Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗

existence if he imagined himself endangered.”

“So,” speculated Carrados inwardly. “A likely precaution for a simple vine-grower of Calabria! Very well,” he assented aloud, “I will go with you alone. Where is the place?”

Madame Ferraja searched in the ancient purse that she discovered in her rusty handbag and produced a scrap of paper.

“People do not understand sometimes my way of saying it,” she explained. “Sette, Herringbone——”

“May I——?” said Carrados, stretching out his hand. He took the paper and touched the writing with his finger-tips. “Oh yes, 7 Heronsbourne Place. That is on the edge of Heronsbourne Park, is it not?” He transferred the paper casually to his desk as he spoke and stood up. “How did you come, Madame Ferraja?”

Madame Ferraja followed the careless action with a discreet smile that did not touch her voice.

“By motor bus—first one then another, inquiring at every turning. Oh, but it was interminable,” sighed the lady.

“My driver is off for the evening—I did not expect to be going out—but I will ’phone up a taxi and it will be at the gate as soon as we are.” He despatched the message and then, turning to the house telephone, switched on to Greatorex.

“I’m just going round to Heronsbourne Park,” he explained. “Don’t stay, Greatorex, but if anyone calls expecting to see me, they can say that I don’t anticipate being away more than an hour.”

Parkinson was hovering about the hall. With quite novel officiousness he pressed upon his master a succession of articles that were not required. Over this usually complacent attendant the unattractive features of Madame Ferraja appeared to exercise a stealthy fascination, for a dozen times the lady detected his eyes questioning her face and a dozen times he looked guiltily away again. But his incongruities could not delay for more than a few minutes the opening of the door.

“I do not accompany you, sir?” he inquired, with the suggestion plainly tendered in his voice that it would be much better if he did.

“Not this time, Parkinson.”

“Very well, sir. Is there any particular address to which we can telephone in case you are required, sir?”

“Mr Greatorex has instructions.”

Parkinson stood aside, his resources exhausted. Madame Ferraja laughed a little mockingly as they walked down the drive.

“Your man-servant thinks I may eat you, Signor Carrados,” she declared vivaciously.

Carrados, who held the key of his usually exact attendant’s perturbation—for he himself had recognized in Madame Ferraja the angelic Nina Brun, of the Sicilian tetradrachm incident, from the moment she opened her mouth—admitted to himself the humour of her audacity. But it was not until half-an-hour later that enlightenment rewarded Parkinson. Inspector Beedel had just arrived and was speaking with Greatorex when the conscientious valet, who had been winnowing his memory in solitude, broke in upon them, more distressed than either had ever seen him in his life before, and with the breathless introduction: “It was the ears, sir! I have her ears at last!” poured out his tale of suspicion, recognition and his present fears.

In the meanwhile the two objects of his concern had reached the gate as the summoned taxicab drew up.

“Seven Heronsbourne Place,” called Carrados to the driver.

“No, no,” interposed the lady, with decision, “let him stop at the beginning of the street. It is not far to walk. My husband would be on the verge of distraction if he thought in the dark that it was the arrival of the police;—who knows?”

“Brackedge Road, opposite the end of Heronsbourne Place,” amended Carrados.

Heronsbourne Place had the reputation, among those who were curious in such matters, of being the most reclusive residential spot inside the four-mile circle. To earn that distinction it was, needless to say, a cul-de-sac. It bounded one side of Heronsbourne Park but did not at any point of its length give access to that pleasance. It was entirely devoted to unostentatious little houses, something between the villa and the cottage, some detached and some in pairs, but all possessing the endowment of larger, more umbrageous gardens than can generally be secured within the radius. The local house agent described them as “delightfully old-world” or “completely modernized” according to the requirement of the applicant.

The cab was dismissed at the corner and Madame Ferraja guided her companion along the silent and deserted way. She had begun to talk with renewed animation, but her ceaseless chatter only served to emphasize to Carrados the one fact that it was contrived to disguise.

