Hugo by Arnold Bennett (all ebook reader txt) 📖

heard a woman's voice within the bedroom.

'I shall open it, Alb, if you kill me for it. I don't care who it is. You may be dying of loss of blood. In fact, I'm sure you are.'

And the door was pulled wide open with a single sweeping movement, and Hugo beheld the figure, slightly dishevelled and more than slightly perturbed, of Mrs. Albert Shawn.

'Oh, Alb!' cried Lily. 'It's Mr. Hugo! Oh, Mr. Hugo! whatever next will happen in this world?'

The swift loosing of the tension of Hugo's nerves was too much for his self-possession. He burst into a peal of loud laughter. It was unnaturally loud, it was hysterical; but it was genuine laughter, and it did him good.

Lily straightened herself. So far, she had not admitted Hugo into the chamber.

'It's all very well for you to laugh like that, Mr. Hugo,' she protested sharply; 'but perhaps you don't know that you've nearly killed my husband with that there revolver. The shot came through the door, and took him in the arm just as he was emptying this safe.'

Hugo saw Albert Shawn lying on the stripped bed, a handkerchief tied round his arm, and in the corner near the door a large safe opened, and its contents in a heap on the floor.

'It's all right, sir,' said Albert; 'come in. I'm nowhere near croaking. I didn't know you were on this lay as well as me, sir. I thought I was going to come down on you to-morrow with a surprise like a thousand of bricks.'

'What lay, Albert?' asked Hugo, advancing into the room.

'The secret-finding lay, sir,' said Albert.

'Your wife has the right to be anxious about you,' Hugo observed, after a pause. 'But you don't seem to be quite dying, Shawn; and I think it will be as well if you explain to me why you have adopted the profession of burglar. It is extremely singular that there should have been three burglars here to-night. You, and then me--'

'What did I tell you, Alb?' Mrs. Albert Shawn exclaimed. 'Didn't I tell you I heard a scuffle?'

'The scuffle was between me and No. 3. And be it known to you, Mrs. Shawn, that the revolver was not fired by me, but by No. 3. I took it off him, afterwards.'

'Then No. 3 must have come on behalf of Mr. Ravengar, sir,' said Albert.

'You are no doubt right,' Hugo agreed. 'But how did you know that?'

'Hawke's Detective Agency, sir. I found out before my wedding that one of their men had been hanging about here, so I chummed up to him. I spun him a yarn how I'd been with Hawke's once, and they gave me the bag, and I wasn't satisfied, and he'd got a lot of grievances against Hawke's, too, he had. We got very friendly. Pity I had to leave the thing for my wedding. But I came back after a week.'

'Yes, that he did, sir,' said Lily proudly, 'and insisted on it.'

'I soon knew they were going to burglarize this flat to get some phonograph records.'

'Phonograph records!' Hugo repeated, pondering.

'Yes, sir; and so I thought I'd be beforehand with 'em.'

'Why didn't you tell me directly you knew?'

'You gave me that Gaboriau book to read, sir, and I learnt a lot from it. It's put me up to a power of things. And, amongst others, that two people can't manage one job. One job, one man.'

'You'll excuse Albert, sir,' said Lily; 'that's only his way of talking.'

'It was simply this, sir. I found out enough to make me as sure as eggs is eggs that you'd like to have those phonograph records yourself, without having to inquire too much where they came from or how they came.'

'I see.'

'Exactly, sir. Well, to cut a long story short, sir, I happened to come across something yesterday that made me think that the annual sale was going to be interfered with by parties unknown. But I'd got all I could manage, and I left that alone; I'd no time for it. And last night parties unknown tried to break my leg for me with an open cellar-flap. I knew it was a plant, and so I pretended it had succeeded.'

'He made me think his ankle was that sprained he couldn't walk. He wouldn't trust even me, sir,' said Lily.

'Gaboriau,' Albert explained briefly. 'I knew I was watched, and I told Lily to tell the milkman I couldn't walk. It was all over Radipole Road at eight o'clock this morning. And so, while parties unknown thought I was fast on a sofa, I slipped out by the back-door as soon as I'd sent Lily here to warn you about the annual sale, in case of necessity. I must say I thought I should be twenty-four hours in front of Hawke's men, but I expect they changed their plans. I brought Lily along with me at the last moment. She's read Gaboriau, too, sir, and she's mighty handy.'

'I am aware of it,' said Hugo.

'Anyhow, we got in here first, by the side-door on the balcony. Hawke's man must have come in about an hour after us, and you just after him. That's how I reckon it.'

'You went into the drawing-room, didn't you?' Hugo asked.

'Just looked in.'

'And played with the clock?'

Here he glanced sternly at Lily.

'I shook it to start it, sir, to see if it would go,' Lily admitted.

