Читать книгу The Wagoner's Halt Mystery - Reginald Heber Poole - Страница 3

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“Why don’t you keep to your own office? Why can’t you stay in your own kennel?” Mr. Cummings snapped out, suddenly, bitterly, and even vindictively. “If the Scouts had taught you to mind your own business and let other people get on with theirs it might have done you a lot of good. You come into this office as though you owned it. You’re supposed to keep in Mr. Raven’s office when he’s not here. You clear out of this office, you—you—you Nosey Sprout!”

There was a hint of triumph in Mr. Cummings’s voice as he found the right insult to hurl at the youth who half sat, half leaned on the big pedestal desk which Mr. Cummings shared with his colleague, Mr. Mason. The desk was piled with letter-files, documents, bulky envelopes, and a variety of official-looking papers all tied with pink tape.

For this was the main office of Messrs. Micklethwaite, Raven, Mortimer & Raven, Solicitors, of Old Flag Court, London, E.C. The hour was half-past eleven on Thursday morning, and Jimmy Sprott, being bored with his own company in the empty office of Mr. Christopher Raven, a junior partner in the firm, had strolled out to waste a few minutes with anybody who was available. He had found Mr. Mason and Mr. Cummings, two of the clerks, indulging in some small bickering.

It had become swiftly evident that Mason and Cummings were rapidly becoming thoroughly annoyed with each other. Jimmy Sprott had butted in instinctively, though he fully realized that it would probably end with the pair of them forgetting their own disagreement and combining forces to squash him. The prospect of being squashed did not worry Sprott in the least. Several people in this office had attempted to do that but so far had failed lamentably.

Generally speaking, Mason and Cummings were the best of friends and colleagues. But they had their off days. It was evident to Sprott that Cummings was in a peevish, quarrelsome mood, which explains why he took Mason’s side without the slightest idea of what they were arguing about. Mr. Mason was about forty; Cummings was three or four years younger, and had been something of an athlete and sportsman in his younger days, but confined himself to tennis and gardening nowadays.

When Cummings became really annoyed with the wit and banter of Jimmy Sprott it was his great jest to call him Sprout. This was quite clever, so Cummings thought, because it was a play on both Sprott and Scout, and everybody in the office knew that Jimmy Sprott was a Scout, and quite an important one at that, because he had on occasion come to the office in full kit, having been selected to represent the Scouts at some important function.

It was also common knowledge that young Mr. Raven had brought Sprott into Micklethwaite’s office. Mr. Raven, assisted by Sprott, really formed a small, special, rather secret and confidential department, all by themselves. In sarcasm, yet not without some little truth in the gibe, Mr. Mason and Mr. Cummings would at times refer to Sprott as “our secret service staff”.

After Mr. Cummings had hissed forth his vindictive and crushing gibe of “Nosey Sprout”, which was just about the very limit of low vulgarity according to the Micklethwaite standard, he glared at Mason and Sprott as though to let them see that he was a truly savage animal when roused. Mr. Mason smiled and turned to Sprott, judging that in a moment or two the good-looking junior would render valuable assistance with several much more cutting though possibly more refined comments than Mr. Cummings had achieved.

“He’s got a liver this morning,” Mason remarked, hoping to encourage Sprott. The junior, however, was regarding Cummings quite calmly and with the air of a fishmonger observing some curious specimen of the finny tribe on his marble slabs. There was not the slightest sign of annoyance over the “Nosey Sprout” insult.

“No, it isn’t a liver,” Sprott said, judicially and regretfully. “It’s much more serious than that, I’m afraid. It’s probably a good thing that I came in, Mr. Mason. This is a case where an understanding friend may be very helpful. Now do listen to me, Mr. Cummings! Take my advice and you’ll be grateful to me in the years to come. Don’t go home wearing that tie to-night! Leave it at the office—lose it, forget you ever had it, but don’t wear it. Buy another when you’re out at lunch. That’s the very first thing you must do.”