“I am not causing you to miss the house with looking after me—No. 7, Madame Ferraja?” he interposed.

“No, certainly,” she replied readily. “It is a little farther. The numbers are from the other end. But we are there. Ecco!”

She stopped at a gate and opened it, still guiding him. They passed into a garden, moist and sweet-scented with the distillate odours of a dewy evening. As she turned to relatch the gate the blind man endeavoured politely to anticipate her. Between them his hat fell to the ground.

“My clumsiness,” he apologized, recovering it from the step. “My old impulses and my present helplessness, alas, Madame Ferraja!”

“One learns prudence by experience,” said Madame sagely. She was scarcely to know, poor lady, that even as she uttered this trite aphorism, under cover of darkness and his hat, Mr Carrados had just ruined his signet ring by blazoning a golden “7” upon her garden step to establish its identity if need be. A cul-de-sac that numbered from the closed end seemed to demand some investigation.

“Seldom,” he replied to her remark. “One goes on taking risks. So we are there?”

Madame Ferraja had opened the front door with a latchkey. She dropped the latch and led Carrados forward along the narrow hall. The room they entered was at the back of the house, and from the position of the road it therefore overlooked the park. Again the door was locked behind them.

“The celebrated Mr Carrados!” announced Madame Ferraja, with a sparkle of triumph in her voice. She waved her hand towards a lean, dark man who had stood beside the door as they entered. “My husband.”

“Beneath our poor roof in the most fraternal manner,” commented the dark man, in the same derisive spirit. “But it is wonderful.”

“The even more celebrated Monsieur Dompierre, unless I am mistaken?” retorted Carrados blandly. “I bow on our first real meeting.”

“You knew!” exclaimed the Dompierre of the earlier incident incredulously. “Stoker, you were right and I owe you a hundred lire. Who recognized you, Nina?”

“How should I know?” demanded the real Madame Dompierre crossly. “This blind man himself, by chance.”

“You pay a poor compliment to your charming wife’s personality to imagine that one could forget her so soon,” put in Carrados. “And you a Frenchman, Dompierre!”

“You knew, Monsieur Carrados,” reiterated Dompierre, “and yet you ventured here. You are either a fool or a hero.”

“An enthusiast—it is the same thing as both,” interposed the lady. “What did I tell you? What did it matter if he recognized? You see?”

“Surely you exaggerate, Monsieur Dompierre,” contributed Carrados. “I may yet pay tribute to your industry. Perhaps I regret the circumstance and the necessity but I am here to make the best of it. Let me see the things Madame has spoken of, and then we can consider the detail of their price, either for myself or on behalf of others.”

There was no immediate reply. From Dompierre came a saturnine chuckle and from Madame Dompierre a titter that accompanied a grimace. For one of the rare occasions in his life Carrados found himself wholly out of touch with the atmosphere of the situation. Instinctively he turned his face towards the other occupant of the room, the man addressed as “Stoker,” whom he knew to be standing near the window.

“This unfortunate business has brought me an introduction,” said a familiar voice.

For one dreadful moment the universe stood still round Carrados. Then, with the crash and grind of overwhelming mental tumult, the whole strategy revealed itself, like the sections of a gigantic puzzle falling into place before his eyes.

There had been no robbery at the British Museum! That plausible concoction was as fictitious as the intentionally transparent tale of treasure trove. Carrados recognized now how ineffective the one device would have been without the other in drawing him—how convincing the two together—and while smarting at the humiliation of his plight he could not restrain a dash of admiration at the ingenuity—the accurately conjectured line of inference—of the plot. It was again the familiar artifice of the cunning pitfall masked by the clumsily contrived trap just beyond it. And straightway into it he had blundered!

“And this,” continued the same voice, “is Carrados, Max Carrados, upon whose perspicuity a government—only the present government, let me in justice say—depends to outwit the undesirable alien! My country; O my country!”

“Is it really Monsieur Carrados?” inquired Dompierre in polite sarcasm. “Are you sure, Nina, that you have not brought a man from Scotland Yard instead?”

