The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      "I'm seeing the old boy to-morrow," he said. "By the way, Rennett, did you see that a fellow had been released from prison to a nursing home for a minor operation the other day? There was a question asked in Parliament about it. Is it usual?"

      "It can be arranged," said Rennett. "Why?"

      "Do you think in a few months' time we could get Jim Meredith into a nursing home for--say an appendix operation?"

      "Has he appendicitis?" asked the other in surprise.

      "He can fake it," said Jack calmly. "It's the easiest thing in the world to fake."

      Rennett looked at the other under his heavy eyebrows.

      "You're thinking of the 'or'?" he challenged, and Jack nodded.

      "It can be done--if he's alive," said Rennett after a pause.

      "He'll be alive," prophesied his partner, "now the only thing is--where shall I find the girl?"

      Chapter II

      Lydia Beale gathered up the scraps of paper that littered her table, rolled them into a ball and tossed them into the fire.

      There was a knock at the door, and she half turned in her chair to meet with a smile her stout landlady who came in carrying a tray on which stood a large cup of tea and two thick and wholesome slices of bread and jam.

      "Finished, Miss Beale?" asked the landlady anxiously.

      "For the day, yes," said the girl with a nod, and stood up stretching herself stiffly.

      She was slender, a head taller than the dumpy Mrs. Morgan. The dark violet eyes and the delicate spiritual face she owed to her Celtic ancestors, the grace of her movements, no less than the perfect hands that rested on the drawing board, spoke eloquently of breed.

      "I'd like to see it, miss, if I may," said Mrs. Morgan, wiping her hands on her apron in anticipation.

      Lydia pulled open a drawer of the table and took out a large sheet of Windsor board. She had completed her pencil sketch and Mrs. Morgan gasped appreciatively. It was a picture of a masked man holding a villainous crowd at bay at the point of a pistol.

      "That's wonderful, miss," she said in awe. "I suppose those sort of things happen too?"

      The girl laughed as she put the drawing away.

      "They happen in stories which I illustrate, Mrs. Morgan," she said dryly. "The real brigands of life come in the shape of lawyers' clerks with writs and summonses. It's a relief from those mad fashion plates I draw, anyway. Do you know, Mrs. Morgan, that the sight of a dressmaker's shop window makes me positively ill!"

      Mrs. Morgan shook her head sympathetically and Lydia changed the subject.

      "Has anybody been this afternoon?" she asked.

      "Only the young man from Spadd & Newton," replied the stout woman with a sigh. "I told 'im you was out, but I'm a bad liar."

      The girl groaned.

      "I wonder if I shall ever get to the end of those debts," she said in despair. "I've enough writs in the drawer to paper the house, Mrs. Morgan."

      Three years ago Lydia Beale's father had died and she had lost the best friend and companion that any girl ever had. She knew he was in debt, but had no idea how extensively he was involved. A creditor had seen her the day after the funeral and had made some uncouth reference to the convenience of a death which had automatically cancelled George Beale's obligations. It needed only that to spur the girl to an action which was as foolish as it was generous. She had written to all the people to whom her father owed money and had assumed full responsibility for debts amounting to hundreds of pounds.

      It was the Celt in her that drove her to shoulder the burden which she was ill-equipped to carry, but she had never regretted her impetuous act.

      There were a few creditors who, realising what had happened, did not bother her, and there were others....

      She earned a fairly good salary on the staff of the _Daily Megaphone_, which made a feature of fashion, but she would have had to have been the recipient of a cabinet minister's emoluments to have met the demands which flowed in upon her a month after she had accepted her father's obligations.

      "Are you going out to-night, miss?" asked the woman.

      Lydia roused herself from her unpleasant thoughts.

      "Yes. I'm making some drawings of the dresses in Curfew's new play. I'll be home somewhere around twelve."

      Mrs. Morgan was half-way across the room when she turned back.

      "One of these days you'll get out of all your troubles, miss, you see if you don't! I'll bet you'll marry a rich young gentleman."

      Lydia, sitting on the edge of the table, laughed.

      "You'd lose your money, Mrs. Morgan," she said, "rich young gentlemen only marry poor working girls in the kind of stories I illustrate. If I marry it will probably be a very poor young gentleman who will become an incurable invalid and want nursing. And I shall hate him so much that I can't be happy with him, and pity him so much that I can't run away from him."

      Mrs. Morgan sniffed her disagreement.

      "There are things that happen----" she began.

      "Not to me--not miracles, anyway," said Lydia, still smiling, "and I don't know that I want to get married. I've got to pay all these bills first, and by the time they are settled I'll be a grey-haired old lady in a mob cap."

      Lydia had finished her tea and was standing somewhat scantily attired in the middle of her bedroom, preparing for her theatre engagement, when Mrs. Morgan returned.

      "I forgot to tell you, miss," she said, "there was a gentleman and a lady called."

      "A gentleman and a lady? Who were they?"

      "I don't know, Miss Beale. I was lying down at the time, and the girl answered the door. I gave her strict orders to say that you were out."

      "Did they leave any name?"

      "No, miss. They just asked if Miss Beale lived here, and could they see her."

      "H'm!" said Lydia with a frown. "I wonder what we owe them!"

      She dismissed the matter from her mind, and thought no more of it until she stopped on her way to the theatre to learn from the office by telephone the number of drawings required.

      The chief sub-editor answered her.

      "And, by the way," he added, "there was an inquiry for you at the office to-day--I found a note of it on my desk when I came in to-night. Some old friends of yours who want to see you. Brand СКАЧАТЬ