Читать книгу A King by Night - Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

Two years before, Oscar Trevors had come to him, a man on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Arnold Eversham, an acknowledged authority on nervous disorders, and the author of the standard text-book on mental diseases—his work, "Pathology of Imagination," made him famous at the age of twenty-five—had seen and prescribed for him. A week after his visit to Harley Street, Oscar Trevors had vanished. Six months later, a letter was received by a firm of lawyers that acted for him in New York, instructing them to sell some property. Simultaneously there came a letter to his bankers, instructing them to forward his half-yearly income to two banks, the Kantonal Bank of Berne in Switzerland, and the Credit Monogasque at Monte Carlo.

Trevors was in the peculiar position that he had inherited from his grandfather a life interest in property which was administered by a board of trustees. His income amounted to $400,000 a year, payable every six months, any balance above that sum being placed to a reserve. Every half-year thereafter came almost identical instructions from the missing man. Sometimes the letter was posted from Paris, sometimes from Vienna; once it had borne the postmark of Damascus. This went on for a few years, and then the trustees refused payment on the grounds that they were not satisfied that Oscar Trevors was alive.

That he was both lively and vicious they were to discover. An action, supported by affidavits innumerable, was entered on Trevors' behalf, and the trustees, advised that they might be liable to heavy damages, capitulated. Every six months thereafter had come his receipt for the moneys sent, and accompanying this document, more often than not, was a pleasant and discursive letter dealing with the land in which he was living.

The girl was staring at the doctor, bewildered.

"The King of Bonginda?" she repeated. "Is there such a place?"

He walked to the bookshelf, took down a volume, and, moving back to the table, opened and turned the leaves.

"There is only one Bonginda," he said, pointing. "It is a small town situated on a tributary of the Congo River—in Central Africa."

There was a dead silence, which the doctor broke.

"This is the first you have heard of Bonginda?"

She nodded.

"I hadn't heard of it," said the doctor, "until your uncle called on me one day. He was a stranger to me, and had apparently been sent by the hotel doctor, who knew that I had some success with neurasthenic cases. I saw him three times in all, and I felt he was improving under my treatment. But on the third and last visit a strange thing happened. Just as he was leaving this very room, he turned.

"'Good-bye, doctor,' he said. 'I am going to resume my place in the Councils of Bonginda.'

"I thought for a moment that he was referring to some society conducted on masonic lines, but his next words removed that impression.

"'Beware of the King of Bonginda!' he said solemnly. 'I, who am his heir, warn you!'"

Gwendda Guildford's mouth was an O of astonishment.

"But how extraordinary ... King of Bonginda! I have never heard that before!"

The kindly eyes of the doctor were smiling.

"You are the first person with any authority to ask, who has ever interviewed me on the subject," he said. "The American Embassy put through a few perfunctory inquiries five years ago, but beyond that I have never been consulted."

The girl sat looking down at the carpet, her pretty face the picture of perplexity. Suddenly she opened the bag on her lap and took out a letter.

"Will you read that, doctor?" she asked, and Arnold Eversham took the note from her hand.

"This is in Trevors' handwriting," he said immediately, and read:

"DEAR GWENDDA,—Do you remember how we played Pollywogs when you were living at 2758 Sunset Avenue? Dear, I'm very happy. Please don't worry; I'm kept busy. When I have locked my office I feel like a released prisoner. My house, which is very quiet, is quite near Longchamps away from the railroad. I have a lovely room with a western view. Tell mother, who I know will be interested, Franklin stayed here. I will stop now, for I'm weary, which is nature's payment. I'll notify any change of address. Have the police made inquiries about me at your home? I ask because they did once.

"Your loving uncle,

"O. TREVORS."

The doctor handed the letter back.

"A somewhat incoherent document," he said. "I see it was posted in Paris three months ago. What were Pollywogs? That he remembered your address is remarkable——"

"There is no such address, and I have no mother," interrupted the girl, and, rising, laid the letter on the table. "Pollywogs was a game of cipher writing I played with him when I was a child, and 2758 is the key. Here is the letter he sent."

She underlined certain words in the letter with a pencil taken from the doctor's table.

"The second, seventh, fifth and eighth words make the real message. The first word is I'm, and it reads:

"I'm kept locked prisoner house near railroad western. Tell Franklin stop payment notify police at once."