The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie [i like reading books txt] 📗
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We were interrupted by a telegram being handed to me. I read it with amazement:
“Anne is safe. Here with me at Kimberley. Suzanne Blair.”
I don’t think I ever really believed in the annihilation of Anne. There is something peculiarly indestructible about that young woman—she is like the patent balls that one gives to terriers. She has an extraordinary knack of turning up smiling. I still don’t see why it was necessary for her to walk out of the hotel in the middle of the night in order to get to Kimberley. There was no train, anyway. She must have put on a pair of angel’s wings and flown there. And I don’t suppose she will ever explain. Nobody does—to me. I always have to guess. It becomes monotonous after a while. The exigencies of journalism are at the bottom of it, I suppose. “How I shot the rapids,” by our Special Correspondent.
I refolded the telegram and got rid of my Governmental friend. I don’t like the prospect of being hungry, but I’m not alarmed for my personal safety. Smuts is perfectly capable of dealing with the revolution. But I would give a considerable sum of money for a drink! I wonder if Pagett will have the sense to bring a bottle of whisky with him when he arrives to-morrow?
I put on my hat and went out, intending to buy a few souvenirs. The curio-shops in Jo’burg are rather pleasant. I was just studying a window full of imposing karosses, when a man coming out of the shop cannoned into me. To my surprise it turned out to be Race.
I can’t flatter myself that he looked pleased to see me. As a matter of fact, he looked distinctly annoyed, but I insisted on his accompanying me back to the hotel. I get tired of having no one but Miss Pettigrew to talk to.
“I had no idea you were in Jo’burg,” I said chattily. “When did you arrive?”
“Last night.”
“Where are you staying?”
“With friends.”
He was disposed to be extraordinarily taciturn, and seemed to be embarrassed by my questions.
“I hope they keep poultry,” I remarked. “A diet of new-laid eggs and the occasional slaughtering of an old cock will be decidedly agreeable soon from all I hear.”
“By the way,” I said, when we were back in the hotel, “have you heard that Miss Beddingfeld is alive and kicking?”
He nodded.
“She gave us quite a fright,” I said airily. “Where the devil did she go to that night, that’s what I’d like to know.”
“She was on the island all the time.”
“Which island? Not the one with the young man on it?”
“Yes.”
“How very improper,” I said. “Pagett will be quite shocked. He always did disapprove of Anne Beddingfeld. I suppose that was the young man she originally intended to meet in Durban?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to,” I said, by way of encouraging him.
“I fancy that this is a young man we should all be very glad to lay our hands on.”
“Not——?” I cried, in rising excitement.
He nodded.
“Harry Rayburn, alias Harry Lucas—that’s his real name, you know. He’s given us all the slip once more, but we’re bound to rope him in soon.”
“Dear me, dear me,” I murmured.
“We don’t suspect the girl of complicity in any case. On her side it’s—just a love-affair.”
I always did think Race was in love with Anne. The way he said those last words made me feel sure of it.
“She’s gone to Beira,” he continued rather hastily.
“Indeed,” I said, staring. “How do you know?”
“She wrote to me from Bulawayo, telling me she was going home that way. The best thing she can do, poor child.”
“Somehow, I don’t fancy she is in Beira,” I said meditatively.
“She was just starting when she wrote.”
I was puzzled. Somebody was clearly lying. Without stopping to reflect that Anne might have excellent reasons for her misleading statements, I gave myself up to the pleasure of scoring off Race. He is always so cocksure. I took the telegram from my pocket and handed it to him.
“Then how do you explain this?” I asked nonchalantly.
He seemed dumbfounded.
“She said she was just starting for Beira,” he said, in a dazed voice.
I know that Race is supposed to be clever. He is, in my opinion, rather a stupid man. It never seemed to occur to him that girls do not always tell the truth.
“Kimberley too. What are they doing there?” he muttered.
“Yes, that surprised me. I should have thought Miss Anne would have been in the thick of it here, gathering copy for the Daily Budget.”
“Kimberley,” he said again. The place seemed to upset him. “There’s nothing to see there—the pits aren’t being worked.”
“You know what women are,” I said vaguely.
He shook his head and went off. I have evidently given him something to think about.
No sooner had he departed than my Government official reappeared.
“I hope you will forgive me for troubling you again, Sir Eustace,” he apologized. “But there are one or two questions I should like to ask you.”
“Certainly, my dear fellow,” I said cheerfully. “Ask away.”
“It concerns your secretary——”
“I know nothing about him,” I said hastily. “He foisted himself upon me in London, robbed me of valuable papers—for which I shall be hauled over the coals—and disappeared like a conjuring trick at Cape Town. It’s true that I was at the Falls at the same time as he was, but I was at the hotel, and he was on an island. I can assure you that I never set eyes upon him the whole time that I was there.”
I paused for breath.
“You misunderstand me. It was of your other secretary that I spoke.”
“What? Pagett?” I cried, in lively astonishment. “He’s been with me eight years—a most trustworthy fellow.”
My interlocutor smiled.
“We are still at cross-purposes. I refer to the lady.”
“Miss Pettigrew?” I exclaimed.
“Yes. She has been seen coming out of Agrasato’s Native Curio-shop.”
