Fire-Tongue Read online

  CHAPTER VII. CONFESSIONS

  Paul Harley crossed the room and stood in front of the tall Burmesecabinet. He experienced the utmost difficulty in adopting a judicialattitude toward his beautiful visitor. Proximity increased his mentalconfusion. Therefore he stood on the opposite side of the office erebeginning to question her.

  "In the first place, Miss Abingdon," he said, speaking verydeliberately, "do you attach any particular significance to the term'Fire-Tongue'?"

  Phil Abingdon glanced rapidly at Doctor McMurdoch. "None at all, Mr.Harley," she replied. "The doctor has already told me of--"

  "You know why I ask?" She inclined her head.

  "And Mr. Nicol Brinn? Have you met this gentleman?"

  "Never. I know that Dad had met him and was very much interested inhim."

  "In what way?"

  "I have no idea. He told me that he thought Mr. Brinn one of the mostsingular characters he had ever known. But beyond describing his roomsin Piccadilly, which had impressed him as extraordinary, he said verylittle about Mr. Brinn. He sounded interesting and "--she hesitated andher eyes filled with tears--"I asked Dad to invite him home." Again shepaused. This retrospection, by making the dead seem to live again, addedto the horror of her sudden bereavement, and Harley would most gladlyhave spared her more. "Dad seemed strangely disinclined to do so," sheadded.

  At that the keen investigator came to life within Harley. "Your fatherdid not appear anxious to bring Mr. Brinn to his home?" he asked,eagerly.

  "Not at all anxious. This was all the more strange because Dad invitedMr. Brinn to his club."

  "He gave no reason for his refusal?"

  "Oh, there was no refusal, Mr. Harley. He merely evaded the matter. Inever knew why."

  "H'm," muttered Harley. "And now, Miss Abingdon, can you enlightenme respecting the identity of the Oriental gentleman with whom he hadlatterly become acquainted?"

  Phil Abingdon glanced rapidly at Doctor McMurdoch and then loweredher head. She did not answer at once. "I know to whom you refer, Mr.Harley," she said, finally. "But it was I who had made this gentleman'sacquaintance. My father did not know him."

  "Then I wonder why he mentioned him?" murmured Harley.

  "That I cannot imagine. I have been wondering ever since DoctorMcMurdoch told me."

  "You recognize the person to whom Sir Charles referred?"

  "Yes. He could only have meant Ormuz Khan."

  "Ormuz Khan--" echoed Harley. "Where have I heard that name?"

  "He visits England periodically, I believe. In fact, he has a housesomewhere near London. I met him at Lady Vail's."

  "Lady Vail's? His excellency moves, then, in diplomatic circles? Oddthat I cannot place him."

  "I have a vague idea, Mr. Harley, that he is a financier. I seem to haveheard that he had something to do with the Imperial Bank of Iran." Sheglanced naively at Harley. "Is there such a bank?" she asked.

  "There is," he replied. "Am I to understand that Ormuz Khan is aPersian?"

  "I believe he is a Persian," said Phil Abingdon, rather confusedly. "Tobe quite frank, I know very little about him."

  Paul Harley gazed steadily at the speaker for a moment. "Can you thinkof any reason why Sir Charles should have worried about this gentleman?"he asked.

  The girl lowered her head again. "He paid me a lot of attention," shefinally confessed.

  "This meeting at Lady Vail's, then, was the first of many?"

  "Oh, no--not of many! I saw him two or three times. But he began tosend me most extravagant presents. I suppose it was his Oriental way ofpaying a compliment, but Dad objected."

  "Of course he would. He knew his Orient and his Oriental. I assume, MissAbingdon, that you were in England during the years that your fatherlived in the East?"

  "Yes. I was at school. I have never been in the East."

  Paul Harley hesitated. He found himself upon dangerously delicate groundand was temporarily at a loss as to how to proceed. Unexpected aid camefrom the taciturn Doctor McMurdoch.

  "He never breathed a word of this to me, Phil," he said, gloomily. "Theimpudence of the man! Small wonder Abingdon objected."

  Phil Abingdon tilted her chin forward rebelliously.

  "Ormuz Khan was merely unfamiliar with English customs," she retorted."There was nothing otherwise in his behaviour to which any one couldhave taken exception."

  "What's that!" demanded the physician. "If a man of colour paid hisheathen attentions to my daughter--"

  "But you have no daughter, Doctor."

  "No. But if I had--"

  "If you had," echoed Phil Abingdon, and was about to carry on this wordywarfare which, Harley divined, was of old standing between the two, whensudden realization of the purpose of the visit came to her. She paused,and he saw her biting her lips desperately. Almost at random he began tospeak again.

