Читать книгу Beau Geste - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 14

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That evening, George Lawrence told Lady Brandon all that Major de Beaujolais had told him, adding his own ideas, suggestions, and theories. But whereas the soldier had been concerned with the inexplicable events of the day, Lawrence was concerned with the inexplicable paper and the means by which it had reached the hand of a dead man, on the roof of a desert outpost in the Sahara.

Throughout his telling of the tale, Lady Brandon maintained an unbroken silence, but her eyes scarcely left his face.

At the end she asked a few questions, but offered no opinion, propounded no theory.

“We’ll talk about it after dinner, George,” she said.

And after a poignantly delightful dinner à deux—it being explained that the Reverend Maurice Ffolliot was dining in his room to-night, owing to a headache—George Lawrence found that the talking was again to be done by him. All that Lady Brandon contributed to the conversation was questions. Again she offered no opinion, propounded no theory.

Nor, as Lawrence reluctantly admitted to himself, when he lay awake in bed that night, did she once admit, nor even imply, that the “Blue Water” had been stolen. His scrupulous care to avoid questioning her on the subject of the whereabouts of the sapphire and of her nephew, Michael Geste, made this easy for her, and she had availed herself of it to the full. The slightly painful realisation, that she now knew all that he did whereas he knew nothing from her, could not be denied.

Again and again it entered his mind and roused the question, “Why cannot she confide in me, and at least say whether the sapphire has been stolen or not?”

Again and again he silenced it with the loyal reply, “For some excellent reason.... Whatever she does is right.”

After breakfast next day, Lady Brandon took him for a long drive. That the subject which now obsessed him (as it had, in a different way and for a different reason, obsessed de Beaujolais) was also occupying her mind, was demonstrated by the fact that, from time to time, and à propos of nothing in particular, she would suddenly ask him some fresh question bearing on the secret of the tragedy of Zinderneuf.

How he restrained himself from saying, “Where is Michael? Has anything happened? Is the ‘Blue Water’ stolen?” he did not know. A hundred times, one or the other of these questions had leapt from his brain to the tip of his tongue, since the moment when, at their first interview, he had seen that she wished to make no communication or statement whatever.

As the carriage turned in at the park gates on their return, he laid his hand on hers and said:

“My dear—I think everything has now been said, except one thing—your instructions to me. All I want now is to be told exactly what you want me to do.”

“I will tell you that, George, when you go.... And thank you, my dear,” replied Lady Brandon.

So he possessed his soul in patience until the hour struck.