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The Master Mummer, a novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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Book 1 - Chapter 3 |
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_ BOOK I CHAPTER III Mr. Grooten, as my new acquaintance called himself, belied neither his appearance nor his modest reference to himself. He proved at once that he knew how to order a satisfactory luncheon, going through the _menu_ with the quiet deliberation of a connoisseur, neither seeking nor accepting any advice from the dark-visaged waiter who stood by his side, and finally writing out his few carefully chosen dishes with a special postscript as to the coffee, which, by-the-bye, we were never to taste. He then leaned over the table and began to talk. Apparently my host had been in every country of the world, and mixed with people of note in each. His anecdotes were always pungent, personal without being egotistical, and savoured always with a certain dry and perfectly natural humour. I found myself both interested and fascinated by his constant flow of reminiscences, and yet at times my attention wandered. For within a few yards of us were seated the man and the child. Everything that was noticeable in their demeanour towards one another at the station was even more apparent here. A bottle of champagne stood upon the table. The man had ordered such a luncheon that the head-waiter was seldom far from his side, and the manager in person had come to pay his respects. He himself was apparently doing full justice to it. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes moist, and his little bursts of laughter as he persevered in his attentions to his companion grew louder and more frequent. But opposite to him, the child's face was unchanged. Her glass was full of wine, but she seemed never to touch it. Her long white fingers played with her bread, but she seemed to eat little or nothing. Her face was pallid and drawn; there was terror--absolute, undiluted terror--in her unnaturally large eyes. Often when the man spoke to her she shivered. Her eyes seemed constantly trying to escape his gaze, wandering round the room, the terror of a hunted animal in their soft, luminous depths. Once they rested upon mine--I was seated in the corner facing her--and it seemed to me that there was appeal--desperate, frenzied appeal--in that long, tense look which thrilled all my pulses with passionate sympathy. Yet she held herself all the while stiff and erect. There was a certain sustaining pride in her close, firm-set mouth. There was never any sign of tears, though more than once her lips parted for a moment in a pitiful quiver. The table at which we were sitting was just inside the door, in the left-hand corner. The man and the girl were upon the opposite side, and a few yards further in the room. My host, with his face to the door, could see neither of them, therefore, without turning round, and owing to our table being pushed far into the corner, only his back was visible to the people in the restaurant. I, sitting facing him, had an excellent view of the girl and her companion, and I was all the while a witness of the silent drama being played out between the two. There came a time when I felt that I could stand it no longer. I leaned over our small table, and interrupted my companion in the middle of a story. "Forgive me," I said, "but I wish you could see that child's face. There is something wrong, I am sure. She is terrified to death. Look, that brute is trying to force her to drink her wine. I really can't sit and watch it any longer." The man who was my host, and who had called himself Mr. Grooten, nodded his head slightly. I knew at once, however, that he was in close sympathy with me. "I have been watching them," he said. "There is a mirror over your head; I have seen everything. It is a hideous-looking affair, but what can one do?" "I know what I am going to do, at any rate," I said, laying my serviette deliberately upon the table. "I don't care what happens, but I am going to speak to the child." Mr. Grooten raised his eyebrows. Beyond this faint expression of surprise his face betrayed neither approval nor disapproval. "What will you gain?" he asked. "Probably nothing," I answered. "And yet I shall try all the same. I dare not go away with the memory of that child's face haunting me. I must make an effort, even though it seems ridiculous. I can't help it." My companion smiled softly. "As you will, my impetuous young friend," he said. "This promises to be interesting. I will await your return." I did not hesitate any longer. I rose to my feet, and crossed the space which lay between the two tables. As I drew nearer to her I watched the child's face. At first a flash of desperate hope seemed suddenly to illumine it; then a fear more abject even than before took its place as she glanced at her companion. She watched me come, reading without a doubt the purpose in my mind with a sort of fascinated wonder. Her eyes were still fastened upon mine when at last I paused before her. I leaned over the table, keeping my shoulder turned upon the man. "You will forgive me," I said to her in a low tone, "but I believe that you are in trouble. Can I help you? Don't be afraid to tell me if I can." "You--you are very kind, sir," she began, breathlessly; "I----" Her companion intervened. Astonishment and anger combined to render his voice unsteady. "Eh? What's this? Who the devil are you, sir, and what do you mean by speaking to my ward?" I disregarded his interruption altogether. I still addressed myself only to the child, and I spoke