Tales of Mystery & Suspense: 25+ Thrillers in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim

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СКАЧАТЬ to talk to. I might as well have opened up my little house in Forest Hill.”

      “I’ll talk to you if you like,” Dominey promised a little grimly, glancing at the clock and hastily ordering a whisky and soda. “I will begin by telling you this,” he added, lowering his tone. “I have discovered the greatest danger I shall have to face during my enterprise.”

      “What is that?”

      “A woman—the Princess Eiderstrom.”

      Seaman lit one of his inevitable cigars and threw one of his short, fat legs over the other. He gazed for a moment with an air of satisfaction at his small foot, neatly encased in court shoes.

      “You surprise me,” he confessed. “I have considered the matter. I cannot see any great difficulty.”

      “Then you must be closing your eyes to it willfully,” Dominey retorted, “or else you are wholly ignorant of the Princess’s temperament and disposition.”

      “I believe I appreciate both,” Seaman replied, “but I still do not see any peculiar difficulty in the situation. As an English nobleman you have a perfect right to enjoy the friendship of the Princess Eiderstrom.”

      “And I thought you were a man of sentiment!” Dominey scoffed. “I thought you understood a little of human nature. Stephanie Eiderstrom is Hungarian born and bred. Even race has never taught her self-restraint. You don’t seriously suppose that after all these years, after all she has suffered—and she has suffered—she is going to be content with an emasculated form of friendship? I talk to you without reserve, Seaman. She has made it very plain to-night that she is going to be content with nothing of the sort.”

      “What takes place between you in private,” Seaman began—

      “Rubbish!” his companion interrupted. “The Princess is an impulsive, a passionate, a distinctly primitive woman, with a good deal of the wild animal in her still. Plots or political necessities are not likely to count a snap of the fingers with her.”

      “But surely,” Seaman protested, “she must understand that your country has claimed you for a great work?”

      Dominey shook his head.

      “She is not a German,” he pointed out. “On the contrary, like a great many other Hungarians, I think she rather dislikes Germany and Germans. Her only concern is the personal question between us. She considers that every moment of the rest of my life should be devoted to her.”

      “Perhaps it is as well,” Seaman remarked, “that you have arranged to go down to-morrow to Dominey. I will think out a scheme. Something must be done to pacify her.”

      The lights were being put out. The two men rose a little unwillingly. Dominey felt singularly indisposed for sleep, but anxious at the same time to get rid of his companion. They strolled into the darkened hall of the hotel together.

      “I will deal with the matter for you as well as I can,” Seaman promised. “To my mind, your greatest difficulty will be encountered to-morrow. You know what you have to deal with down at Dominey.”

      Dominey’s face was very set and grave.

      “I am prepared,” he said.

      Seaman still hesitated.

      “Do you remember,” he asked, “that when we talked over your plans at Cape Town, you showed me a picture of—of Lady Dominey?”

      “I remember.”

      “May I have one more look at it?”

      Dominey, with fingers that trembled a little, drew from the breast pocket of his coat a leather case, and from that a worn picture. The two men looked at it side by side beneath one of the electric standards which had been left burning. The face was the face of a girl, almost a child, and the great eyes seemed filled with a queer, appealing light. There was something of the same suggestion to be found in the lips, a certain helplessness, an appeal for love and protection to some stronger being.

      Seaman turned away with a little grunt, and commented:

      “Permitting myself to reassume for a moment or two the ordinary sentiments of an ordinary human being, I would sooner have a dozen of your Princesses to deal with than the original of that picture.”

      CHAPTER VIII

       Table of Contents

      “Your ancestral home,” Mr. Mangan observed, as the car turned the first bend in the grass-grown avenue and Dominey Hall came into sight. “Damned fine house, too!”

      His companion made no reply. A storm had come up during the last few minutes, and, as though he felt the cold, he had dragged his hat over his eyes and turned his coat collar up to his ears. The house, with its great double front, was now clearly visible—the time-worn, Elizabethan, red brick outline that faced the park southwards, and the stone-supported, grim and weather-stained back which confronted the marshes and the sea. Mr. Mangan continued to make amiable conversation.

      “We have kept the old place weathertight, somehow or other,” he said, “and I don’t think you’ll miss the timber much. We’ve taken it as far as possible from the outlying woods.”

      “Any from the Black Wood?” Dominey asked, without turning his head.

      “Not a stump,” he replied, “and for a very excellent reason. Not one of the woodmen would ever go near the place.”

      “The superstition remains then?”

      “The villagers are absolutely rabid about it. There are at least a dozen who declare that they have seen the ghost of Roger Unthank, and a score or more who will swear by all that is holy that they have heard his call at night.”

      “Does he still select the park and the terrace outside the house for his midnight perambulations?” Dominey enquired.

      The lawyer hesitated.

      “The idea is, I believe,” he said, “that the ghost makes his way out from the wood and sits on the terrace underneath Lady Dominey’s window. All bunkum, of course, but I can assure you that every servant and caretaker we’ve had there has given notice within a month. That is the sole reason why I haven’t ventured to recommend long ago that you should get rid of Mrs. Unthank.”

      “She is still in attendance upon Lady Dominey, then?”

      “Simply because we couldn’t get any one else to stay there,” the lawyer explained, “and her ladyship positively declines to leave the Hall. Between ourselves, I think it’s time a change was made. We’ll have a chat after dinner, if you’ve no objection.—You see, we’ve left all the trees in the park,” he went on, with an air of satisfaction. “Beautiful place, this, in the springtime. I was down last May for a night, and I never saw such buttercups in my life. The cows here were almost up to their knees in pasture, and the bluebells in the home woods were wonderful. The whole of the little painting colony down at Flankney turned themselves loose upon the place last spring.”

      “Some of the old wall is down, СКАЧАТЬ