“What do you mean? What’s wrong with my tie?” Cummings demanded, but there was a sudden guilty flush about his face and a startled note in his voice which told Mr. Mason that young Sprott had touched the spot in some way. What the tie had to do with Cummings’s ill-temper was something Mason could not grasp, but Cummings’s manner showed that it had. Sprott was an extraordinary youngster, and it was certainly not all hot air that he talked when he lectured them on the art and science of observation.

“There’s nothing wrong with the tie,” Sprott said. “It’s really quite a nice tie, but not for you. You know perfectly well that your wife doesn’t like it because it was given to you by someone at the tennis club after you’d won the mixed doubles—but we needn’t go into that now. It’s ancient history. But you must get rid of that tie!”

“If you’d mind your own business——” Cummings said, but so weakly and so lacking real protest that he never even attempted to finish his sentence. He merely stared moodily at the work in front of him and his sulkiness encouraged Sprott to continue.

“I’m sorry for you, Mr. Cummings. You’re a happily married man and yet you’re foolish enough to quarrel over a trivial thing of that sort. Not only did you quarrel with your wife over breakfast, but you didn’t even kiss Betty good-bye this morning. A big-hearted man like you oughtn’t to behave in that way. You simply dashed off out several minutes before you need have left home and then walked by the field-path to the station, which was quite unnecessary. As a result you came up to town by an earlier train and missed the men with whom you usually travel. Didn’t feel in the mood for their company this morning, I suppose? Childish—not worthy of you, Mr. Cummings.”

“Who’s told you this?” Cummings made a sudden effort to become angry again and glared at Mason accusingly. “What have you been saying about me?”

“I’ve not said anything,” Mason protested. “I don’t know anything about it. You certainly mentioned that you caught the 8.35, but I certainly never mentioned it to Sprott.”

“Now please don’t argue, children,” Sprott reproved. “Nobody told me. I observed it for myself. It’s so very obvious. I was going to mention that you didn’t even finish the boiled egg you had for breakfast, but I’m not sure that it wasn’t a poached egg. However, take my advice. Replace your tennis club tie with another one; buy your wife a nice bunch of—No, she’ll think you’re extravagant if you buy flowers when you have all you need in your own garden. So it will have to be sweets or chocolates, according to the lady’s taste. Oh, and I’d take Betty something, too.”

“Anything else?” Cummings asked.

“Better say something about having a most difficult time at the office just at present. Don’t overdo it, you know. You see the idea, however? Don’t refer to breakfast at all; don’t mention the tie. If the subject is raised, treat it in an off-hand fashion. Hint that you never did like the thing and you’ve given it away to the office boy who rather fancied it. But do what I tell you and you’ll be saying to-morrow, just quietly and in confidence to Mr. Mason, that you think young Sprott is a marvel. As I’ve said before—Always take Sprott’s advice!”

Mr. Mason was watching his colleague’s face while the cheeky junior spouted his hot air. Cummings had been annoyed before Sprott appeared on the scene and this sort of talk was liable to make him explode. But it didn’t. Cummings simply stared at the youth as though temporarily hypnotized. Everybody knew that Cummings was happily married and that his daughter, Betty, was one of the world’s supreme wonders. It would annoy Cummings exceedingly to be lectured on his domestic affairs by a mere junior.

Instead of showing his annoyance, however, Mr. Cummings’s lips slowly twisted into the wisp of a smile, the first of the morning, and then rather weakly he asked: “How did you know about—about the tie—and everything else? Who told you? You couldn’t have guessed all that.”

“It isn’t guesswork; it’s what we call deduction,” Sprott said calmly. “I just observe the details and form my own conclusions. We all know that Betty never fails to smooth those massive eyebrows of yours; you told us some joke about the tie a long time ago, but you’ve never worn it except on that one occasion. Mrs. Cummings doesn’t like it, and she’s annoyed that you should drag it out again. You ought to have lost it long ago. The other details are all there to be seen. The fleck of egg still showing on your coat indicates that you left home without submitting to that final little flick with the clothes brush and the quick look-over which your wife always gives you. Any ass can tell from one glance at your shoes that you came across the field-path this morning; it isn’t dust but a mixture of morning dew and dust which makes mud. And you were already here when I came in and getting on with your work instead of reading the morning paper. Put two and two together——”

“Ah, good morning! Good morning! Could I see Mr. Raven—Mr. Christopher Raven, please?”

