Читать книгу Interference - Roland Pertwee - Страница 12

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The voices Faith had heard in the consulting room belonged to John, to Douglas Helder, and Barbara. For once in his life, as Barbara pointed out, with a kind of insolent amusement, John was taking himself seriously.

‘I am,’ he said, slapping his engagement diary down on the desk. ‘I have no choice. These publicity blokes will not leave me alone.’

‘It’s all very well, sir,’ Douglas protested, ‘but all the big chaps have been through it.’

John held up his hands in a gesture of surrender.

‘Big chaps, I ask you,’ he said. ‘Of course, I am pleased at the success of the serum, as who wouldn’t be; but I do kick at details of my private life being plastered all over London.’

‘It is a personal age, sir,’ said Douglas. ‘The public are much more interested in the performer than his performance.’

John Marlay picked up a sheaf of press-cuttings and flicked them over, pausing now and then to point out colourful passages with an indignant forefinger.

‘ “Sir John Marlay,” ’ he read, ‘ “is a passionate devotee to the works of Handel.” Apart from the song—“Alice where art thou” I am not conscious of ever having heard the works of Handel.’

‘He certainly didn’t write Alice,’ said Barbara with a snigger.

‘Well, there you are,’ said John. ‘And here’s a bit about me being something of a dandy. When, I ask you, have I ever taken more than ten minutes to dress in the morning?’

‘Most days,’ said Barbara.

‘Then all this trash about character, good citizenship and the rest of it.’ He turned up another cutting. ‘ “Sir John Marlay is an exemplary husband.” Now that’s a rotten thing to say about anybody.’

‘But you are an exemplary husband. If you doubt it, ask Faith,’ said Barbara.

‘Perhaps I am,’ he replied, ‘but what business is it of the public’s to know that?’

‘There’s a big demand for that kind of information,’ Douglas explained.

‘Then in my case,’ retorted John, ‘the demand is going to exceed the supply. For how much of this are you responsible, Douglas?’

‘I have done my whack, sir.’

The twinkling humour in John’s eyes deadened and he put his next question with a frown.

‘Have you written anything about Faith?’

‘Only to say what a wonderful wife she’s been, and how she’s helped you with your work.’

‘But that’s beastly vulgar,’ said Barbara.

John rose from his writing table and crossing to a corner of the room, poured himself out a glass of water, which he drank at a draught.

‘The public expect that kind of thing,’ said Douglas, a shade ruefully.

John turned on him.

‘And if Faith had not been a marvellous wife, but been a great hindrance to my work, is the public to be told that?’

Douglas shrugged his shoulders.

‘I am employed by a newspaper and it is my job to get all the information I can.’

‘I know, I know,’ said John, his hand falling on the young man’s shoulder. ‘Everybody has a right to earn their living as best they can, but they have no right to interfere with other people who are doing the same thing. Interference is a deadly sin. Make your mud pie as pretty as you like, but don’t mess about with mine.’

Douglas Helder looked crestfallen.

‘It’s frightfully difficult to hold down this job without making a few floaters,’ he said, ‘but if you feel this way about it, I won’t write another word without your leave.’

There was something very sincere in the offer.

‘Oh, Gawd! don’t make me feel a hundred,’ said John, with a little laugh. ‘I have a kink in that direction. A man has a right to be left alone. Curiosity often leads to interference and interference makes me see red.’

‘Now everyone feels uncomfortable,’ said Barbara.

‘Good thing, too,’ said John. ‘Mine’s a very funny profession, probably the last in which a moral standard means much one way or the other. I am an ambitious man, Douglas, and up to now I have been a fairly successful man. I am not out to take risks. Archbishops, Princes, Prime Ministers may fall and rise again, but once a doctor hits the earth, he bites it.’

He turned away, embarrassed at the vigour of his own words.

Douglas and Barbara sought each other’s eyes.

Barbara’s mouth pursed into a little moue. John Marlay’s back was towards them, and stooping quickly, Douglas kissed the mouth and turned it into a smile.

‘There’s a looking-glass on the mantelpiece, Douglas, old man,’ said John.