  "So far as you are aware, then, Miss Abingdon, Sir Charles never metOrmuz Khan?"

  "He never even saw him, Mr. Harley, that I know of."

  "It is most extraordinary that he should have given me the impressionthat this man--for I can only suppose that he referred to OrmuzKhan--was in some way associated with his fears."

  "I must remind you, Mr. Harley," Doctor McMurdoch interrupted, "thatpoor Abingdon was a free talker. His pride, I take it, which wasstrong, had kept him silent on this matter with me, but he welcomed anopportunity of easing his mind to one discreet and outside the familycircle. His words to you may have had no bearing upon the thing hewished to consult you about."

  "H'm," mused Harley. "That's possible. But such was not my impression."

  He turned again to Phil Abingdon. "This Ormuz Khan, I understood you tosay, actually resides in or near London?"

  "He is at present living at the Savoy, I believe. He also has a housesomewhere outside London."

  There were a hundred other questions Paul Harley was anxious to ask:some that were professional but more that were personal. He foundhimself resenting the intrusion of this wealthy Oriental into thelife of the girl who sat there before him. And because he could read akindred resentment in the gloomy eye of Doctor McMurdoch, he was drawnspiritually closer to that dour character.

  By virtue of his training he was a keen psychologist, and he perceivedclearly enough that Phil Abingdon was one of those women in whom acertain latent perversity is fanned to life by opposition. Whethershe was really attracted by Ormuz Khan or whether she suffered hisattentions merely because she knew them to be distasteful to others, hecould not yet decide.

  Anger threatened him--as it had threatened him when he had realized thatNicol Brinn meant to remain silent. He combated it, for it had no placein the judicial mind of the investigator. But he recognized its presencewith dismay. Where Phil Abingdon was concerned he could not trusthimself. In her glance, too, and in the manner of her answers toquestions concerning the Oriental, there was a provoking femininity--adeliberate and baffling intrusion of the eternal Eve.

  He stared questioningly across at Doctor McMurdoch and perceived asudden look of anxiety in the physician's face. Quick as the thoughtwhich the look inspired, he turned to Phil Abingdon.

  She was sitting quite motionless in the big armchair, and her face hadgrown very pale. Even as he sprang forward he saw her head droop.

  "She has fainted," said Doctor McMurdoch. "I'm not surprised."

  "Nor I," replied Harley. "She should not have come."

  He opened the door communicating with his private apartments andran out. But, quick as he was, Phil Abingdon had recovered before hereturned with the water for which he had gone. Her reassuring smile wassomewhat wan. "How perfectly silly of me!" she said. "I shall begin todespise myself."

  Presently he went down to the street with his visitors.

  "There must be so much more you want to know, Mr. Harley," said PhilAbingdon. "Will you come and see me?"

  He promised to do so. His sentiments were so strangely complex thathe experienced a desire for solitude in order that he might strive tounderstand the
m. As he stood at the door watching the car move towardthe Strand he knew that to-day he could not count upon his intuitivepowers to warn him of sudden danger. But he keenly examined the faces ofpassers-by and stared at the occupants of those cabs and cars whichwere proceeding in the same direction as the late Sir Charles Abingdon'slimousine.

  No discovery rewarded him, however, and he returned upstairs to hisoffice deep in thought. "I am in to nobody," he said as he passed thedesk at which Innes was at work.

  "Very good, Mr. Harley."

  Paul Harley walked through to the private office and, seating himself atthe big, orderly table, reached over to a cupboard beside him and tookout a tin of smoking mixture. He began very slowly to load his pipe,gazing abstractedly across the room at the tall Burmese cabinet.

  He realized that, excepting the extraordinary behaviour and the veiledbut significant statements of Nicol Brinn, his theory that Sir CharlesAbingdon had not died from natural causes rested upon data of the mostflimsy description. From Phil Abingdon he had learned nothing whatever.Her evidence merely tended to confuse the case more hopelessly.

  It was sheer nonsense to suppose that Ormuz Khan, who was evidentlyinterested in the girl, could be in any way concerned in the death ofher father. Nevertheless, as an ordinary matter of routine, Paul Harley,having lighted his pipe, made a note on a little block:

  Cover activities of Ormuz Khan.

  He smoked reflectively for a while and then added another note:

  Watch Nicol Brinn.

  For ten minutes or more he sat smoking and thinking, his unseeing gazeset upon the gleaming lacquer of the cabinet; and presently, as hesmoked, he became aware of an abrupt and momentary chill. His sixthsense was awake again. Taking up a pencil, he added a third note:

  Watch yourself. You are in danger.