'I reckon you turned out Hawke's man, sir?' Albert queried.

'It amounted to that,' said Hugo. 'But these phonograph records--what are they?'

'I don't know what they are,' said Albert, descending from the bed, 'but I know that Mr. Ravengar wanted them very badly. It seems Mr. Tudor was a great hand at phonographs and gramophones. Like me, sir.'

'Yes, sir; we've got a beauty. My uncle gave it us,' Lily put in. 'Oh, Alb! your arm's all burst out again.'

The bandage was, in fact, slightly discoloured.

'Oh, that's nothing, my dear,' said Albert.

He pushed up a pile of discs from in front of the safe, and displayed them to Hugo.

'Can we try them here?' Hugo demanded, in a voice suddenly and profoundly eager.

'Certainly, sir. Here's the machine. You undo this catch, and then you--'

Albert was mounted on his latest hobby, and in a few minutes, although he could only use one arm, the phonograph, which stood on the table near the safe, was ready for its work of reproduction. Albert started it.

'Follow me, follow me!'

It began to sing the famous ditty in the famous voice of Miss Edna May.

'Stop that!' cried Hugo, and Albert stopped it.

The next two discs proved to be respectively a series of stories of Mr. R.G. Knowles and 'The Lost Chord,' played on a cornet. And these also were cut short. Then came a bundle of discs tied together. Hugo himself fixed the top one, and the machine, after whirring inarticulately, said in slow, clear tones:

'In case I should die before--'

Hugo arrested the action.

'Go,' he said, almost threateningly, to Albert and his wife. 'Mrs. Shawn, look after your husband's wound. It needs it. See the blood!'

'But--'

'Go,' said Hugo.

And they went.

And when they were gone he released the mechanism, and in the still solitude of the bedroom listened to the strange story of Francis Tudor, related in Francis Tudor's own voice. It occurred to him that the man must have been talking into a phonograph shortly before he died. He remembered the monotonous voice on that fatal night in August.


CHAPTER XIX


WHAT THE PHONOGRAPH SAID

In case I should die before I can complete my arrangements for the future (said the phonograph, reproducing the voice of Francis Tudor), I am making a brief statement of the whole case into this phonograph. I am exhausted with to-day's work, and I shall find it easier and much quicker to speak than to write; and I'm informed that I ought never to exert myself more than is necessary. Supposing I were to die within the next few days--and I have yet to go through the business of the funeral ceremonies!--circumstances might arise which might nullify part of my plan, unless a clear account of the affair should ultimately come into the hands of some person whom I could trust not to make a fool of himself--such as Polycarp, my solicitor, for instance.

Hence I relate the facts for a private record.

When I first met Camilla Payne she was shorthand clerk or private secretary, or whatever you call it, to Louis Ravengar. I saw her in his office. Curiously, she didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the moment. By the way, Polycarp, if it is indeed you who listen to this, you must excuse my way of relating the facts. I can only tell the tale in my own way. Besides meddling with finance, I've dabbled in pretty nearly all the arts, including the art of fiction, and I can't leave out the really interesting pieces of my narrative merely because you're a lawyer and hate needless details, sentimental or otherwise. But _do_ you hate sentimental details? I don't know. Anyhow, this isn't a counsel's brief. What was I saying? Oh! She didn't make a tremendous impression on me at the moment, but I thought of her afterwards. I thought of her a good deal in a quiet way after I had left her--so much so that I made a special journey to Ravengar's a few days afterwards, when there was no real need for me to go, in order to have a look at her face again. I should explain that I was dabbling in finance just then, fairly successfully, and had transactions with Ravengar. He didn't know that I was the son of the man who had taken his stepmother away from his father, and I never told him I had changed my name, because the scandals attached to it by Ravengar and his father had made things very unpleasant for any bearer of that name. Still, Ravengar happened to be the man I wanted to deal with, and so I didn't let any stupid resentment on my part stop me from dealing with him. He was a scoundrel, but he played the game, I may incidentally mention. I venture to give this frank opinion about one of your most important clients, because he'll be dead before you read this, Polycarp. At least, I expect so.

Well, the day I called specially with a view to seeing her she was not there. She had left Ravengar's employment, and disappeared. Ravengar seemed to be rather perturbed about it. But perhaps he was perturbed about the suicide which had recently taken place in his office. I felt it--I mean I felt her disappearance. However, the memory of her face gave me something very charming to fall back on in moments of depression, and it was at this time something occurred sufficient to make me profoundly depressed for the remainder of my life. I was over in Paris, and seeing a good deal of Darcy, my friend the English doctor there. We were having a long yarn one night in his rooms over the Cafe Americain, and he said to me suddenly: 'Look here, old chap, I'm going to do something very unprofessional, because I fancy you'll thank me for it.' He said it just