Читать книгу A King by Night - Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace - Страница 4

Mr. Arnold Eversham sat at his broad writing table, his head resting on one long, white hand, the other laid upon the open book beneath the table lamp. There was no other light in the room, but the lemon-coloured walls of his study glowed in the reflected rays that were thrown from the white blotting-pad to the ceiling and back again. The room was simply furnished; a deep blue carpet covered the centre of the parquet floor, and across one wall stretched a dwarf book-case of dark wood; a chintz-covered davenport, a big armchair drawn up by the flower-filled fireplace, two other chairs and the writing table constituted the bulk. A few Medici prints in dark frames hung on the walls—a Corot, a Terbosch, a Van Mere and da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

He looked up as somebody knocked softly on the door, and, so looking, his brows met. He was a particularly good-looking man of fifty-five, slightly grey at the temples. His thin, intellectual face showed none of the tell-tale markings that characterize men of his years, and his grave, deep-set eyes held all the sparkle and fire of youth.

"Come in," he said.

A serving-maid in grey livery came silently into the room.

"There is a young lady to see you, sir."

He took the card from the silver plate she carried, and read the name.

"Miss Gwendda Guildford ... Sacramento," he read, and looked up.

"Will you show the lady in, please?" he asked.

As the door closed on the servant he looked at the card again, and his lips moved as he read the name.

The girl who followed the maid into the room was at first sight a child, with all a child's slimness and natural grace of carriage. She stood, her hand at the door, and he had time to distinguish her face in the semi-gloom. The illusion of extreme youth was not disturbed by the scrutiny, only, as, mechanically, he pressed the governor switch on his desk, and the concealed cornice light came on, filling the room with a strange sunlight glow, he saw that she was older than he had thought. The fine red lips were firmer, and the eyes that met his had a decision and a character which instantly changed his conception of her.

"Won't you sit down, Miss Guildford ... you have just arrived in London?"

"I arrived to-night, doctor, and I took the chance of your being in. I'm fortunate."

Her voice had the sweet, low quality of the well-bred, excellently tutored college woman, and he nodded as though in approval of his first judgment. He walked leisurely to the fireplace, twisted the big chair, and pushed it toward her.

"And I feel that you have come to see me about your uncle, Mr. Trevors. I placed you the moment you came into the room. I think I must have remembered your name: did you write to me? I see that you didn't ... now, where have I heard it, and how do I know that Oscar Trevors was your uncle?"

He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then his face cleared.

"The newspapers, of course!" he said. "There was a story about him in a Californian paper, and I saw your picture. You were a very little girl then."

She smiled faintly. She could afford to smile, for she was relieved. She had been puzzled as to how she was to approach the great alienist, what excuse to offer for the extraordinary character of her mission, or in what way she could enlist his help. Doctors were notoriously reticent personages, and though she was Oscar Trevors' sole relative, the relationship was all the more remote because she had never seen him, though once they had been regular correspondents. But the brief smile that dawned and faded so responsively to hers gave her the courage and confidence she had needed.

"I don't know how to begin," she said haltingly. "I have so many protests of disinterestedness to make—and yet I'm not wholly disinterested, am I? If—if my uncle's money comes to me—I mean, I am his heiress. And suppose that if I protested ever so violently that that part of it wasn't—didn't——"

She stopped breathlessly, and again she saw the quiet amusement in his eyes and felt comforted.

"I'll believe that you are disinterested, Miss Guildford ... and curious! I confess to something of that weakness myself. I am intensely curious about Oscar Trevors, whenever I have time to think about him. And at least I am disinterested."

"I've got it now," she interrupted almost brusquely. "I'd better start off by telling you that I am on the staff of the Sacramento Herald—I'm a—well, a reporter. Mr. Malling, the editor, was a friend of my father's, and after I left college and poor daddy died, he found a place for me. I've been moderately successful, especially with society stuff ... oh, yes, we've a very exclusive society in Sacramento, so please don't smile."

"I'm not smiling at the possibility of there being social life in Sacramento," he said, "though I'm ready to smile at the idea that there shouldn't be. There is cream in the milk of London—why should I laugh at the suggestion that the milk of California is not altogether creamless? No, I was thinking how curiously unlike my ideas of a reporter you are. That is an impertinence——"

"It isn't," she said ruefully. "I look horribly unsophisticated, and I suppose I am. But that is another story, Dr. Eversham. To take a very short cut to the object of my visit, the Herald has paid my expenses to Europe to find Oscar Trevors."

"And when you find him, what then?" asked the man, his eyes twinkling.

There was an awkward silence.

"I don't know," she confessed. "If I find him in the circumstances I fear, there will be a great story. If not, my story will end a little flatly—if he is alive."

The doctor nodded.

"He is alive. I am convinced of that," he said. "He is also mad, I am equally satisfied."

"Mad?" Her eyes opened wide. "You don't mean that he is really insane?"

He nodded, so deliberately, yet so emphatically, that it almost seemed as though he were bowing.

"If he is not insane," he said, choosing his words with great care, "then there is a state on this earth, a powerful government, of which the world knows nothing. The Kingdom of Bonginda—and Oscar Trevors is its king!"