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

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      Merries shuddered.

      “May I go?” he pleaded. “There’s the three hundred on the table. For God’s sake, let me go!”

      Peter Ruff nodded.

      “I wish you’d saved a little more,” he said. “However—”

      He turned the lock and Merries rushed out of the room. Ruff looked across the room towards his secretary.

      “Ring up 1535 Central,” he ordered, sharply.

      Peter Ruff had descended from his apartments on the top floor of the building, in a new brown suit with which he was violently displeased, to meet a caller.

      “I am sorry to intrude—Mr. Ruff, I believe it is?” Sir Richard Dyson said, a little irritably—“but I have not a great deal of time to spare—”

      “Most natural!” Peter Ruff declared. “Pray take a chair, Sir Richard. You want to know, of course, about Lord Merries and poor Masters.”

      Sir Richard stared at his questioner, for a moment, without speech. Once more the fear which he had succeeded in banishing for a while, shone in his eyes—revealed itself in his white face.

      “Try the easy-chair, Sir Richard,” Ruff continued, pleasantly. “Leave your hat and cane on the table there, and make yourself comfortable. I should like to understand exactly what you have come to me for.”

      Sir Richard moved his head toward Miss Brown.

      “My business with you,” he said, “is more than ordinarily private. I have the honour of knowing Miss—”

      “Miss Brown,” Peter interrupted quickly. “In these offices, this young lady’s name is Miss Violet Brown.”

      Sir Richard shrugged his shoulders.

      “It is of no importance,” he said, “only, as you may understand, my business with you scarcely requires the presence of a third party, even one with the discretion which I am sure Miss—Brown possesses.”

      “In these matters,” Ruff answered, “my secretary does not exist apart from myself. Her presence is necessary. She takes down in shorthand notes of our conversation. I have a shocking memory, and there are always points which I forget. At the conclusion of our business, whatever it may be, these notes are destroyed. I could not work without them, however.”

      Sir Richard glanced a little doubtfully at the long, slim back of the girl who sat with her face turned away from him. “Of course,” he began, “if you make yourself personally responsible for her discretion—”

      “I am willing to do so,” Ruff interrupted, brusquely. “I guarantee it. Go on, please.”

      “I do not know, of course, where you got your information from,” Sir Richard began, “but it is perfectly true that I have come here to consult you upon a matter in which the two people whose names you have mentioned are concerned. The disappearance of Job Masters is, of course, common talk; but I cannot tell what has led you to associate with it the temporary absence of Lord Merries from this country.”

      “Let me ask you this question,” Ruff said. “How are you affected by the disappearance of Masters?”

      “Indirectly, it has caused me a great deal of inconvenience,” Sir Richard declared.

      “Facts, please,” murmured Peter.

      “It has been rumoured,” Sir Richard admitted, “that I owed Masters a large sum of money which I could not pay.”

      “Anything else?”

      “It has also been rumoured,” Sir Richard continued, “that he was seen to enter my house that day, and that he remained there until late in the afternoon.”

      “Did he?” asked Ruff.

      “Certainly not,” Sir Richard answered.

      Peter Ruff yawned for a moment, but covered the indiscretion with his hand.

      “Respecting this inconvenience,” he said, “which you admit that the disappearance of Job Masters has caused you, what is its tangible side?”

      Sir Richard drew his chair a little nearer to the table where Ruff was sitting. His voice dropped almost to a whisper.

      “It seems absurd,” he said, “and yet, what I tell you is the truth. I have been followed about—shadowed, in fact—for several days. Men, even in my own social circle, seem to hold aloof from me. It is as though,” he continued slowly, “people were beginning to suspect me of being connected in some way with the man’s disappearance.”

      Ruff, who had been making figures with a pencil on the edge of his blotting paper, suddenly turned round. His eyes flashed with a new light as they became fixed upon his companion’s.

      “And are you not?” he asked, calmly. Sir Richard bore himself well. For a moment he had shrunk back. Then he half rose to his feet.

      “Mr. Ruff!” he said. “I must protest—”

      “Stop!”

      Peter Ruff used no violent gesture. Only his forefinger tapped the desk in front of him. His voice was as smooth as velvet.

      “Tell me as much or as little as you please, Sir Richard,” he said, “but let that little or that much be the truth! On those terms only I may be able to help you. You do not go to your physician and expect him to prescribe to you while you conceal your symptoms, or to your lawyer for advice and tell him half the truth. I am not asking for your confidence. I simply tell you that you are wasting your time and mine if you choose to withhold it.”

      Sir Richard was silent. He recognized a new quality in the man—but the truth was an awful thing to tell! He considered—then told.

      Ruff briskly asked two questions. “In alluding to your heavy settlement with Masters, you said just now that you could not have paid him—then.”

      “Quite so,” Sir Richard admitted. “That is the rotten part of the whole affair. Four days later a wonderful double came off—one in which we were all interested, and one which not one of us expected. We’ve drawn a considerable amount already from one or two bookies, and I believe even Masters owes us a bit now.”

      “Thank you,” Ruff said. “I think that I know everything now. My fee is five hundred guineas.”

      Sir Richard looked at him.

      “What?” he exclaimed.

      “Five hundred guineas,” Ruff repeated.

      “For a consultation?” Sir Richard asked.

      Peter Ruff shook his head.

      “More than that,” he said. “You are a brave man in your way, Sir Richard Dyson, but you are going about now shivering under a load of fear. It sits like a devil incarnate upon your shoulders. It poisons the air wherever you go. Write your cheque, Sir Richard, and you can leave that little black devil СКАЧАТЬ