Читать книгу The British Mysteries Edition: 14 Novels & 70+ Short Stories - Sapper - Страница 54

A thick grey mist lay over the Thames. It covered the water and the low fields to the west like a thick white carpet; it drifted sluggishly under the old bridge which spans the river between Goring and Streatley. It was the hour before dawn, and sleepy passengers, rubbing the windows of their carriages as the Plymouth boat express rushed on towards London, shivered and drew their rugs closer around them. It looked cold ... cold and dead.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the vapour rose, and spread outwards up the wooded hills by Basildon. It drifted through the shrubs and rose-bushes of a little garden, which stretched from a bungalow down to the water's edge, until at length wisps of it brushed gently round the bungalow itself. It was a daily performance in the summer, and generally the windows of the lower rooms remained shut till long after the mist had gone and the sun was glinting through the trees on to the river below. But on this morning there was a change in the usual programme. Suddenly the window of one of the downstair rooms was flung open, and a man with a white haggard face leant out drawing great gulps of fresh air into his lungs. Softly the white wraiths eddied past him into the room behind—a room in which a queer, faintly sweet smell still hung—a room in which three other men lay sprawling uncouthly in chairs, and two dogs lay motionless on the hearthrug.

After a moment or two the man withdrew, only to appear again with one of the others in his arms. And then, having dropped his burden through the window on to the lawn outside, he repeated his performance with the remaining two. Finally he pitched the two dogs after them, and then, with his hand to his forehead, he staggered down to the water's edge.

"Holy smoke!" he muttered to himself, as he plunged his head into the cold water, "talk about the morning after.... Never have I thought of such a head."

After a while, with the water still dripping from his face, he returned to the bungalow and found the other three in varying stages of partial insensibility.

"Wake up, my heroes," he remarked, "and go and put your great fat heads in the river."

Peter Darrell scrambled unsteadily to his feet. "Great Scott! Hugh," he muttered thickly, "what's happened?"

"We've been had for mugs," said Drummond grimly.

Algy Longworth blinked at him foolishly from his position in the middle of a flower-bed.

"Dear old soul," he murmured at length, "you'll have to change your wine merchants. Merciful Heavens! is the top of my head still on?"

"Don't be a fool, Algy," grunted Hugh. "You weren't drunk last night. Pull yourself together, man; we were all of us drugged or doped somehow. And now," he added bitterly, "we've all got heads, and we have not got Potts."

"I don't remember anything," said Toby Sinclair, "except falling asleep. Have they taken him?"

"Of course they have," said Hugh. "Just before I went off I saw 'em all in the garden, and that swine Lakington was with them. However, while you go and put your nuts in the river, I'll go up and make certain."

With a grim smile he watched the three men lurch down to the water; then he turned and went upstairs to the room which had been occupied by the American millionaire. It was empty, as he had known it would be, and with a smothered curse he made his way downstairs again. And it was as he stood in the little hall saying things gently under his breath that he heard a muffled moaning noise coming from the kitchen. For a moment he was nonplussed; then, with an oath at his stupidity, he dashed through the door. Bound tightly to the table, with a gag in her mouth, the wretched Mrs. Denny was sitting on the floor, blinking at him wrathfully....

"What on earth will Denny say to me when he hears about this!" said Hugh, feverishly cutting the cords. He helped her to her feet, and then forced her gently into a chair. "Mrs. Denny, have those swine hurt you?"

Five minutes served to convince him that the damage, if any, was mental rather than bodily, and that her vocal powers were not in the least impaired. Like a dam bursting, the flood of the worthy woman's wrath surged over him; she breathed a hideous vengeance on every one impartially. Then she drove Hugh from the kitchen, and slammed the door in his face.

"Breakfast in half an hour," she cried from inside—"not that one of you deserves it."

"We are forgiven," remarked Drummond, as he joined the other three on the lawn. "Do any of you feel like breakfast? Fat sausages and crinkly bacon."

"Shut up," groaned Algy, "or we'll throw you into the river. What I want is a brandy-and-soda—half a dozen of 'em."

"I wish I knew what they did to us," said Darrell. "Because, if I remember straight, I drank bottled beer at dinner, and I'm damned if I see how they could have doped that."

"I'm only interested in one thing, Peter," remarked Drummond grimly, "and that isn't what they did to us. It's what we're going to do to them."

"Count me out," said Algy. "For the next year I shall be fully occupied resting my head against a cold stone. Hugh, I positively detest your friends...."

* * * * *

It was a few hours later that a motor-car drew up outside that celebrated chemist in Piccadilly whose pick-me-ups are known from Singapore to Alaska. From it there descended four young men, who ranged themselves in a row before the counter and spoke no word. Speech was unnecessary. Four foaming drinks were consumed, four acid-drops were eaten, and then, still in silence, the four young men got back into the car and drove away. It was a solemn rite, and on arrival at the Junior Sports Club the four performers sank into four large chairs, and pondered gently on the vileness of the morning after. Especially when there hadn't been a night before. An unprofitable meditation evidently, for suddenly, as if actuated by a single thought, the four young men rose from their four large chairs and again entered the motor-car.

The celebrated chemist whose pick-me-ups are known from Singapore to Alaska gazed at them severely.

"A very considerable bend, gentlemen," he remarked.

"Quite wrong," answered the whitest and most haggard of the row. "We are all confirmed Pussyfoots, and have been consuming non-alcoholic beer."

Once more to the scrunch of acid-drops the four young men entered the car outside; once more, after a brief and silent drive, four large chairs in the smoking-room of the Junior Sports Club received an occupant. And it was so, even until luncheon time....

"Are we better?" said Hugh, getting to his feet, and regarding the other three with a discerning eye.

"No," murmured Toby, "but I am beginning to hope that I may live. Four Martinis and then we will gnaw a cutlet."