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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
In 'On The Night Express,' Fred M. White crafts a riveting narrative that intertwines elements of mystery and adventure, set against the backdrop of an enigmatic train journey. The novella explores themes of suspense and fate, with its plot revolving around a diverse cast of characters, each with their own secrets and motivations. Written in a compelling prose style typical of early 20th-century literature, White's work captures the reader's attention through intricate descriptions and a well-paced storyline, reflective of the Victorian fascination with technology and travel, while also hinting at deeper psychological undercurrents. Fred M. White was a prolific author whose extensive body of work included numerous novels and short stories, primarily in the detective fiction genre. His background in journalism and his experiences in Victorian England notably influenced his storytelling techniques and thematic choices. 'On The Night Express' can be seen as a culmination of White'Äôs literary ambitions, showcasing his ability to blend captivating plots with engaging character studies, enriched by his keen observations of society and human nature. I highly recommend 'On The Night Express' to both enthusiasts of classic mystery as well as casual readers seeking an engaging, quick read that provides a window into the intricacies of human behavior and the tensions of early 20th-century life. White's adept storytelling and richly drawn characters make this novella a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of the mystery genre.
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On The Night Express
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
Constance Wakefield flashed a challenging glance across the library table at the big man with the hard mouth and the menacing eyes, at the same time wondering subconsciously why she both feared and mistrusted Rupert Bascoe in spite of the decided fact that she owed the very bread she ate to him.
To begin with, she was to all practical purposes, the mistress of that fine establishment known as Uppertons, which was a very haven of rest after the stormy years that followed after the cataclysm of 1914 and a Europe on the verge of collapse with ruin and starvation, especially in Eastern Europe where Connie had passed her early childhood with the now dead Countess Inez Matua, her second mother, for she had no recollection of her real one and, strange to say, no knowledge of her father at all. But then little girls in their early teens—as Connie was when the tempest burst and Serbia was swept by the flood—do not trouble much about such things so long as they are happy, as Connie was in the Countess's castle with the love of in the gracious lady to protect her.
Then out of the blue the flood of invasion. Death and peril on every hand and the flight into the unseen. The bursting of shells round the old castle and the awful death of the only friend Connie knew to the world and after that, misery unspeakable for the affrighted Serbians and Connie—then in her 14th year—picked up by the grace of God and attached to the Red Cross in the role of a bewildered but willing worker.
And so on to the end by which time she had become a competent nurse and, for her own protection, an accomplished revolver shot. She still was an expert by the way, and kept it up, even though in her present peaceful and refined surroundings, it was no more than a pastime. About the only one she had in that quiet house. So that she generally carried that silver mounted weapon in her pocket much as most people carry a watch. She had it with her now, for she intended to go out into the grounds of Uppertons presently and indulge in an hour's practice.
Meanwhile she was looking into the menacing eyes of her guardian, Rupert Bascoe and striving out of loyalty for past favours to shake off that mistrust of the man which had possessed her ever since the day when he had sought her out in a London hospital and told her that he was a distant relative of her mother's and that he had something more than an ordinary name to offer her. And Connie, with no friends and poor prospects, had gladly accepted on the understanding that she was to ask no questions.
"Better not," Bascoe had suggested at the time. "The story is a sad one and none too creditable to your father, so it is just as well to let sleeping dogs lie. Uppertons, my property in Kent, is a fine one and there is a fine income behind it. You can be practically mistress of it, and when I die it will be yours. There is only one condition and when you hear what I have to say you will see the necessity of complying with it."
We shall see all in good time what that condition implied and the dramatic consequences that it entailed.
Meanwhile Connie stood there in the library that perfect morning with Bascoe on the other side of the big table, pointing down at some documents which he has curtly ordered Connie to sign. And that without a single word of explanation. And, once more, that wave of mistrust and dislike and fear swept over the girl as she flushed before the almost brutal demand. She knew already that Bascoe could be sinister and cruel when crossed—a year or two under the same roof had taught her that.
"I am not quite a child," she said coldly. "Why should I sign those papers without knowing their contents? I hate these mysteries. There have been too many of them since I came here. At any rate I demand the right to read them first."
Bascoe's thin lips hardened under his short, black beard. There was a cruel gleam in his eyes that set Connie's heart beating faster. She was glad that the little revolver lay in the pocket of her sports coat. The man meant mischief.
"Sign," he said hoarsely, "sign and be damned to you."
