Читать книгу The Mind Readers - Margery Allingham - Страница 5

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The main-line approach to London from the east country has not changed in half a century. Just before one o’clock, as the party of boys traveling up from St. Josephus, the preparatory school for Totham College, approached Liverpool Street Station, the carriages were dark as on a winter’s evening and outside the windows the soot-covered arches were as black and mysterious as the entrance to a thousand little tombs. The smell of the city, unbearably exciting and nostalgic to young Londoners, was already pervading the train, stinging eyes and noses and forcing itself into mouths sick and tired of fresh air and plain food.

The games master who was in charge of the party, a square young man called Mason, not very long out of university, was smoking in the corridor where he could keep an eye on three compartments. Two of these were full, for the London contingent was strong this year, but in the third there were only two boys. He had thought it best to keep little Sam Ferris and his cousin apart from the rest. There had been too much chatter about the libel suit already and he did not want the child ragged. He was a sensitive little beast and there was no telling how seriously he was concerned by the whole infuriating business. The cousin, Edward Longfox, was a different type entirely. He was older, of course, but young Mr. Mason very much wondered if he had ever been very different even in his perambulator. He could see him now, sitting in the corner closest to the corridor, his small shoulders hunched, his curiously wizened face expressionless and his flaming-red hair burning in the gloom. The hair really was remarkable. Some children would have found it an intolerable affliction, but young Longfox bore it as stoically as he did his name. They were both marks of distinction, of course, in their way. Richard Longfox, the father, had had a brilliant career as a scientist and had made a reputation for himself before he met his untimely death on the Antarctic 507 expedition. In the opinion of the headmaster the boy had inherited his brains. The hair, on the other hand, had come from his mother’s family. She was Sophia, daughter of the Earl of Pontisbright, whose title had been revived so romantically in the 1930’s, and whose family coloring was a legend. At the moment she was in South America with her father and Edward was to spend the short holiday with another member of the clan, the Lady Amanda of Alandel Airplanes fame. She, of course, was married to that very odd character Albert Campion. It occurred to Mason that Edward would fit in with that family very well: the child looked like some sort of eccentric already.

Mason walked down the corridor and glanced in at Sam. The small boy was sitting opposite his cousin, a comic paper folded on his knee and his pink and white face as inscrutable as only children’s are. Kids were like eggs at that age, Mason reflected. God alone knew how each was going to hatch out later on.

At the moment Helena Ferris’s son was angel-faced, with straw-colored hair and eyes as gray as her own. He was sitting up straight on the edge of the seat, one sandaled foot stretched to touch the floor to insure his balance as the train lurched over the points. He seemed as lost in thought as his cousin. Whereas the children in the other two compartments were swarming over the windows like caged puppies in a petshop, these two were behaving like little old men engrossed by inner cares. The master was reminded again of the libel suit, and his irritation increased. He did not belong to that section of the Common Room who felt that Philip Allenbury was not justified in suing “Tabloid” Pellett, the examiner, whatever the stupid old idiot had written to the headmaster about him, but it seemed a pity that he could not vindicate himself without dragging the children into the quarrel. He was still thinking about the whole extraordinary business and wondering what on earth had happened, since, however one looked at them, the circumstances were pretty fishy, when the train lurched into the station and he was surrounded by a milling crowd of his charges.

The coach reserved for St. Josephus was in the front of the train and came to rest under the footbridge so that the platform there was very narrow and darker even than the rest of the station. The train was full and the little crowd of relatives waiting for the boys was constantly broken up by the stream of travelers from the back of the train. There was considerable confusion and the schoolmaster solved the problem by keeping his charges in the corridor and only letting each one out as an escort appeared for him. He was halfway through the task when he came to the turn of a hatless young woman in decorated spectacles and a dark coat who spoke to him earnestly for a few seconds. The children in the train could not hear her, but a trickle of anxiety ran through the throng and the message was passed back hastily. “Ferris and Longfox, Ferris and Longfox. Hurry. Come on. Buck up.”

