The Fourth Plague by Edgar Wallace Read Free Book Online

followed her, her hands behind her back; she stood behind her.
    â€œDo you like me, Vera?” she asked.
    Vera looked round, and stared at her.
    â€œMy dear child,” she said, “don’t be absurd. I don’t dislike you.”
    â€œBut you do,” persisted the other. “I have seen it so often. I’ve had such convincing evidence, and it makes me a little unhappy.” She drew up a chair by the side of the piano and sat down.
    â€œDon’t play,” she said, “just let us have a heart-to-heart talk.”
    â€œThat’s the kind of talk I loathe. I’ve just been having a heart-to-heart talk about Quaker oats,” said the other. “But this young man—what’s his name?”
    â€œGillingford—Frank Gillingford,” said Marjorie, steadily.
    â€œYou are rather keen on him, aren’t you?”
    â€œI am hoping that he is rather keen on me,” said the girl, her sense of humour getting the better of her resentment.
    â€œWhat is he, an engineer or something?” asked Vera, touching the keys lightly with her sensitive hands.
    â€œSomething of the sort.” And Marjorie changed the conversation. “Didn’t uncle rather—rather”—she hesitated for a simile—“as Mr. George would say, ‘whack it into’ that unfortunate person?”
    â€œYou mean the burglar?”
    Marjorie nodded.
    â€œI don’t think he got any more than he deserved,” said Vera.
    â€œDo you really think he came after uncle’s collection?
    â€œWhy not?” asked Vera, without looking round. “It is a very valuable one. There are medallions there worth three or four hundred pounds each—there is one there worth a thousand, at least,” she added quickly. “I believe that is so.”
    â€œBut what use would they be to him?” persisted the girl.
    â€œWell—” Vera shrugged her shoulders.
    â€œYou are asking me to give a psychological survey of a burglar’s mind,” she said, “and that I am not prepared to do.”
    Marjorie walked back to the window and looked out on to the dismal landscape. It had been raining for the last hour, and the trees looked especially miserable, half enveloped as they were by a mist which was driving up from the Medway valley.
    â€œI shouldn’t advise you to discuss the question of that sentence with your uncle,” said Vera across her shoulder. “He is rather sore; I think that was the cause of his quarrel with Hilary George.”
    The girl made no reply. She could not understand Vera. She had always been an enigma to her. That she was a disappointed woman, Marjorie knew. She had expected to inherit a life of luxurious calm; instead, she had merely succeeded the house-keeper, whom Sir Ralph had thoughtfully discharged, and had, moreover, dated his discharge as from the date of his wedding.
    Vera was an ambitious woman. She had set no limit upon her possibilities. She had come, as she had thought, into a wider world, to a larger life, with scope for the exercise of her undoubted genius, but had found herself restricted to the prosaic duties of housekeeping for a querulous and a mean old man.
    Marjorie’s reverie was cut short by the sudden cessation of the music. There was a little pause, and then Vera’s voice asked—“Where could I raise five hundred pounds?”

II. —THE CALL OF TILLIZINI
    MARJORIE TURNED WITH A start.
    â€œFive hundred pounds?” she repeated.
    Vera nodded.
    â€œI want that sum,” she said, “for a purpose. You understand that this is confidential?”
    â€œOh, quite,” said Marjorie, “but it is a lot of money. Couldn’t you get it from Uncle Ralph?”
    â€œUncle Ralph,” repeated the other, contemptuously. “He wouldn’t give five hundred potatoes! A demand for five hundred pounds would estrange us for the rest of our lives.”
    She gave a