"Not till I have read them," Connie challenged.
A second later and her wrist was in Bascoe's grip. Connie's right hand slipped down to her coat pocket. Then the door of the library was flung open without ceremony and a young man came into the room bringing an air of mirth and cheerfulness with him.
"Hullo, hullo," he cried. "Why this assumption of the tragic muse? Let dogs delight to bark and bite, what? Come, Bascoe, old chap, you really can't spiflicate Desdemona on a lovely morning like this. It isn't done."
"You'd joke at your mother's funeral, Marrable," Bascoe said with a growl. "What the devil do you want?"
The young man called Marrable laughed. He belonged to the enviable class that always finds life a comedy. An artist by instinct and inclination, Jimmy Marrable, without a penny in the world, was content to take life as he found it without a murmur until fate chose to smile on him. Meanwhile he obtained a living of sorts by acting as comedian to any travelling concert party in need of his services. And it was during a disastrous tour of one of these that Bascoe had found him stranded in a Northern watering place trying in vain to raise the price of his lodgings by selling some of his sketches. And Bascoe, whose one weakness was to pose as a painter, could see the outstanding merit of these drawings in water colour and had promptly invited the volatile Jimmy down to Uppertons.
Jimmy knew exactly what the invitation meant after Bascoe had shown part of his hand. He was to make a long stay at Uppertons and paint pictures which Bascoe could pass off as his own. Or, at best, touch up Bascoe's work until it might pass as something brilliant and original. And Jimmy agreed, despite the fact that he was an old public school boy with good connexions. Anyway, he was on the rocks for the moment and his humorous philosophy saw nothing wrong in the innocent imposture.
"Oh, very well," he said. "If I am de trop I will remove my hated presence. But if you want that new sketch completed—"
Bascoe hastened to interrupt. That weak vanity of his must not be exposed to anyone, least of all Connie.
"Very well," he said. "I'll come along to the studio now. I think I told you last night—"
The sentence trailed off outside the library door and Connie was left alone. In a haste that she failed to understand, Bascoe had forgotten those papers lying on the table—the papers he had been trying to force the girl to sign.
Connie wondered why. The sudden change from Bascoe's almost Berserk manner to that of a schoolboy detected in some act of meanness puzzled, and at the same time alarmed her. It was all in keeping with that air of mystery that had come to Uppertons in the last few months. And then another thought struck Connie, and she moved across to the table where Bascoe had placed the papers and bent over them eagerly. If there was any sort of a secret here she was going to find it, but beyond a name or two, which was utterly unfamiliar, she could see nothing until there came the words 'Le Forest,' that seemed to strike a cord of memory somewhere.
For a moment or two Connie pondered over this until recollection came like a flood. The old, bad days were back again—the days of deadly peril and the crashing of shells on the old castle in Serbia, and the memory of the last few words she had heard from the woman who had acted as a second mother to her. It all came back now.
The box, the little box that the Countess had placed into her hands, and which she had never lost during all that dreadful time when she had drifted backwards with the Serbian army. The tiny gold box she carried on a thin chain round her neck, until she reached England, and which was now somewhere upstairs amongst her other treasures.
Strange that she had forgotten it so entirely all this long time. And now she remembered that the box contained no more than an address of some bank in Paris, and a tiny steel key with a gold stem, and, on it, in blue enamel, the words 'Le Forest.' And the Countess had told her she was never to part with it.
All this was a matter of a few seconds, and then Bascoe was back again with a threatening cloud on his brow. He pointed to the papers, on the table and took up a pen.
"Now, then," he said roughly. "Your signature."
"Never," Connie said. "Never, until you explain to me what those papers mean and what the allusion to Le Forest stands for. Oh, yes, I have glanced at those papers in your absence. There is something underhanded here that I don't understand."
"Don't you?" Bascoe sneered. "Do you forget I could turn you out of this house at a moment's notice? Do you forget that a certain action of mine made it possible for you to pass as an English subject and saved you from being deported as an alien? Now, then, are you going to sign?"
Connie shook her head resolutely. With his teeth set and violence in his eyes, Bascoe dashed round the table, only to find himself facing Connie's little revolver.
"Go back!" she said. "If you touch me I shall shoot. I swear I will. Go back, you coward!"
Just for a moment, Bascoe hesitated, then with a contemptuous laugh, flung himself down into a chair.
CHAPTER II
With her head high in the air, Connie walked out of the library into the hall, where she came almost in contact with a tall and graceful girl, who looked at her with a question in her rather magnetic eyes.
