Читать книгу The Secret of Sheen - John Laurence Pritchard - Страница 6
ОглавлениеCHARITY SHEEN ACTS
Somewhere in the big house a clock had just finished chiming the hour of three. As the last stroke died away Leonard Bilsiter woke with a start and sat up.
The room felt stuffy and was intensely dark and he had a vague idea that the heavy curtains had been drawn, shutting out the half light of the June night. He made a movement to put his hand under his pillow. As he did so an electric torch flashed out and was directed full in his face, blinding him. He jerked his hand automatically and swiftly under his pillow, and there came a subdued laugh from the darkness behind the torch.
“I think, Mr. Bilsiter, you had better accept defeat quietly.”
The words were spoken sharply and the moneylender caught the glint of a revolver barrel as the other moved it forward.
“You see I have got your revolver. I thought, perhaps, it was wiser to get that first. Revolvers have a nasty habit of going off. I’ve drawn the blinds, too, in case my light shows outside. To save you the trouble of wasting your energies I have blown the main fuse, so that none of the lights in the house work. Candles are so difficult to see with, aren’t they, when you’re running after a man? The door is also locked and the key is in my pocket. Altogether a very unpleasant situation for you. Now then, get up.”
“What do——”
“Get out of bed!” interrupted the other curtly. “I’m having no monkey tricks, and I’m going to be obeyed, and talk afterwards.”
Slowly Bilsiter climbed out of bed. His beady eyes were half shut, to allow himself to get accustomed to the light. His brain was working quickly. To give him his due, he was no coward, but the business end of a revolver, held by a man whom he could not see, was a powerful argument for obedience.
“What do you want?” he demanded evenly.
“I want all the contents of all your pockets, as a beginning, Bilsiter,” came the voice from the darkness. “And I want them quickly. Now then, start with your dress clothes. Pile all the things in the pockets on the floor there, and be quick about it. Turn the pockets inside out. I don’t trust you.”
The moneylender moved away from the bed, the light following him.
“I suppose you are the man who calls himself Charity Sheen?” said Bilsiter coolly, as he put his hand in the inside pocket of his dinner jacket. “If so, you won’t get much for charity this time.”
“I dare say I shall get all I want, all the same,” replied the other. “Now your trouser pockets.”
Charity Sheen watched the moneylender from behind the screen of darkness as the latter placed the contents of his pockets on the floor beside him. A cigarette case, a gold-mounted cigarette-holder, a small pocket-book, some silver, a key, and a handkerchief appeared to be all.
“Now what next, Mr. Sheen?” asked Bilsiter, with a slight trace of sarcasm in his tones. “The cuff-links out of my shirt?”
“May as well have them while I am about it,” replied Sheen.
He moved suddenly forward as he spoke and kicked the pocket-book and the key towards him with his foot.
“I fancy these will be more valuable,” he remarked.
He was narrowly watching the other, and he saw a momentary tightening of his lips. But Bilsiter spoke calmly enough.
“And I fancy not,” he said easily. “The notebook merely contains a few notes of my engagements, though I am afraid I failed to put down Mr. Sheen, 3 a.m. June 19th, and the key is merely the key of one of my trunks, which contains spare clothing.”
“And the things I want,” snapped Sheen. “It is usual to hand over your keys to the man who is looking after you, as you did not bring your own man with you. The fact that you kept the key back, that you carry it about with you, suggests the trunk is worth looking into, Mr. Leonard Bilsiter. Where is that trunk, eh?”
The moneylender was on one knee beside his property, half turned away from the man with the light. His eyes were getting accustomed to the glare which had dazzled him, and he was now purposely refraining from looking directly at it. Dimly, through half-shut eyes, he could make out the form of Charity Sheen, though he could not see his face.
All the time Bilsiter had been emptying his pockets his brain had been working. He had not the slightest intention of allowing Sheen to get away with his property. He picked up his dress shirt and started to take the cuff-links out.
“The trunk is over there by the window,” he said slowly. “You still want the links, I suppose.”