Mason looked up from the platform as the two appeared. Although he was over twelve, Edward was no taller than his eight-and-a-half-year-old cousin, and they made a rather pathetic picture, their startled faces unnaturally solemn in the gloom, as they hung for a moment at the top of the steps looking at the woman who was clearly a stranger to them.

Mason lifted the younger boy down and beckoned to the other and they all stood for a moment beside the girl, who was smiling encouragingly at the children.

The young man cleared his throat awkwardly, as anxious as the boys. “Look, Ferris,” he said very gently. “This is Miss...?”

“Lewis,” she supplied quickly. “From the hospital.”

“Yes, yes, I see.” He tried to silence her. “But you told me it was not serious?”

“No, it’s not, but she would like to see him. He should come with me now.” She put out a hand and took Sam’s own. He submitted very meekly and said nothing at all but glanced sharply at his cousin, who pressed forward.

“We wondered if Mrs. Ferris was going to meet us,” Edward said, revealing a husky voice unexpectedly precise from such a small person.

“She’s been detained.” Mason spoke before Miss Lewis could explain. “There has been a slight accident, but it is not serious. His mother would like to see Sam, and so he’s going straight to her. You can manage on your own, can you, Longfox?”

“Or perhaps his cousin would come too?” Miss Lewis spoke briskly. It was evident that she was worried and anxious to get back. “It would be nice for the young one to have a friend with him.”

Mason hesitated. The situation sounded more serious than he had thought, but before he could intervene Miss Lewis had smiled at Edward, who somewhat unexpectedly took her other hand, and they all three hurried off down the platform to the ticket barrier.

Mason was claimed at once by the mother of one of the other boys and had no time to consider the incident, although in the back of his mind he was uneasy. He wondered if he should have made the woman wait so that he could go with the boys himself, but meanwhile he was very fully occupied and Miss Lewis had certainly seemed in a hurry. He hoped nothing really frightful had happened to young Ferris’s mother.

The hatless girl with the floating coat and the two boys, each of whom carried a small suitcase in his free hand, sped across the concrete in silence. The children made no attempt to speak and the woman seemed too worried, but once the barrier was passed and they climbed the footbridge and came down into the wide glass hall of the main departure platform she relaxed a little.

“We have a nice big car waiting for us out in the street,” she said. “Do you know your way about here? We only have to go through the main booking hall and up the ramp and there it will be. You will see your mother very soon.”

Sam nodded. He was very white and had begun to tremble, but he kept up with her, running a little when he had to, as did Edward on her other side. There was nothing extraordinary in the picture they made. The whole station seemed to be dotted with striding women leading running children home for half term, but since it was not crowded as if it had been the rush hour they got on very quickly.

The booking office, which is also the main entrance to the station, has two sets of large double doors leading to the covered way where the taxicabs wait, and beside the first set of these there stands as a rule a City of London police constable. The city police are taller than most and, as some say, even handsomer and more splendid.

P. C. Godfrey Hawkins, who was on duty on this occasion, was six foot four in his socks, in the prime of life and looking bored and magnificent as he stared idly over the heads of the stream of outgoing passengers, his helmet and silver buttons worthy emblems of authority.

A husky voice somewhere about his waist startled him suddenly and the astonishing statement it conveyed took him so completely by surprise that he reacted slowly.

“Officer!” said the voice, young but unmistakable in background and temper. “I wish to give this lady in charge. She is attempting to kidnap me and my cousin.”

There was a flurry before him, and Godfrey looked down to see a flash of red hair, two struggling children, and a black coat whipping round someone wearing spectacles, and then the second child broke free. He flung himself at the policeman’s solid blue legs and hung on to one of them as if it had been a tree.

“Look out!” The voice was high and shrill. “Look out. She’s a spy!”

Everything which, as a policeman, he had ever learned about the irrepressible idiocy of the human boy leaped into the constable’s mind, and he was in the act of scooping young Sam to his feet with a few well-chosen words about the inadvisability of behaving like a goat while dealing with the law when the incredible thing happened.

Miss Lewis took to her heels and fled up the hill toward the busy street, her coat flying out behind her and her shoes clattering on the pavement.

At the same moment a man who had been loitering in the shadow of the ticket bureau swept past the astounded little group and pressed on up the drive after her.