Читать книгу The Four Faces - Le Queux William - Страница 7

"Good heavens, Dulcie!" I exclaimed, hurrying across to her, "whatever are you doing here? And you, Aunt Hannah?"

At the sound of my voice Dulcie started up in her chair, and Aunt Hannah turned quickly. To my amazement they both looked at me without uttering. Dulcie's eyes were troubled. She seemed inclined to speak, yet afraid to. The expression with which Aunt Hannah peered at me chilled me.

"What is the meaning of this, Mr. Berrington?" she asked coldly, after a brief pause. Even in that moment of tense anxiety it struck me that Aunt Hannah looked and spoke as though reproving a naughty schoolboy.

"Meaning of what?" I said stupidly, astonishment for the moment deadening my intelligence.

"Of your bringing us up to London to find—this."

"Bringing you up? What do you mean, Miss Challoner?" I exclaimed, mystified.

In spite of my deep anxiety, a feeling of annoyance, of resentment, had come over me. No man likes to be made to look ridiculous, and here was I standing before a lot of constables, all of them staring in inquisitive astonishment at my being thus addressed by the old lady.

"Is this Mr. Berrington, madam?" an immensely tall, bull-necked, plain-clothes policeman, of pompous, forbidding mien, suddenly asked.

"Yes, officer, it is," she snapped. During all the time I had known her I had never seen her quite like this.

"See here," he said, turning to me, "I want your address, and for the present you will stay here."

I am considered good-tempered. Usually, too, I can control my feelings. There is a limit, however, to the amount of incivility I can stand, and this fellow was deliberately insulting me.

"How dare you speak like that to me!" I burst out. "What has this affair to do with me? Do you know who I am?"

"Aren't you Mr. Michael Berrington?" he inquired more guardedly, apparently taken aback at my outburst of indignation.

"I am."

"Then read that," he said, producing a telegram and holding it out before me.

It was addressed to:

"Miss Dulcie Challoner, Holt Manor, Holt Stacey," and ran:

"The police have recovered property which they believe to have been stolen from Holt Manor. Please come at once to 430 Grafton Street, Bond Street, to identify it. Shall expect you by train due Paddington 12:17. Please don't fail to come as matter very urgent.

"MICHAEL BERRINGTON."

It had been handed in at the office in Regent Street at 9:30 that morning, and received at Holt Stacey village at 9:43.

"How absurd! How ridiculous!" I exclaimed. "My name has been forged, of course. I never sent that telegram; this is the first I have seen or heard of it."

"That you will have to prove," the detective answered, with official stolidity.

"Surely, Aunt Hannah," I almost shouted—so excited did I feel—as I again turned to her, "you can't think I sent that telegram?"

"I certainly think nothing else," she replied, and her eyes were like shining beads. "Who would send a telegram signed with your name but you, or someone instructed by you?"

I saw that to argue with her in the frame of mind she was then in would be futile—my presentiment at Holt that some day I should fall foul of her had come true! I turned to the officer.

"I must see the original of that telegram," I said quickly, "and shall then quickly prove that it was not sent by me. How soon can I get hold of it?"

"Oh, we can see about it at once, sir," he answered much more civilly, for, pretending to look for something in my pocket, I had intentionally pulled out my leather wallet, containing two hundred pounds or more in notes, and opened it for an instant. There is nothing like the sight of paper money to ensure civility from a policeman disposed to be impertinent—I should like, in justice, to add that most policemen are not.

Also Easterton had come over and spoken to me, and of course pooh-poohed the idea of my having sent the telegram, which had just been shown to him. Dulcie stared at me with large, pathetic eyes, and I knew that, but for Aunt Hannah's so-to-speak mounting guard, she would have asked me endless questions instead of sitting there mute.

"You had better come with me and hear Jack Osborne's story," Easterton said some moments later. "The Inspector tells me he is upstairs, and still rather weak from the effect of the treatment he has received."