The Joker, Edgar Wallace [books you have to read TXT] 📗

she experienced a little

twinge of unhappiness when Jim Carlton took an abrupt adieu.

 

Though in no mood for work, she sat at her table until one o’clock, then,

putting down her pen, opened the window and leaned out, inhaling the cold

night air. The sky was clear and frosty; there was not a suspicion of the

fog which had been predicted by the evening newspapers; and Coram Street

was singularly peaceful and soothing. From time to time there came a

distant whirr of wheels as cars and taxis passed along Theobald’s Road,

but this was the only jar in the harmony of silence. It was one of

London’s quiet nights.

 

She looked up and down the street-the deserted pavement was very

inviting. She was stiff and cramped through sitting too long in one

position, and a quarter of an hour’s walk was not only desirable, but

necessary, she decided. Putting on her coat, she opened the door other

room and crept silently down the stairs, not wishing to disturb the other

inmates of the house.

 

At the foot of the first flight of stairs she had a surprise.

 

The door of the attentive boarder was wide open, and when she came

abreast of it she saw him sitting in an armchair, a pipe gripped between

his teeth, his hands clasped unromantically across his front and he was

nodding sleepily. But she made sufficient noise to rouse him, and

suddenly he sat up.

 

‘Hullo!’ he croaked, in the manner of one awaking from slumber. ‘Are you

going out?’

 

The impertinence of the man took her breath away.

 

‘I thought of going for a stroll too,’ he said, rising laboriously. ‘I’m

not getting enough exercise.’

 

‘I’m going to post a letter, that is all,’ she said, and had the

humiliation of making a pretence to drop an imaginary letter into the

pillar-box under his watchful eye.

 

She brushed past him as he stood in the doorway, blowing great clouds of

smoke from his pipe, and almost ran up the stairs, angry with herself

that she could allow so insignificant a thing to irritate her.

 

She did not see the man at breakfast, but as she walked up the steps to

the office, she happened to glance round and, to her annoyance, saw him

lounging on the corner of the square, apparently interested in nothing

but the architecture of the fine old Queen Anne mansion which formed the

corner block.

 

This day was to prove for Aileen Rivers something of an emotional strain.

She was clearing up her desk preparatory to leaving the office when Mr

Stebbings’s bell rang. She went in with her notebook and pencil.

 

‘No, no, no letter; I just have a curious request,’ said Mr Stebbings,

looking past her. ‘A very curious and yet a very natural request. An old

client of mine… his secretary has a sore throat or something. He wanted

to know if you’d go round after dinner and take a few letters.’

 

‘Why certainly, Mr Stebbings,’ she said, surprised that he should be so

apologetic.

 

‘He is not a client of mine now, as I think I’ve told you before,’ the

stout Mr Stebbings went on, addressing the chandelier. ‘And I don’t know

that I should wish for him to be a client either. Only—’

 

‘Mr Harlow?’ she gasped, and he brought his gaze down to her level.

 

‘Yes, Mr Harlow, 704 Park Lane. Do you mind?’

 

She shook her head.

 

‘No,’ she said. She had a struggle before she could agree. ‘Why, of

course I’ll go. At what time?’

 

‘He suggested nine. I said that was rather late, but he told me that he

had a dinner engagement. He was most anxious,’ said Mr Stebbings, his

eyes returning to the Adam ceiling, ‘that this matter should be kept as

quiet as possible.’

 

‘What matter?’ she asked wonderingly.

 

‘I don’t know’—Mr Stebbings could be exasperatingly vague—‘I rather

fancy it may have been the contents of the letter; or, on the other hand,

it may have been that he did not wish anybody to know that he had a

letter of such importance as would justify the calling in of a special

stenographer to deal with it. Naturally I told him he might rely on your

discretion… thank you, that is all.’

 

She went back to her little room with the disquieting thought that she

was committed to spend an hour alone with a man who on his last

appearance had filled her with terror. She wondered whether she ought to

tell Jim Carlton, and then she saw the absurdity of notifying to him

every petty circumstance of her life, every coming and going. She knew he

did not like Harlow; that he even suspected that splendid man of being

responsible for the attack which had been made upon him in Long Acre; and

she was the last to feed his prejudices. There were times when she

allowed herself the disloyalty of thinking that Jim leaned a little

towards sensationalism.

 

So she sent him no message, and at nine o’clock was ringing at the door

of Mr Harlow’s house.

 

She had not seen him since he came to the flat. Once he had passed her in

his car, but only Jim had recognised him.

 

Aileen was curious to discover whether she would recover that impression

of power he had conveyed on the night of his call; whether the same

thrill of fear would set her pulses beating faster-or whether on second

view he would shrink to the proportions of someone who was just removed

from the commonplace.

 

She had not anticipated that it would be Harlow himself who would open

the door to her. He wore a dinner jacket, a pleated silk shirt and round

the waist of his well cut trousers a cummerbund of oriental brocade. He

looked superb. But the old thrill?…

 

Without realising her action she shook her head slowly.

