The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
and she undressed quickly.
She opened the door of her bedroom, her hand was on a switch, when she was conscious of a faint and not unpleasant odour. It was a clean, pungent smell. "Disinfectant," said her brain mechanically. She turned on the light, wondering where it came from. And then as she crossed the room she came in sight of her bed and stopped, for it was saturated with water--water that dropped from the hanging coverlet, and made little pools on the floor. From the head of the bed to the foot there was not one dry place. Whosoever had done the work was thorough. Blankets, sheets, pillows were soddened, and from the soaked mass came a faint acrid aroma which she recognised, even before she saw on the floor an empty bottle labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen."
She could only stand and stare. It was too late to arouse the household, and she remembered that there was a very comfortable settee in the dressing-room with a rug and a pillow, and she went back.
A few minutes later she was fast asleep. Not so Miss Briggerland, who was sitting up in bed, a cigarette between her lips, a heavy volume on her knees, reading:
"Such malignant cases are almost without exception rapidly fatal, sometimes so early that no sign of the characteristic symptoms appear at all," she read and, dropping the book on the floor, extinguished her cigarette on an alabaster tray, and settled herself to sleep. She was dozing when she remembered that she had forgotten to say her prayers.
"Oh, damn!" said Jean, getting out reluctantly to kneel on the cold floor by the side of the bed.
Chapter XIX
Her maid woke Jean Briggerland at eight o'clock the next morning.
"Oh, miss," she said, as she drew up the table for the chocolate, "have you heard about Mrs. Meredith?"
Jean blinked open her eyes, slipped into her dressing jacket and sat up with a yawn.
"Have I heard about Mrs. Meredith? Many times," she said.
"But what somebody did last night, miss?"
Jean was wide awake now.
"What has happened to Mrs. Meredith?" she asked.
"Why, miss, somebody played a practical joke on her. Her bed's sopping."
"Sopping?" frowned the girl.
"Yes, miss," the woman nodded. "They must have poured buckets of water over it, and used up all Mrs. Cole-Mortimer's peroxide, what she uses for keeping her hands nice."
Jean swung out of her bed and sat looking down at her tiny white feet.
"Where did Mrs. Meredith sleep? Why didn't she wake us up?"
"She slept in the dressing-room, miss. I don't suppose the young lady liked making a fuss."
"Who did it?"
"I don't know who did it. It's a silly kind of practical joke, and I know none of the maids would have dared, not the French ones."
Jean put her feet into her slippers, exchanged her jacket for a gown, and went on a tour of inspection.
Lydia was dressing in her room, and the sound of her fresh, young voice, as she carolled out of sheer love of life, came to the girl before she turned into the room.
One glance at the bed was sufficient. It was still wet, and the empty peroxide bottle told its own story.
Jean glanced at it thoughtfully as she crossed into the dressing-room.
"Whatever happened last night, Lydia?"
Lydia turned at the voice.
"Oh, the bed you mean," she made a little face. "Heaven knows. It occurred to me this morning that some person, out of mistaken kindness, had started to disinfect the room--it was only this morning that I recalled the little boy who was ill--and had overdone it."
"They've certainly overdone it," said Jean grimly. "I wonder what poor Mrs. Cole-Mortimer will say. You haven't the slightest idea----"
"Not the slightest idea," said Lydia, answering the unspoken question.
"I'll see Mrs. Cole-Mortimer and get her to change your bed--there's another room you could have," suggested Jean.
She went back to her own apartment, bathed and dressed leisurely.
She found her father in the garden reading the _Nicoise_, under the shade of a bush, for the sun was not warm, but at that hour, blinding.
"I've changed my plans," she said without preliminary.
He looked up over his glasses.
"I didn't know you had any," he said with heavy humour.
"I intended going back to London and taking you with me," she said unexpectedly.
"Back to London?" he said incredulously. "I thought you were staying on for a month."
"I probably shall now," she said, pulling up a basket-chair and sitting by his side. "Give me a cigarette."
"You're smoking a lot lately," he said as he handed his case to her.
"I know I am."
"Have your nerves gone wrong?"
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and her lips curled.
"It wouldn't be remarkable if I inherited a little of your yellow streak," she said coolly, and he growled something under his breath. "No, my nerves are all right, but a cigarette helps me to think."
"A yellow streak, have I?" Mr. Briggerland was annoyed. "And I've been out since five o'clock this morning----" he stopped.
"Doing--what?" she asked curiously.
"Never mind," he said with a lofty gesture.
Thus they sat, busy with their own thoughts, for a quarter of an hour.
"Jean."
"Yes," she said without turning her head.
"Don't you think we'd better give this up and get back to London? Lord Stoker is pretty keen on you."
"I'm not pretty keen on him," she said decidedly. "He has his regimental pay and 500 a year, two estates, mortgaged, no brains and a title--what is the use of his title to me? As much use as a coat of paint! Beside which, I am essentially democratic."
He chuckled, and there was another silence.
"Do you think the lawyer is keen on the girl?"
"Jack Glover?"
Mr. Briggerland nodded.
"I imagine he is," said Jean thoughtfully. "I like Jack--he's clever. He has all the moral qualities which one admires so much in the abstract. I could love Jack myself."
"Could he love you?" bantered her father.
"He couldn't," she said shortly. "Jack would be a happy man if he saw me stand in Jim Meredith's place in the Old Bailey. No, I have no illusion about Jack's affections."
"He's after Lydia's money I suppose," said Mr. Briggerland, stroking his bald head.
"Don't be a fool," was the calm reply. "That kind of man doesn't worry about a girl's money. I wish Lydia was dead," she added without malice. "It would make things so easy and smooth."
Her father swallowed something.
"You shock me sometimes, Jean," he said, a statement which amused her.
"You're such a half-and-half man," she said with a note of contempt in her voice. "You