He Who Whispers Read Online Free PDF Page B

very strangely. He wore a raincoat and a tweed cap. Over his left arm was hung the crook of a cane, and in his right hand he carried an old black-leather brief-case. It seemed to me even then that his light-blue eyes looked strangely watery; nor had I ever noticed before, in a man so fit, that there was sagging flesh under his chin.
    â€˜ “My dear Brooke!” I said to him, and shook hands with him in spite of himself. His hand felt very limp. “My dear Brooke,” I said, “this is an unexpected pleasure! How is everyone at home? How is your good wife, and Harry, and Fay Seton?”
    â€˜ “Fay Seton?” he said to me. “Damn Fay Seton.”
    â€˜Ouf!
    â€˜He had spoken in English, but so loudly that one or two persons in the bank glanced round. He flushed with embarrassment, this good man, but he was so troubled that he did not really seem to care. He marched me to the front of the bank, beyond hearing of anyone else. Then he opened the brief-case, and showed me.
    â€˜Inside, in solitary state, were four slender packets of English banknotes. Each packet contained twenty-five twenty-pound notes: two thousand pounds.
    â€˜ “I had to send to Paris for these,” he told me, and his hands were trembling. “I thought, you know, that English notes would be more tempting. If Harry won’t give the woman up, I must simply buy her off. Now you must excuse me.”
    â€˜And he straightened his shoulders, shut up the brief-case, and walked out of the bank without another word.
    â€˜My friends, have you ever been hit very hard in the stomach? So that your eyesight swims, and your stomach rises up, and you feel suddenly like a rubber toy squeezed together? That was how I felt then. I forgot to write a cheque. I forgot everything. I walked back to my hotel, through a drizzling rain that was turning black and greasy the cobble-stones of the Place des Epars.
    â€˜But it was impossible to write, as I discovered. About half an hour later, at a quarter past three, the telephone rang. I think I guessed what it might be about, though I did not guess what it was. It was Mama Brooke, Mrs Georgina Brooke, and she said:
    â€˜ “ For God’s sake, Professor Rigaud, come out here immediately .”
    â€˜This time, my friends, I am more than disturbed.
    â€˜This time I am thoroughly well frightened, and I confess it!
    â€˜I got out my Ford; I drove out to their house as fast as I could, and with an even more execrable style of driving than usual. Still it would not rain properly, would not burst a hole in this hollow of thundery heat that enclosed us. When I reached Beauregard, it was like a deserted house. I called aloud in the downstairs hall, but nobody answered. Then I went into the drawing-room, where I found Mama Brooke sitting bolt upright on a sofa, making heroic efforts to keep her face from working, but with a damp handkerchief clutched in her hand.
    â€˜ “Madame,” I said to her, “what is happening? What is wrong between your good husband and Miss Seton?”
    â€˜And she cried out to me, having nobody else to whom she could appeal.
    â€˜ “I don’t know!” she said; it was plain she meant it. “Howard won’t tell me. Harry says it’s all nonsense, whatever it is, but he won’t tell me anything either. Nothing is real any longer. Only two days ago …”
    â€˜Only two days before, it appeared, there had been a shocking and unexplained incident.
    â€˜Near Beauregard, on the main road to Le Mans, lived a market-gardener named Jules Fresnac, who supplied them with eggs and fresh vegetables. Jules Fresnac had two children – a daughter of seventeen, a son of sixteen – to whom Fay Seton had been very kind, so that the whole Fresnac family was very fond of her. But two days ago Fay Seton had met Jules Fresnac driving his cart in the road, in the white road with the tall poplars and grain-fields on