Читать книгу The Secret of the Barbican and Other Stories - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 12

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The reappearance of the Earl of Normanstowe in the merry world of Mayfair roused almost as much commotion as his sudden quitting of that fascinating stage had aroused precisely a month before.

His disappearance had set up a nine-days’ wonder; the newspaper reporters, the police, the private inquiry agents, had racked their brains and used up all their energies in their attempts to find him. Certainly, said those who were acquainted with the youthful nobleman’s career, there was nothing surprising about Normanstowe’s sudden disappearance; it was like him to set everybody talking. His whole life, from his Eton days onward, had been a succession of episodes of the noticeable order.

It was he who painted the Provost’s door a brilliant vermilion. It was he who drove a zebra and a dromedary, tandem fashion, round the park, himself attired in Arab costume, and accompanied by a gigantic Zulu, clothed to the manner, desperately armed. It was he who made a daring parachute descent at Ranelagh. It was he who, dressed up in wonderful garments of the East, and accompanied by a suite of singularly disguised friends, presented himself at the Mansion House, and introduced his person and company to the Lord Mayor as an Oriental potentate from the undiscovered regions of Asia. It was he who organized the famous hoax on the Prime Minister, whereby Downing Street and Whitehall were filled one afternoon with the equipages of all the ambassadors, diplomatists, and political luminaries of London. It was he who sent four Punch and Judy shows, a merry-go-round, and a travelling circus to the garden party at Lambeth Palace, which garden party was being given by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Colonial bishops and their ladies.

Most people who kept themselves acquainted with things knew of Lord Normanstowe and his eccentricities: his disappearance merely seemed to them to be another of his little ways. The probability was, said they, that he was enjoying himself in Paris or Vienna, and would return again, with more mischief in his head, when he was least expected.

But Normanstowe presented himself at the Melatherium to the moment, loudly demanding his £10,000 as soon as he had greeted the select coterie which awaited his coming with suppressed excitement. They stared at him, wonderingly. That he had shaved off his famous whiskers, and even got rid of his moustache, was at once apparent; it was also apparent that he was a little thin. But he brought in with him an alert manner and bright, clear eyes, and he looked uncommonly fit, as if he had been in strict training. And then everybody wanted to know where he had hidden himself.

“That,” replied Normanstowe, carefully putting Wrigge’s cheque away in his pocket, “is my secret. I have, of course, remained within the circumscribed area provided for in the terms of our wager. But as to where I have been, how I got there, what I did there, how I came away from there—that, my friends, is a secret which will never be revealed by me from now to Doomsday.”

“Well, you’ve done it anyway,” said Chisholm.

“Didn’t I say I’d do it?” replied Normanstowe. “Of course I’ve done it. I’ll do it again next year on similar terms. It’s easy as lighting this cigar. But in the meantime I return to the calm and quiet routine of my usual life.”

It was speedily noticed that in pursuing this routine Lord Normanstowe was accompanied almost everywhere by a quiet young man whom he introduced to his set and circle as Mr. John Copperthwaite. According to Normanstowe he had made the acquaintance in South Africa, and had been greatly delighted to renew it. Mr. Copperthwaite proved to be a quiet, well-behaved person, who united modest manners with eminently good looks; it was evident that on his recent arrival in this country he had patronised the best tradesmen in Saville Row and Bond Street, and his well set up, irreproachably garbed and groomed figure, handsome features, and quiet air impressed everybody who met him. And Normanstowe, who was entertaining him royally in the family mansion in Mount Street, used to laugh heartily when they were alone at night.

“ ’Pon my honour, Copper,” he would say, “this is great fun! You’re a consummate actor, by gad!”

“No,” answered Copper, “I’m only perfectly natural—I never could act. I just take things as they come.”

Whereupon Normanstowe would laugh more than ever in his high falsetto voice, and slap his guest on the back and declare that he was the best fun he had had for ages, and that they would keep things up. For Lord Normanstowe was never happy unless he was playing some mischievous game, and it delighted him to take the ex-trooper, ex-warder, out to dinners and dances—all to see him solemnly “playing pretty,” as Normanstowe phrased it.

“Gad!” he used to say, “it’s better than a play!” And he enjoyed it all the more—a characteristic of his—because he had the secret all to himself.

But one morning when Normanstowe was alone, occupied in the engrossing task of seeing how much his racing establishment had cost him that year, there entered to him his sister, Lady Trementower, who was some twelve years older than himself, and in addition to being an incurable gossip, was also a lady of observation and penetration. She closed the door of her brother’s study, sacred to the serious reading of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf and the latest French fiction, and dropped into a chair by his desk. Normanstowe took a sly glance at her, and saw signs of bad weather.

“Look here, Normanstowe,” said her ladyship abruptly, “who is this man Copperthwaite?”

“Chap I knew in South Africa,” answered Normanstowe, promptly and truthfully.

“I dare say you knew a lot of chaps, as you call them, in South Africa,” observed his sister. “But who is he?”

“Name’s John Copperthwaite,” said Normanstowe. “Come from Windebusch, Orange Free State.”

