Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [19]
With his usual small mincing steps he walked away down the road. From afar there came a rumble of thunder. The mechanic looked up and spoke to Masters.
‘There’s a storm coming over. Thought I could feel it in the air.’
‘Crikey,’ said Masters. ‘And forty miles to go.’
‘Ah!’ said the other. ‘There’s no need to be hurrying over this job. You’ll not be wanting to take the road till the storm’s passed over. That little boss of yours doesn’t look as though he’d relish being out in thunder and lightning.’
‘Hope they’ll do him well at that place,’ muttered the chauffeur. ‘I’ll be pushing along there for a bite myself presently.’
‘Billy Jones is all right,’ said the garage man. ‘Keeps a good table.’
Mr William Jones, a big burly man of fifty and landlord of the ‘Bells and Motley’, was at this minute beaming ingratiatingly down on little Mr Satterthwaite.
‘Can do you a nice steak, sir–and fried potatoes, and as good a cheese as any gentleman could wish for. This way, sir, in the coffee-room. We’re not very full at present, the last of the fishing gentlemen just gone. A little later we’ll be full again for the hunting. Only one gentleman here at present, name of Quin–’
Mr Satterthwaite stopped dead.
‘Quin?’ he said excitedly. ‘Did you say Quin?’
‘That’s the name, sir. Friend of yours perhaps?’
‘Yes, indeed. Oh! yes, most certainly.’ Twittering with excitement, Mr Satterthwaite hardly realized that the world might contain more than one man of that name. He had no doubts at all. In an odd way, the information fitted in with what the man at the garage had said. ‘Folks that come and go…’ a very apt description of Mr Quin. And the name of the Inn, too, seemed a peculiarly fitting and appropriate one.
‘Dear me, dear me,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘What a very odd thing. That we should meet like this! Mr Harley Quin, is it not?’
‘That’s right, sir. This is the coffee-room, sir. Ah! here is the gentleman.’
Tall, dark, smiling, the familiar figure of Mr Quin rose from the table at which he was sitting, and the well-remembered voice spoke.
‘Ah! Mr Satterthwaite, we meet again. An unexpected meeting!’
Mr Satterthwaite was shaking him warmly by the hand.
‘Delighted. Delighted, I’m sure. A lucky breakdown for me. My car, you know. And you are staying here? For long?’
‘One night only.’
‘Then I am indeed fortunate.’
Mr Satterthwaite sat down opposite his friend with a little sigh of satisfaction, and regarded the dark, smiling face opposite him with a pleasurable expectancy.
The other man shook his head gently.
‘I assure you,’ he said, ‘that I have not a bowl of goldfish or a rabbit to produce from my sleeve.’
‘Too bad,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite, a little taken aback. ‘Yes, I must confess–I do rather adopt that attitude towards you. A man of magic. Ha, ha. That is how I regard you. A man of magic.’
‘And yet,’ said Mr Quin, ‘it is you who do the conjuring tricks, not I.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Satterthwaite eagerly. ‘But I cannot do them without you. I lack–shall we say–inspiration?’
Mr Quin smilingly shook his head.
‘That is too big a word. I speak the cue, that is all.’
The landlord came in at that minute with bread and a slab of yellow butter. As he set the things on the table there was a vivid flash of lightning, and a clap of thunder almost overhead.
‘A wild night, gentlemen.’
‘On such a night–’ began Mr Satterthwaite, and stopped.
‘Funny now,’ said the landlord, unconscious of the question, ‘if those weren’t just the words I was going to use myself. It was just such a night as this when Captain Harwell brought his bride home, the very day before he disappeared for ever.’
‘Ah!’ cried Mr Satterthwaite suddenly. ‘Of course!’
He had got the clue. He knew now why the name Kirtlington Mallet was familiar. Three months before he had read