The Crime and the Criminal. Marsh Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ O'Donnel?" I wondered what he meant; there was meaning in his tone. Indeed, every word he uttered, every gesture he made, seemed pregnant with meaning. The more I saw of him, the more uncomfortable I became. "I do not remember to have heard the name Louise O'Donnel."

      "Yes, Louise O'Donnel. You're quite sure you never heard it?"

      "So far as I remember, never."

      "Perhaps your memory is at fault; one never knows." He puffed at his cigar-or, rather, he puffed at my cigar. "I don't think I'll give you my address. I'll call for the handkerchief at yours. What is your address?"

      I hesitated. I was quite aware that to give him my address would be to commit a further act of folly. But, at the same time, I did not see how I could avoid giving it him without a row or worse.

      "My office is in Austin Friars?"

      "Austin Friars? You don't happen to have a card about you?"

      I did happen to have one of my business cards in my letter-case. Taking it out, I gave it to him. He looked at it askance, reading the name on it out loud.

      "Thomas Tennant. Rather an alliterative kind of name. Almost like a pseudonym." I sat in silence. "However, there may be some one about with such a name." He slipped the card into his waistcoat pocket. "I shall have pleasure, Mr. Tennant, in calling on you, for my silk handkerchief, in Austin Friars; possibly to-morrow, possibly next week, or the week after-but that I shall call for it, sooner or later, you may rest assured." He looked at me with a grin. "Now that we have transacted that little piece of business, I don't think there is any necessity for me to inflict my company upon you any longer. I may as well get out."

      I was thankful for the prospect of a prompt deliverance. But I was not to be rid of him so easily, as his next words showed. He was drumming with his finger-tips on the front of the cab.

      "By the way, you were good enough to mention something about a deposit for my handkerchief. I think that, after all, I will trouble you for one."

      I advanced my hand towards my pocket.

      "With pleasure. If you have no objection, I will buy the handkerchief right out at a liberal price?"

      His reply was a sneer.

      "Thank you; I am obliged; the handkerchief is not for sale. I prize it too greatly-as a present from my late lamented greatgrandmother. But something on deposit I don't mind."

      "How much shall we say?"

      "Say-we'll say ten pounds."

      "Ten pounds!" I stared at him. The fellow's impudence was increasing. "You are jesting."

      He turned on me quite savagely-his black eyes glared.

      "Jesting? What do you mean by saying I am jesting?"

      "I shall certainly deposit with you no sum approaching ten pounds."

      He continued to regard me as if he were taking my measure. I met his glance unflinchingly. I wished him to understand that I was not quite the simpleton he seemed to take me for. I think he grasped something of my meaning. His tone became sullen.

      "Make it five pounds, then."

      "I am more likely to make it five shillings. However, under the peculiar circumstances, as I don't know what I should have done without your handkerchief, I don't mind going as far as half a sovereign, which is about four times its value."

      His reply, though scarcely a direct answer to my words, still was sufficiently plain.

      "You and I, Mr. Tennant, will spend the night together."

      "Again, I ask you, what do you mean by that?"

      The fellow smoothed his clean-shaven chin and grinned.

      "I mean, Mr. Tennant, that I am beginning to suspect that it may be my painful duty to thrust myself on your society until I have ascertained what became of the woman who got into your compartment at Brighton, but who was not in it when we reached Victoria."

      A creepy, crawly feeling went all over me. This came of not having told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, directly the accident had happened. Already I was suspected of the worst. And by such a fellow! Already, to a certain extent, I was in his power.

      I did not give him the five pounds he asked. I did not make quite such an idiot of myself as that. But I gave him much more than his ancient rag was worth. He rattled the coins, gold coins, together in the palms of his hands; he chuckled at the sound of them; he called out to the cabman, "Stop!" Standing on the pavement, he took off his hat to me with a sweeping flourish, saying, with a laugh-

      "The handkerchief itself-that priceless relic of my late lamented greatgrandmother! – I will call for at your office in Austin Friars."

      CHAPTER III

      THE NAME ON THE SCRAP OF PAPER

      I was quite conscious, as I drove home the rest of the way alone, that I had made of myself, doubly and trebly, a fool. But, if possible, still worse remained behind.

      How the African gentleman, of whom I read the other day, manages with 999 wives, I, for one, am at a loss to understand. When a man is on good terms with one wife-and I had rather be on good terms with one wife than on bad terms with 999-occasions do arise on which he experiences little difficulties. For instance, I had been in the habit of telling my wife everything-or, perhaps, it would be more correct to write, practically everything. It would have been well for me if there had been no reservations. As a matter of fact, I had said nothing about two or three little incidents of my pre-nuptial existence. Notably, I had said nothing about Ellen Howth-though that, perhaps, was rather more than an incident.

      The result was that when I reached home I was in something of a quandary. The wife plied me with the usual questions, to which I was unable to supply the accustomed copious and satisfactory answers. She wished to know how my face came to be cut in that terrible fashion. I rigged up some cock-and-bull story about a broken window-a window had been broken, but not altogether in the manner I led her to infer. Then she found that a button was missing from my overcoat. Another cock-and-bull story had to be manufactured to account for that. It did not require a woman's keen eyes to discover that there was something amiss about my general demeanour-that I "wore a worried look." In endeavouring to satisfactorily account for that I blundered fearfully. We went to bed with a shade of coolness perceptible on either side. I felt that I had been ill-used generally, and Lucy felt that I had ill-used her.

      The wife had bound up my face with a sticking-plaster. In the morning the sticking-plaster was much in evidence. I had not had a good night's rest. I should like to know who would have done, after my adventures of the evening! I got up, not so much in a bad temper as oppressed with gloom. Lucy, as a matter of course, plied me with her questions all over again. We had a fencing match while dressing. The match was continued at breakfast, till the buttons almost came off the foils. I had resolved, in the small hours of the morning, to screw my courage to the sticking point, and to make a clean breast of it to some one. I told myself that the first plunge would be the worst, when I had taken that all would be well. But, by the time I started for the City, I had become so aggrieved with Lucy that my resolution, as it were, had assumed a different hue. It was irresolution again.

      I bought all the papers. I searched them to learn if anything or any one had been found upon the Brighton line. I did not see very well how there could have been, in time for the fact to have been printed in the morning papers. But a morbid СКАЧАТЬ