Sprott’s airy lecture came to an abrupt end. An apparition had entered the office. Behind him came Wilks, the middle-aged man who sat in the inquiry office, dealt with all callers politely, and performed other useful tasks. Wilks had his arms outstretched and was obviously pained and angry that this man had eluded his grasp and burst into the general office.

“I couldn’t stop him! He never gave me a chance. Told me he must see——”

“All right, my good fellow! I shall explain everything to Mr. Raven, and I feel sure he will not blame you in the least. Good morning, gentlemen! I must apologize for entering in this unseemly fashion, but I am most urgently anxious to see Mr. Raven.”

He was not at first sight the kind of man Wilks ought to have admitted. Rather was he the type of caller whom Wilks was expected to keep in a dark corner of the waiting-room until somebody had found out his business. Judged by his appearance, the man had just come through an earthquake or been mixed up in a wild street row. His tie was hanging loosely from his half-open waistcoat; his collar had come unanchored and one end was flapping about like a flag of truce; the right side of his face had apparently been banged and rubbed against a brick wall, and there was a slowly congealing trickle of blood from a cut near the temple.

He had no hat and his clothes on one side had gathered a good deal of mud and dust, from which, going on Sprott’s lines, one might deduce that he had first of all been in contact with some wet earth and later had been rolled in a drier spot.

That side of his face which had not been mixed up with the brick wall, however, gave the impression of a fairly youngish man, though his hair, getting rather thin and with a greyish tinge here and there, hinted at middle age.

But it was his smiling air of complete amiability, and the ridiculous appearance of lop-sidedness as he looked over the top of his broken eye-glasses, which made both Cummings and Mason decide very quickly that the best plan would be to get rid of the man at the earliest moment. He was most assuredly not the sort of prospective client Messrs. Micklethwaites desired to welcome. Important business men came to them, and ordinary police-court cases were not quite in their line.

“I am afraid Mr. Raven is out this morning, but if you will call again this afternoon it is possible that he will be free,” Mr. Mason said, rising, and preparing to use all the tact at his command to persuade this queer character to depart quietly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the man said, and his tones were those of a courteous and cultured man. “But I wonder if Mr. Raven’s assistant is in the office? I should like to see him for a few moments—ah—privately, you know. Mr. Jimmy—let me see—Scout, Sprout—Ah, yes, Sprott! Mr. Sprott! Is Mr. Sprott engaged?”

The first real genuine smile of the morning was on Mr. Cummings’s face, and both Mason and Wilks were checking a grin. Mason turned to Jimmy Sprott and said in swift low tones: “He’s your pigeon, Jimmy! Now you’ll be able to deduce quite a lot! Take him away—but press the bell hard if you want any help!”

Sprott was already moving forward and smiling pleasantly, despite the visitor’s playful way with his name.

“I am Mr. Raven’s assistant. Will you come this way, please, Mr.—I didn’t quite catch your name, I’m afraid?”

“Kel—ah—Smithers! Yes! John Smithers! John Murgatroyd Smithers. How do you do, Mr. Sprott? If you could spare me a few minutes I should be most grateful.”

“Come this way, Mr. Smithers,” Jimmy said, and led the way from the general office and just across the passage to the private room of Mr. Raven, where Jimmy himself usually occupied a small desk, except at those times when Mr. Raven indicated that he could wander away.

“Will you take a chair—Mister—Murgatroyd—Smithers?” Jimmy said, and gave an emphatic and slightly sarcastic note to the name. “And then, if you wouldn’t mind, I should like to know your real name. We prefer our clients to deal with us frankly, and naturally have strong objections to dealing with anyone under an assumed name.”