Читать книгу The Green Archer - Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace - Страница 6

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The rattle and clang of steel against steel, the staccato drumming of electric rivetters, the muffled pandemonium of hammer and mallet. All these were music to the ears of Abel Bellamy.

He stood by the window of his sitting-room, his hands clasped behind him, his gaze fixed upon such a scene as he could watch for hours. Opposite to his hotel a big building was in course of erection. The steel skeleton of it towered above the puny houses that flanked each side.

Below in the street a small crowd of people had gathered to watch, open-mouthed, a girder going skyward at the end of a spider thread of cable. Higher and higher the big derrick lifted the steel that swung with majestic slowness. Abe Bellamy grunted his disapproval. The girder was badly balanced. He knew to the fraction of an inch just where it should have been fixed.

If the evil deeds of men were, as the ancients believed, written in letters of blood in the place of their perpetration, the name of Abel Bellamy would be splashed red in many places.

On a mean farm in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; in the grey hall of Pentonville Prison—to name but two.

Abe Bellamy never lost sleep at nights thinking of the past. Remorse was foreign to his nature, fear he did not know. He had done evilly and was content. The memory of the horror of lives wantonly broken, of suffering deliberately inflicted, of children delivered to hardship and pain, of a woman hunted to death by a tiger of hate that the Moloch of his self-esteem should be appeased, never caused him a second's unrest of mind.

If he thought of these old matters at all, he thought approvingly. It seemed right to him that those who opposed him should be hurt. Fortune had favoured him greatly. At twenty he was carrying a hod; at thirty-five he was a dollar millionaire. At fifty-five his million was ten, and he had shaken from his feet the dust of the city that made him and was one with the landed gentry of England, the master of a domain that the flower of English chivalry had won by its swords and built on the sweat and fear of its slaves.

For thirty years he had had the power to hurt. Why should he deny himself? He could regret nothing, being what he was. He stood six feet two in his stockinged feet, and at sixty had the strength of a young ox. But it was not his size that made men and women turn in the street to look after him. His ugliness was fascinating, his immense red face was seamed and lined into a hundred ridges and hollows. His nose was big, squat, bulbous. His mouth broad and thick-lipped; one corner lifted so that he seemed to be sneering all the time.

He was neither proud nor ashamed of his ugliness. He had accepted his appearance as he had accepted his desires, as normal in himself.

Such was Abel Bellamy, late of Chicago, now of Garre Castle in Berkshire, a man born without the gift of loving.

Standing by the long window of the hotel, he watched the work progressing. Who was the builder, what was the building, he neither knew nor cared. The men who moved cautiously along narrow and perilous paths were his own men for the moment. He growled under his breath as his quick eye located a party of three rivetters, who, free from the observation of their foreman, were idling.

Then instinctively his eyes flashed back to the dangling girder. Something within him said "Danger!" Quick as he was, he did not see the accident. The free end of the steel had swung inward to a scaffolding where two men were at work. He heard the crash above the roar of the street traffic, caught a momentary glimpse of a man clinging for life to the scaffolding . . . and then something fell, turning over and over, and disappeared in the confusion of brick-heap and mortar-machines behind the high board that fenced the works.

"Hum!" said Abe Bellamy.

He wondered what the contractor would do; what were the laws of this country in which he had made his home for seven years? If it had been his job, he would have had his lawyer round to see the widow before the news reached her, and she would have signed away all claims before she rightly realised she was bereft. But these Englishmen were slow.

The door of the sitting-room opened, and he turned his head. Julius Savini was not unused to being greeted with a scowl, but he sensed something more important than the usual snarl of complaint that was his regular morning portion.

"See here, Savini, I've been waiting for you since seven o'clock. If you're going to stay connected with your job, I want to see you before noon—understand that."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Bellamy. I told you last night I should be late. I only got back from the country a few minutes ago."

Julius Savini's attitude and voice were almost humble. He had not been Bellamy's secretary for a year without learning the futility of opposing his employer.

"Will you see a man from the Globe, sir?" he asked.

"A newspaper man?" said Abe Bellamy suspiciously. "You know I never see a newspaper man. What does he want? Who is he?"

"He's Spike Holland, an American," said Julius almost apologetically.

"That doesn't make him any more welcome," snarled the other. "Tell him I can't see him. I'm not going to fall for any of that newspaper stuff. What is it about? You're supposed to be my secretary, aren't ye?"

