Читать книгу The Great God Gold - Le Queux William - Страница 3

Raymond Diamond’s unfortunate deformity had always been against his advancement in his profession.

The only son of old Doctor Diamond, a country practitioner of the old school, in Norfolk, he had had a brilliant career at Edinburgh, and after some years of changeful life as a locum tenens had bought a partnership in a practice on the outskirts of Birmingham.

His partner turned out to be a rogue who had misrepresented facts, and six months afterwards absconded to America. Diamond, however, betrayed a sharp resourcefulness. He advertised the practice in the Lancet, and when a prospective purchaser came to view it, he hired fourteen or fifteen men to come into the surgery, one after the other, and pay fees. Such an impression did this ruse cause upon the newly married medico, who came from London to investigate, that he bought it at once, and Diamond netted nearly twice the sum he originally gave for his partnership.

Finding that his deformity precluded him from forming anything like a lucrative practice, he accepted a berth as ship’s doctor in the P&O service, and for some years sailed the Indian and China seas.

Back in London again, he drifted from one suburban practice to another, doing locum work, and at last built up a semblance of a practice in a cheap new suburban district down at Catford.

Even there, however, his ugliness proved much against him, and at last he was forced to retire into a Northamptonshire village, where he and his wife eked out a modest living by adopting children upon yearly payments.

It was not a very creditable means of livelihood, yet the several children beneath their cottage roof were all well treated and well cared for. And after all, Raymond Diamond, a brilliant man in many ways, was only a failure because of his physical shortcomings.

He knew his Paris well. In his younger days he had often been there. Indeed, he once resided at St. Cloud with an invalid gentleman for close upon two years. Long years of travel had rendered him a thorough-going cosmopolitan, even though his lot was now cast in a sleepy country village.

The reason of his present visit to Paris was in order to interview the father of one of his adopted daughters, but the man had not kept the appointment, and by waiting from day to day in hope of finding him, he had exhausted his slender finances, and he knew that his patient wife was in a similar condition of penury at home.

He was certainly a strikingly ugly man. His forehead was broad and bulgy, and his face narrowed to the point of the beard. His head seemed too large, his arms too long and ungainly, while his face was deeply furrowed by long years at sea. His mouth, too, was wide and ugly and when he laughed he displayed an uneven row of teeth much discoloured by tobacco.

With folded arms, he was standing by the dead stranger, silently contemplating the white upturned face which showed distinctly in the fading twilight.

“I wonder who he was?” he exclaimed aloud. “Why did he refuse his name, and why was he so particular to burn those papers? He was a queer stick – poor fellow! I suppose they have inquests in France, and I’ll get something as a witness.”

And he pulled the sheet tenderly across to hide the lifeless visage.

“But,” he added, “perhaps I’ve rendered myself liable because I didn’t call in a French doctor!”

Then, suddenly arousing himself, he walked softly across to the stove and, spreading his handkerchief on the floor, raked out all the tinder into it. To his satisfaction he saw, as he had anticipated, that some of the papers, closely folded as they were, had only been burned at the edges.

One of them he opened, and found it covered with typewriting.

“These will, no doubt, prove interesting,” he remarked to himself as he gathered every particle up into the handkerchief, and very carefully folded it over to protect it.

The lid of an old cardboard box which he found under the bed he broke up, and placing one piece above the handkerchief and the other below, he put the whole into the breast-pocket of his shabby frock-coat.

The stranger’s bag he next examined. It was old, and covered with labels of first-class hotels – many of them in cities in the Near East and the Levant. The contents were disappointing, only a couple of shirts marked with the initials “P.H.”, several dirty collars, a cravat or two, and a safety razor, together with a few unimportant odds and ends.

“The proprietor must have these, in lieu of his bill, I suppose,” Diamond said. “I wonder what ‘P.H.’ stands for? He was a well-read man without a doubt. By Jove! he took his blow as bravely as any fellow I’ve seen go under. With a heart like that, it’s a marvel that he lived so long. If I knew who his relatives were, I’d ‘wire’ to them – providing I had the money,” he added with a bitter smile.

Then he shrugged his shoulders, and after striking a match to reassure himself that nothing had been left inside the stove to betray the fact that papers had been burned there, he turned upon his heel and left the room.

Below, in his dingy little back room on the first floor, he saw the proprietor, and told him what had occurred.

The old man grunted in his armchair and ordered the greasy-looking valet-de-chambre to inform the police, but to first go and search the dead man’s effects and ascertain if he had left any money.

“Monsieur Blanc was penniless, like myself,” Diamond said. “Neither of us had eaten all day yesterday.”

“No money to pay his bill!” croaked the old Frenchman, who looked more like a concierge than a hotel proprietor. “And you are also without money?” he asked glaring.

“I regret that such is the truth,” was Diamond’s answer with much politeness. “Has not m’sieur noticed in life that honest men are mostly poor? Thieves and rogues are usually in funds.”

“Then I must ask you to leave my hotel at once,” said the old man testily.

The Doctor grinned, and bowed.

“If that is m’sieur’s decision, I can do nothing else but obey,” was his polite answer.

“You will leave your luggage, of course.”

“M’sieur is quite welcome to all he finds,” was the Doctor’s response, and with another bow he turned and strode out.

His plan had worked admirably. He had no desire to remain there in the present circumstances. To be ordered out was certainly better than to flee.

So he walked gaily down the stairs, and a few minutes later was strolling airily down the Rue Lafayette, in the direction of the Opera.

The hotel proprietor and the valet-de-chambre quickly searched the dead man’s room, but beyond the bag and its contents found nothing. Afterwards they informed the police.

