Всего за 5.99 руб. Купить полную версию
CHAPTER XXXV
FANNY DISCOVERS WHO RICHARD MANX IS
MY DARLING What has occurred to-day must be related with calmness, although my mind is in a whirl of excitement. The presentiment I felt last night that we were on the threshold of an important discovery has come true. A discovery has been made which neither you nor I could ever have dreamt of, and we have to thank Fanny for it. How wonderfully all the circumstances of life seem to be woven into one another! Little did I think, when I first met the poor, hungry little girl, and was kind to her, that she would repay me as she has repaid me, and that we should owe to her, perhaps, the happiness of our lives. I may be mistaken; I may be speaking more out of my heart than my head, more out of my hopes than my reason. But surely what Fanny has discovered will lead to a discovery of greater moment. It is, as yet, the most important link in the chain. We must consider what is best to be done. At noon, Fanny said to me:
I want a holiday; Ive got something to do.
She spoke abruptly, and with great earnestness.
You dont intend to run away from me, Fanny, I said, and immediately repented my words, for Fanny seized my hands, and kissed them, with tears running down her face.
Run away from you! she cried. Never never never! How could you think it of me. I would die for you indeed, indeed I would!
I quieted her, trying to excuse myself by saying that it was only because she was keeping something secret from me that the words escaped me.
But Im doing it for you, she said. To-night Ill tell you everything.
Now, read how Fanny passed the day. I will relate it as nearly as possible out of her lips.
When I went into Mr. Pelhams room, yesterday, she said, in Buckingham Palace Road, I didnt suspect anything at first. I didnt like his looks, but that was nothing. There are lots of people I dont like the looks of. I remained there while he threw away the letter, and while he drank and smoked. He was drinking wine, and he emptied three glasses one after another. It wasnt till he got up and went to his desk that I noticed something a twitch of his left shoulder upwards, just as a man does when he shrugs his shoulders. But Mr. Pelham did not shrug his two shoulders, he shrugged one the left one. I only knew one other man who did with his left shoulder what Mr. Pelham did, and I thought it funny. While he was writing his letter he threw away his cigar, and took a cigarette, and the way he put it into his mouth and rolled it between his lips was just the same as the other man who twitched his shoulder as Mr. Pelham did. Well, as I walked back to Mrs. Holdfasts house, I seemed to see the two men Mr. Pelham and the other, shrugging their left shoulders, and rolling their cigarettes in their mouths, and what they did was as like as two peas, though they were two different men, though one was poor and the other rich. I couldnt help calling myself a little fool when the idea came to me that they were not different men at all, and I said to myself, What do they mean by it? No good, thats certain. So I made up my mind to do something, and I did it to-day.
First, there was Richard Manx. I watched him out of the house. He came down from his garret a little after twelve; I stood in the dark passage, and watched him coming downstairs; he seemed to be out of temper, and he gave the wall a great blow with his hand. I think he would have liked to hear it cry out, so that he might be sure he had hurt it. I thought I shouldnt like him to strike me in that way but I dont suppose he would if any one was looking. He would have hit me as he hit the wall, if he had known what I was up to that is, if nobody was near.
He went out of the house, closing the street door, O, so quietly behind him. Have you noticed how quietly he does everything? He walks like a cat well, so can other people. I waited a minute after he closed the street door, and then I slipped out after him. I looked all ways, and I saw him just turning out of the Square into Great King Street. I soon turned the corner too, and there I was walking behind him on the other side of the way, with my eyes glued to him. Well, as good as glued. I can walk a long way behind a person, and never lose sight of him, my eyes are so sharp, and I didnt lose sight of Mr. Richard Manx, as he calls himself. He walked Lambeth way, and I noticed that he was looking about in the funniest manner, as though he was afraid he was being watched. The farther he got from Great Porter Square the more he looked about him; but no one took any notice of him only me. Well, he went down a street where half the houses were shops and half not, and at the corner of the street was a coffee-shop. There were two doors facing him, one going into the shop where people are served, and the other going into a passage, very narrow and very dark. A little way up this passage was a door, which pushed open. Mr. Manx, after looking about him more than ever, went into the narrow dark passage, and pushed open the door.
What I had to do now was to wait until he came out, and to dodge about so that I shouldnt be seen or caught watching for something I didnt know what. It was a hard job, as hard a job as ever I was at, and it was all that I could do to keep people from watching me. I waited an hour, and another hour, and another hour, and Mr. Manx never came out of the coffee shop. I was regularly puzzled, and tired, and bothered. But I didnt know what a little fool I was till after waiting for at least four hours I found out that the coffee shop had two more doors on the side facing the other street; doors just like the others, one going into the shop, and the other into a narrow dark passage. When I found that out I thought that Mr. Manx must have gone in at one door in one street and come out at the other door in the other street, and I was regularly vexed with myself. But that didnt help me, and I walked away from Lambeth towards Buckingham Palace Road. I wanted to see with my own eyes if Mr. Pelham was at home. He was; I saw him stand for a minute at the window of his room on the front floor. Then I set to watching him. I wanted to find out where he was going to, and what he was up to. I suppose it was seven oclock, and dark, before he came out. He walked till he met a cab, and as he got in I heard him give the direction of Mrs. Holdfasts house. That was enough for me; I followed him there, my feet ready to drop off, I was that tired. But I wasnt going to give up the job. No one came out of Mrs. Holdfasts house till nine oclock struck; then the street door was opened, and Mr. Pelham walked into the street. He stood still a little, and I thought to myself he is thinking whether he shall take a cab. He didnt take one till he was half-a-mile from Mrs. Holdfasts house. I ran all the way after it. It was a good job for me that the cab was a four-wheeler, and that it went along slow, for running so hard set my heart beating to that extent that I thought it would jump out of my body. I scarcely knew where we were going, the night was that dark, but I knew it was not in the direction of Buckingham Palace Road. Mr. Pelham rode about a mile, then called out to the cabby, and jumped on to the pavement. He paid the man, and the cab drove away, and then Mr. Pelham walked slowly towards Lambeth, looking about him, although the night was so dark, in exactly the same way as Mr. Manx had done when I followed him from Great Porter Square. I had been on my feet all the day, and had walked miles and miles, and I hadnt had a bit of bread in my mouth since breakfast but when I was certain that Mr. Pelham was walking to Lambeth I didnt feel hungry or tired. I said to myself, Fanny, your idea was right; but what does it all mean? Well, I couldnt settle that; all I had to settle was that the two men who shrugged their left shoulders, and who rolled their cigarettes in their mouths in the way I had noticed, were not two men at all, but the same man, living in one place as a gentleman and an Englishman, and in another as a poor foreigner without a shilling. So I was not at all surprised to see Mr. Pelham, dressed like a swell, stop at the coffee shop at which Mr. Manx had stopped, and push through the dark passage by the door I had not noticed when I was waiting in the street this morning for Mr. Manx, and I wasnt at all surprised that Mr. Pelham didnt come out again. The man who came was the man I wanted, and I followed him home here to Great Porter Square, and he is in the house now. And here Fanny concluded the account of her days adventures by asking, Who came in five minutes before I did?