 

His was a tremendous personality, dominating, masterful, sublimely

confident. But he was not godlike. Almost she felt disappointed. Yet if

he had been the Harlow of her mind it is doubtful whether she would have

entered the house.

 

‘Most good of you!’ He helped her to struggle other heavy coat. ‘And very

good of Stebbings! The truth is that my secretary is down with ‘flu and I

hate employing people from agencies.’

 

He opened the door of the library and, entering, stood waiting with the

edge of the door in his hand. As she stepped into the library, her foot

slipped from under her on the highly-polished floor, and she would have

fallen, but he caught her in a grip that was surprisingly fierce. As she

recovered, she was facing him, and she saw something like horror in his

eyes—just a glimpse, swift to come and go.

 

‘This floor is dreadful,’ he said jerkily. ‘The men from Herrans should

have been here to lay the carpet.’

 

She uttered an incoherent apology for her clumsiness, but he would not

listen.

 

‘No, no—unless you are used to the trick of walking on it—’

 

His concern was genuine, but he made a characteristic recovery.

 

‘I have a very important letter to write—a most important letter. And I

am the worst of writers. Dictation is a cruel habit to acquire—the

dictator becomes the slave of his typist!’

 

His attitude might be described as being generally off-handed. It struck

Aileen that he was not at all anxious to impress her. She missed the

smirk and the touch of ingratiating pomposity with which the middle-aged

business man seeks to establish an impression upon a new and pretty

stenographer. In a sense he was brusque, though he was always pleasant.

She had the feeling of being put in her place—but it was an exact

grading—she was in the place she belonged, no higher, no lower.

 

‘You have a notebook? Good! Will you sit at my table? I belong to the

peripatetic school of dictators. Comfortable? Now—’

 

He gave a name and an address, spelling them carefully.

 

The letter was to a Colonel Harry Mayburgh of 9003 Wall Street.

 

‘My dear Harry’, he began. The dictation went smoothly from hereon.

Harlow’s diction was a little slow but distinct.

 

He was never once at a loss for a word, nor did he flounder in the morass

of parentheses. Towards the end of the letter:

 

‘… the European situation remains settled and there is every promise of

a revival in trade during the next few months. I, for one, will never

believe that so unimportant a matter as the Bonn affair will cause the

slightest friction between ourselves and the French.’

 

She remembered now reading of the incident. A quarrel between a

sous-officier of the French army and a peppery British colonel who had

gone to Bonn.

 

So unimportant was the incident that when a question had been raised in

the House of Commons by an inquisitive member, he had been greeted by

jeering laughter. It seemed surprising that a man of Harlow’s standing

should think it worth while to make any reference to the incident.

 

He stopped here, pinching his chin and gazing down at her abstractedly.

She met the pale eyes—was conscious that in some ineffable manner his

appearance had undergone a change. The pale eyes were deeper set; they

seemed to have receded, leaving two little wrinkles of flesh to spoil

the unmarked smoothness of skin. Perhaps she was mistaken and was seeing

now, in a leisurely survey, characteristics which had been overlooked in

the shock of meeting him at Fotheringay Mansions…

 

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, answering, as it were, a question he had put to

himself. ‘I think I might say that. Will you read back?’

 

She read the letter from her shorthand and when she had finished he

smiled.

 

‘Splendid!’ he said quietly. ‘I envy Mr Stebbings so efficient a young

lady.’

 

He walked to the side-table, lifted a typewriter and carried it to the

desk.

 

‘You will find paper and carbons in the top right hand drawer,’ he said.

‘Would you mind waiting for me after you have finished? I shall not be

more than twenty minutes.’

 

She had made the required copies of the letter within a few minutes of

his departure. There were certain matters to be considered; she sat back,

her hands folded lightly on her lap, her eyes roving the room.

 

Mr Harlow’s splendour showed inoffensively in the decorations of the

room. The furniture, even the bookcases which covered the walls, were in

Empire style. There was a pervading sense of richness in the room and yet

it might not in truth be called over-ornate, despite the gold and crystal

of the candelabras, the luxury of heavy carpets and silken damask.

 

So roving her eyes came to the fireplace where the red coals were dying.

On the white-tiled hearth immediately before the fire a little screw of

paper had been thrown which, under the influence of the heat, had opened

into a crumpled ball. She saw a pencilled scrawl.

 

‘Marling.’

 

She spelt the word—thought at first it was ‘making.’ And then she did

something which shocked her even in the act—she stooped and picked up

the paper, smoothed it out and read quickly, as though she must satisfy

her curiosity before S, her outraged sense of propriety intervened.

 

The handle of the door turned; she slipped the creased paper into her

bag, which was open on the table, and closed it as the stony-faced Mrs

Edwins came into the room.

 

She came to the desk where the girl sat, her big, gaunt hands folded, her

disparagement conveyed rather than expressed.

 

‘You’re the young woman,’