"It is about the Green Archer." Julius hesitated before he spoke.

Abe Bellamy swung round savagely.

"Who has been talking about the Green Archer? You, you rat!"

"I haven't seen any newspaper men," said Julius sullenly. "What shall I tell him?"

"Tell him to go to—here, send him up." If he did not see the reporter, he'd probably invent something, thought the old man. And he was just a little scared of newspapers. It was a newspaper that had made the fuss in Falmouth.

Presently Julius ushered in the visitor.

"You needn't wait," snapped Bellamy, and when his secretary had gone, he growled: "Have a cigar?"

He flung the box on to the table as a man might throw a bone to a dog.

"Thanks, Mr. Bellamy," said Spike coolly, "but I never smoke millionaires' cigars. It makes me sort of dissatisfied with my own."

"Well, what do you want?" rasped Bellamy, looking at the red-haired reporter through narrowed lids.

"There's a story around that there's a ghost in Garre Castle, Mr. Bellamy—a Green Archer."

"It's a lie," said the other promptly—too promptly, in fact. If he had shown any indifference to the suggestion, Spike might have been deceived. The very promptitude of the denial gave him for the first time an interest in the story.

"Who told you this?" asked Bellamy.

"We had it from a reliable source," was the cautious reply. "According to our information, the Green Archer of Garre has been seen at the castle, and apparently has been in and out of your room——"

"It is a lie!" Abe Bellamy's tone was violent. "These crazy English servants are always looking for ghosts. It is true I found my bedroom door open one night, but I guess I must have forgotten to close it. Who is your informant?"

"We had it from three different sources," said Spike untruthfully, "and every story hangs together. Now, Mr. Bellamy," he smiled, "there is something in it; and anyway a ghost puts up the value of an old castle."

"That's where you're wrong," said Abe Bellamy, instantly seizing the opportunity offered to him. "It depreciates the property, and if you put a line about ghosts in your paper I'll bring an action for libel. Get that, young fellow?"

"Maybe the ghost would start something too," said the other amiably.

He went downstairs, not quite decided in his mind. Abe Bellamy was not the usual type of millionaire who makes his residence in England and drifts almost mechanically into British society. The man was a boor, half educated, entirely without social ambitions, unless Spike's shrewd judgment was at fault.

Coming into the hall, he found Julius talking with a tall, grey-bearded man of the prosperous workman class, and Julius signalled him to wait.

"You know the room, Mr. Creager? Mr. Bellamy is expecting you."

When the man had disappeared, Julius turned to the reporter.

"What did he say, Holland?"

"He turned down the story. Honest, Savini, is there anything in it?"

Julius Savini shrugged his lean shoulders.

"I don't know where you got the yarn from, and I certainly am giving you no information whatever. The old man gave me hell because he thought I had tipped you off."

"Then it is true," said Spike. "You have had a grisly apparition stalking along your battlemented walls? Say, did he wear any chains?"

Julius shook his head.

"You'll get nothing from me, Holland. I've got a job to lose."

"Who was the beaver you sent up? He looks like a policeman."

Julius grinned.

"He was asking the same question about you when you came down. His name is Creager, he's a ——"—he hesitated—"well, I wouldn't say friend; he's an acquaintance of the old man. Probably he's a pensioner. Anyway, he calls pretty regularly, and I imagine he doesn't come for nothing. I'm not wanted until he comes down. Come and have a cocktail."

Spike shook his head. While they were speaking, to the evident surprise of Julius, the man Creager came down the stairs again, an ugly look on his face.

"He won't see me until two o'clock," he said in suppressed wrath. "Does he expect I'm going to wait on him? Because, if he does, he's made a mistake. You can tell him that, Mr. Savini."

"What's the trouble?" asked Julius.

"He said two o'clock, I admit; but I'm in town. Why should I wait until this afternoon? Why couldn't he see me this morning?" demanded the bearded man furiously. "He treats me like a dog. He thinks he's got me like that." He turned down a thick thumb suggestively. "He's wild about a reporter. That's you, ain't it?" he asked.

"That's me," said Spike.

"You can tell him"—the man Creager turned to Julius, and tapped the young man's chest to emphasize his words—"that I'm coming at two, and I want a long talk with him, or I'll be having a little conversation with a reporter myself."

With this menace he left them.

"Savini," said Spike softly, "I smell a good story."

But Savini was going up the stairs two at a time on his way to his enraged employer.