The Greatest Thrillers of Edgar Wallace. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
There was only one way to discover, but he waited a little longer — waited, in fact, until he heard the soft slam of a safe door closing — before he slipped again through the window and dropped to the ground.
The bicycle was, as he had expected, leaning against one of the pillars. He could see nothing, and did not dare flash his lamp, but his sensitive fingers ran over its lines, and he barely checked an exclamation of surprise. It was a lady’s bicycle!
He waited a little while, then withdrew to a shrubbery opposite the door on the other side of the drive up which the cyclist had come. He had not long to wait before the door under the portico opened again and closed. Somebody jumped on to the bicycle as Tarling leaped from his place of concealment. He pressed the key of his electric lamp, but for some reason it did not act. He felt rather than heard a shiver of surprise from the person on the machine.
“I want you,” said Tarling, and put out his hands.
He missed the rider by the fraction of an inch, but saw the machine swerve and heard the soft thud of something falling. A second later the machine and rider had disappeared in the pitch darkness.
He refixed his lamp. Pursuit, he knew, was useless without his lantern, and, cursing the maker thereof, he adjusted another battery, and put the light on the ground to see what it was that the fugitive had dropped. He thought he heard a smothered exclamation behind him and turned swiftly. But nobody came within the radius of his lamp. He must be getting nervy, he thought, and continued his inspection of the wallet.
It was a long, leather portfolio, about ten inches in length and five inches in depth, and it was strangely heavy. He picked it up, felt for the clasp, and found instead two tiny locks. He made another examination by the light of his lantern, an examination which was interrupted by a challenge from above.
“Who are you?”
It was Mrs. Rider’s voice, and just then it was inconvenient for him to reveal himself. Without a word in answer, he switched off his light and slipped into the bushes, and, more as the result of instinct than judgment, regained the wall, at almost the exact spot he had crossed it.
The road was empty, and there was no sign of the cyclist. There was only one thing to do and that was to get back to town as quickly as possible and examine the contents of the wallet at his leisure. It was extraordinary heavy for its size, he was reminded of that fact by his sagging pocket.
The road back to Hertford seemed interminable and the clocks were chiming a quarter of eleven when he entered the station yard.
“Train to London, sir?” said the porter. “You’ve missed the last train to London by five minutes!”
XXIII. The Night Visitor
Tarling was less in a dilemma than in that condition of uncertainty which is produced by having no definite plans one way or the other. There was no immediate necessity for his return to town and his annoyance at finding the last train gone was due rather to a natural desire to sleep in his own bed, than to any other cause. He might have got a car from a local garage, and motored to London, if there had been any particular urgency, but, he told himself, he might as well spend the night in Hertford as in Bond Street.
If he had any leanings towards staying at Hertford it was because he was anxious to examine the contents of the wallet at his leisure. If he had any call to town it might be discovered in his anxiety as to what had happened to Odette Rider; whether she had returned to her hotel or was still marked “missing” by the police. He could, at any rate, get into communication with Scotland Yard and satisfy his mind on that point. He turned back from the station in search of lodgings. He was to find that it was not so easy to get rooms as he had imagined. The best hotel in the place was crowded out as a result of an agricultural convention which was being held in the town. He was sent on to another hotel, only to find that the same state of congestion existed, and finally after half an hour’s search he found accommodation at a small commercial hotel which was surprisingly empty.
His first step was to get into communication with London and this was established without delay. Nothing had been heard of Odette Rider, and the only news of importance was that the exconvict, Sam Stay, had escaped from the county lunatic asylum to which he had been removed.
Tarling went up to the commodious sittingroom. He was mildly interested in the news about Stay, for the man had been a disappointment. This criminal, whose love for Thornton Lyne had, as Tarling suspected rightly, been responsible for his mental collapse, might have supplied a great deal of information as to the events which led up to the day of the murder, and his dramatic breakdown had removed a witness who might have offered material assistance to the police.
Tarling closed the door of his sittingroom behind him, pulled the wallet from his pocket and laid it on the table. He tried first with his own keys to unfasten the flap but the locks defied him. The heaviness of the wallet surprised and piqued him, but he was soon to find an explanation for its extraordinary weight. He opened his pocket-knife and began to cut away the leather about the locks, and uttered an exclamation.
So that was the reason for the heaviness of the pouch — it was only leather-covered! Beneath this cover was a lining of fine steel mail. The wallet was really a steel chain bag, the locks being welded to the chain and absolutely immovable. He threw the wallet back on the table with a laugh. He must restrain his curiosity until he got back to the Yard, where the experts would make short work of the best locks which were ever invented. Whilst he sat watching the thing upon the table and turning over in his mind the possibility of its contents, he heard footsteps pass his door and mount the stairway opposite which his sittingroom was situated. Visitors in the same plight as himself, he thought.
Somehow, being in a strange room amidst unfamiliar surroundings, gave the case a new aspect. It was an aspect of unreality. They were all so unreal, the characters in this strange drama.
Thornton Lyne seemed fantastic, and fantastic indeed was his end. Milburgh, with his perpetual smirk, his little stoop, his broad, fat face and half-bald head; Mrs. Rider, a pale ghost of a woman who flitted in and out of the story, or rather hovered about it, never seeming to intrude, yet never wholly separated from its tragic process; Ling Chu, imperturbable, bringing with him the atmosphere of that land of intrigue and mystery and motive, China. Odette Rider alone was real. She was life; warm, palpitating, wonderful.
Tarling frowned and rose stiffly from his chair. He despised himself a little for this weakness of his. Odette Rider! A woman still under suspicion of murder, a woman whom it was his duty, if she were guilty, to bring to the scaffold, and the thought of her turned him hot and cold!
He passed through to his bedroom which adjoined the sittingroom, put the wallet on a table by the side of his bed, locked the bedroom door, opened the windows and prepared himself, as best he could, for the night.
There was a train leaving Hertford at five in the morning and he had arranged to be called in time to catch it. He took off his boots, coat, vest, collar and tie, unbuckled his belt — he was one of those eccentrics to whom the braces of civilisation were anathema — and lay down on the outside of the bed, pulling the eiderdown over him. Sleep did not come to him readily. He turned from side to side, thinking, thinking, thinking.
Suppose there had been some mistake in the time of the accident at Ashford? Suppose the doctors were wrong and Thornton Lyne was murdered at an earlier hour? Suppose Odette Rider was in reality a coldblooded — . He growled away the thought.
He heard the church clock strike the hour of two and waited impatiently for the quarter to chime — he had heard every quarter since he had retired to bed. But he did not hear that quarter. He must have fallen into an uneasy sleep for he began to dream. He dreamt he was in China again and had fallen into the hands of that baneful society, the “Cheerful Hearts.” He was in a temple, lying on a great black slab of stone, bound hand and foot, and above him he saw the leader of the gang, knife in hand, peering down into his face with a malicious grin — and