as encouragingly as I could. "Don't be afraid to tell me," I said. "Think that I am your brother. I want to help you if I can." "Oh, if you only could!" she moaned. Her companion seized me by the arm and forced me to turn round. His face was red almost to suffocation, and two thick blue veins stood out upon his forehead in ugly fashion. His voice was scarcely articulate by reason of his attempt to keep it low. "Of all the infernal impertinence! What do you mean by it, sir? Who are you? How dare you force yourself upon strangers in this fashion?" "I am quite aware that I am doing an unusual thing," I answered, "and I perhaps deserve all that you can say to me. At the same time, I am here to have my question answered. You have a child with you who is apparently terrified to death. I insist upon hearing from her own lips whether she is in need of friends." White and mute, she looked from one to the other. It was the man who answered. "If this were not a public place," he said, still struggling with his anger, "I'd punish you as you deserve, you impudent young cub. This young lady is my ward, and I have just brought her from a convent, where she has lived since she was three years old. She is strange and shy, of course, and I was perhaps wrong to bring her to a public place. I did it, however, out of kindness. I wanted her to enjoy herself, but I perhaps did not appreciate her sensitiveness and the fact that only a few days ago she parted with the friends with whom she has lived all her life. Now, sir," he added, with a sneer upon his coarse lips, "I have been compelled to answer your questions to avoid a disturbance in a public place; but I promise you that if you do not make yourself scarce in thirty seconds I will send for the manager." I looked once more at the child, from whose white, set face every gleam of hope seemed to have fled. "I can do nothing for you, then?" I asked. Her eyes met mine helplessly. She shook her head. She did not speak at all. "Is it true--what he has told me?" I asked. She murmured an assent so faint, that though I was bending over her, it scarcely did more than reach my ears. I could do no more. I turned away and resumed my seat. Grooten smiled at me. "Well, Sir Knight Errant," he said lightly; "so you could not free the maiden?" "I was made to feel and look like a fool, of course," I answered, "but I don't mind about that. To tell you the truth, I am not satisfied now. The man says that he is her guardian, and that he has just brought her from a convent, where she has lived all her life. He vouchsafed to explain things to me to avoid a row, but he was desperately angry. She has never been out of the convent since she was three years old, and she is very nervous and shy. That was his story, and he told it plausibly enough. I could not get anything out of her, except an admission that what he said was the truth." Mr. Grooten nodded thoughtfully. "After all," he said, "she is only a child, fourteen or fifteen at the most, I should suppose. I have paid the bill, and, as you see, I have my coat on. Are you ready?" "Directly I have finished my coffee," I answered. "It looks too good to leave." "Finish it, by all means," he answered. "I am in no particular hurry. By-the-bye, I forget whether I showed you this." He drew a small shining weapon, with rather a long barrel, from his pocket, but though he invited me to inspect it, he retained it in his own hand. "I bought it in New York a few months ago," he remarked; "it is the latest weapon of destruction invented." "Is it a revolver?" I asked, a little puzzled by its shape. "Not exactly," he answered, fingering it carelessly; "it is in reality a sort of air-gun, with a wonderful compression, and a most ingenious silencer; quite as deadly, they say, as any firearm ever invented. It ejects a cylindrically-shaped bullet, tapered down almost to the fineness of a needle. Now," he added, with a faint smile and a rapid glance round the room, "if only one dared--" he turned in his chair, and I saw the thing steal out below his cuff, "one could free the child quite easily--quite easily." It was all over in a moment--a wonderful, tense moment, during which I sat frozen to my chair, stricken dumb and motionless with the tragedy which it seemed that I alone had witnessed. For there had been a little puff of sound, so slight that no other ears had noticed it. The seat in front of me was empty, and the man on my right had fallen forwards, his hand pressed to his side, his face curiously livid, patchy with streaks of dark colour, his eyes bulbous. Waiters still hurried to and fro, the hum of conversation was uninterrupted. And then suddenly it came--a cry of breathless horror, of mortal unexpected agony--a cry, it seemed, of death. The waiters stopped in their places to gaze breathlessly at the spot from which the cry had come, a silver dish fell clattering from the fingers of one, and its contents rolled unnoticed about the floor. The murmur of voices, the rise and fall of laughter and speech, ceased as though an unseen finger had been pressed upon the lips of everyone in the room. Men rose in their places, women craned their necks. For a second or two the whole place was like a tableau of arrested motion. Then there was a rush towards the table across which the man had fallen, a doubled-up heap. A few feet away, with only that narrow margin of table-cloth between them, the girl sat and stared at him, still white and panic-stricken, yet with a curious change in her face from which all the dumb terror which had first attracted my attention seemed to have passed away. _ |
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