The Man in the Brown Suit

‘Doubtless, now that he has—retired, he will marry. Some young society beauty, who will disperse his millions faster than he acquired them.’

Nadina shook her head.

‘No, no, that is not the way of it. Listen, my friend, tomorrow I go to London.’

‘But your contract here?’

‘I shall be away only one night. And I go incognito, like Royalty. No one will ever know that I have left France. And why do you think that I go?’

‘Hardly for pleasure at this time of the year. January, a detestable foggy month! It must be for profit, eh?’

‘Exactly.’ She rose and stood in front of him, every graceful line of her arrogant with pride. ‘You said just now that none of us had anything on the chief. You were wrong. I have. I, a woman, have had the wit and, yes, the courage—for it needs courage—to double-cross him. You remember the De Beer diamonds?’

‘Yes, I remember. At Kimberley, just before the war broke out? I had nothing to do with it, and I never heard the details, the case was hushed up for some reason, was it not? A fine haul too.’

‘A hundred thousand pounds’ worth of stones. Two of us worked it—under the “Colonel’s” orders, of course. And it was then that I saw my chance. You see, the plan was to substitute some of the De Beer diamonds for some sample diamonds brought from South America by two young prospectors who happened to be in Kimberley at the time. Suspicion was then bound to fall on them.’

‘Very clever,’ interpolated the Count approvingly.

‘The “Colonel” is always clever. Well, I did my part—but I also did one thing which the “Colonel” had not foreseen. I kept back some of the South American stones—one or two are unique and could easily be proved never to have passed through De Beers’ hands. With these diamonds in my possession, I have the whip-hand of my esteemed chief. Once the two young men are cleared, his part in the matter is bound to be suspected. I have said nothing all these years, I have been content to know that I had this weapon in reverse, but now matters are different. I want my price—and it will be a big, I might almost say a staggering price.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said the Count. ‘And doubtless you carry these diamonds about with you everywhere?’

His eyes roamed gently around the disordered room.

Nadina laughed softly.

‘You need suppose nothing of the sort. I am not a fool. The diamonds are in a safe place where no one will dream of looking for them.’

‘I never thought you a fool, my dear lady, but may I venture to suggest that you are somewhat foolhardy? The “Colonel” is not the type of man to take kindly to being blackmailed, you know.’

‘I am not afraid of him,’ she laughed. ‘There is only one man I have ever feared—and he is dead.’

The man looked at her curiously.

‘Let us hope that he will not come to life again, then,’ he remarked lightly.

‘What do you mean?’ cried the dancer sharply.

The Count looked slightly surprised.

‘I only meant that resurrection would be awkward for you,’ he explained. ‘A foolish joke.’

She gave a sigh of relief.

‘Oh, no, he is dead all right. Killed in the war. He was a man who once—loved me.’

‘In South Africa?’ asked the Count negligently.

‘Yes, since you ask it, in South Africa.’

‘That is your native country, is it not?’

She nodded. Her visitor rose and reached for his hat.

‘Well,’ he remarked, ‘you know your own business best, but, if I were you, I should fear the “Colonel” far more than any disillusioned lover. He is a man whom it is particularly easy to—underestimate.’

She laughed scornfully.

‘As if I did not know him after all these years!’

‘I wonder if you do?’ he said softly. ‘I very much wonder if you do.’

‘Oh, I am not a fool! And I am not alone in this. The South African mail-boat docks at Southampton tomorrow, and on board her is a man who has come specially from Africa at my request and who has carried out certain orders of mine. The “Colonel” will have not one of us to deal with, but two.’

‘Is that wise?’

‘It is necessary.’

‘You are sure of this man?’

A rather peculiar smile played over the dancer’s face.

‘I am quite sure of him. He is inefficient, but perfectly trustworthy.’ She paused, and then added in an indifferent tone of voice: ‘As a matter of fact, he happens to be my husband.’

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_76e9d30a-3a4e-5ca5-aa3b-e810e30c1057)

Everybody has been at me, right and left, to write this story, from the great (represented by Lord Nasby) to the small (represented by our late maid-of-all-work, Emily, whom I saw when I was last in England. ‘Lor, miss, what a beyewtiful book you might make out of it all—just like the pictures!’)

I’ll admit that I’ve certain qualifications for the task. I was mixed up in the affair from the very beginning, I was in the thick of it all through, and I was triumphantly ‘in at the death’. Very fortunately, too, the gaps that I cannot supply from my own knowledge are amply covered by Sir Eustace Pedler’s diary, of which he has kindly begged me to make use.

So here goes. Anne Beddingfeld starts to narrate her adventures.

