The Polo Ground Mystery Read Online Free PDF

to tell me anything in confidence would be as foolish as putting a burglar in command of the Bank Guard. You see it concerns Edmée, and I’m very fond of her.”
    â€œI thought Laura Hardinge was in the ascendant at the moment.”
    â€œI know, I know, but Edmée’s not an ordinary woman, Algernon; she’s a relapsing fever. She gets into your blood. You take an injection of common sense and you think you’re cured. You even begin to look happy, and then without the slightest warning you’re as bad as ever again. I may have a relapse at any moment.”
    â€œAnd Laura’s an alternating fever, I suppose.”
    â€œNo, no, she’s too sweet for that. She’s almost a convalescence.”
    â€œWell, never mind. I’m discretion itself, Ricky. You can trust me with the details; they’ll go no further.”
    â€œThen let’s begin at the beginning. It’s just a little over two years ago since Sutton Armadale married Angela Daunay. She had been the loveliest debutante of her year, so every one said. It’s a relative kind of compliment as a rule; the standard’s so low. Still, every one would call Angela beautiful, I think, beautiful with a noli-me-tangere face. Flaxen hair, blue eyes, complexion of milk and roses. Not my colouring; I’ve always disliked Dresden Shepherdesses since I broke one of my mother’s treasures as a small boy. There’s one thing, however; Angela’s a thoroughbred. ‘Fruity’ Fanshaugh says she has the most perfect pasterns he has ever seen. Everything about Angela is fine; it’s an overpowering quality in some women. I’m rather afraid of her, to tell the truth. One glance from her turns me from a baboon into a courtier. About his first wife I don’t know very much. A very estimable person, I believe, but not quite out of the top drawer. She was fourteen stone and always dressed as if she weighed seven. Had a bourgeois taste in jewellery and wore it like a publican’s wife. I’ve seen her enter a room caparisoned like a durbar elephant. But she was an amiable, kind-hearted soul with a Family Herald streak in her mental make-up. I think her favourite author was Berta Ruck. Anyway, Sutton was very happy with her and was very cut up when she died. He knew her and understood her; he’d got the feel of her as one does of a favourite stick. Now, like many successful business men, Sutton had no insight where women were concerned. He met Angela Daunay, liked her streamline, knew she was a top-notcher as far as birth was concerned, and thought she’d put the right cachet on his wealth. Nobody thought Angela would look twice at him. But there’s something about these financiers that’s inexplicably, almost spookishly magnetic. I’ve a theory that it’s the secret of their success. Angela, to everybody’s surprise, accepted him. I was going to say jumped at him, but it would be wrong. She accepted him with about the same enthusiasm as royalty accepts a large donation to a charity. She was glad but impersonally glad. She had accepted him as if he were going to be a pleasant adjunct to her dignity and comfort—more of a rich fur coat than a husband. Sutton’s second excursion, if rumour speaks the truth, was unfortunate. In less than six months they were cold soup to one another. Edmée says they ought to have taken a warning during their engagement when they found they couldn’t dance well together. ‘Their vital rhythms varied,’ were her words, and I dare say lasting love’s only a matter of good timing. In any case, there was a big disparity in their ages. Sutton was forty-eight and Angela twenty years younger.”
    â€œThere’s not much in that, Ricky; the woman usually makes up for it in intelligence. Intelligence is to experience what art is to craftsmanship.”
    â€œBut Angela, like many aristocrats, isn’t intelligent. With