Freeman The shadow of the Wolf

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-3-8190-2309-5
Verlag: epubli
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 275 Seiten

About half-past eight on a fine, sunny June morning, a small yacht crept out of Sennen Cove near the Land's End and headed for the open sea. On the shelving beach of the Cove two women and a man, evidently visitors (or 'foreigners' to use the local term), stood watching her departure with valedictory waving of cap or handkerchief, and the boatman who had put the crew on board, aided by two of his comrades, was hauling his boat up above the tide-mark.

Dr. Richard Austin Freeman MRCS LSA (11 April 1862 - 28 September 1943) was a British writer of detective stories, mostly featuring the medico-legal forensic investigator Dr. Thorndyke.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Freeman, Richard Austin

Leseproben

Chapter II.
In Which Margaret Purcell Receives a Letter

Daylight dies hard in the month of June and night comes but tardily into her scanty reversion. The clock on the mantelpiece stood at half-past nine, and candles twinkled on the supper table, but even now the slaty-grey band of twilight was only just stealing up behind the horizon to veil the fading glories of the western sky.

Varney sat at the old-fashioned, oval gate-legged table with an air of placid contentment, listening to and joining in the rather disconnected talk (for hungry people are poor conversationalists) with quiet geniality but with a certain remoteness and abstraction. From where he sat he could see out through the open window the great ocean stretching away to the south and west, the glittering horizon and the gorgeous evening sky. With quiet pleasure he had watched the changing scene; the crimson disc of the setting sun, the flaming gold softening down into the sober tints of the afterglow, and now, as the grey herald of the night spread upwards, his eye dwelt steadily on one spot away in the south-west. At first faintly visible, then waxing as the daylight waned, a momentary spark flashed in the heart of the twilight grey; now white like the sparkle of a diamond, now crimson like the flash of a ruby. It was the light on the Wolf Rock.

He watched it thoughtfully as he talked: white—red—white—red—diamond—ruby; so it would go on every fifteen seconds through the short summer night; to mariners a warning and a guide; to him, a message of release; for another, a memorial.

As he looked at the changing lights, he thought of his enemy lying out there in the chilly depths on the bed of the sea. It was strange how often he thought of Purcell. For the man was dead; had gone out of his life utterly. And yet, in the two days that had passed, every trivial incident had seemed to connect itself and him with the man who was gone. And so it was now. All roads seemed to lead to Purcell. If he looked out seaward, there was the lighthouse flashing its secret message, as if it should say, “We know, you and I; he is down here.” If he looked around the table, still everything spoke of the dead man. There was Phillip Rodney—Purcell and he had talked of him on the yacht. There was Jack Rodney who had waited on the pier for the man who had not come. There, at the hostess’s right hand, was the quiet, keen-faced stranger whom Purcell, for some reason, had not wished to meet; and there, at the head of the table, was Margaret herself, the determining cause of it all. Even the very lobsters on the table (lobsters are plentiful at the Land’s End) set him thinking of dark, crawling shapes down in that dim underworld, groping around a larger shape tethered to an iron weight.

He turned his face resolutely away from the sea. He would think no more of Purcell. The fellow had dogged him through life, but now he was gone. Enough of Purcell. Let him think of something more pleasant.

The most agreeable object of contemplation within his field of vision was the woman who sat at the head of the table—his hostess. And, in fact, Margaret Purcell was very pleasant to look upon, not only for her comeliness, though she was undoubtedly a pretty, almost a beautiful, woman, but because she was sweet-faced and gracious and what men compliment the sex by calling “womanly.” She was evidently under thirty, though she carried a certain matronly sedateness and an air of being older than she either looked or was; which was accentuated by the fashion in which she wore her hair, primly parted in the middle—a rather big woman, quiet and reposeful, as big women often are.

Varney looked at her with a kind of wonder. He had always thought her lovely and now she seemed lovelier than ever. And she was a widow, little as she suspected it; little as any one but he suspected it. But it was a fact. She was free to marry, if she only knew it.

He hugged himself at the thought and listened dreamily to the mellow tones of her voice. She was talking to her guest and the elder Rodney, but he had only a dim idea of what she was saying; he was enjoying the music of her speech rather than attending to the matter. Suddenly she turned to him and asked:

“Don’t you agree with me, Mr. Varney?”

He pulled himself together, and, after a momentarily vacant look, answered:

“I always agree with you, Mrs. Purcell.”

“And so,” said Rodney, “as the greater includes the less, he agrees with you now. I am admiring your self-possession, Varney: you haven’t the least idea what we were talking about.”

