Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests. Джозеф Джефферсон Фарджон
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almost sounds like advice,” said John.
“Well, if it is, it’s good advice,” parried Taverley unrepentantly. “That kind of woman can put a man through hell. Make pulp of his will-power. And—what’s the use?”
“I see you don’t like her.”
“You’re wrong, Foss. I like her immensely. What’s a woman to do with her beauty? Scrap it? One sticks to oneself. I like her, and I liked her husband. He and I played cricket together. He used to tell me that the only moment he could forget Nadine was when he brought off a leg-glide. There’s something about a leg-glide. Then only he got perfect peace. After he’d passed through a particularly difficult time you could always bowl Leveridge l.b.w.—he would try for that leg-glide. Even with the ball on the off-stump.”
“Did they quarrel, then?” asked John.
“Like hell,” answered Taverley. “And loved like hell. The person who next marries Nadine will know all there is to know. Well, that’s Number One of the guests. Seen any more?”
“Yourself.”
“Sussex. Batting average, 41.66. We won’t talk about the bowling average. Lord Aveling loves a show, and I’m part of it.” He laughed, then frowned at himself. “Don’t get a wrong impression of our host. He’s all right.”
“It seems to me you think everybody’s all right.”
“So they are, if we dig down far enough. But you’ll need to hold on to your faith this week-end—you’ll bump into some odd people.”
“Here come the only others I’ve bumped into,” said John, as the front door opened abruptly and the velvet-coated man and the retired merchant came in. A draught of keen air came in with them.
“Brrh!” exclaimed the retired merchant, rubbing his hands together. “Shut the door, quick!”
“Mistake to admit you’re cold in company,” commented the velvet-coated man. “It stamps you with a hot water-bottle.”
“Well, I love my hot water-bottle, and I don’t care a damn who knows it!”
“You’ll lose respect. Life, being itself hot, only sympathises with a poor circulation.”
“Oh, does it? Well, blood ain’t the only thing that circulates!” The retired merchant tapped his pocket and laughed. “Life respects that! Besides, where’s your company, anyhow?” Then he became conscious of it. “Ah, Taverley! We’ve just been across to the studio. It’s going to be a masterpiece. How’s the patient? How’s it go?”
“First rate, thanks,” answered John. “I shan’t be on your hands long.”
“Glad to hear it. I mean, glad you’re feeling better. Nasty things, these twisted ankles. I bunged mine up once playing draughts. Ha, ha! Well, come along, Pratt, or we’ll have no tea.”
He strode to the stairs and disappeared, but Pratt paused for a moment before following.
“Described us yet?” he inquired.
“No. You’re next on the list,” smiled Taverley. “So you’d better hurry!”
Pratt smiled back and left them, with just enough speed to indicate that he could respond to a jest without losing his dignity. John grinned.
“Leicester Pratt?” he asked. Taverley nodded. “Rather the rage just now, isn’t he?”
“Very much so. That’s why he’s here. Women flock to him to be painted, and Pratt ruthlessly reveals their poor little souls. Queer, isn’t it, how some people will strip themselves for notoriety—and not know they’re doing it?”
“I saw one of Pratt’s pictures last May. I thought it was clever, but—well—”
“Horrible?”
“Struck me that way. What’s this latest masterpiece? Is he painting anybody here?”
“The Honourable Anne,” answered Taverley. Both men were silent for a few seconds. Then Taverley continued: “The other was Mr. Rowe. You won’t have heard of him, but you may have breakfasted with him. Pratt—who has a cynical name for everybody—calls him the Man Behind the Sausage. When he paints Mr. Rowe, as he’s bound to do one day—Rowe is rolling in it—he’ll elongate his head just enough to let everybody know but Mr. Rowe. That’s his devilish art. He finds your weakness, and paints round it.”
“I don’t think I’m going to like Mr. Pratt,” mused John.
“Take my advice and try to,” responded Taverley. “Well, that’s four of us. Five—the large lady with impressive glasses. Have you read Horse-flesh?” John shook his head. “You’re luckier than about eighty thousand others. Our large lady wrote it. Edyth Fermoy-Jones. Accent, please, on the Fermoy. She’ll die happy if she goes down in history as the female Edgar Wallace. Only with a touch more literary distinction. Quite a nice person if you can smash through her rather pathetic ambition.”
“I’ll do my best,” promised John.
“Six, Mrs. Rowe. Seven, Ruth Rowe—daughter. There isn’t really much to say about them, except that Ruth will be much happier when—if ever—she escapes from the sausage influence. Let’s see—yes, that’s the lot of who are here. But Number Eight is coming by car—Sir James Earnshaw, Liberal, wondering whether to turn Right or Left—and there will be four more on the next train. Zena Wilding—”
“The actress?”
“Yes. And Lionel Bultin. Bultin will write us all up in his gossip column. His method in print is rather like Pratt’s on canvas. He says what he likes and what others don’t. Who are the last two? Oh, the Chaters. Mr. and Mrs. I don’t know anything about them. Well—that’s the dozen.”
“And I make the thirteenth,” remarked John as Taverley rose.
“I hope that doesn’t worry you?”
“Not superstitious.”
“That’s fortunate, although, even if you were, you’d be clear. The bad luck would come, wouldn’t it, to the thirteenth guest who passes in through that door?… Well, I must be moving. See you later.”
Before going up, Taverley waited while the pretty maid with the flushed cheeks—they were still a little flushed—came down. John turned his head to watch the Sussex cricketer depart. A sudden gasp from the maid brought his head round again.
She had vanished, but he was just in time to glimpse a form flashing by the window.
Chapter III. At the Black Stag
The brilliant amber of the day had gone. The sun had changed into a dull red disc and had dropped below the fringe of Greyshot Heath. Already the nip in the air had lost its pleasantness, and the sly old fox at Mile Bottom was opening its eyes in its earthy den to ponder on pheasants and mice and rabbits. One day the sly old fox would itself be hunted, and only for this reason had it escaped sharing the excommunication of the pole-cat. It was too good a runner to waste its agility in the north.
In a little wood half a mile from Bragley Court a cock pheasant fluttered heavily to his roosting place. He had no fear. Death, that odd, incomprehensible thing, came to others; but he had survived a dozen shoots, and he knew how to evade its shadow. If a stoat or a cat prowled too close, an old bird could easily raise the alarm and find some other retreat. Like all living things, the cock pheasant was immortal to himself, because he had not yet endured the experience of extinction. When extinction came, he would not know it.
The doctor’s brass plate had ceased to glow. It was now merely a cold flatness surrounded by vines. The sentinel dog outside the Cricketers’ Arms had risen, shaken itself, and gone inside. A lamp had appeared in the uncurtained window of the Black Stag overlooking Flensham station, and the gravelly railway station itself was a length of grey shadows broken by the occasional dim lights of platform lamps and of an inadequate waiting-room. Somewhere to the south loomed a large black hole that was a tunnel. You were conscious of the