Bodkin The Capture of Paul Beck

1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-3-96537-292-4
Verlag: OTB eBook publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 180 Seiten

Synopsis: Lady detective Dora Myrl and Paul Beck join forces in this brisk mystery. Each are acting for a different client on a fraud case. (Goodreads)

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bodkin, Matthias McDonnell

Leseproben

Chapter I
A Proposal
“Don’t say ‘No’ right away, that’s all I ask. I’m sorry I spoke. It was just like my infernal cheek— I beg your pardon—I mean it was sheer presumption. I know well I’m not fit to tie your shoe-string. But have a little pity on a chap. I couldn’t hold in; upon my soul I couldn’t. Don’t refuse me straight away; give me a little hope. I don’t want you to say ‘Yes.’” “You don’t want me to say ‘Yes’?” The words came out softly one by one in a little ripple of mocking laughter. The wretched young man, who had plunged headlong into an unpremeditated proposal and was floundering beyond his depth, raised his eyes for the first time from the carpet to the face of the girl. It was a face to justify his fervour. The cheeks were flushed rosy red before his ardent gaze; the sweet, sensitive lips quivered a little, but two merry imps of laughter danced in the depths of the clear brown eyes. A wild hope sprung to life in his heart. “Oh, Norma, is it possible? Can you? Will you?” “But you don’t want me to say ‘Yes,’” more softly than before. Then he knew, and took his answer from those sweet lips without resistance. A delicious glow of love and triumph warmed his whole being. The ordeal was over. He had won. The love his soul longed for was his for ever. Nothing else in the whole world mattered now. At that instant those two tasted the supreme bliss that makes human life worth living, even if there were nothing before or after—the entrancing ecstasy of first love which God has given as his best gift to man. “Oh! you foolish boy,” she said, as she touched the hair from his forehead timidly, yet with a familiarity that made him tingle with delight, “you might have known I loved you better than ever you’ll love me. I was only waiting for you to speak to tell you so.” For a little while he was dizzy with his delight. “She loves you, she loves you,” a voice seemed to cry with the quick beating of his heart. He held her to him close and kissed her unresisting lips till the full assurance of her love came to him with a flood of rapturous delight. They were alone in the world in their sublime, delicious selfishness, with no thought outside themselves—unborn tomorrow and dead yesterday were both forgotten. They lived their whole, full life in the swiftly-passing moments. The dimly-lit drawing-room with its subdued glow of rich colours was as the temple of their love. The man woke first from this ecstatic trance, impatient for still greater bliss. For the woman, the present was all-sufficient. “Norma,” he whispered in the small pink ear, “when will we be married?” “Never! never! if you hold me like that. I’m afraid of you. Why, we are not even regularly engaged yet, and you talk of marriage. We may never marry.” “What!” he cried, with a twinge of his old nervousness. “You’re jesting. Of course we are engaged. I’ll prove it to you. Now, are we? Now?” “I cannot help myself, you are stronger than I am. But I don’t consider myself really engaged till father knows. I have no mother to tell,” she added a little wistfully. “I never missed my mother more than now.” “You need miss no one when you are mine, darling. I will settle the engagement right away. Your father is in his study, I suppose. Will you wait here till I come back?” “Yes, I’ll wait. I’ve said that I’m not at home to anyone. But mind this, Mr. Armitage—well, Phil then—if dad won’t have you, I won’t; so you must be awfully nice to him for my sake.” “Oh, that will be all right,” he answered with ready confidence from the door. “He and I are good friends.” As it closed behind him she switched on the electric light and made for the big Chippendale mirror that filled one panel of the room. Vanity? Not a bit of it. She wanted to see the girl he loved. In that broad mirror she saw a girl worthy of any man’s love. She hardly knew herself at first. She had never seen that face before; that strange sweet face, rosy with love’s kisses; and brown eyes, warm with the dawn of love. After a moment the light in her own eyes frightened her and kindled her cheek to a rosier red. Instinctively she switched off the light, dropped languidly on the soft couch, trembling with vague, delicious hopes and fears, and hugging the mysterious little god close to her virginal bosom. “Come in,” cried the sharp voice of Mr. Theophilus Lee, and Phil Armitage walked confidently into the spacious, well-appointed study. From his big roll-top desk Mr. Lee rose, tall