Mr American. George Fraser MacDonald

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СКАЧАТЬ and twitteringly guided and hindered the Customs man as he plunged into the mass of female clothing within.

      “One would think one were a criminal, or a passenger to New York!” exclaimed the large lady indignantly, her feather hat quivering with affront. “It is bad enough to have one’s belongings turned out wholesale in front of half the population of America, but in England – really!” Plainly the lady had suffered, on her arrival at New York, at the hands of the minions of “Lucky” Loeb, the Customs Chief, whose private war against smuggling had caused considerable indignation and sundry spluttering letters to the New York Times; Griffin seemed to remember that even a steamship line’s director had had to turn out his pockets. But now the Customs man was delving and bringing forth a large bottle of gin, and the lady was going bright purple and demanding of the shrinking Evelyn how that had got there?

      “Serve the old trout right,” observed Murphy coarsely, and Inspector Griffin privately agreed. Nothing much here, though; he glanced again at the little stout man, who was bustling off crying “Thank you, thank you, sir!” to the Customs man, and was preparing to speak to Murphy, when his eye fell on a face at the table beyond.

      A man was stepping forward to take his place at the table, pausing momentarily to make way for two pretty, giggling American girls who were gathering up their cases; they had succeeded in wheedling more than their allowance of perfume past a grey-haired and indulgent official, and were tripping off to find a porter. One of them shot a quick, appraising glance at the man who was stepping aside, received a grave touch of the hat-brim in return, and whispered, tittering to her companion; she was what Murphy would have called a peach, a lissom little blonde whose bobbing curls and tight-skirted bottom drew an approving sigh from the constable as he watched her clicking off on her high heels, showing a tantalising glimpse of silken ankle; a nudge from Griffin brought him back to earth.

      “That one at the far table. All right, turn this way and tell me about him.”

      Murphy glanced at the man for a couple of seconds and turned obediently to face Griffin; he only slightly resented his superior’s habit of playing classroom games by way of instruction in police routine.

      “American,” he said confidently, “thirty to thirty-five, not more. Six foot one, maybe two, between twelve an’ thirteen stone, well built on the lean side, black moustache, no whiskers, could do with a haircut, thin features, sunburned, wearing a bowler, brown, an’ a tweed cape, dark suit, no rings, plain pin, watch-chain as might be gold but might just as easy be brass, not carryin’ a stick, but with a big green valise –”

      “Yes, yes, boy,” said Griffin. “But what about him? Turn and have another look.”

      Murphy shrugged and glanced round at the man, who was watching the Customs official go through his valise; he looked ordinary enough to Murphy; not quite so well-dressed as most of the passengers, perhaps, a trifle more – bohemian was the word that might have occurred to Murphy if he had known it, but it would have been wide of the mark. Quiet-looking chap, very attentive to what the Customs man said, nodding seriously and thanking the official as he restrapped the valise and turned his attention to the battered trunk which lay beside the table. Murphy frowned and shrugged again.

      “That’s all, sir; don’t see anything out o’ the way. He’s no crook, that’s certain; not so – well, smooth as most, but otherwise …” He shook his head. “Quiet chap, I’d say; you know, a bit soft-like, in his manner – for a Yankee, any roads.”

      The Customs man was bending over the trunk, chalk in hand, and the American was stooping beside him, apparently reassuring him about the contents. Griffin strained his ears, and felt a slight thrill of satisfaction when the passenger spoke. All he said was: “No, no I don’t believe I have any of those. Guess I’d know if I did, all right. Thank you, thanks very much.”

      The voice fitted, Griffin thought. That soft, husky drawl, so different from the nasal rasp of the Eastern seaboard; it was a voice from the Plains, the kind he remembered from the Saskatchewan prairie. North Central United States, then, or thereabouts; it was an accent which Griffin, with his sympathetic Welsh ear, could have listened to all day; a voice from out yonder.

      “Have I missed anything, sir?” Murphy was wondering.

      Just about everything that matters, thought Griffin, but since he couldn’t blame Murphy for failing to recognize something he had never seen before, all he said was: “No, boy, you had him summed up nice for description. He isn’t sunburned, though; he’s weather-beaten. There’s a difference. Tell you what, Constable Murphy – that little stout chap who went through a minute since. See if he gets on the London train, will you? If he doesn’t, get his address.”

      He was not particularly interested in the little stout man, but he wanted to study this other one at leisure. Not that there was anything really remarkable about him, but he was out of the run of the normal transatlantic traffic. A Westerner, and not a townsman, either. Griffin studied the tall, rangy figure in its slightly incongruous cape and new bowler; good features, behind the black moustache that turned down slightly at the corners of the mouth, quite a fine face, like a scholar’s, even, thought Griffin, although this patently wasn’t a scholar. Soft-like, Murphy had thought, and Griffin could excuse him for the mistake; there was a gentleness, almost a diffidence, about the face and the man’s whole bearing, as though he were ready to apologise for being there. But he wasn’t soft; oh no, thought Griffin, you’re not soft – but nobody will realize it until the moment when they wish they hadn’t misjudged you.

      The Inspector smiled. How long ago was it now? – twenty-four years, nearly twenty-five since the day that sometimes came back to him in bad dreams. The tangled clearing at Duck Lake, the reek of powder smoke and the crash of firing, the shrill yells of the Metis sharpshooters and the whooping of Big Bear’s Crees as they closed in through the woods on the battered circle of red coats among the carts and slaughtered horses. The Army Colt jumping in his fist as he fired over the shelter of his saddle, and then the scorching pain in his left arm, and himself pawing at the feathered arrow in his blood-soaked sleeve, crying great tears of pain, until the man next to him had crawled across to snap the shaft off short and thrust the arrow-head agonisingly through Griffin’s arm and out the other side. He remembered the man’s face; the same wide-spaced grey eyes, the lean features and straight jaw under the broad-brimmed hat, and the soft, almost apologetic voice: “Easy does it, Mountie. Just lie there, head down – okay?” Why, he might have been this fellow’s father, for looks. MacPherson, his name had been, a big, gangling scout in buckskin – but then, there had been hundreds like him, all through that campaign; tall, quiet men who said little, and that to the point, courteous in manner, pensive, rather lonely men.

      And the wounded bewildered young constable in the red tunic was now Inspector Lloyd Griffin, of the Liverpool force, dressed in authority and drab overcoat, heavier about the jowls and waist, and instead of the trees and war-whoops by Duck Lake there was the echoing Customs shed and the respectable passengers and staff going about their business quietly and orderly in the civilised centre of England’s second city, and it was no buckskin man but a soberly-dressed American who was nodding to the Customs man and looking about for a porter.

      Griffin sauntered closer and cast an eye at the label on the battered trunk. It read “M.J. Franklin, Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, England.” Well, he hadn’t expected to see the name MacPherson, anyhow. Just because this boy was from the same stable, so to speak, of the same breed and the same neck of the woods, give or take a thousand miles or so, meant nothing. Inspector Griffin shook himself almost irritably. That was all long ago, and things had changed; this was the twentieth century, and the wild days were well gone now, except in the memories of old hands like himself. But for a moment there, the sight of that … that type, working on his Celtic imagination, had taken him back. Well, of course, men didn’t change, even if times did. And СКАЧАТЬ