He stood up as he spoke and then, without warning, flung the shirt straight at the hand holding the torch, and stepping swiftly aside, lunged forward in the semi-darkness with his closed fist. It met the barrel of the revolver which he heard drop to the floor. He opened his mouth to shout at the precise moment the fist of Sheen met his body somewhere about the waistline Bilsiter gave an unexpected grunt of agony, and, winded, struck out wildly. He was fighting a losing battle, for immediately afterwards Sheen’s fist caught him full in the face. The moneylender spun half around, flung up his arms in a vain effort to save himself, and then dropped to the floor.
“And that’s that,” muttered his opponent grimly. “And now, I think, Mr. Bilsiter, we’ll tie you up before you cause further trouble.”
Bilsiter did not answer, for the simple reason that he was, temporarily, beyond answering. He was half unconscious from the two blows he had received, and by the time he had recovered he found himself firmly tied up with cord from his dressing-gown and one of the straps from his bags. His own handkerchief, stuffed in his mouth, completed his discomfiture.
After that Charity Sheen worked methodically and rapidly. The key the moneylender had turned out of his dress clothes he promptly tried in the small box on the dressing-table.
“So that was your trunk, eh?” he said softly as he lifted the lid and disclosed a number of papers inside. “It was rather a foolish kind of tale, especially as this key is obviously not a trunk key. I am a bit of an authority on keys. I knew you were contemplating some monkey trick when you told me that lie.”
He switched his light on the face of the man lying on the bed. Bilsiter’s eyes were glaring the rage he felt and Charity Sheen laughed.
“There is no need for me to search further,” he continued. “I fancy these are the papers I want, and perhaps there are a few more which will prove useful.”
Nevertheless, he turned them all rapidly over under the light of his torch before he placed them in his pocket.
“And now good night, Mr. Bilsiter,” he said mockingly. “I am sorry to inconvenience you, but I must have a little time to make a safe exit. I think I will take this revolver with me in case you have any other visitors and turn nasty.”
He slipped a single sheet of paper on the dressing-table. It bore the words, “Received with thanks, in full settlement. Charity Sheen.”
“Happy days,” he added.
He unlocked the door, and closing it softly behind him stepped into the corridor, listening keenly, and then chuckled to himself as he thought of Bilsiter lying there on the bed. He wondered how long it would take the man to free himself. The story would be public property to-morrow afternoon. He laughed again to himself as he remembered how he had bluffed his victim, prevented him from attempting to switch on the electric light by the story that he had blown the main fuse.
“It’s an idea to remember, though,” he murmured to himself. “Makes things safer. No one thinks of candles and matches in an emergency till too late.”
He moved rapidly and noiselessly over the heavy carpet, as noiselessly turned the handle of one of the bedroom doors and stepped inside. As he turned to close it his strained ears caught the sound of a door opening farther down the corridor, and he stood there in the semi-darkness of early dawn. The shadows were still too deep for him to see. He listened, his hand on the handle of the door, and heard the soft pat pat of someone passing. Cautiously he opened the door and looked out. He could see but a dim shadow as it disappeared round the bend in the corridor—someone in a dressing-gown—and quickly he closed the door.
“Whew! That was a narrow squeak. A minute later——”
He shrugged his shoulders. A miss was as good as a mile. If the other had met him, had recognised him, it would have been difficult for him to explain his presence in the corridor at that time in the morning, and inevitably when the story Bilsiter would have to tell became known suspicion would fall on him. He wasted no time considering who the other was or what he might want, wandering about at that time of night. It did not occur to him that it was for any reason but some perfectly legitimate one.
The man who called himself Charity Sheen locked his bedroom door, turned on the light of his torch again, and looked through the papers he had taken, one by one. At one he stopped and stared thoughtfully for some time. It began: “I promise to pay ...” and bore the signature “John Abbleway.”
“If that’s Sir John Abbleway’s signature,” he murmured to himself, “then I don’t know it when I see it. I could have done it better myself. So that’s Bilsiter’s game, is it? By Heaven, if I’d known I don’t think I should have hit him quite so softly.”
Dawn had fully broken before he had finished reading the papers and had placed them where he did not intend they should be found in a hurry. Charity Sheen had not evaded all the powers of Scotland Yard for two years by being careless. He unlocked the door and a few minutes after his head had touched the pillow he was fast asleep. And as he slept there was a smile on his face.
