The House Opposite by J. Jefferson Farjeon

Author:J. Jefferson Farjeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008155858
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2015-11-16T14:25:31.887000+00:00

CHAPTER XIX

MR CLITHEROE’S BIG IDEA

‘WELL, there he is,’ said the attractive woman. ‘And now what are you going to do with him?’

‘That, as Hamlet, observed,’ answered Mr Clitheroe, ‘is the question. I am not quite sure, Jessica, what I am going to do with him.’

‘But you’ve got some idea at the back of your head, Mr Clitheroe,’ she retorted. ‘And this is the time to explain it to me.’

Had Jack Hobart, lying inert in his chair, been in a condition to hear her retort, he would have been interested in the fact that she addressed her assumed father by his surname. But if he had been in a condition to hear, she would have continued to adopt the daughterly attitude which she now very definitely shed.

‘I explain things at my own time,’ snapped the old man. If she was not daughterly, neither was he paternal.

‘No, at Mahdi’s time,’ she corrected spitefully. ‘I suppose you know he’s not far off?’

‘I am quite aware that he is not far off,’ barked the old man, more testily than ever. ‘Is it likely that he would be far off? Is it likely that he will take himself off at all until we’ve carried this through? And am I going to carry it through unless I have absolute and unquestioned obedience?’

‘Obedience?’ exclaimed Jessica. ‘I say, are you being funny? In the space of three minutes you tell me to send a man I’ve never seen to sleep. In five minutes I have done it—’

‘Eight and a half minutes, my dear,’ corrected Mr Clitheroe, with a cynical smile.

‘Don’t be irritating! I’ve done what you asked me to do—’

‘Told you to do!’

‘If you like! What’s it matter? And now you prattle about obedience! What would you do if I became disobedient, for a change?’

‘I would make the change complete,’ replied Mr Clitheroe. ‘It would be a change from a charming evening frock, and charming furs, and charming jewellery, to the kind of fashion in vogue at Brixton or Holloway.’

‘Well, I’m not pretending that I’d like it,’ she responded shrewdly; ‘but at least I would have the satisfaction of knowing that your own beauty would be in the very latest Dartmoor style! You’ve often complained that I’m over-curious. Perhaps I am. I’m a woman, and it’s my prerogative! But you’re over-secretive, and unless you unbutton your tongue a bit more, maybe you’ll land us all in the soup!’

‘Unbutton my tongue? In the soup? What horrid phrases!’ murmured Mr Clitheroe. ‘Well, well, if you insist on increasing your personal risk by sharing dangerous knowledge, I will tell you one of my ideas concerning our friend Mr Hobart. It is to kill him.’

‘I’m out of that!’ she muttered quickly.

‘Oh, no, you are not,’ he answered. ‘You are in it. Right up to the neck, my dear. The only way to get out of it is to go to a policeman and tell him that you fear for the life of a man you have just drugged. In certain ways, Jessica, you are the cleverest woman I know.

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