Shattering Glass. John Russell Fearn
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Название: Shattering Glass
Автор: John Russell Fearn
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Зарубежные детективы
isbn: 9781434437280
isbn:
“You’re sure you’re all right now?” Betty Mills inquired. “You don’t feel ill or anything?”
“No, Betty, my health’s all right, thanks—but I certainly don’t feel up to going away. Perry has agreed that we’ll honeymoon here, and just so as things won’t get too dull, for Perry anyway, I want all of you to stay for, say a week.”
“Of all the extraordinary ideas!” declared Will Ransome. “Can’t say when I’ve ever heard of anything like it!”
“It’s certainly original,” Helen commented. “The thing that amazes me is that you should want me to stay. I haven’t been particularly pleasant towards you, Moira....” She gave a slow, cynical smile. “It’s not that I’m apologizing; I’m just pointing it out.”
“I can understand your feelings and that’s why I’m not resentful,” Moira replied. “I’d probably feel the same if after years of struggle to get the man I wanted I discovered a stranger had walked in and taken him. I don’t hold it against you.”
“Thanks,” Helen said, still looking vaguely astonished. “Now that’s settled I suppose we can consider ourselves one big, happy family?”
“We’ll stay over, of course,” Betty said.
Perry tried to enliven things with dancing in the ballroom to radio and piano. Moira danced divinely, whether it was with him, Dick Mills or Will Ransome, but it was purely mechanical. Her mind was elsewhere.
They adjourned to the drawing-room around ten o’clock.
“Of all the crazy set-ups this is about the craziest,” Helen murmured, just loud enough for Perry to hear. “For goodness sake, Perry, give me a cigarette before I burst out weeping!”
Perry handed her his cigarette case and she selected one.
“Look, Perry, are you sure you did the right thing?” she asked anxiously. “Did you ever see such a line-up for a wedding night? Since we came from the ballroom everything has just died on its feet. Betty and her hubby playing cards, and that fat-headed brother of mine drawing sketches, and me racking my brains trying to think of something original and amusing. As for your wife...!”
Perry shifted position uncomfortably and shied away from Helen’s suddenly questioning gaze. He knew her well enough to realize that her emotions were not really as brutal as her words implied. Helen Ransome had the unfortunate drawback of seeming downright vicious, until one managed to discover that she had a welling generosity somewhere deep inside.
“I’ll admit,” he said moodily, glancing over at Moira, “that I didn’t expect it was going to be like this. It’s disturbing, to say the last.”
“You’ve never told me yet why you did decide to marry her. Quite all right if you don’t want to, of course, but I’m not exactly a stranger. Hang it all, Perry, I can give you everything any woman can—and a darned sight more than this broody hen you’ve picked.... What started it? I’m interested.”
“I don’t quite know.... She seemed exciting.”
“Exciting!” Helen stared blankly. “Moira?”
“Well then, mystifying,” Perry amended. “I was just feeling thoroughly browned off with everything and everybody in general when she came running out of the night and bumped into me. Then....” He sketched in the finer points of this experience, his voice low, and in the end smiled a little whimsically. “So, feeling attracted to her, chiefly because of the apparent element of danger and the fact she needed protection, I decided to marry her.”
“Then,” Helen said, wondering, “you don’t really know anything about her? She just came out of the night and, when everything’s boiled down, you’ve taken her on trust?”
“I don’t know any more than she’s told me. Her parents are dead; she, worked in Bristol as a secretary; they cut the staff down and—”
“Just about the crazy sort of thing you would do,” Helen interrupted.
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