There was more than a looking-glass on the mantelpiece; there was one of Deborah’s blank postcards which had arrived that morning. John picked it up, and crossing to his table, took five others from a drawer. Fanning them between his fingers, he handed them to Douglas.

‘You are a bright sort of a lad,’ he said. ‘What do you make of these?’

‘Postcards,’ said Douglas, turning them to and fro in his hand.

‘There you are; he’s on to it in a minute,’ said John.

Douglas scrutinised the empty backs of the cards in silence, then:

‘There’s nothing written on them.’

‘There’s my name and address, a Westminster postmark and, if you examine the dates, you will see they run consecutively.’

‘Nothing on the back, I mean.’ Then turning them again. ‘It’s queer writing, do you know it, sir?’

‘I am getting to know. It might be disguised, do you think?’

Douglas shook his head.

‘Rather a job to disguise a hand effectively half-a-dozen times.’

John nodded.

‘There’s a queer slant to the characters. I had an idea it might be the writing of a left-handed woman,’ said he.

‘That’s much more probable. I’d go bail it’s a woman.’

Barbara, her head over Douglas’s shoulder, stared at the cards critically.

‘Whoever wrote them, hasn’t much to say,’ said she.

John’s face looked surprisingly serious for so small a cause.

‘Up to the present,’ he replied, slowly. ‘Anyway, it’s a pleasant little mystery for some one to unravel.’

Before he had completed the sentence Faith came into the room.

‘What mystery?’ she stammered. ‘What were you saying?’

‘Another of these blank postcards, my sweet.’

Faith struggled to make her voice sound natural.

Deliberately John looked away from her.

She forced a smile and held out her hand to Douglas.

‘How are you, Lady Marlay?’ he inquired. ‘Babs tells me you have been a bit off-colour.’

‘Not I,’ she replied. ‘Babs is a scaremonger.’ Then, slipping an arm through one of Barbara’s, ‘Has he been proposing again, this man?’

‘He has, rather,’ Barbara replied.

‘And have you been accepting?’

‘Good heavens, no. A newspaper man about the house used to be rather a thrill, but since Uncle John sprang to fame, one never sees anybody else.’

‘Sprang to fame, is right,’ said John. ‘You haven’t heard the latest honour this grateful country has bestowed upon me.’

‘Oh, not a baronetcy,’ Barbara exclaimed.

‘Not yet. It’s the wrong time of the year for that,’ he replied. ‘This is a much rarer distinction. F.R.S. if you want to know.’

‘F.R.S.’ Faith spoke with a hand pressed to her throat.

John nodded.

‘I bet a thousand pounds to one you haven’t the smallest idea what that is,’ said he.

‘Of course I have. A Fellow of the Royal Society.’

John laughed.

‘Marvellous,’ he said.

‘A Fellow of the Royal Society,’ Barbara repeated with a wry face. ‘But isn’t that awfully stodgy?’

‘Stodgy, stodgy,’ John returned. ‘My dear good child, haven’t you read your Encyclopædia Britannica—if you’re not jolly careful, I’ll give you one for a wedding present—where they tell you that the Royal Society is “a concourse of divers learned persons inquisitive into natural philosophy and other parts of human learning.” You’ll go a long way before you’ll find a more handsome phrase than that.’

‘It—it’s wonderful,’ said Faith, but the tone in which she spoke had more in it of dread than admiration.

‘For my part,’ said Barbara, ‘I should have preferred a slightly improved title.’

‘This is a title,’ said John. ‘Only it’s worn after a name like a tail-light, instead of in front.’

‘I’m tremendously glad, sir,’ said Douglas. ‘Can I deal with it in the morning’s issue of The Cable?’

John shook his head.

‘You cannot,’ said he.

Picking up a copy of the evening paper he disposed himself on the sofa at Faith’s side.

Her right arm stole round his neck, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder.

‘I am so proud, so proud, John,’ she said. ‘I do adore you so—and you.’ Her free hand strayed out and met one of Barbara’s. ‘I want to be everything to both of you.’

John twinkled an eyelid at Barbara, who tilted her head humorously in reply.

‘Don’t report that sentiment in your paper, Douglas,’ he said.

‘Whatever is the matter with her?’ Barbara asked.

