Mysterious Mr. Quin - Agatha Christie [65]
‘No,’ said Mr Quin, ‘I have no car waiting.’
‘Then–’
But Mr Quin shook his head.
‘You are most kind,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to go my own way. Besides,’ he said with a rather curious smile, ‘if anything should–happen, it will be for you to act. Goodnight, and thank you. Once again we have seen the drama together.’
He had gone so quickly that Mr Satterthwaite had no time to protest, but he was left with a faint uneasiness stirring in his mind. To what drama did Mr Quin refer? Pagliacci or another?’
Masters, Mr Satterthwaite’s chauffeur, was in the habit of waiting in a side street. His master disliked the long delay while the cars drew up in turn before the Opera house. Now, as on previous occasions, he walked rapidly round the corner and along the street towards where he knew he should find Masters awaiting him. Just in front of him were a girl and a man, and even as he recognized them, another man joined them.
It all broke out in a minute. A man’s voice, angrily uplifted. Another man’s voice in injured protest. And then the scuffle. Blows, angry breathing, more blows, the form of a policeman appearing majestically from nowhere–and in another minute Mr Satterthwaite was beside the girl where she shrank back against the wall.
‘Allow me,’ he said. ‘You must not stay here.’
He took her by the arm and marshalled her swiftly down the street. Once she looked back.
‘Oughtn’t I–?’ she began uncertainly.
Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.
‘It would be very unpleasant for you to be mixed up in it. You would probably be asked to go along to the police station with them. I am sure neither of your–friends would wish that.’
He stopped.
‘This is my car. If you will allow me to do so, I shall have much pleasure in driving you home.’
The girl looked at him searchingly. The staid respectability of Mr Satterthwaite impressed her favourably. She bent her head.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and got into the car, the door of which Masters was holding open.
In reply to a question from Mr Satterthwaite, she gave an address in Chelsea, and he got in beside her.
The girl was upset and not in the mood for talking, and Mr Satterthwaite was too tactful to intrude upon her thoughts. Presently, however, she turned to him and spoke of her own accord.
‘I wish,’ she said pettishly, ‘people wouldn’t be so silly.’
‘It is a nuisance,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite.
His matter-of-fact manner put her at her ease, and she went on as though feeling the need of confiding in someone.
‘It wasn’t as though–I mean, well, it was like this. Mr Eastney and I have been friends for a long time–ever since I came to London. He’s taken no end of trouble about my voice, and got me some very good introductions, and he’s been more kind to me than I can say. He’s absolutely music mad. It was very good of him to take me tonight. I’m sure he can’t really afford it. And then Mr Burns came up and spoke to us–quite nicely, I’m sure, and Phil (Mr Eastney) got sulky about it. I don’t know why he should. It’s a free country, I’m sure. And Mr Burns is always pleasant, and good-tempered. Then just as we were walking to the Tube, he came up and joined us, and he hadn’t so much as said two words before Philip flew out at him like a madman. And–Oh! I don’t like it.’
‘Don’t you?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite very softly.
She blushed, but very little. There was none of the conscious siren about her. A certain measure of pleasurable excitement in being fought for there must be–that was only nature, but Mr Satterthwaite decided that a worried perplexity lay uppermost, and he had the clue to it in another moment when she observed inconsequently:
‘I do hope he hasn’t hurt him.’
‘Now which is “him”?’ thought Mr Satterthwaite, smiling to himself in the darkness.
He backed his own judgment and said:
‘You hope Mr–er–Eastney hasn’t hurt Mr Burns?’
She nodded.
‘Yes, that’s what I said. It seems so dreadful. I wish I knew.’
The car was drawing up.
‘Are you on the telephone?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘If you like, I will find out exactly what