Varney laughed and reddened, and Margaret looked at him with playful reproach.

“Haven’t you?” she asked. “But how deceitful of you to answer so readily. I was remarking that lawyers have a way of making a solemn parade and exactness and secrecy when there is no occasion. That was my statement.”

“And it is perfectly correct,” said Varney. “You know it is, Rodney. You’re always doing it. I’ve noticed it constantly.”

“Oh, this is mere vindictiveness because he unmasked your deceit. I wasn’t alluding to Mr. Rodney, or any one in particular. I was just speaking generally.”

“But,” said Varney, “something must have suggested the reflection.”

“Certainly. Something did: a letter that I have just received from Mr. Penfield; a most portentous document, and all about nothing.”

At the mention of the lawyer’s name Varney’s attention came to a sharp focus.

“It seems,” Margaret continued, “that Dan, when he wrote to Mr. Penfield the other day, put the wrong letter in the envelope; a silly thing to do, but we all do silly things sometimes.”

“I don’t,” said Rodney.

“Well, ordinary persons, I mean. Then Mr. Penfield, instead of simply stating the fact and returning the letter, becomes mysterious and alarming. He informs me that the envelope was addressed in Dan’s handwriting, that the letter was posted at Penzance at eight-thirty p.m., that it was opened by him in person, and that the contents, which have been seen by no one but himself, are at present reposing in his private safe, of which he alone has the key. What he does not tell us is what the contents of the envelope were; which is the only thing that matters. It is most extraordinary. From the tone of his letter one would think that the envelope had contained something dreadful and incriminating.”

“Perhaps it did,” said Varney. “Dan’s political views are distinctly revolutionary and he is as secret as a whole barrel of oysters. That letter may have contained particulars of some sort of Guy Fawkes conspiracy enclosing samples of suitable explosives. Who knows?”

Margaret was about to reply, when her glance happened to light on Jack Rodney, and something in that gentleman’s expressive and handsome face gave her pause. Had she been chattering indiscreetly? And might Mr. Penfield have meant something after all? There were some curious points about his letter. She smilingly accepted the Guy Fawkes theory and then adroitly changed the subject.

“Speaking of Penzance, Mr. Varney, reminds me that you haven’t told us what sort of voyage you had. There was quite a thick fog, wasn’t there?”

“Yes. It delayed us a lot. Purcell would steer right out to sea for fear of going ashore. Then the breeze failed for a time and then it veered round easterly and headed us, and, as a wind-up to the chapter of accidents, the jib-halyard carried away and we had to reeve a new one. Nice, crazy gear you keep on your craft, Rodney.”

“I suspected that rope,” said Rodney; “in fact I had meant to fit a new halyard before I went up to town. But I should have liked to see Purcell shinning up aloft.”

“So should I—from the shore,” said Varney. “He’d have carried away the mast, or capsized the yacht. No, my friend, I left him below as a counterpoise and went aloft myself.”

“Did Dan go straight off to the station?” Margaret asked.

“I should say not,” replied Varney. “He was in a mighty hurry to be off; said he had some things to see to—I fancy one of them was a grilled steak and a bottle of Bass. We were both pretty ravenous.”

“But why didn’t you go with him, if you were ravenous, too?”

“I had to snug up the yacht and he wouldn’t wait. He was up the ladder like a lamplighter almost before we had made fast. I can see him now, with that great suit-case in his hand, going up as light as a feather. He is wonderfully active for his size.”

“Isn’t he?” said Rodney. “But these big men often are. Look at the way those great lumping pilots will drop down into a boat; as light as cats.”

“He is a big fellow, too,” said Varney. “I was looking at him as he stopped at the top of the ladder to sing out, ‘So long.’ He looked quite gigantic in his oilskins.”

“He actually went up into the town in his oilskins, did he?” exclaimed Margaret. “He must have been impatient for his meal! Oh, how silly of me! I never sewed on that button that had come off the collar of his oilskin coat! I hope you didn’t have a wet passage.”

“You need not reproach yourself, Mrs. Purcell,” interposed Phillip Rodney. “Your neglect was made good by my providence. I sewed on that button when I borrowed the coat on Friday evening to go to my diggings in.”

“You told me you hadn’t a spare oilskin button,” said Margaret.

“I hadn’t, but I made one—out of a cork.”

“A cork!” Margaret exclaimed, with an incredulous laugh.

“Not a common cork, you know,” Phillip explained. “It was a flat, circular cork from one of...