.

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ war years, when he fought his way endlessly down jammed corridors, his attitude seldom relaxed. Very occasionally, he might install a harmless old lady in a first-class compartment, with an apologetic and slightly anxious glance at the other occupants.

      Mr. Webb’s raucous, ‘Tickets, please!’ echoed down the corridors of the Manchester–Euston express one rough night in the late autumn. He paused to pull up a window in the corridor which was admitting a half-gale, then opened the door of a compartment which had a single occupant who was stretched full length along the seat. The occupant of the carriage was rather a dark young man of about twenty-seven, with unruly black hair and glistening white teeth, which he exposed in a pleasant smile. He seemed in no way upset at the inspector’s intrusion.

      ‘Sorry to wake you, sir,’ said Mr. Webb mechanically. It was his inevitable formula on night trains.

      ‘That’s all right,’ yawned the young man, fumbling in his pocket for his ticket. ‘Lordy, I was hard on!’

      Mr. Webb’s ears, attuned to dialects from every corner of the country, immediately registered the young man as being of Welsh origin.

      ‘What time is it now?’ asked the passenger, inserting a finger and thumb in his upper waistcoat pocket.

      ‘It’s half past ten, sir,’ announced Webb, producing a large silver watch, and glancing at it for corroboration.

      The Welshman yawned again.

      ‘About another hour before we get into Euston?’ he queried.

      Webb nodded, and waited while the young man found his ticket.

      ‘Not many people travelling tonight,’ said the young man, his Welsh accent as pronounced as ever.

      ‘Haven’t had it as quiet as this for months,’ the inspector informed him, clipping the ticket and handing it back. ‘Thank you, sir. Good night.’

      The young man nodded and composed himself to sleep again as the door of the compartment slid softly to, and Mr. Webb went on his way.

      Webb muttered a soft imprecation to himself as he came out into the corridor again, for the window he had closed had slid down, and once more he got the full force of the biting wind. He snatched at the strap, pulled up the window and passed on to the next compartment. There was no light in this compartment and the blinds were drawn, but in the faint glow reflected from the corridor Webb could discern the figure of a woman slumped in the far corner with her back to the engine.

      ‘Ticket, please, miss!’ called the inspector. At that moment the express began to rattle noisily over a viaduct, and she gave no sign of having heard him. Webb repeated his request and advanced a step into the compartment.

      ‘Cor blimey!’ muttered Webb, who never ceased to marvel at the way people slept on trains. The girl remained indifferent to his presence, so he moved across and shook her shoulder vigorously.

      ‘Come along, miss, wake up!’ he urged in an authoritative tone. ‘Wake up now! I want to see your ticket.’ He shook her again. Suddenly and quite without warning her head jerked forward.

      Webb released her shoulder and, turning, switched on the lights in the compartment. The girl was in the early thirties, with red-gold hair and large eyes. Beneath an elaborate makeup the face was ashen.

      ‘Strewth!’ murmured Webb expressively under his breath. Then, without any further ado, he turned and went back to the compartment he had just visited.

      The young man looked up in some surprise as the inspector’s head appeared.

      ‘What is it? What is it, man?’ he demanded. ‘Have you seen a ghost or something?’

      ‘Would you mind coming into the next compartment, sir?’ asked Webb in a very agitated tone. ‘It’s – it’s a young lady, sir. I think she’s been taken ill.’

      The young man sat up with a start and at once rose to his feet.

      ‘Why, yes, of course,’ he murmured, following the ticket inspector into the next compartment. They found the young woman had now slid to the floor, where she was lying in an ungainly heap.

      ‘Take her shoulders,’ ordered the young man, catching hold of the woman’s feet. Rather awkwardly, they lifted her on to the seat and laid her full length. The Welshman placed a finger and thumb beneath her eyes, then felt her pulse.

      ‘What is it? What’s the matter with her?’ demanded Webb in an anxious tone.

      ‘What’s the matter with her! Why, lordy, man, she’s dead!’

      The inspector’s jaw dropped. He bent forward and eyed the body intently, as if he could not believe what he heard. For some seconds there was no sound but the mournful scream of the engine’s whistle and the unceasing clatter of the wheels.

      ‘Shouldn’t we pull the communication-cord?’ suggested the Welshman, an excited flush mounting in his cheeks.

      ‘Don’t see that can help much,’ replied the other gruffly.

      ‘But, man, we should get a doctor…’

      ‘I’ll see if there’s one on the train first. No sense in losing time if we can help it. We’re running seven minutes late as it is.’

      A sudden draught swept through the compartment. The window in the corridor was open again. The breeze stirred the curtains, which were closely drawn. Something caught the Welshman’s eye, and he drew back one of the curtains. He leaned forward and gazed intently at the corner of the window near where the dead woman had been sitting.

      ‘What are you staring at?’ demanded Webb.

      For a moment the other did not reply. Then he suddenly gave to an exclamation.

      ‘Look what’s chalked on the window,’ he said, moving out of the light, so that the inspector could see for himself.

      Rather laboriously, he spelt out the three letters that were scrawled in vivid red capitals. ‘R-E-X.’

      ‘Rex?’ repeated the little Welshman, with a puzzled frown. ‘Now what does that mean, I wonder?’

      Arthur Montague Webb slowly shook his head. He was very puzzled.

      It did not take the police long to discover that the dead woman was Norma Rice, the well-known actress, and within a few hours a dozen newspaper reporters were busily ferreting for facts to add to the rather scanty information about the lady in question which they found in their libraries.

      Norma Rice’s career had always been something of a mystery, true, she made no secret of her origins. She was the daughter of a wardrobe mistress from the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and had spent her childhood in Peabody’s Buildings, within a stone’s throw of that famous theatre. Her gamin qualities and their potentialities had soon come to the notice of a certain Madame Terrani, who ran the famous Starlit Juveniles, and it was not long before Norma Rice was the ‘stooge’ of the outfit – the girl who always does the wrong thing and is a couple of beats behind the rest of the talented troupe.

      Norma stuck it until she was fifteen, then she mysteriously vanished, to reappear four years later as the star overnight of a new Broadway СКАЧАТЬ