"Well, my dear," the parlourmaid asked, with what might have been termed flippant familiarity. "Oh, I couldn't help hearing. So you have found him out at last, have you? Actually threatened you, didn't he?"
Connie laid her finger to her lip and beckoned the pretty parlourmaid to follow her into the morning room. As a matter of fact, Nita Keene was not precisely a maid-servant in the ordinary sense of the word. She was a lady by birth and education who, in her fierce independence, preferred to get her own living to marrying the man whom her father had endeavored to foist upon her. She had been at Uppertons for some considerable time, and had confided her story to Connie, feeling sure that the latter would understand and sympathise. And so the two had become something more than mistress and servant, though Bascoe had not the slightest idea of this.
"Now, tell me all about it," Nita said, as she closed the door of the morning room behind her. "I always told you that Rupert Bascoe was a real bad lot. Ah, my dear, I have seen more of the world than you have, though perhaps from a different angle. Oh, I know men—I ought to, after my experiences when my mother died. And that is why I spotted Bascoe for what he is directly I came here. And I remained because I took a fancy to you, feeling that sooner or later you would want a friend. Now, tell me what it was that the quarrel was all about."
Connie told her story, to which Nita listened with almost flattering attention.
"Ah," the latter said presently. "I thought it was something of the sort. There was a time when you regarded Rupert Bascoe as the best friend you had in the world. It seemed to you really splendid that he should seek you out in the hospital where you were working and bring down here as mistress of this grand establishment with a prospect of it all belonging to you some day, together with a large fortune. And all that because Bascoe claimed to be a distant relative of your mother's. Lies, my dear, all lies. That was not the reason at all. He brought you under his roof because there is a secret behind your identity from which he hopes to profit, and that is why he asked you to sign those papers this morning. I feel it in my bones that he wants you to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage."
"Yes," Connie said thoughtfully. "I am afraid there is something in what you suggest. Mr. Bascoe has been so different lately. Somehow, I have always been a bit afraid of him, but I laughed at my fears, until the last month or two. You needn't be afraid, Nita, I am not going to sign anything. I am going to try and find out where the allusion to somebody called Le Forest comes in. I am going to do my best to get in touch with a man friend, if I can find one, who will look at that address in the gold box I have just told you about and help me to solve the mystery. Unless you can suggest some other way."
"I am afraid I can't," Nita said, after a long pause. "There is only one man close at hand, and that is Jimmy Marrable. He is a dear boy, is Jimmy, and I am very fond of him."
"So I noticed." Connie said with a little smile. "But then Jimmy is so dreadfully inconsequent and featherheaded. I don't think that a lighthearted artist like Jimmy could be at all the sort of man to handle a situation like mine."
"Oh, I don't know," Nita said thoughtfully. "There are hidden depths in Jimmy. I know, because we were brought up together, and he was my little hero in the days when I wore socks and he ran about in grey flannel shorts. Rather a strange coincidence that we should come together again down here. However, that is nothing to do with it. You must have a friend you can rely upon and I will do my best to find you one. Perhaps Jimmy can put us on to somebody. Oh, I know poor Jimmy hasn't any influence or money, though before the war his people had more than enough. But Jimmy was always popular at Eton and he knows heaps of the right sort of men. Besides, I thought it was extremely plucky of him to join a concert party as comedian to get his living in that way whilst he was waiting for his chance as an artist. And Jimmy is a great artist as the world will know one of these days. I dare say you regard him as an easy going individual, quite content to remain here as Bascoe's guest and helping the latter to paint his pictures, but there are ambitions in Jimmy, as I have reason to know. It I were you, I should not say anything about the contents of the gold box. In fact, I shouldn't say anything at all. I think you had better leave it to me. Let me tell him that Bascoe is trying to force you to take a line you decline to adopt and that he is acting like a thorough blackguard. I am perfectly sure if you will allow me to do this, Jimmy will be able to find somebody who can advise you as to the right course to adopt. Now let me tell you something you don't know. You would hardly believe it, but during the war Jimmy was a trusted servant of our Secret Service. You see, he speaks two or three languages, and as he had been all over Europe with a travelling company, he had picked up a lot of information which was most useful. Mind you, he used to do that sort of thing just for his own amusement long before he ever expected to have to get his living thereby. But he has known what it is to go in peril of his life in an enemy country with nothing but that cheerful laugh and vacuous comedian expression of his to save him from any peril. Mind you, this is absolutely between ourselves. I have only told you to show that Jimmy is a man to be trusted implicitly to control his tongue and hide his feelings when a crisis arises. Now, if you will let me explain the situation to him, I am quite sure that he will be able to help you in what I feel is a moment of dire peril."
