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

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and get to work!”

      Dickinson rose to his feet unsteadily. “Yes!” he said. “What was it? I have forgotten, for the moment, but I am ready.”

      “You must get his betting book from his pocket,” Sir Richard directed. “Then you must help Merries downstairs with him, and into the car. Merries is—to get rid of him.”

      Merries shivered. His hand, too, went out for the brandy.

      “To get rid of him,” he muttered. “It sounds easy!”

      “It is easy,” Sir Richard declared. “You have only to keep your nerve, and the thing is done. No one will see him inside the car, in that motoring coat and glasses. You can drive somewhere out into the country and leave him.”

      “Leave him!” Merries repeated, trembling. “Leave him—yes!”

      Neither of the two men moved.

      “I must do more than my share, I suppose,” Sir Richard declared contemptuously. “Come!”

      They dragged the man’s body on to a chair, wrapped a huge coat around him, tied a motoring cap under his chin, fixed goggles over his eyes. Sir Richard strolled into the hall and opened the front door. He stood there for a moment, looking up and down the street. When he gave the signal they dragged him out, supported between them, across the pavement, into the car. Ugh! His attitude was so natural as to be absolutely ghastly. Merries started the car and sprang into the driver’s seat. There were people in the Square now, but the figure reclining in the dark, cushioned interior looked perfectly natural.

      “So long, Jimmy,” Sir Richard called out. “See you this evening.”

      “Right O!” Merries replied, with a brave effort.

      Peter Ruff, summoned by telephone from his sitting room, slipped down the stairs like a cat—noiseless, swift. The voice which had summoned him had been the voice of his secretary—a voice almost unrecognisable—a voice shaken with fear. Fear? No, it had been terror!

      On the landing below, exactly underneath the room from which he had descended, there was a door upon which his name was written upon a small brass plate—Mr. Peter Ruff. He opened and closed it behind him with a swift movement which he had practised in his idle moments. He found himself looking in upon a curious scene.

      Miss Brown, with the radiance of her hair effectually concealed, in plain black skirt and simple blouse—the ideal secretary—had risen from the seat in front of her typewriter, and was standing facing the door through which he had entered, with a small revolver—which he had given her for a birthday present only the day before—clasped in her outstretched hand. The object of her solicitude was, it seemed to Peter Ruff, the most pitiful-looking object upon which he had ever looked. The hours had dwelt with Merries as the years with some people, and worse. He had lost his cap; his hair hung over his forehead in wild confusion; his eyes were red, bloodshot, and absolutely aflame with the terrors through which he had lived—underneath them the black marks might have been traced with a charcoal pencil. His cheeks were livid save for one burning spot. His clothes, too, were in disorder—the starch had gone from his collar, his tie hung loosely outside his waistcoat. He was cowering back against the wall. And between him and the girl, stretched upon the floor, was the body of a man in a huge motor coat, a limp, inert mass which neither moved nor seemed to have any sign of life. No wonder that Peter Ruff looked around his office, whose serenity had been so tragically disturbed, with an air of mild surprise.

      “Dear me,” he exclaimed, “something seems to have happened! My dear Violet, you can put that revolver away. I have secured the door.”

      Her hand fell to her side. She gave a little shiver of relief. Peter Ruff nodded.

      “That is more comfortable,” he declared. “Now, perhaps, you will explain—”

      “That young man,” she interrupted, “or lunatic—whatever he calls himself—burst in here a few minutes ago, dragging—that!” She pointed to the motionless figure upon the floor. “If I had not stopped him, he would have bolted off without a word of explanation.”

      Peter Ruff, with his back against the door, shook his head gravely.

      “My dear Lord Merries,” he said, “my office is not a mortuary.”

      Merries gasped.

      “You know me, then?” he muttered, hoarsely.

      “Of course,” Ruff answered. “It is my profession to know everybody. Go and sit down upon that easy-chair, and drink the brandy and soda which Miss Brown is about to mix for you. That’s right.”

      Merries staggered across the room and half fell into an easy-chair. He leaned over the side with his face buried in his hands, unable still to face the horror which lay upon the floor. A few seconds later, the tumbler of brandy and soda was in his hands. He drank it like a man who drains fresh life into his veins.

      “Perhaps now,” Peter Ruff suggested, pointing to the motionless figure, “you can give me some explanation as to this!”

      Merries looked away from him all the time he was speaking. His voice was thick and nervous.

      “There were three of us lunching together,” he began—“four in all. There was a dispute, and this man threatened us. Afterwards there was a fight. It fell to my lot to take him away, and I can’t get rid of him! I can’t get rid of him!” he repeated, with something that sounded like a sob.

      “I still do not see,” Peter Ruff argued, “why you should have brought him here and deposited him upon my perfectly new carpet.”

      “You are Peter Ruff,” Merries declared. “‘Crime Investigator and Private Detective,’ you call yourself. You are used to this sort of thing. You will know what to do with it. It is part of your business.”

      “I can assure you,” Peter Ruff answered, “that you are under a delusion as to the details of my profession. I am Peter Ruff,” he admitted, “and I call myself a crime investigator—in fact, I am the only one worth speaking of in the world. But I certainly deny that I am used to having dead bodies deposited upon my carpet, and that I make a habit of disposing of them—especially gratis.”

      Merries tore open his coat.

      “Listen,” he said, his voice shaking hysterically, “I must get rid of it or go mad. For two hours I have been driving about in a motor car with—it for a passenger. I drove to a quiet spot and I tried to lift it out—a policeman rode up! I tried again, a man rushed by on a motor cycle, and turned to look at me! I tried a few minutes later—the policeman came back! It was always the same. The night seemed to have eyes. I was watched everywhere. The—the face began to mock me. I’ll swear that I heard it chuckle once!”

      Peter Ruff moved a little further away.

      “I don’t think I’ll have anything to do with it,” he declared. “I don’t like your description at all.”

      “It’ll be all right with you,” Merries declared eagerly. “It’s my nerves, that’s all. You see, I was there—when the accident happened. See here,” he added, tearing a pocketbook from his coat, “I have three hundred and seventy pounds saved up in case I had to bolt. I’ll keep seventy—three hundred for you—to dispose of it!”

      Ruff СКАЧАТЬ