The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      "You couldn't help it!" she almost snarled. "You had him under your gun and you let him go. Do you think he'll ever come again, you fool?"

      "Now look here, I'm not going to----" began Mr. Briggerland, but she snatched the gun from his hand, looked swiftly at the lock and ran across the lawn toward the trees.

      Somebody was hiding. She sensed that and all her nerves were alert. Presently she saw a crouching figure and lifted the gun, but before she could fire it was wrested from her hand.

      She opened her lips to cry out for help, but a hand closed over her mouth, and swung her round so that her back was toward her assailant, and then in a flash his arm came round her neck, the flex of the elbow against her throat.

      "Say one of them prayers of yours," said a voice in her ear, and the arm tightened.

      She struggled furiously, but the man held her as though she were a child.

      "You're going to die," whispered the voice. "How do you like the sensation?"

      The arm tightened on her neck. She was suffocating, dying she thought, and her heart was filled with a wild, mad longing for life and a terror undreamt of. She could faintly hear her father's voice calling her and then consciousness departed.

      When Jean came to herself she was in Lydia Meredith's arms. She opened her eyes and saw the pathetic face of her father looming from the background. Her hand went up to her throat.

      "Hallo, people--how did I get here?" she asked as she struggled into a sitting position.

      "I came in search of you and found you lying on the ground," quavered Mr. Briggerland.

      "Did you see the man?" she asked.

      "No. What happened to you, darling?"

      "Nothing," she said with that composure which she could command. "I must have fainted. It was rather ridiculous of me, wasn't it?" she smiled.

      She got unsteadily to her feet and again she felt her throat. Lydia noticed the action.

      "Did he hurt you?" she asked anxiously. "It couldn't have been Jaggs."

      "Oh no," smiled Jean, "it couldn't have been Jaggs. I think I'll go to bed."

      She did not expect to sleep. For the first time in her extraordinary life fear had come to her, and she had shivered on the very edge of the abyss. She felt the shudder she could not repress and shook herself impatiently. Then she extinguished the light and went to the window and looked out. Somewhere there in the darkness she knew her enemy was hidden, and again that sense of apprehension swept over her.

      "I'm losing my nerve," she murmured.

      It was extraordinary to Lydia Meredith that the girl showed no sign of her night's adventure when she came in to breakfast on the following morning. She looked bright. Her eyes were clear and her delicate irony as pointed as though she had slept the clock round.

      Lydia did not swim that day, and Mr. Stepney had his journey out to Cap Martin in vain. Nor was she inclined to go back with him to Monte Carlo to the Casino in the afternoon, and Mr. Stepney began to realise that he was wasting valuable time.

      Jean found her scribbling in the garden and Lydia made no secret of the task she was undertaking.

      "Making your will? What a grisly idea?" she said as she put down the cup of tea she had carried out to the girl.

      "Isn't it," said Lydia with a grimace. "It is the most worrying business, too, Jean. There is nobody I want to leave money to except you and Mr. Glover."

      "For heaven's sake don't leave me any or Jack will think I am conspiring to bring about your untimely end," said Jean. "Why make a will at all?"

      There was no need for her to ask that, but she was curious to discover what reply the girl would make, and to her surprise Lydia fenced with the question.

      "It is done in all the best circles," she said good-humouredly. "And, Jean, I'm not interested in a single public institution! I don't know by title the name of any home for dogs, and I shouldn't be at all anxious to leave my money to one even if I did."

      "Then you'd better leave it to Jack Glover," said the girl, "or to the Lifeboat Institution."

      Lydia threw down her pencil in disgust.

      "Fancy making one's will on a beautiful day like this, and giving instructions as to where one should be buried. Brrr! Jean," she asked suddenly, "was it Mr. Jaggs you saw in the wood?"

      Jean shook her head.

      "I saw nobody," she said. "I went in to look for the burglar; the excitement must have been too much for me, and I fainted."

      But Lydia was not satisfied.

      "I can't understand Mr. Jaggs myself," she said, but Jean interrupted her with a cry.

      Lydia looked up and saw her eyes shining and her lips parting in a smile.

      "Of course," she said softly. "He used to sleep at your flat, didn't he?"

      "Yes, why?" asked the girl in surprise.

      "What a fool I am, what a perfect fool!" said Jean, startled out of her accustomed self-possession.

      "I don't quite know where your folly comes in, but perhaps you will tell me," but Jean was laughing softly.

      "Go on and make your will," she said mockingly. "And when you've finished we'll go into the rooms and chase the lucky numbers. Poor dear Mrs. Cole-Mortimer is feeling a little neglected, too, we ought to do something for her."

      The day and night passed without any untoward event. In the evening Jean had an interview with her French chauffeur, and afterwards disappeared into her room. Lydia tapping at her door to bid her good night received no answer.

      Day was breaking when old Jaggs came out from the trees in his furtive way and glancing up and down the road made his halting way toward Monte Carlo. The only objects in sight was a donkey laden with market produce led by a bare-legged boy who was going in the same direction as he.

      A little more than a mile along the road he turned sharply to the right and began climbing a steep and narrow bridle path which joined the mountain road, half-way up to La Turbie. The boy with the donkey turned off to the main road and continued the steep climb toward the Grande Corniche. There were many houses built on the edge of the road and practically on the edge of precipices, for the windows facing the sea often looked sheer down for two hundred feet. At first these dwellings appeared in clusters, then as the road climbed higher, they occurred at rare intervals.

      The boy leading the donkey kept his eye upon the valley below, and from time to time caught a glimpse of the old man who had now left the bridle path, and was picking his way up the rough hill-side. He was making for a dilapidated house which stood at one of the hairpin bends of the road, and the donkey-boy, shading his eyes from СКАЧАТЬ