Meanwhile Raymond Diamond walked on, undecided how to act. He had already reached the Place de l’Opera, now bright beneath its many electric lamps, before he had made up his mind. He would go once again in search of little Aggie’s father, the man who owed him money.

Therefore he turned into the narrow Rue des Petit-Champs, and half-way down entered a house, passed the concierge, and ascended to a flat on the second floor.

Fully twenty times he had called there before, but the place was shut, as its owner, an Englishman, was absent somewhere in the Midi. When, however, he rang, he heard movement within.

His heart leapt for joy, for when the door opened there stood Mr Mullet, a tall, thin, red-haired man with a long pale face and a reddish, bristly moustache, who, the moment he recognised his visitor, stretched forth his hand in welcome.

“Come in, Doctor,” he cried cheerily. “I got back only this morning, and the concierge gave me your card. I expected, however, you’d grown tired of waiting, and returned to England. How’s my little Aggie?”

“She grows a bonnie girl, Mr Mullet – quite a bonnie girl,” answered the ugly little man. “Gets on wonderfully well at school. And Lady Gavin, at the Manor, takes quite an interest in her.”

“That’s right. I’m glad to hear it – very glad. Though I’m a bit of a rover, Doctor, I’m always thinking of the child you know. Why – she must be nearly thirteen now.”

“Nearly. It’s fully six years since I took her off your hands.”

“Fully.”

And the two men sat down in the rather comfortable room of the tall, cadaverous-looking man, a mining engineer, whose adventures would have filled a volume.

David Mullet, or “Red Mullet” as his friends called him on account of the colour of his hair, offered the Doctor a good cigar from his case, poured out two glasses of brandy and soda, and after a chat took out two notes of a thousand francs from the pocket-book he carried and handed them to his visitor, receiving a receipt in return.

“I’ve been a long time paying, I’m afraid, Doctor,” laughed the man airily. “But you know what kind of fellow I am! Sometimes I’m flush of money, and at others devilish hard up.”

“I’m hard up, or I wouldn’t press for this.”

“My dear Doctor, it’s been owing for two years. And I’m very glad to get out of your debt.”

“Well, Mr Mullet,” Diamond said, “eighty pounds is a lot to me just now. I haven’t had a square meal for days, and to tell the truth I’ve just been ordered out of my hotel.”

“My dear fellow, that’s happened to me dozens of times,” laughed the other. “I never feel sorry for the proprietor. I only regret that I can’t give tips to the servants. I suppose you’ll go back home – eh?”

“To-night, or by the first service in the morning.”

“By Jove, I’d like to see my little Aggie. I wonder,” exclaimed the man, “I wonder if I could manage to get across?”

“It isn’t far,” urged the Doctor.

But “Red Mullet” hesitated. He had a cause to hesitate. There was a hidden reason why for the past three years he had not put foot on English soil.

He shook his head sadly as he recognised that discretion was the better part of valour. He was too wary a man to run his neck into a noose.

“No,” he said, “I think that in a few weeks I’ll ask you to bring little Aggie over here to see me. You won’t mind the trip – eh?”

“Not at all,” was the reply. “Aggie will hardly know her father, I expect. She looks upon me as her parent.”

“That was what we arranged, Doctor. She was to take your name, and you were to bring her up as your own daughter. I have a reason for that.”

“So you told me six years ago.”

“Red Mullet” nodded, and stretched out his long legs lazily as he contemplated the smoke of his cigar ascending to the ceiling. Recollections of his child had struck a sympathetic chord in his memory. There were incidents in his life that he would fain have forgotten. One of them was now recalled.

Quickly, however, the shadow passed, and his brow cleared. He became the same easy-going, humorous man he always had been, possessing a merry bonhomie and a fund of stories regarding his own amusing experiences in various out-of-the-way corners of the world.

At last the Doctor, with eighty pounds in his pocket, rose and wished his friend adieu.

Then he walked to a brasserie in the Avenue de l’Opera, where he dined well, concluding his meal with coffee and a liqueur, and at nine o’clock he left the Gare du Nord for Calais and London.

The reason of his sudden flight from Paris was the fear of having contravened the law by not calling in a French medical man when he knew that the case of the mysterious Blanc was hopeless. Detention would mean trouble and much expense. Therefore he deemed it best to get across to England at the earliest possible moment.

At six o’clock next morning he found himself in a small hotel called the Norfolk in Surrey Street, Strand, where he had on one or two occasions stayed. The waiter having brought up his breakfast, he locked the door and, going to the table, he took from his pocket the packet of charred paper and broken tinder which he had abstracted from the stove in Paris.

With infinite care he opened the handkerchief and spread it out. The tinder had broken into tiny fragments and some had been reduced to black powder, while the half-charred paper split as he attempted to open it.

He had switched on the light, for the London dawn had not yet spread. Then, seating himself at the table, he proceeded to examine and decipher the remains of the papers which the dying man believed he had entirely destroyed.

For some time he could make nothing of the lines of written words, which had neither beginning nor end.

Suddenly, however, he held his breath. He sat erect, statuesque, his dark eyes staring at the paper.

Then he re-read the written lines eagerly.

“Great Heavens! How strange!” he cried. “How utterly astounding! That man who refused his name had learned the greatest and most important secret this modern world of ours contains! And it is in my hands —mine! My God! Is it true – is it really true what this man alleges?”

He paused and again re-read the smoke-blackened, half-burned pages. For some moments he sat with his mouth open in utter astonishment. He could scarcely believe his own eyes.

“His secret – his amazing secret, one unheard of – is mine!” he gasped, glancing around the room, as though half-fearful lest he had been overheard. “I shall be a rich man – one of the richest in all Europe! Before six months is out the whole world will be at the feet of Raymond Diamond!”