A minute or two later, Connie strolled out into the grounds. She was still astonished and bewildered at the change in the attitude of her benefactor, though for some time past she had noticed that things were drifting towards what might be at any time a crisis. There was a sinister atmosphere about Uppertons of late—so sinister that more than once she had half decided to throw her present position up and return to hospital work.
But there was a reason against this—a reason that Connie had not discussed with anyone nor dared she do so, because if that secret became public property then she might have to leave the country for good. She was English to her finger tips; every instinct she had told her that she came from British stock. And yet she knew nothing of her parentage, not even how she came to find herself, as a child, under the guardian ship of Countess Inez Matua in that old grim castle in Serbia.
And the trouble was this—it only needed some busybody or some enemy to ask a question or two, and Connie might be faced with an accusation of being an alien actually residing in England without a passport or a permit. Because D.O.R.A. was not yet dead, and Connie had read of more than one Englishwoman married to a German who had been forced to quit her native soil simply because she was held to have forfeited her nationality. True, Bascoe had taken steps to obviate such a catastrophe, but, at the same time, it gave him a power over the girl that made her tremble to think of it. And she trembled all the more now in the face of that scene in the library only a few minutes ago. Never was a girl more awkwardly placed, and never was one in greater need of a true friend than Connie just now.
She wandered on through the grounds into the woods beyond turning her troubles over in her mind. Gradually, as the beauty of the morning began to impress itself upon her, she grew more calm and tranquil and more disposed to shake off the fears that oppressed her so strangely. Then she looked up and saw that a man was coming down the narrow path between the avenue of high beech, and her heart began to flutter at the sight of him.
"Strange!" she thought. How like Hugh Gaskell was the figure who came leisurely swinging along in her direction. The man she had not seen since that stirring day in 1917 when the Serbians fell back for a final effort and—
The stranger looked up. A light flashed into his eyes, and he came forward eagerly with hands outstretched. "Connie!" he cried. "Dear little Connie! Don't you know me, darling? I have been searching the wide world for you for the last seven years. What became of you? You must have known that I should want to see you again."
"Hugh!" Connie gasped. "Hugh! What—where did you come from? Just at the very moment when—oh, Hugh, it wasn't my fault. You remember how we were pushed back and all the dreadful things that happened afterwards. I saw you in the thick of it, and I thought you were killed. Ah, if you only knew."
She looked at him with her heart in her eyes, and, almost before she realised it, the man's arms were about her, and his lips were warm and loving on her. Just for a moment she lay there, then broke away like a frightened animal.
"Ah, no, I mustn't!" she cried. "I dare not. For the moment I had forgotten. Oh, Hugh, this is dreadful!—dreadful! You must let me go and never try to see me again!"
She broke away from him and literally fled down the path, leaving the man she called Hugh Gaskell staring after her with perplexity and amazement written on his face.
CHAPTER III
It was not Connie Wakefield and a confident Nita Keene who alone sensed the sinister atmosphere that hung like a cloud over Uppertons. Jimmy Marrable had seen and heard enough to convince him that there was something utterly wrong about the man in whose house he was at present living.
He had never been quite comfortable there, and by the use of an ingenious excuse, had managed to get away from Uppertons and establish himself in a small old-fashioned house at the far end of the village. This he had done a day or two after the scene in the library, though he had no intention of severing his artistic connexion with Bascoe, who was more or less essential to him at the moment for more reasons than one.
"But why the change, Jimmy?" Nita asked him at the first possible opportunity. "Why didn't you stay in the house?"
"Oh, well, my dear," Jimmy said in his most casual way. "You see, always like to be as independent as I can. I prefer not to eat the bread of a man I mistrust. It is all very well to work for a chap like Bascoe, but when you don't like him there is no necessity to partake of his salt at the same time."
"Then you don't trust him?" Nita asked.
"Well, between ourselves, my dear, I don't. I believe he is a thoroughly bad lot. You told me what happened in the library the other morning, and, indeed, I did not fail to see signs of trouble myself. Of course, this is entirely between you and me, and not likely to go any further. I suppose that poor child was not bullied into signing those papers?"
