Beyond The Blue Mountains - Plaidy Jean (бесплатные онлайн книги читаем полные .TXT) 📗

“Ah! You have taken it from his stock of valuables!”

“This afternoon, while he was out. I found he had left the key I of his precious storeroom behind. My dear, this gown called out for an ornament. The neck does not fit with that elegance with which it should. An ornament to hold it in position was a necessity; but it had to be the right ornament. So into the storeroom I went, and in a case there I found this brooch. Now, tell me, is it not the very thing?”

“Indeed it is! And how it sparkles! It is a sapphire … of so near it that it might be taken for one. Mamma, you will be a grand lady tonight! Listen! Is that the shop bell?”

“I do believe it is!” Kitty’s eyes were twinkling wickedly.

“Now, who in the world…”

They were silent, listening. Carolan went to the door and looked out onto the landing. She could hear a rumble of voices below.

“Your father is down there,” said Kitty, ‘so we need not worry ourselves. Come. Put on your cloak. Let me see how you look. My dear, how glad I am that you can wear that shade of green. So few can. but on you it is mightily becoming.”

Millie was coming up the stairs.

“Millie!” called Carolan.

“Millie… just a moment, Millie.”

Millie came in. Her lips sagged open at the sight of the grandeur of their costumes.

“Millie,” said Carolan, ‘who is down there?”

“It is Mt. Crew.”

Carolan looked at Kitty, and saw the demure expression, the downcast eyes.

“Oh, Mamma, did you tell him we were going to the play?”

Kitty went to her dressing-table and peeped slyly at her reflection in the mirror.

“I may have mentioned it.”

“A mention which was an invitation, I expect!”

Kitty said: “Listen! Is that the carriage? I declare, we are doing things in style tonight. Millie, you had better go and open the door.”

Without a word Millie went.

They heard a scream from below, Millie’s scream. Carolan went to the door and listened.

“I do hope the girl hasn’t fallen down and broken her leg,” said Kitty.

“It would be very inconvenient.”

Carolan started downstairs. There was the sound of raised voices now, a scuffling, the noise of heavy furniture being overturned.

She rushed into the shop parlour, from whence the noises came. Her father was lying on the floor and Jonathan Crew was kneeling on him with his hands about his throat.

“Father!” shrieked Carolan, and ran to him.

“Keep off!” shouted Jonathan Crew.

Carolan flew at him; it was like a crazy nightmare, for she knew suddenly that she hated Jonathan Crew and always had distrusted him without realizing it.

Her father’s eyes were on her; they looked too large and protruding, unlike his eyes. His lips said: “Carolan … Carolan.”

With a slight movement of his arm, Jonathan Crew threw Carolan off; she fell, striking her head against the table, and the blow had the effect of stunning her slightly so that the room whirled round and the sounds in it were confused.

Darrell was lying very still on the floor. Jonathan Crew got slowly to his feet. His eyes were now on Kitty, who was standing there, ashen-faced and trembling. There was a hammering on the shop door.

Jonathan Crew went to Kitty; he dragged her into the room.

Roughly he seized Carolan and in a second he had them handcuffed to each other.

“In the name of the law,” said Jonathan Crew, “I arrest you on a charge of receiving stolen goods.”

Kitty screamed: “Darrell… Darrell… my love! What has he done to you?”

Jonathan Crew had turned from them and seized the frightened Millie. He pushed her towards Carolan and Kitty. Then he touched Darrell with his foot.

“He is dead, I fear,” he said.

“Then you killed him!” cried Carolan passionately. And she knew that he had waited long for this moment, had planned it, had thought of nothing but it ever since he had first met her in the street.

“He tried to resist arrest,” said Jonathan Crew coldly.

Carolan stared down at her father’s misshapen hands, now still, lifeless. He would never look at them again; he would never reach that peaceful country home for which he had schemed and longed.

Kitty said in a surprisingly cool voice: “It was blood-money you were after then, you rogue! You pig!” And great hot tears rolled down her cheeks, tears of sorrow and humiliation.

“My love!” she moaned.

“What will become of us now?”

Carolan was not thinking of the future but of the past. Words rushed into her mind, words that evil man had spoken; she began to tremble, for now she was seeing dearly what had led to this. She had brought her parents into this. She was responsible for the death of her father, for the betrayal of Marcus for now she knew without a doubt what had happened to Marcus; and she wished, in that moment, that it was she who lay dead on the floor in place of her father.

Jonathan Crew opened the door and two men came in.

“Here are the prisoners,” he said, and they were taken out to the waiting van.

Oh, why had she not fought him as he bent over her father! Why had she not picked up a knife from the table and plunged it into his wicked heart!

He sat opposite her. his eyes alive, amused.

“Ah! How beautiful you played into my hands. Miss Carolan!” he seemed to say, and black misery was in Carolan’s heart as the jolting van carried them through the streets of London to Newgate Prison.

Dazed, bruised, with the taste of blood in her mouth, and the permeating, inescapable and foulest of all smells in her nostrils, Carolan lay on the hard platform which was her bed. Around her, women breathed noisily in sleep, snoring, sighing, groaning, muttering, cursing. Carolan lay still, saying over and over to herself: “This has not really happened to me; I shall awake in a minute, Please God, let me wake now!”

Kitty was beside her; Kitty’s beautiful hair hanging matted round her face; Kitty’s voluptuous body naked beneath her torn cloak; blood on Kitty’s face, mingling with tears and dirt. Kitty was not quite conscious now. Carolan could almost say “Lucky Mamma!”

Millie was there, sleeping with her hand curled round Carolan’s foot. Millie’s clothes hung about her, tattered and torn, for Millie had fought for her clothes, fought and become exhausted; and, like an animal, as soon as she had laid herself on the floor beside Carolan, she had slept. Perhaps Carolan could say “Lucky Millie!”

Carolan tried to raise herself on her arm, but so bruised was she that this proved too painful. There was an itch about her body which was beginning to madden her. She buried her face in her hands to shut out the dark shadows about her, to try to free her nostrils from that sickening smell. Impossible! One could shut one’s eyes, but whatever one did, the smell remained. Unclean human bodies, foul air, slop pails, the evil-smelling breath of diseased women.

High up in the wall were two barred windows through which came scarcely any light or air. On the window-sills whale-oil lamps burned. A small child was creeping silently towards Carolan. A little girl? A little boy? She did not know. It was more like a dark little animal … or a scarecrow. Tiny hands were feeling for her pockets, very deft hands, and very, very small.

“Go away!” hissed Carolan, and the small figure darted back whence it had come, and was lost to her in a maze of sleeping bodies.

Carolan, remembering what had gone before, began to cry softly. Anger and bitterness were a pain that constricted her throat so that she breathed with difficulty. She would have sobbed with rage, with fury, had she not known that she, and she alone, was responsible for their being here. She it was who had had Millie leave her home and come to live at the shop, and, but for her, poor half-witted Millie would be sleeping in the crowded room with her family and her drunken father; it had seemed horrible enough when Carolan had first heard of it -now it seemed paradise indeed.