Lord John in New York. Williamson Charles Norris

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ can sit in the outer office and browse over the bundle till lunch-time, if you like," said Yelverton. "There's a table there in a quiet corner. I shall be off on business before you finish, I expect. See you later – at the Felborn Theatre, your first night. Wish you luck."

      I thanked him and got up. Carr Price followed suit.

      "Weren't you a bit premature mentioning the Felborn?" he reproached me in the next room, beyond earshot of Mr. Yelverton's secretaries and stenographers.

      "No," I reassured him. "To-morrow, at this time or a little later, you'll know why. Meanwhile, don't worry, but take my word – and a taxi to the theatre. Tell Felborn I'm on the spot, and there's a truce between Odell and me, an armistice of twenty-four" – I pulled out my watch – "no, twenty-two and a half hours. Ask him to lend me his private office to-morrow morning from nine till ten o'clock. After that time you and he had better hold yourselves ready to be called in to discuss dates."

      "You're either the wonder child of the British Empire or its champion fool," remarked Price somewhat waspishly, as he prepared to leave me alone with the Callender-Graham dossier.

      "You've got till to-morrow to make up your mind which," said I, sitting down to my meal of manuscripts in order not to waste a minute out of the twenty-two and a half hours which remained to me. It would not have been wise to add that I didn't know which myself.

      Many of the papers I passed over rapidly. Others gave me information that I couldn't have got from Odell without a confession of ignorance, or from the Misses Callender without impertinence. Among the latter was one summarising much of the family history; and, profiting by some smart detective's researches, I learned a good deal about Miss Grace Callender and her almost equally interesting aunt.

      Even before the girl reached the age of sixteen, it seemed, she had begun to have offers of marriage. After her parents' death, when she was not quite fifteen, she had lived for a while with Miss Marian Callender at the house in Park Avenue left to her by her father. She had been taught by French governesses, German governesses and English governesses, but all had failed to prevent a kind of persecution by young men fascinated with the child's beauty or her money. At last Miss Callender senior had sent her niece to a boarding-school in the country where the supervision was notoriously strict, and had herself gone to Italy, her mother's native land, for a few months' visit. Eight or nine years before this Marian Callender had fallen in love with an Italian tenor, singing with enormous success in New York. The lady's half-brother – Grace's father – had objected to the marriage, and for that reason or some other the two had parted. Gossips said that the singer, Paolo Tostini, had not cared enough for Marian Callender to take her without a dot; and all she had came from her millionaire half-brother. At Graham Callender's death Marian's friends were surprised that she was left a yearly allowance (though a magnificently generous one) only while she "continued unmarried and acted as Grace's guardian." In the event of Grace's marriage, the girl was free to continue half the same allowance to her aunt if she chose. This was generally considered unjust to Marian, and the only excuse for the arrangement seemed to be that Graham Callender feared Paolo Tostini might come forward again if the woman he had jilted were left with a fortune.

      The police of New York had apparently thought it worth while to ferret out further facts in connection with the singer, who had not again returned to America. They learned that the once celebrated tenor had lost his voice and had spent his money in extravagance, as many artists do. He was living in comparative poverty with his father (a skilled mechanician and inventor of a successful time lock for safes) and his younger brother in Naples at the time of Miss Marian Callender's visit to Italy, and Grace's school life. Although these facts were inquired into only after some years had passed, and the two brothers Callender-Graham had died, Marian's movements must have been easily traced, for it was learned that she had openly visited the Tostinis at their small villa between Posilipo and Naples. The family had also called and dined at her hotel, where they were not unknown. After that their circumstances had apparently improved, and it appeared not improbable that Marian Callender had helped her late lover's people.

      When she returned to New York it was to find that Grace was being bombarded with love letters at school, and that the hotel in the village near by had for its principal clients a crowd of young men whose whole business in life was lying in wait for the heiress. In consequence, Marian brought her niece back to the house in Park Avenue; and soon after, before the girl had been allowed to come out in society, Antonio, the younger brother of Paolo Tostini, arrived in New York. His business was that of an analytical chemist. He had first-rate recommendations, and was an extremely brilliant, as well as singularly good-looking young man, some (who remembered the tenor) thought even handsomer than Paolo. Antonio Tostini, thanks to his own ability and the introductions he had from Miss Callender and others, got on well both in business and society. No one was surprised, and no one blamed her, when Marian Callender threw the clever young Italian and Grace Callender together – except that the girl was young to make up her mind, and her dead father had favoured a match with one of the disinherited cousins.

      From these rough notes, crudely classifying Antonio Tostini's courtship of Grace Callender, I gathered that the young Italian had fallen desperately in love with the girl. He had assured friends whom they had in common that even if, to marry him, she were obliged to give up her fortune, he would still think himself the happiest man on earth to win her. Grace's aunt, who had tried to keep the girl out of other men's way, evidently favoured her old love's brother. She chaperoned a yachting party, of which Grace and Antonio were the most important members, a party in which the Callender-Grahams were not included, though they wished for invitations. This match-making effort on Marion's part stifled all suspicion that she discouraged Grace from marrying in order to retain a charming home, a large, certain income, and all kinds of other luxuries for herself. She had taken Grace's refusal of Antonio Tostini almost as hard as he had taken it himself. She had even been ill for several weeks when for the third time Grace had sent him away, and he returned in despair to Italy. It was not long after this affair (the dossier informed me) that, in accordance with her father's desire, the girl engaged herself to Perry Callender-Graham, and Marian consented to the inevitable. Her affection and support during the tragic experiences that followed had given great comfort to Grace, and, so far as was known, Antonio Tostini had had the good taste never to appear on the scene again.

      Here were many details which I had been anxious, but not decently able, to learn, as the Misses Callenders' shipboard friendship had confined itself to lending me books, telling me what to do in New York, inviting me to call, listening to talk about the war or the play, and allowing me to snapshot them on deck.

      Having looked through the dossier, I took my departure with the key. It was only a duplicate, yet I couldn't rid myself of a queer, superstitious feeling for the thing, as if it were offered to me by the unseen hand of a dead man.

      I taxied back to my hotel and mentioned to a clerk that I wanted to see houses and flats in the direction of Riverside Drive. Could he direct me to an agent who would have the letting of apartments in that neighbourhood? If my foreign way of expressing myself amused him, he hid his mirth and looked up in a big book the addresses of several agents.

      I had not cared to be too specific in my questions, but I chose the address nearest the street I wanted, taxied there, found the agent, and inquired if there were anything to be let. It was the street in which Perry Callender-Graham and Ned, his brother, had met their death.

      "I have been recommended to that particular street by an American friend in England," I said. "He has told me that it's very quiet. There are several apartment houses in it, are there not?

      "Yes," replied a spruce young man who looked willing to let me half residential New York. "But it's a favourite street; I'm afraid there's nothing doing there now. As for houses, they're all owned, or have been rented for many years. A little farther north or south – "

      "Hold on," I pulled him back. "Somebody might be induced to let. My friend was telling me about СКАЧАТЬ