“Basta! he is here; what more do you want? Do not mock the poor sightless gentleman,” answered Madame Dompierre, in doubtful sympathy.

“That is exactly what I was wondering,” ventured Carrados mildly. “I am here—what more do you want? Perhaps you, Mr Stoker——?”

“Excuse me. ‘Stoker’ is a mere colloquial appellation based on a trifling incident of my career in connection with a disabled liner. The title illustrates the childish weakness of the criminal classes for nicknames, together with their pitiable baldness of invention. My real name is Montmorency, Mr Carrados—Eustace Montmorency.”

“Thank you, Mr Montmorency,” said Carrados gravely. “We are on opposite sides of the table here to-night, but I should be proud to have been with you in the stokehold of the Benvenuto.”

“That was pleasure,” muttered the Englishman. “This is business.”

“Oh, quite so,” agreed Carrados. “So far I am not exactly complaining. But I think it is high time to be told—and I address myself to you—why I have been decoyed here and what your purpose is.”

Mr Montmorency turned to his accomplice.

“Dompierre,” he remarked, with great clearness, “why the devil is Mr Carrados kept standing?”

“Ah, oh, heaven!” exclaimed Madame Dompierre with tragic resignation, and flung herself down on a couch.

“Scusi,” grinned the lean man, and with burlesque grace he placed a chair for their guest’s acceptance.

“Your curiosity is natural,” continued Mr Montmorency, with a cold eye towards Dompierre’s antics, “although I really think that by this time you ought to have guessed the truth. In fact, I don’t doubt that you have guessed, Mr Carrados, and that you are only endeavouring to gain time. For that reason—because it will perhaps convince you that we have nothing to fear—I don’t mind obliging you.”

“Better hasten,” murmured Dompierre uneasily.

“Thank you, Bill,” said the Englishman, with genial effrontery. “I won’t fail to report your intelligence to the Rasojo. Yes, Mr Carrados, as you have already conjectured, it is the affair of the Countess X. to which you owe this inconvenience. You will appreciate the compliment that underlies your temporary seclusion, I am sure. When circumstances favoured our plans and London became the inevitable place of meeting, you and you alone stood in the way. We guessed that you would be consulted and we frankly feared your intervention. You were consulted. We know that Inspector Beedel visited you two days ago and he has no other case in hand. Your quiescence for just three days had to be obtained at any cost. So here you are.”

“I see,” assented Carrados. “And having got me here, how do you propose to keep me?”

“Of course that detail has received consideration. In fact we secured this furnished house solely with that in view. There are three courses before us. The first, quite pleasant, hangs on your acquiescence. The second, more drastic, comes into operation if you decline. The third—but really, Mr Carrados, I hope you won’t oblige me even to discuss the third. You will understand that it is rather objectionable for me to contemplate the necessity of two able-bodied men having to use even the smallest amount of physical compulsion towards one who is blind and helpless. I hope you will be reasonable and accept the inevitable.”

“The inevitable is the one thing that I invariably accept,” replied Carrados. “What does it involve?”

“You will write a note to your secretary explaining that what you have learned at 7 Heronsbourne Place makes it necessary for you to go immediately abroad for a few days. By the way, Mr Carrados, although this is Heronsbourne Place it is not No. 7.”

“Dear, dear me,” sighed the prisoner. “You seem to have had me at every turn, Mr Montmorency.”

“An obvious precaution. The wider course of giving you a different street altogether we rejected as being too risky in getting you here. To continue: To give conviction to the message you will direct your man Parkinson to follow by the first boat-train to-morrow, with all the requirements for a short stay, and put up at Mascot’s, as usual, awaiting your arrival there.”

“Very convincing,” agreed Carrados. “Where shall I be in reality?”

“In a charming though rather isolated bungalow on the south coast. Your wants will be attended to. There is a boat. You can row or fish. You will be run down by motor car and brought back to your own gate. It’s really very pleasant for a few days. I’ve often