and thin and straight, to greet him, but there was no cordiality in his greeting. The hand he offered was nerveless and chill. The cold grey eyes questioned the intruder courteously but coldly. Mr. Lee wore his gold spectacles low down near the bridge of his long, sharp nose, and had a disconcerting trick of looking over them unexpectedly, straight into a visitor’s eyes. Poor Phil Armitage’s confidence began to evaporate. He had never been treated in this fashion before by Mr. Lee, who, standing himself, let his visitor stand, and whose cold, questioning attitude said plainer than words, “What is your business, sir? Tell it and go.” “It is about your daughter, Mr. Lee,” stammered out poor Phil. “My daughter! ah, indeed! And what about my daughter, Mr. Armitage?” There was no hint in his voice that he divined his errand; nothing but polite surprise that the young man should have anything to say or ask about his daughter. His tone stung the suitor to courage. “I came, Mr. Lee,” he said very quietly—no stammer now, no nervousness—“to ask your permission to marry your daughter.” Mr. Lee’s long face remained for a moment quite expressionless, and he drew his thin hand softly over his pointed beard as though he were stroking a pet dog. Phil felt himself wondering vaguely how this could be his Norma’s father. Then the cold grey eyes met his over the gold-rimmed glasses with stealthy suddenness. “You have already spoken to my daughter of this?” he asked sharply. “Only a moment ago.” “You consider that honourable, of course?” “I don’t understand you.” “Oh! I suppose not. You know my daughter is an only child and an heiress?” “I never gave the matter a thought.” “Of course, of course, but you knew the fact when you came here to make love to her. Having inveigled her into a promise you come here to ask me for her hand and fortune.” “I didn’t; I don’t. I tell you now I don’t want a farthing of her fortune.” “There is no use whatever in indulging in mock heroics, Mr. Armitage, they don’t affect me in the least. You know as well as I do that my fortune goes with my girl.” His voice warmed a little at the word. “The world, I know, calls me a hard man, because I have worked hard and made a big pile honestly and because I wasted none of it. But no one has ever called me a hard father. Young man, you say you love my daughter. You don’t love her a hundredth part as well as her father does. All I am or have is hers. If Norma were to marry a beggar or a blackguard it would be hers just the same; but she shan’t marry a beggar or a blackguard if I can help it.” It was a curious sight if there was anyone to see it. The feeble, cadaverous old man quietly heaping insult after insult on the young athlete who could have crushed him with a grip, could have killed him with a blow. The young fellow bit his lip hard and clenched his hands tight, as though by strong physical effort, to keep down the hot, strong passion that pressed for an outlet. “He is an old man; he is her father,” he kept repeating to himself. For a moment or two he could not find his voice. “I trust, Mr. Lee,” he said at last, with a calmness and a coolness that surprised himself, “that I am neither a blackguard nor a beggar. In a year or so I will have got my profession of electrical engineer, and I am promised a good appointment. Meanwhile, I have twenty thousand pounds of my own to go on with.” “Twenty thousand,” sneered the old man. “You are willing to set that huge sum against the two hundred thousand that my girl will have the day she is married? How generous of you! A good commercial speculation! Love and prudence run together with you, Mr. Armitage. You don’t want money, of course; you don’t value it, of course. The disinterested young man never does when he wants to marry an heiress! Well, I do believe in money. People call me a miser. I suppose you have often called me a miser yourself. There, you needn’t answer. I don’t care two straws whether you did or not. If it be miserly to believe in money’s worth and money’s power I am a miser.” He sank back into a chair exhausted by his own vehemence. His face had suddenly grown grey. There was a bluish tint in his lips and a queer catch in his voice when he spoke again. “You may sit down,” he said, pointing to a chair. “I will finish this thing out while I’m at it and not let it keep on worrying me.” He leaned back in his chair and wiped his clammy face with his handkerchief. But he went on relentlessly : “I believe in money for myself and for my girl. I want her to have everything that money can buy, and that’s pretty nearly everything there is. Well, she can have it if she chooses. Abraham Lamman has asked her to be his wife, and I have given my consent if he can get hers.” Young Armitage was taken completely aback by this announcement. “Have you told Lamman,” he blurted out, “that I—” The father cut him short....