went in for developing the country. Very wealthy man now, I believe—deals in options and concessions, and that sort of thing.”

“Know him personally?” inquired Richard.

“No, I don’t—never seen him. Heard lots about him, though. Very familiar name across there in connection with developments.”

This cheered Richard. Lansdale, if he were Land, had too much at stake, surely, to run his head into the lion’s mouth as Henry Marchmont seemed to suggest he was doing. He went home to his flat in Jermyn Street rehearsing what he would say to Angelita’s father in the morning and for the first time in his life he realised what it meant to be able to show that he was well equipped with this world’s goods.

But Richard never got to Lansdale’s hotel next morning. He was hastily breakfasting before setting out thither, when his valet called him to the telephone. The first sound of the voice coming over filled him with a sudden strange fear.

“Mr. Richard? This is Simpson speaking, sir. Can you come here, Bedford Row, at once?”

“Yes!” answered Richard. “But what is it? Say!”

“Your uncle, Mr. Richard. An—an accident——”

“Say straight out!” demanded Richard. “Quick, now!”

“Mr. Marchmont is dead, sir!” replied Simpson.