The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ®. Морис Леблан
Читать онлайн книгу.
gazing after her and wondering.
Was she really a governess, as she pretended?
Her clothes, her manner, her smart chatter, her exquisite chic, all revealed good breeding and a high station in life. There was no touch of cheap shabbiness—or at least I could not detect it.
A few moments before twelve she alighted from the cab at the corner of the Rue Royale and greeted me merrily. Her face was slightly flushed, and I thought her hand trembled as I took it. But together we mounted into the car again.
“You seem a constant traveller on the road, m’sieur,” she said, as we went along.
“I’m a constant traveller,” I replied, with a laugh. “A little too constant, perhaps. One gets wearied with such continual travel as I am forced to undertake. I never know to-morrow where I may be, and I move swiftly from one place to another, never spending more than a day or two in the same place.”
I did not, for obvious reasons, tell her my profession.
“But it must be very pleasant to travel so much,” she declared. “I would love to be able to do so. I’m passionately fond of constant change.”
Together we went on to Boulogne, crossed to Folkestone, and that same night at midnight entered London.
On our journey she gave me an address in the Vauxhall Bridge Road, where, she said, a letter would find her. She refused to tell me her destination or to allow me to see her into a hansom. This latter fact caused me considerable reflection. Why had she so suddenly made up her mind to come to London? and why should I not know whither she went, when she had told me so many details concerning herself?
Of one fact I felt quite convinced—namely, that she had lied to me. She was not a governess, as she pretended. Besides, I had been seized by suspicion that a tall, thin-faced elderly man, rather shabbily dressed, whom I had noticed idling in the Rue Royale, had followed us by rail. I thought I saw him outside the Tivoli, in the Strand, where she descended.
His reappearance there recalled to me that he had watched us in the Rue Royale, and had appeared intensely interested in all our movements. Whether my pretty travelling-companion noticed him I do not know. I, however, watched her as she walked along the Strand carrying her dressing-bag, and saw the tall man striding after her. Adventurer was written upon the fellow’s face. His grey moustache was upturned, and his keen grey eyes looked out from beneath shaggy brows, while his dark threadbare overcoat was tightly buttoned across his chest for greater warmth.
Without approaching her, he stood back in the shadow, and saw her enter a hansom and drive towards Charing Cross. It was clear that she was not going to the address she had given me, for she was driving in the opposite direction.
My duty was to drive direct to Clifford Street and report to Bindo, but so interested was I in the thin-faced watcher that I turned the car into the courtyard of the Cecil in the Strand and left it there, in order to keep further observation upon the stranger.
Had not mademoiselle declared herself to be in danger of her life? If so, was it not possible that this fellow, whoever he was, was a secret assassin?
I did not like the aspect of the affair at all. I ought to have warned her against him, and I now became filled with regret. She was a complete mystery, and as I dogged the footsteps of the unknown foreigner—for that he undoubtedly was—I became more deeply interested in what was in progress.
He walked to Trafalgar Square, where he hesitated in such a manner as to show that he was not well acquainted with London. He did not know which of the converging thoroughfares to take. At last he inquired of the constable on point duty, and then went up St. Martin’s Lane.
As soon as he had turned I approached the policeman and asked what the stranger wanted, explaining that he was a suspicious character whom I was following.
“’E’s a Frenchman. ’E wants Burton Crescent.”
“Where’s that?”
“Why, just off the Euston Road—close to Judd Street. I’ve told ’im the way.”
I took a hansom, and drove to the place in question, a semicircle of dark-looking, old-fashioned houses of the Bloomsbury type—most of them let out in apartments. Then, alighting, I loitered for half an hour up and down, to await the arrival of the stranger.
He came at last, his tall meagre figure looming dark in the lamp-light. Very eagerly he walked round the Crescent, examining the numbers of the houses, until he came to one, rather cleaner than the others, of which he took careful observation.
I, too, took note of the number.
Afterwards, the stranger turned into the Euston Road, crossed to King’s Cross Station, where he sent a telegram, and then went to one of the small uninviting private hotels in the neighbourhood. Having seen him there, I returned to Burton Crescent, and for an hour watched the house, wondering whether the mysterious Julie had taken up her abode there. To me it seemed as though the stranger had overheard the directions she had given the cabman.
The windows of the house were closed by green venetian blinds. I could see that there were lights in most of the rooms, while over the fan-light of the front door was a small transparent square of glass, bearing what seemed to be the representation of some Greek saint. The front steps were well kept, and in the deep basement was a well-lighted kitchen.
I had been there about half an hour when the door opened, and a middle-aged man in evening dress, and wearing a black overcoat and crush hat, emerged. His dark face was an aristocratic one, and as he descended the steps he drew on his white gloves, for he was evidently on his way to the theatre. I took good notice of his face, for it was a striking countenance—one which once seen could never be forgotten.
A man-servant behind him blew a cab-whistle, a hansom came up, and he drove away. Then I walked up and down in the vicinity, keeping a weary vigil; for my curiosity was now much excited. The stranger meant mischief. Of that I was certain.
The one point I wished to clear up was whether Julie Rosier was actually within that house. But though I watched until I became half frozen in the drizzling rain, all was in vain. So I took a cab and drove to Clifford Street, to report my arrival to Count Bindo.
That same night, when I got to my rooms, I wrote a line to the address Julie had given me, asking whether she would make an appointment to meet me, as I wished to give her some very important information concerning herself, and to this on the following day I received a reply asking me to call at the house in Burton Crescent that evening at nine o’clock.
Naturally I went. My surmise was correct that the house watched by the stranger was her abode. The fellow was keeping observation upon it with some evil intent.
The man-servant, on admitting me, showed me into a well-furnished drawing-room on the first floor, where sat my pretty travelling-companion ready to receive me.
In French she greeted me very warmly, bade me be seated, and after some preliminaries inquired the nature of the information which I wished to impart to her.
Very briefly I told her of the shabby watcher, whereupon she sprang to her feet with a cry of mingled terror and surprise.
“Describe him—quickly, M’sieur Ewart!” she urged in breathless agitation.
I did so, and she sat back again in her chair, staring straight before her.
“Ah!” she gasped, her countenance pale as death. “Then they mean revenge, after all. Very well! Now that I am forewarned I shall know how to act.”
She rose, and pacing the room in agitation, pushed back the dark hair from her brow. Then her hands clenched themselves, and her teeth were set, for she was desperate.
The shabby man was an emissary of her enemies, she told me as much. Yet in all she said was mystery. At one moment I was convinced that she had told the truth when she said she was a governess, and at the next I suspected her of trying to deceive.
Presently, after she had handed me a cigarette, the