‘I don’t know,’ John answered, ‘but it’s a sinister sign, when a woman you have been married to for seven years makes a public declaration of her affection.’

Faith started and drew away her hand.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Embarrassment, darling,’ he replied with a laugh, ‘embarrassment. It is always embarrassing to be hit in the eye by a bouquet from an unexpected quarter.’

‘Is it unexpected?’ Faith’s voice was tense.

For the first time in six days John looked her squarely in the eyes.

‘My lovely, you have got the jumps,’ he told her, ‘and I cannot allow it. A fortnight from to-day, we’ll put out from London and beat it for the desert. There’s an oasis in Algeria that I know—Berrian, it’s called—the Place of the Singing Wells. All day long you shall sit in the sun on an old mud wall and watch the green barley, the coloured crowds and lazy camels, and hear the splash of water and the squeaking of the well-pulleys.’

He was interrupted by the arrival of Childers, with an overcoat thrown over his arm.

‘I thought you might have forgotten your appointment at Wigmore Street, Sir John.’

John looked at his watch.

‘All right. Get me a taxi in five minutes. I don’t have to be there until six o’clock. And Childers, put me out a dinner jacket—I’ll dress when I come in.’

‘Very good, Sir John,’ said Childers and retired.

‘You haven’t told me where you are dining,’ said Faith.

‘With old Smythe who edits the Clinic,’ he replied. ‘A decent old sort. He wants me to meet this Swedish scientist—Professor Altzadjem. There’s an article about him in this paper.’ Turning a page, he read, ‘ “The distinguished Swedish scientist who is generally accepted as the first living authority on Anterior Poliomyelitis and Disseminated Sclerosis.” That’s the kind of man I am.’

‘With whom did you say?’ Faith repeated.

John shook his head.

‘I am not going to say it all over again; it would give me lockjaw.’

‘Yes, but where does Doctor Smythe live?’

‘Westminster, darling. Beaufort Hall Court—No. 48.’

Faith’s body became rigid as stone, her hands clenched tightly into the cushions at the side of her.

Of course, it was a coincidence, and nothing more, that he should be dining in the same mansions in which Deborah Kane lived; but the coincidence, occurring at that moment when her resistances were strained to the final pitch of endurance, was almost more than she could stand.

Stupidly, like a child, she repeated the address.

John had risen and was not looking at her.

With an effort she struggled to regain her self-control, rubbed her forehead and said:

‘I always like to know where you are.’ Then, to hide her anxiety, she told of her meeting with Florence. ‘I knew you were going out, so I promised to have dinner with her.’

‘Then I should have something to eat before you go,’ said John, folding the evening paper and putting it on his table.

‘You’re rather hard on Florence,’ she said. ‘She isn’t a bad sort, really.’

‘Perhaps not,’ said Barbara; ‘but until Uncle John’s upward flight she didn’t bother much with us.’

‘She didn’t think he should have married me,’ said Faith, and added, ‘Perhaps she was right.’

‘Then why has she changed her mind?’ Barbara demanded.

‘Florence has no machinery for changing her mind,’ said John. ‘It changes automatically with the fashion. Shall I see you when I come back, sweetest?’

Faith nodded—then:

‘John, I shall want some money, I am afraid I have been rather—extravagant, lately.’

‘Well, why not?’ he replied. ‘How much—a million?’

‘About two hundred.’

‘What, only a trifle like that? All right, I’ll let you have the cheque when I come in.’

‘If it’s all the same,’ said Douglas Helder, ‘may I take Barbara out of the room while this is going on? I’d hate her to get the notion that your answers are typical of husbands.’

John went out laughing.

‘I’m on duty to-night at The Cable offices,’ Douglas went on. ‘Coming to see me off, Babs?’

But Barbara saw no occasion to do anything of the kind. Douglas was too ready to take things for granted.

‘Nope,’ she replied.

It was Faith who persuaded her to satisfy the young man’s wish. Faith, with a little shake of the head, a tap from the back of her hand and a quite inaudible,

‘Be nice to him.’

‘You sentimentalists,’ said Barbara, and jumping to her feet, crossed to where Douglas stood and gave him a hearty, practical, matter-of-fact kiss.

‘There, will that satisfy you?’

Linking arms, they marched out of the room together.