CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

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СКАЧАТЬ the law will to secure its victims. Scotland Yard expects them to come into its arms automatically—regards them as a perquisite of its existence.”

      “I wish my husband were in your profession, Mr. Ruff,” Maud said, with a sidelong glance of her blue eyes which she had always found so effective upon her various admirers. “I am sure that I should be a great deal fonder of him.”

      Peter Ruff leaned forward in his chair. He, too, had expressive eyes at times.

      “Madam,” he said—and stopped. But Maud blushed, all the same.

      She looked down into her lap.

      “We are forgetting Mr. Fitzgerald,” she murmured.

      Peter Ruff glanced up at the clock.

      “It is a long story,” he said. “Are you in a hurry, Mrs. Dory?

      “Not at all,” she assured him, “unless you want to close you office, or anything. It must be nearly one o’clock.”

      “I wonder,” he asked, “if you would do me the honour of lunching with me? We might go to the Prince’s or the Carlton—whichever you prefer. I will promise to talk about Mr. Fitzgerald all the time.”

      “Oh, I couldn’t!” Maud declared, with a little gasp. “At least—well, I’m sure I don’t know!”

      “You have no engagement for luncheon?” Peter Ruff asked quietly.

      “Oh, no!” she answered; “but, you see, we live so quietly. I have never been to one of those places. I’d love to go—but if we were seen! Wouldn’t people talk?”

      Peter Ruff smiled. Just the same dear, modest little thing!

      “I can assure you,” he said, “that nothing whatever could be said against our lunching together. People are not so strict nowadays, you know, and a married lady has always a great deal of latitude.”

      She looked up at him with a dazzling smile.

      “I’d simply love to go to Prince’s!” she declared.

      “Cat!” Miss Brown murmured, as Peter Ruff and his client left the room together.

      Peter Ruff returned from his luncheon in no very jubilant state of mind. For some time he sat in his easy-chair, with his legs crossed and his finger tips pressed close together, looking steadily into space. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not smoke. Miss Brown watched him from behind her machine.

      “Disenchanted?” she asked calmly.

      Peter Ruff did not reply for several moments.

      “I am afraid,” he admitted, hesitatingly, “that marriage with John Dory has—well, not had a beneficial effect. She allowed me, for instance, to hold her hand in the cab! Maud would never have permitted a stranger to take such a liberty in the old days.”

      Miss Brown smiled curiously.

      “Is that all?” she asked.

      Peter Ruff felt that he was in the confessional.

      “She certainly did seem,” he admitted, “to enjoy her champagne a great deal, and she talked about her dull life at home a little more, perhaps, than was discreet to one who was presumably a stranger. She was curious, too, about dining out. Poor little girl, though. Just fancy, John Dory has never taken her anywhere but to Lyons’ or an A B C, and the pit of a theatre!”

      “Which evening is it to be?” Miss Brown asked.

      “Something was said about Thursday,” Peter Ruff admitted.

      “And her husband?” Miss Brown enquired.

      “He happens to be in Glasgow for a few days,” Peter Ruff answered.

      Miss Brown looked at her employer steadily. She addressed him by his Christian name, which was a thing she very seldom did in office hours.

      “Peter,” she said, “are you going to let that woman make a fool of you?”

      He raised his eyebrows.

      “Go on,” he said; “say anything you want to—only, if you please, don’t speak disrespectfully of Maud.”

      “Hasn’t it ever occurred to you at all,” Miss Brown continued, rising to her feet, “that this Maud, or whatever you want to call her, may be playing a low-down game of her husband’s? He hates you, and he has vague suspicions. Can’t you see that he is probably making use of your infatuation for his common, middle-class little wife, to try and get you to give yourself away? Can’t you see it, Peter? You are not going to tell me that you are so blind as all that!”

      “I must admit,” he answered with a sigh, “that, although I think you go altogether too far, some suspicion of the sort has interfered with my perfect enjoyment of the morning.”

      Miss Brown drew a little breath of relief. After all, then, his folly was not so consummate as it had seemed!

      “What are you going to do about it, then?” she asked.

      Peter Ruff coughed—he seemed in an unusually amenable frame of mind, and submitted to cross-examination without murmur.

      “The subject of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald,” he remarked, “seemed, somehow or other, to drop into the background during our luncheon. I propose, therefore, to continue to offer to Mrs. John Dory my most respectful admiration. If she accepts my friendship, and is satisfied with it, so much the better. I must admit that it would give me a great deal of pleasure to be her occasional companion—at such times when her husband happens to be in Glasgow!”

      “And supposing,” Miss Brown asked, “that this is not all she wants—supposing, for instance, that she persists in her desire for information concerning Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald?”

      “Then,” Peter Ruff admitted, “I’m afraid that I must conclude that her unchivalrous clod of a husband has indeed stooped to make a fool of her.”

      “And in that case,” Miss Brown demanded, “what shall you do?”

      “I was just thinking that out,” Peter Ruff said mildly, “when you spoke….”

      The friendship of Peter Ruff with the wife of his enemy certainly appeared to progress in most satisfactory fashion. The dinner and visit to the theatre duly took place. Mr. Ruff was afterwards permitted to offer a slight supper and to accompany his fair companion a portion of the way home in a taxicab. She made several half-hearted attempts to return to the subject of Spencer Fitzgerald, but her companion had been able on each occasion to avoid the subject. Whether or not she was the victim of her husband’s guile, there was no question about the reality of her enjoyment during the evening. Ruff, when he remembered the flash of her eyes across the table, the touch of her fingers in the taxi, was almost content to believe her false to her truant lover. If only she had not been married to John Dory, he realised, with a little sigh, that he might have taught her to forget that such a person existed as Spencer Fitzgerald, might have induced her to become Mrs. Peter Ruff!

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