Читать книгу Look to the Lady - Margery Allingham - Страница 4

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Val sat forward in the half-darkness and peered out. The old cab was, he guessed, travelling all out at about thirty-five miles an hour. The streets were rain-swept and deserted and he recognized that he was being carried directly out of his way.

On the face of it he was being kidnapped, but this idea was so ridiculous in his present condition that he was loth to accept it. Deciding that the driver must be drunk or deaf, he thundered again on the glass and tried shouting down the speaking tube.

“I want Bottle Street—off Piccadilly.”

This time he had no doubt that his driver heard him, for the man jerked his head in a negative fashion and the cab rocked and swayed dangerously. Val Gyrth had to accept the situation, absurd though it might be. He was a prisoner being borne precipitately to an unknown destination.

During the past eighteen months he had discovered himself in many unpleasant predicaments, but never one that called for such immediate action. At any other time he might have hesitated until it was too late, but to-night the cumulative effects of starvation and weariness had produced in him a dull recklessness, and the mood which had permitted him to follow such a fantastic will-o’-the-wisp as his name on a discarded envelope, and later to accept the hardly conventional invitation of the mysterious Mr Campion, was still upon him. Moreover, the kindly ministrations of Mr Lugg had revived his strength and with it his temper.

At that moment, hunched up inside the cab, he was a dangerous person. His hands were knotted together, and the muscles of his jaw contracted.

The moment the idea came into his head he put it into execution.

He bent down and removed the heavy shoe with the thin sole, from which the lace had long since disappeared. With this formidable weapon tightly gripped in his hand, he crouched in the body of the cab, holding himself steady by the flower bracket above the spare seats. He was still prodigiously strong, and put all he knew into the blow. His arm crashed down like a machine hammer, smashing through the plate glass and down on to the driver’s skull.

Instantly Gyrth dropped on to the mat, curling himself up, his arms covering his head. The driver’s thick cap had protected him considerably, but the attack was so sudden that he lost control of his wheel. The cab skidded violently across the greasy road, mounted the pavement and smashed sickeningly into a stone balustrade.

The impact was terrific: the car bounded off the stonework, swayed for an instant and finally crashed over on to its side.

Gyrth was hurled into the worn hood of the cab, which tore beneath his weight. He was conscious of warm blood trickling down his face from a cut across his forehead, and one of his shoulders was wrenched, but he had been prepared for the trouble and was not seriously injured. He was still angry, still savage. He fought his way out through the torn fabric on to the pavement, and turned for an instant to survey the scene.

His captor lay hidden beneath the mass of wreckage and made no sound. But the street was no longer deserted. Windows were opening and from both ends of the road came the sound of voices and hurrying footsteps.

Gyrth was in no mood to stop to answer questions. He wiped the blood from his face with his coat-sleeve and was relieved to find that the damage was less messy than he had feared. He slipped on the shoe, which he still gripped, and vanished like a shadow up a side street.

He finished the rest of his journey on foot.

He went to the address in Bottle Street largely out of curiosity, but principally, perhaps, because he had nowhere else to go. He chose the narrow dark ways, cutting through the older part of Holborn and the redolent alleys of Soho.

Now, for the first time for days, he realized that he was free from that curious feeling of oppression which had vaguely puzzled him. There was no one in the street behind him as he turned from dark corner to lighted thoroughfare and came at last to the cul-de-sac off Piccadilly which is Bottle Street.

The single blue lamp of the Police Station was hardly inviting, but the door of Number Seventeen, immediately upon the left, stood ajar. He pushed it open gingerly.

He was well-nigh exhausted, however, and his shreds of caution had vanished. Consoling himself with the thought that nothing could be worse than his present predicament, he climbed painfully up the wooden steps. After the first landing there was a light and the stairs were carpeted, and he came at last to a full stop before a handsome linenfold oak door. A small brass plate bore the simple legend, “Mr Albert Campion. The Goods Dept.”

There was also a very fine florentine knocker, which, however, he did not have occasion to use, for the door opened and an entirely unexpected figure appeared in the opening.

A tall thin young man with a pale inoffensive face, and vague eyes behind enormous horn-rimmed spectacles smiled out at him with engaging friendliness. He was carefully, not to say fastidiously, dressed in evening clothes, but the correctness of his appearance was somewhat marred by the fact that in his hand he held a string to which was attached a child’s balloon of a particularly vituperant pink.

He seemed to become aware of this incongruous attachment as soon as he saw his visitor, for he made several unsuccessful attempts to hide it behind his back. He held out his hand.

“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” he said in a well-bred, slightly high-pitched voice.

Considerably startled, Gyrth put out his hand. “I don’t know who you are,” he began, “but I’m Val Gyrth and I’m looking for a man who calls himself Albert Campion.”

“That’s all right,” said the stranger releasing the balloon, which floated up to the ceiling, with the air of one giving up a tiresome problem. “None genuine without my face on the wrapper. This is me—my door—my balloon. Please come in and have a drink. You’re rather late—I was afraid you weren’t coming,” he went on, escorting his visitor across a narrow hall into a small but exceedingly comfortable sitting-room, furnished and decorated in a curious and original fashion. There were several odd trophies on the walls, and above the mantelpiece, between a Rosenberg drypoint and what looked like a page from an original ‘Dance of Death’, was a particularly curious group composed of a knuckle-duster surmounted by a Scotland Yard Rogues’ Gallery portrait of a well-known character, neatly framed and affectionately autographed. A large key of a singular pattern completed the tableau.

Val Gyrth sank down into the easy chair his host set for him. This peculiar end to his night’s adventure, which in itself had been astonishing enough, had left him momentarily stupefied. He accepted the brandy-and-soda which the pale young man thrust into his hands and began to sip it without question.

It was at this point that Mr Campion appeared to notice the cut on his visitor’s forehead. His concern was immediate.

“So you had a spot of trouble getting here?” he said. “I do hope they didn’t play rough.”

Val put down his glass, and sitting forward in his chair looked up into his host’s face.

“Look here,” he said, “I haven’t the least idea who you are, and this night’s business seems like a fairy tale. I find an envelope addressed to me, open, in the middle of Ebury Square. Out of crazy curiosity I follow it up. At Kemp’s eating-house in Clerkenwell I find a letter waiting for me from you, with two pounds in it and an extraordinary invitation card. I get in a taxi to come here and the man tries to shanghai me. I scramble out of that mess with considerable damage to myself, and more to the driver, and when I get here I find you apparently quite au fait with my affairs and fooling about with a balloon. I may be mad—I don’t know.”

Mr Campion looked hurt. “I’m sorry about the balloon,” he said. “I’d just come back from a gala at the Athenaeum, when Lugg phoned to say you were coming. He’s out to-night, so I had to let you in myself. I don’t see that you can grumble about that. The taxi sounds bad. That’s why you were late, I suppose?”

“That’s all right,” said Val, who was still ruffled. “But it must be obvious to you that I want an explanation, and you know very well that you owe me one.”

It was then that Mr Campion stepped sideways so that the light from the reading-lamp on the table behind him shone directly upon his visitor’s face. Then he cleared his throat and spoke with a curious deliberation quite different from his previous manner.

“I see you take the long road, Mr. Gyrth,” he said quietly.

Val raised his eyes questioningly to his hosts face. It was the second time that night that the simple remark had been made to him, and each time there had been this same curious underlying question in the words.

He stared at his host blankly, but the pale young man’s slightly vacuous face wore no expression whatsoever, and his eyes were obscured behind the heavy spectacles. He did not stir, but stood there clearly waiting a reply, and in that instant the younger man caught a glimpse of waters running too deep for him to fathom.