“God bless my soul!” I interrupted. “I was going into that place myself this afternoon. You might have caught me coming out!”
There doesn’t seem to be any innocent thing that one can do in Jo’burg without being suspected for it.
“Ah! but she has been there more than once—and in rather doubtful circumstances. I may as well tell you—in confidence, Sir Eustace—that the place is suspected of being a well-known rendezvous used by the secret organization behind this revolution. That is why I should be glad to hear all that you can tell me about this lady. Where and how did you come to engage her?”
“She was lent to me,” I replied coldly, “by your own Government.”
He collapsed utterly.
CHAPTER XXXAs soon as I got to Kimberley I wired to Suzanne.
She joined me there with the utmost dispatch, heralding her arrival with telegrams sent off en route. I was awfully surprised to find that she really was fond of me—I thought I had been just a new sensation, but she positively fell on my neck and wept when we met.
When we had recovered from our emotion a little, I sat down on the bed and told her the whole story from A to Z.
“You always did suspect Colonel Race,” she said thoughtfully, when I had finished. “I didn’t until the night you disappeared. I liked him so much all along and thought he would make such a nice husband for you. Oh, Anne, dear, don’t be cross, but how do you know that this young man of yours is telling the truth? You believe every word he says.”
“Of course I do,” I cried indignantly.
“But what is there in him that attracts you so? I don’t see that there’s anything in him at all except his rather reckless good looks and his modern Sheik-cum-Stone-Age love-making.”
I poured out the vials of my wrath upon Suzanne for some minutes.
“Just because you’re comfortably married and getting fat, you’ve forgotten that there’s any such thing as romance,” I ended.
“Oh, I’m not getting fat, Anne. All the worry I’ve had about you lately must have worn me to a shred.”
“You look particularly well nourished,” I said coldly. “I should say you must have put on about half a stone.”
“And I don’t know that I’m so comfortably married either,” continued Suzanne in a melancholy voice. “I’ve been having the most dreadful cables from Clarence ordering me to come home at once. At last I didn’t answer them, and now I haven’t heard for over a fortnight.”
I’m afraid I didn’t take Suzanne’s matrimonial troubles very seriously. She will be able to get round Clarence all right when the times comes. I turned the conversation to the subject of the diamonds.
Suzanne looked at me with a dropped jaw.
“I must explain, Anne. You see, as soon as I began to suspect Colonel Race, I was terribly upset about the diamonds. I wanted to stay on at the Falls in case he might have kidnapped you somewhere close by, but didn’t know what to do about the diamonds. I was afraid to keep them in my possession——”
Suzanne looked round her uneasily, as though she feared the walls might have ears, and then whispered vehemently in my ear.
“A distinctly good idea,” I approved. “At the time, that is. It’s a bit awkward now. What did Sir Eustace do with the cases?”
“The big ones were sent down to Cape Town. I heard from Pagett before I left the Falls, and he enclosed the receipt for their storage. He’s leaving Cape Town to-day, by the by, to join Sir Eustace in Johannesburg.”
“I see,” I said thoughtfully. “And the small ones, where are they?”
“I suppose Sir Eustace has got them with him.”
I turned the matter over in my mind.
“Well,” I said at last, “it’s awkward—but it’s safe enough. We’d better do nothing for the present.”
Suzanne looked at me with a little smile.
“You don’t like doing nothing, do you, Anne?”
“Not very much,” I replied honestly.
The one thing I could do was to get hold of a time-table and see what time Guy Pagett’s train would pass through Kimberley. I found that it would arrive at 5.40 on the following afternoon and depart again at 6. I wanted to see Pagett as soon as possible, and that seemed to me a good opportunity. The situation on the Rand was getting very serious, and it might be a long time before I got another chance.
The only thing that livened up the day was a wire dispatched from Johannesburg. A most innocent-sounding telegram:
“Arrived safely. All going well. Eric here, also Eustace, but not Guy. Remain where you are for the present. Andy.”
Eric was our pseudonym for Race. I chose it because it is a name I dislike exceedingly. There was clearly nothing to be done until I could see Pagett. Suzanne employed herself in sending off a long soothing cable to the far-off Clarence. She became quite sentimental over him. In her way—which of course is quite different from me and Harry—she is really fond of Clarence.
“I do wish he was here, Anne,” she gulped. “It’s such a long time since I’ve seen him.”
“Have some face cream,” I said soothingly.
Suzanne rubbed a little on the tip of her charming nose.
“I shall want some more face cream soon too,” she remarked, “and you can only get this kind in Paris.” She sighed. “Paris!”
“Suzanne,” I said, “very soon you’ll have had enough of South Africa and adventure.”
“I should like a really nice hat,” admitted Suzanne wistfully. “Shall I come with you to meet Guy Pagett to-morrow?”
“I prefer to go alone. He’d be shyer speaking before two of us.”
So it came about that I was standing in the doorway of the hotel on the following afternoon, struggling with a recalcitrant parasol that refused to go up, whilst Suzanne lay peacefully on her bed with a book and a basket of fruit.
According to the hotel porter, the train was on its good behaviour to-day and would be almost on time, though he was extremely doubtful whether it would ever get through to Johannesburg. The line had been blown up, so he solemnly assured me.
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