Читать книгу The Mystery Lady - Robert William Chambers - Страница 13
ОглавлениеI
The girl turned and looked up at the house.
It* stood on the south side of the street just west of the shabby avenue—an ancient brick edifice in extreme dilapidation.
Broken blinds closed every window. Stoop, iron railing, deeply recessed door, fan-light, pilasters, all were sadly eloquent of generations forgotten.
For the age of this melancholy mansion could not have been less than a century; and it looked twice as old.
Maddaleen Dirck glanced at Lanier, and the smile he gave her was ironical and slightly sinister.
“You don’t have to come in,” he said.
“I do have to.... But goodness, how dismal! This house is not merely expiring; it’s already done for. It’s all in, Mr. Lanier.”
“Oh, a touch of lively paint would revive it—”
“No; only bedizen it. Like rouging a corpse. There’s no resurrection for this house. It’s dead.”
He seemed amused at her imagination: “Well,” he said, “shall we enter this melancholy morgue and make ourselves comfortable on a pair of slabs?”
“Tea,” she said, “is a balm. Let us go in and embalm ourselves.”
“You seem to be in a mortuary mood, Miss Dirck.”
“Illogical?”
“Necrological.”
“Isn’t that house sufficient reason?”
“It’s more cheerful inside.”
“I hope so.”
They ascended the worn stoop. Lanier touched an electric button. The old-fashioned door opened silently; they entered; the door clicked behind them very softly.
The interior of the Forty Club was agreeably lighted by shaded globes. To the left opened a small cloak-room; to the right a dining-room; and in the rear was the lounge, pleasantly lighted, comfortably furnished.
In fact, the place resembled one of the quieter and quainter London clubs with its dark old woodwork polished by time, its black marble fireplaces where, behind old-fashioned fire-screens, heavy logs burned.
A pair of fat grey cats dozed on the hearth in conjugal proximity.
“Their names,” remarked Lanier, “are Hell and Maria.”
In the subdued light of the lounge two or three members were visible, lolling in armchairs, reading, smoking, dozing. There seemed to be nobody in the dining-room, where small tables for two were ranged along the walls.
“You mentioned tea,” suggested Lanier.
“Yes, please. But I meant lunch.”
He smiled and stepped into the cloak-room, took her fur coat, and hung up his own coat, hat, and stick beside it. There were no checks, nobody in attendance.
“Personal property is supposed to be safe in this club,” he observed. “Otherwise there’d be no club.”
They entered the lamp-lit dining-room and seated themselves at one of the tables. Lanier pushed a button. A door opened at the further end of the room and a servant in yellow-and-black livery brought the luncheon card. He looked like any servant in any respectable club; he took orders for grapefruit, omelette, chops, muffins and tea; Lanier signed the check; the servant filled their water glasses, brought fresh butter; retired, soundlessly.
The girl’s dark eyes roved brightly about the room. Wainscot and mantel of old black cherry glimmered in the mellow light. Against the woodwork a few faded pictures hung in tarnished frames,—paintings of horses, hounds, gentlemen in pink careering across a very British landscape. Over the fireplace grinned a wolf’s head mounted on a panel, and appropriately flanked by the heads of two sheep.
“Did he eat them because they roiled the water?” inquired Maddaleen Dirck.
Lanier, who had been slyly watching her, replied:
“Is not the bla-bla created to be eaten by wolves?”
“Is that why you ordered chops, Mr. Lanier?”
“You’re quite witty,” he said.
“No, I’m frightened.”
“I wonder.”
“You needn’t; my flippancy is a certain symptom that I’m badly scared.”
“How old are you?” he asked abruptly.
“Twenty-three.”
“That makes you mentally nine years my senior: I’m only thirty-two.”
Maddaleen shook her head: “That is one of those popular and masculine delusions. Really there is no wisdom in women.”
“The wisdom of serpents.”
“Perhaps that much.” ... She hesitated, then: ... “These walls have the usual ears, I suppose?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Really?”
“Quite. This is sanctuary.... Even malefactors have to have one.”
“Then I may talk to you in safety?”
“Except before servants or other members.”
She sat looking absently at her plate in silence until luncheon was served. And when the servant had retired, and after they had been eating for a little while:
“I’ve told you why I desire to join this club, Mr. Lanier.”
“You wish to pick the pocket of our Mr. Welper.”
“I do.”
“You’ll have to accomplish that bit of legerdemain outside these walls. This is the crooks’ heaven—
‘Where they cease from double-crossing
And the leery are at rest,’ ”
he hummed under his breath; but his lively glance became sardonic and his eyes remained curiously intent on hers.
“What would happen to me if I stole that paper inside this club?” she asked.
“It isn’t done.”
“I know. But what might result if I did?”
“Some member would ‘get’ you sooner or later. Treachery within is a common danger and concerns every member of this club. If you do such a thing it becomes the club’s business to get rid of you.”
“Expel me?”
“Kill you.”
“Do you mean that they’d continue to track me until—”
“I do mean exactly that. You couldn’t get away with it. Sooner or later you’d be found dead somewhere, or—you’d remain missing, indefinitely.”
“If I took that paper from him inside this house would it get you into trouble?” she asked calmly.
“No. But they’d expect me to help get you.”
He sipped his glass of water and watched her over the goblet’s rim:
“Is that all you want out of this club,—a scrap of paper in Barney Welper’s pocket?”
“That is all.”
“And you are not sure that the paper is of any value to you?”
“No, not absolutely sure.”
“And you are willing to pay five thousand dollars initiation and five thousand dues on the chance that the paper is worth that much to you?”
“I am.”
“And you are willing to take a chance of picking Welper’s pocket inside this house?”
“Yes.”
“You’re some plunger, aren’t you?”
“Why?”
“Ten thousand dollars—and thirty-nine guns—all to be drawn on you at sight. Thirty-nine large, black automatics—”
“Thirty-eight, Mr. Lanier.”
“Oh. You don’t think I’d go after you?”
“Not if the paper I want is worth what I expect. I’ve offered you half interest, you know.”
“Suppose I—prefer to inherit—your share?”
The girl’s eyes seemed to darken and the curve of lip and cheek stiffened.
“No use,” she said. “The other half of that paper is in my safe-deposit box.”
“What foresight!” he exclaimed in a bantering voice. “So you hold the key to Mr. Welper’s document?”
“I think so.”
“Then why do you want Welper’s paper?”
“It is also the key to mine—I think.”
“Oho! I understand. The one is useless without the other.”
“I think so.”
Lanier smiled: “You do a lot of thinking, don’t you, Miss Dirck? And what is your ultimate conclusion concerning yourself, myself, and this scrap of paper?”
“That I must have it. And that I don’t believe you’ll kill me.”
“Not if you frisk your man outside the club. Otherwise I—”
“No. You won’t try to kill me whatever I do,” she said in a low voice. She had been studying the pattern on the table-cloth. She raised her eyes as she spoke, looked straight into the young man’s face with intuition as old as the mother of all serpents: “You’d never kill me,” she murmured.
“Is that another of those things you think?”
“I don’t trouble to think about that. It is what these others might do to you—”
“What about what they might do to you? You can’t beat this game, Miss Dirck.”
“You say so.” ... After a moment a pale smile touched her features: “Let me do a little more thinking,” she said.
While they had been talking several members drifted into the club, and among them Mr. Welper. Lanier, facing the hall, had noticed those who entered. Now he said to the girl:
“I’ll introduce Barney Welper to you when you’re ready. He came in about a quarter of an hour ago.”
“I’m ready,” said Maddaleen Dirck.
| * | The house still stands as it was. |
