The Secret of Chimneys. Агата Кристи

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СКАЧАТЬ the memoirs of Count Stylptitch to do with Prince Michael?’

      ‘They will cause scandals.’

      ‘Most memoirs do that,’ said Anthony soothingly.

      ‘Of many secrets he the knowledge had. Should he reveal but the quarter of them, Europe into war plunged may be.’

      ‘Come, come,’ said Anthony. ‘It can’t be as bad as all that.’

      ‘An unfavourable opinion of the Obolovitch will abroad be spread. So democratic is the English spirit.’

      ‘I can quite believe,’ said Anthony, ‘that the Obolovitch may have been a trifle high-handed now and again. It runs in the blood. But people in England expect that sort of thing from the Balkans. I don’t know why they should, but they do.’

      ‘You do not understand,’ said the Baron. ‘You do not understand at all. And my lips sealed are.’ He sighed.

      ‘What exactly are you afraid of?’ asked Anthony.

      ‘Until I have read the memoirs I do not know,’ explained the Baron simply. ‘But there is sure to be something. These great diplomats are always indiscreet. The apple-cart upset will be, as the saying goes.’

      ‘Look here,’ said Anthony kindly. ‘I’m sure you’re taking altogether too pessimistic a view of the thing. I know all about publishers–they sit on manuscripts and hatch ’em like eggs. It will be at least a year before the thing is published.’

      ‘Either a very deceitful or a very simple young man you are. All is arranged for the memoirs in a Sunday newspaper to come out immediately.

      ‘Oh!’ Anthony was somewhat taken aback. ‘But you can always deny everything,’ he said hopefully.

      The Baron shook his head sadly.

      ‘No, no, through the hat you talk. Let us to business come. One thousand pounds you are to have, is it not so? You see, I have the good information got.’

      ‘I certainly congratulate the Intelligence Department of the Loyalists.’

      ‘Then I to you offer fifteen hundred.’

      ‘Anthony stared at him in amazement, then shook his head ruefully.

      ‘I’m afraid it can’t be done,’ he said, with regret.

      ‘Good. I to you offer two thousand.’

      ‘You tempt me, Baron, you tempt me. But I still say it can’t be done.’

      ‘Your own price name, then.’

      ‘I’m afraid you don’t understand the position. I’m perfectly willing to believe that you are on the side of the angels, and that these memoirs may damage your cause. Nevertheless, I’ve undertaken the job, and I’ve got to carry it through. See? I can’t allow myself to be bought off by the other side. That kind of thing isn’t done.’

      The Baron listened very attentively. At the end of Anthony’s speech he nodded his head several times.

      ‘I see. Your honour as an Englishman it is?’

      ‘Well, we don’t put it that way ourselves,’ said Anthony. ‘But I dare say, allowing for a difference in vocabulary, that we both mean much the same thing.’

      The Baron rose to his feet.

      ‘For the English honour I much respect have,’ he announced. ‘We must another way try. I wish you good morning.’

      He drew his heels together, clicked, bowed and marched out of the room, holding himself stiffly erect.

      ‘Now I wonder what he meant by that,’ mused Anthony. ‘Was it a threat? Not that I’m in the least afraid of old Lollipop. Rather a good name for him, that, by the way. I shall call him Baron Lollipop.’

      He took a turn or two up and down the room, undecided on his next course of action. The date stipulated upon for delivering the manuscript was a little over a week ahead. Today was the 5th of October. Anthony had no intention of handing it over before the last moment. Truth to tell, he was by now feverishly anxious to read these memoirs. He had meant to do so on the boat coming over, but had been laid low with a touch of fever, and not at all in the mood for deciphering crabbed and illegible handwriting, for none of the manuscript was typed. He was now more than ever determined to see what all the fuss was about.

      There was the other job too.

      On an impulse, he picked up the telephone book and looked up the name of Revel. There were six Revels in the book: Edward Henry Revel, surgeon, of Harley Street; and James Revel and Co, saddlers; Lennox Revel of Abbotbury Mansions, Hampstead; Miss Mary Revel with an address in Ealing; Hon Mrs Timothy Revel of 487 Pont Street; and Mrs Willis Revel of 42 Cadogan Square. Eliminating the saddlers and Miss Mary Revel, that gave him four names to investigate–and there was no reason to suppose that the lady lived in London at all! He shut up the book with a short shake of the head.

      ‘For the moment I’ll leave it to chance,’ he said. ‘Something usually turns up.’

      The luck of the Anthony Cades of this world is perhaps in some measure due to their own belief in it. Anthony found what he was after not half an hour later, when he was turning over the pages of an illustrated paper. It was a representation of some tableaux organized by the Duchess of Perth. Below the central figure, a woman in Eastern dress, was the inscription:

      The Hon Mrs Timothy Revel as Cleopatra. Before her marriage, Mrs Revel was the Hon Virginia Cawthron, a daughter of Lord Edgbaston.

      Anthony looked at the picture some time, slowly pursing up his lips as though to whistle. Then he tore out the whole page, folded it up and put it in his pocket. He went upstairs again, unlocked his suitcase and took out the packet of letters. He took out the folded page from his pocket and slipped it under the string that held them together.

      Then at a sudden sound behind him, he wheeled round sharply. A man was standing in the doorway, the kind of man whom Anthony had fondly imagined existed only in the chorus of a comic opera. A sinister-looking figure, with a squat brutal head and lips drawn back in an evil grin.

      ‘What the devil are you doing here?’ asked Anthony. ‘And who let you come up?’

      ‘I pass where I please,’ said the stranger. His voice was guttural and foreign, though his English was idiomatic enough.

      ‘Another dago,’ thought Anthony.

      ‘Well, get out, do you hear?’ he went on aloud.

      The man’s eyes were fixed on the packet of letters which Anthony had caught up.

      ‘I will get out when you have given me what I have come for.’

      ‘And what’s that, may I ask?’

      The man took a step nearer.

      ‘The memoirs of Count Stylptitch,’ he hissed.

      ‘It’s impossible to take you seriously,’ said Anthony. ‘You’re so completely the stage villain. I СКАЧАТЬ