Bat Wing, Sax Rohmer [top 20 books to read .txt] 📗

I saw that Colin Camber had detected my interest, for:

“Ah Tsong is really my wife’s servant,” he explained.

“Oh,” she said in a low voice, and looked at me earnestly, “Ah Tsong nursed me when I was a little baby so high.” She held her hand about four feet from the floor and laughed gleefully. “Can you imagine what a funny little thing I was?”

“You must have been a wonder-child, Mrs. Camber,” I replied with sincerity; “and Ah Tsong has remained with you ever since?”

“Ever since,” she echoed, shaking her head in a vaguely pathetic way. “He will never leave me, do you think, Colin?”

“Never,” replied her husband; “you are all he loves in the world. A case, Mr. Knox,” he turned to me, “of deathless fidelity rarely met with nowadays and only possible, perhaps, in its true form in an Oriental.”

Mrs. Camber having seated herself upon one of the few chairs which was not piled with books, her husband had resumed his place by the writing desk, and I sought in vain to interpret the glances which passed between them.

The fact that these two were lovers none could have mistaken. But here again, as at Cray’s Folly, I detected a shadow. I felt that something had struck at the very root of their happiness, in fact, I wondered if they had been parted, and were but newly reunited for there was a sort of constraint between them, the more marked on the woman’s side than on the man’s. I wondered how long they had been married, but felt that it would have been indiscreet to ask.

Even as the idea occurred to me, however, an opportunity arose of learning what I wished to know. I heard a bell ring, and:

“There is someone at the door, Colin,” said Mrs. Camber.

“I will go,” he replied. “Ah Tsong has enough to do.”

Without another word he stood up and walked out of the room.

“You see,” said Mrs. Camber, smiling in her naive way, “we only have one servant, except Ah Tsong, her name is Mrs. Powis. She is visiting her daughter who is married. We made the poor old lady take a holiday.”

“It is difficult to imagine you burdened with household responsibilities, Mrs. Camber,” I replied. “Please forgive me but I cannot help wondering how long you have been married?”

“For nearly four years.”

“Really?” I exclaimed. “You must have been married very young?”

“I was twenty. Do I look so young?”

I gazed at her in amazement.

“You astonish me,” I declared, which was quite true and no mere compliment. “I had guessed your age to be eighteen.”

“Oh,” she laughed, and resting her hands upon the settee leaned forward with sparkling eyes, “how funny. Sometimes I wish I looked older. It is dreadful in this place, although we have been so happy here. At all the shops they look at me so funny, so I always send Mrs. Powis now.”

“You are really quite wonderful,” I said. “You are Spanish, are you not, Mrs. Camber?”

She slightly shook her head, and I saw the pupils begin to dilate.

“Not really Spanish,” she replied, haltingly. “I was born in Cuba.”

“In Cuba?”

She nodded.

“Then it was in Cuba that you met Mr. Camber?”

She nodded again, watching me intently.

“It is strange that a Virginian should settle in Surrey.”

“Yes?” she murmured, “you think so? But really it is not strange at all. Colin’s people are so proud, so proud. Do you know what they are like, those Virginians? Oh! I hate them.”

“You hate them?”

“No, I cannot hate them, for he is one. But he will never go back.”

“Why should he never go back, Mrs. Camber?”

“Because of me.”

“You mean that you do not wish to settle in America?”

“I could not—not where he comes from. They would not have me.”

Her eyes grew misty, and she quickly lowered her lashes.

“Would not have you?” I exclaimed. “I don’t understand.”

“No?” she said, and smiled up at me very gravely. “It is simple. I am a Cuban, one, as they say, of an inferior race—and of mixed blood.”

She shook her golden head as if to dismiss the subject, and stood up, as Camber entered, followed by Ah Tsong bearing a tray of refreshments.

Of the ensuing conversation I remember nothing. My mind was focussed upon the one vital fact that Mrs. Camber was a Cuban Creole. Dimly I felt that here was the missing link for which Paul Harley was groping. For it was in Cuba that Colin Camber had met his wife, it was from Cuba that the menace of Bat Wing came.

What could it mean? Surely it was more than a coincidence that these two families, both associated with the West Indies, should reside within sight of one another in the Surrey Hills. Yet, if it were the result of design, the design must be on the part of Colonel Menendez, since the Cambers had occupied the Guest House before he had leased Cray’s Folly.

I know not if I betrayed my absentmindedness during the time that I was struggling vainly with these maddening problems, but presently, Mrs. Camber having departed about her household duties, I found myself walking down the garden with her husband.

“This is the summer house of which I was speaking, Mr. Knox,” he said, and I regret to state that I retained no impression of his having previously mentioned the subject. “During the time that Sir James Appleton resided at Cray’s Folly, I worked here regularly in the summer months. It was Sir James, of course, who laid out the greater part of the gardens and who rescued the property from the state of decay into which it had fallen.”

I aroused myself from the profitless reverie in which I had become lost. We were standing before a sort of arbour which marked the end of the grounds of the Guest House. It overhung the edge of a miniature ravine, in which, over a pebbly course, a little stream pursued its way down the valley to feed the lake in the grounds of Cray’s Folly.

From this point of vantage I could see the greater part of Colonel Menendez’s residence. I had an unobstructed view of the tower and of the Tudor garden.

“I abandoned my work-shop,” pursued Colin Camber, “when the—er—the new tenant took up his residence. I work now in the room in which you found me this morning.”

He