Читать книгу Interference - Roland Pertwee - Страница 11

Table of Contents

In the chaos and misery in which Faith found herself, was an irresistible yearning to throw herself into John’s arms and tell him everything. But this comfort, for his own sake, she was denied.

She loved John too much to tell him the truth. Her reasoning power, never the greatest of her possessions, told her that here was tragedy that none might share.

She tried vaguely to imagine what his feelings or actions would be if he learnt she was not his wife. Of his love, she was confident, of his chivalry, he had given her a thousand proofs, but often she had been aware in him of a certain puritanism which set its face against all that was slack and irregular in life.

John was not a man to let things slide. He would never be content for their lives to continue together, under the ever-present menace of another man with a first claim upon her, re-appearing out of the past. She knew the defensive pride with which he surrounded his possessions. It would be intolerable to a nature like his to hold with such a slender bond, a woman in whom he had no real title.

Once he knew the truth, he would not rest until Philip Voaze had been found and the hideous muddle of their present position had been cleared up one way or the other. And that, Faith told herself, could only result in publicity of a scandalous kind which would shake the whole foundation of his practice. From being one of the most conspicuous successes of the day he would become the subject of gossip, club anecdote, and newspaper notoriety.

Inevitably, his prestige would suffer, as inevitably as his peace of mind and all he had cherished most in life would be broken into pieces.

A public man is the natural target of scandal-mongers. To profess that neither he nor Faith had had the vaguest idea that her husband was still alive, might satisfy a few, but would not arrest the wagging tongues of a vulgar majority.

‘He must never know,’ she told herself. ‘Rather than let him know I’d kill myself.’

It was then that the thought of death as a solution to the problem opened a wide door in her imagination.

‘Perhaps I ought to kill myself,’ she said. Perhaps I owe it to him. He took me from nothing and gave me everything. Am I to repay him by spoiling all he has worked for?’

But death is a nasty-looking customer for a timid soul to meet on the highways of a life, which until then, had held so much of happiness.

In the lonely dusk of Lansdowne Passage, Faith stopped and pressed a hand over her eyes.

An approaching newspaper reporter, returning from an unsuccessful attempt to interview Marlay, recognised her and whipped off his hat.

‘Pardon me, it’s Lady Marlay, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Are you ill?’

She shook her head and looked at him with a scared expression.

‘I represent the International Press Bureau,’ he went on. ‘May I have the pleasure of escorting you home?’

Again she shook her head.

‘Please don’t trouble,’ she said. ‘I was a little faint, that’s all.’

‘No trouble, an honour,’ he replied, gallantly. ‘I have been trying, without success, to get hold of this husband of yours. He’s a difficult chap to land.’

Faith said nothing.

Side by side they came out into Curzon Street.

‘I suppose you wouldn’t use your influence on my behalf, Lady Marlay? A man who has brought off a great scientific discovery mustn’t be allowed to hide his light under a bushel. I suppose I can’t persuade you to give me an item of news.’

A sudden panic seized Faith and brought her near to crying out,

‘Yes. Yes. He isn’t my husband at all and he doesn’t know it. Tell that to your readers, Mr. Reporter, let them snigger over that at their breakfast tables to-morrow.’

How he would leap at such a piece of news.

What a scoop for the press. And with that thought, Faith hated the press, hated it with the loathing one has for a rat, a spy. It was because of the press that she was suffering now. Her whole happiness had been shattered by a three by two snapshot on an illustrated page of a daily paper.

Aloud she said.

‘No—nothing.’

Journalists are used to rebuffs, and the young man smiled agreeably.

‘Then perhaps you’d consent to edit the woman’s page in next week’s issue of Panache,’ he said. ‘It’s only a matter of putting a signature to stuff that has already been written.’

Faith did not reply. They had arrived at her doorstep. She admitted herself with a latchkey, said ‘Good-night’ to the young man, and left him on the pavement.

There were two staircases in the house in Curzon Street—a square well-staircase, and a semi-spiral which went up to John’s laboratory.

It was by the latter Faith mounted, and opening a little door at the stairhead, she stepped silently into the white-tiled, glass-shelved room in which his researches were made.

The impersonality of the place had always made it slightly detestable to Faith. In a way, she was jealous of it, since it absorbed much of John’s time that otherwise might have been spent with her. On the shelves were hundreds of bottles, test tubes, retorts and glass jars with strange, inhuman-looking exhibits suspended therein or floating in spirits of wine.

At one end was a cabinet, the doors of which were kept locked. Turning her eyes towards it, Faith saw with surprise that they were open, and that a bunch of keys dangled idly from the lock.

From the consulting room beyond, came a murmur of voices. Faith stood still listening. Then, acting on impulse, moved quickly to the cupboard, threw back the door and looked within.

The shelves were crowded with mysterious odds and ends, and haphazard, Faith picked up a little brown bottle, with a glass stopper. It bore a red poison label on which, in John’s handwriting, were the words, ‘Acid Hydrocyanic.’

Removing the stopper, Faith sniffed at the contents and caught instantly a choking, acrid smell of bitter almonds. With a little shudder, she put the stopper back, closed the door, and tucked the bottle in her bag.

Like a ghost she vanished from the laboratory and passed down the stairs to the hall.

Taking off her moleskin coat, Faith threw it over a chair, and found Childers standing beside her.

‘There was someone asking for you on the telephone,’ he said. ‘A Mrs. Denham, she said she would ring up later.’

Faith did not reply, but one of her hands drifted out for the banister rail. For a moment, she remained thus, rocking on her heels, then silently mounted the stairs, clutching the little bag of coloured brocade.