“That conveys nothing to me. I want to know who he is. Is he a gentleman?” demanded Lady Trementower.

“What’s he look like?” asked Normanstowe.

“He is certainly a very well-mannered young man,” replied his sister thoughtfully. “And much more modest than most of you young men are nowadays. But that doesn’t explain him, and such strange people come from South Africa.”

“Yes, live in Park Lane, most of ’em,” said Normanstowe.

“I’m not talking of that sort,” said Lady Trementower. “I want to know who this man is.”

“What’s the matter?” asked Normanstowe.

Lady Trementower coughed.

“Well, of course you introduced him as a friend of yours——”

“Excellent friend, thoroughly dependable, keeps his word,” murmured Normanstowe. “Yes, go on.”

“And so, of course I received him as such,” continued her ladyship. “And he’s come to us and we’ve been here, and we meet him at a great many places to which you take him, and, well, I’m uneasy about Alma Stuvesant.”

Normanstowe lifted his hands in the air, opened his large mouth to its widest extent, and then pursed his lips in a shrill whistle.

“Whew! What—the heiress?” he exclaimed.

“That’s just it,” replied Lady Trementower. “Alma Stuvesant has a quarter of a million in her own right, Normanstowe. Not even her father can touch it. And think of what she expects to get from him—one of the richest men in Chicago!”

“But I thought you and she were fishing for nothing under a Marquis?” said Normanstowe. “You both gave me the frozen eye, anyhow.”

“What girl do you suppose would marry you until you’ve settled down?” demanded Lady Trementower. “But, really, Normanstowe, I do believe the girl is in love with this Copperthwaite. And she’s of age, and her own mistress, and you know what these American girls are!”

“Well, not quite, but I don’t want to know any more,” answered Normanstowe. “You—you surprise me greatly, I had no idea that Alma’s amorous propensities——”

“When is this young man going back to South Africa?” asked Lady Trementower hastily.

“Don’t know. I’ll ask him,” replied Normanstowe. “I think—yes, I believe—soon.”

“Well, I hope so,” said his sister, rising. “I hope so. The fact is that he and Alma are meeting every day—in the park, or in Kensington Gardens, or at one or other of the museums. I know. I’ve had her watched.”

“What horrible depravity!” exclaimed Normanstowe. “Ah, these American manners. Sad, aren’t they? So different to ours. However, I’ll speak to Copper—I mean Mr. Copperthwaite.”

That night in the privacy of the smoking-room, Normanstowe addressed his guest in fatherly fashion.

“I say, Copper, I had my sister here this morning,” he said. “She was on to me like a thousand of bricks—about you.”

“I trust I have done nothing to give her ladyship pain,” answered the guest modestly.

“You’ll give her ladyship an apopletic fit if you don’t mend your manners,” answered the host. “You’ve been playing the meet-me-by-moonlight-alone game with the packed-pork maiden.”

Copper drew himself up.

“My father was more than equal in rank to Miss Stuvesant’s father,” he said. “He was a clergyman, though a poor one—and if family reverses——”

“Oh, chuck that,” said Normanstowe. “Miss Stuvesant is over here to marry a duke, or something of the sort. Why, man, she wouldn’t have me! And don’t you see, my sister would get into an awful hole if—but there, what’s the use of talking? When do you think of leaving England to start that South African game, Copper?”

“I’m leaving England almost at once,” replied Copper, tersely.

“That’s all right,” said Normanstowe. “Well, you’ve kept, and I’m sure you’ll keep, your word to me. You’re never to let it out about where we met, you know. Half the fun of my recent adventure is that all these fellows who were in at it are biting their tongues with vexation because they can’t find out where I put myself. And here’s the five thousand I promised you, Copper, and I hope you’ll turn it into a million. And now let’s have a turn at billiards, and you leave the Chicago beauty to espouse strawberry leaves.”

Copper pocketed the cheque with a single word of thanks, and said no more. He went out of the house very early next morning, and Normanstowe formed the opinion that he had gone to book his passage to South Africa. But just about noon, as he was thinking of strolling out to one of his clubs, Lady Trementower rang him up on the telephone, and as soon as she had got his ear, poured out a breathless flood into it.

“Normanstowe!” she screamed, “is that you? That headstrong girl has married that Copperthwaite person—married him, I tell you! At the Kensington Registry Office this morning. She’s just sent me a note. Stay in, Normanstowe, do you hear? I’m coming round to see you at once. You must do something to have it annulled or——”

Normanstowe calmly dropped the receiver and rang off. Presently the bell again rang sharply; he took no notice. Instead he rang another bell for his valet.

“Beevers,” he said, “we go to Paris, on our way South, by the 2.20 from Charing Cross. Pack all I shall immediately want, and all that you want, and meet me at the train. And oh, Beevers, tell Johnson that if anybody calls this morning—Lady Trementower, for instance—I’m out, and nobody knows when I shall be in.”

Then Normanstowe walked out of the house, and began to shake the dust of Mayfair off his feet.