I’d always longed for adventures. You see, my life had such a dreadful sameness. My father, Professor Beddingfeld, was one of England’s greatest living authorities on Primitive Man. He really was a genius—everyone admits that. His mind dwelt in Palaeolithic times, and the inconvenience of life for him was that his body inhabited the modern world. Papa did not care for modern man—even Neolithic Man he despised as a mere herder of cattle, and he did not rise to enthusiasm until he reached the Mousterian period.

Unfortunately one cannot entirely dispense with modern men. One is forced to have some kind of truck with butchers and bakers and milkmen and greengrocers. Therefore, Papa being immersed in the past, Mamma having died when I was a baby, it fell to me to undertake the practical side of living. Frankly, I hate Palaeolithic Man, be he Aurignacian, Mousterian, Chellian, or anything else, and though I typed and revised most of Papa’s Neanderthal Man and his Ancestors, Neanderthal men themselves fill me with loathing, and I always reflect what a fortunate circumstance it was that they became extinct in remote ages.

I do not know whether Papa guessed my feelings on the subject, probably not, and in any case he would not have been interested. The opinion of other people never interested him in the slightest degree. I think it was really a sign of his greatness. In the same way, he lived quite detached from the necessities of daily life. He ate what was put before him in an exemplary fashion, but seemed mildly pained when the question of paying for it arose. We never seemed to have any money. His celebrity was not of the kind that brought in a cash return. Although he was a fellow of almost every important society and had rows of letters after his name, the general public scarcely knew of his existence, and his long learned books, though adding signally to the sum-total of human knowledge, had no attraction for the masses. Only on one occasion did he leap into the public gaze. He had read a paper before some society on the subject of the young of the chimpanzee. The young of the human race show some anthropoid features, whereas the young of the chimpanzee approach more nearly to the human than the adult chimpanzee does. That seems to show that whereas our ancestors were more Simian than we are, the chimpanzee’s were of a higher type than the present species—in other words, the chimpanzee is a degenerate. That enterprising newspaper, the Daily Budget, being hard up for something spicy, immediately brought itself out with large headlines. ‘We are not descended from monkeys, but are monkeys descended from us? Eminent Professor says chimpanzees are decadent humans.’ Shortly afterwards, a reporter called to see Papa, and endeavoured to induce him to write a series of popular articles on the theory. I have seldom seen Papa so angry. He turned the reporter out of the house with scant ceremony, much to my secret sorrow, as we were particularly short of money at the moment. In fact, for a moment I meditated running after the young man and informing him that my father had changed his mind and would send the articles in question. I could easily have written them myself, and the probabilities were that Papa would never have learnt of the transaction, not being a reader of the Daily Budget. However, I rejected this course as being too risky, so I merely put on my best hat and went sadly down the village to interview our justly irate grocer.

The reporter from the Daily Budget was the only young man who ever came to our house. There were times when I envied Emily, our little servant, who ‘walked out’ whenever occasion offered with a large sailor to whom she was affianced. In between times, to ‘keep her hand in’, as she expressed it, she walked out with the greengrocer’s young man, and the chemist’s assistant. I reflected sadly that I had no one to ‘keep my hand in’ with. All Papa’s friends were aged Professors—usually with long beards. It is true that Professor Peterson once clasped me affectionately and said I had a ‘neat little waist’ and then tried to kiss me. The phrase alone dated him hopelessly. No self-respecting female has had a ‘neat little waist’ since I was in my cradle.

I yearned for adventure, for love, for romance, and I seemed condemned to an existence of drab utility. The village possessed a lending library, full of tattered works of fiction, and I enjoyed perils and love-making at second hand, and went to sleep dreaming of stern silent Rhodesians, and of strong men who always ‘felled their opponent with a single blow’. There was no one in the village who even looked as though they could ‘fell’ an opponent, with a single blow or several.

There was the cinema too, with a weekly episode of ‘The Perils of Pamela’. Pamela was a magnificent young woman. Nothing daunted her. She fell out of aeroplanes, adventured in submarines, climbed skyscrapers and crept about in the Underworld without turning a hair. She was not really clever, the Master Criminal of the Underworld caught her each time, but as he seemed loath to knock her on the head in a simple way, and always doomed her to death in a sewer-gas chamber or by some new and marvellous means, the hero was always able to rescue her at the beginning of the following week’s episode. I used to come out with my head in a delirious whirl—and then I would get home and find a notice from the Gas Company threatening to cut us off if the outstanding account was not paid!

And yet, though I did not suspect it, every moment was bringing adventure nearer to me.

It is possible that there are many people in the world who have never heard of the finding of an antique skull at the Broken Hill Mine in Northern Rhodesia. I came down one morning to find Papa excited to the point of apoplexy. He poured out the whole story to me.