The Joker by Edgar Wallace (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📖
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- Author: Edgar Wallace
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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,’
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