The devils mountain, p.1
The Devil's Mountain, page 1
The Devil’s Mountain
H. G. de Lisser
The Devil’s Mountain was first published between 1922–1923.
This edition published by Mint Editions 2023.
ISBN 9798888970096 | E-ISBN 9798888970249
Published by Mint Editions®
minteditionbooks.com
Publishing Director: Katie Connolly
Design: Ponderosa Pine Design
Production and Project Management: Micaela Clark
Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services
CONTENTS
I. “A DETESTABLE PERSON”
II. LADY ROSEDALE’S ADVICE
III. MR. PHIPPS’S ADVICE
IV. “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE”
V. THE JEWEL ROBBERY
VI. MR. PHIPPS GOES OUT
VII. THE POLICE CONFER
VIII. LADY ROSEDALE’S SUSPICIONS
IX. THE INVITATION
X. A PASSAGE AT ARMS
XI. MAJOR FELLSPAR MEETS MR. PHIPPS
XII. MARIAN AND MR. PHIPPS
XIII. “AN IRON STRAIN IN HIM”
XIV. THE DEVIL’S MOUNTAIN
XV. THE PHOTOGRAPHS
XVI. “I SPEAK AS A SPANIARD”
XVII. MR. PHIPPS CHANGES
XVIII. MAJOR FELLSPAR’S BELIEF
XIX. LAWRENCE AND MR. PHIPPS
XX. A SLIP OF THE TONGUE
XXI. THE STRANGER
XXII. THE STRANGER EXPLAINS
XXIII. MR. PHIPPS EXPLAINS
XXIV. STEPHEN
XXV. LADY ROSEDALE INTERVENES
XXVI. THE ONLY WAY
XXVII. MR. HAMMOND’S STORY
XXVIII. GOODBYE
I
“A DETESTABLE PERSON”
Lawrence Beaman was one of the first to see the members of the moving picture company when they arrived. The motor cars rolled swiftly up to the porch of the hotel and discharged their occupants; then through the lobby came trooping the actresses and actors, who were immediately joined, with friendly welcoming greeting, by many of the guests.
Lawrence moved forward with the others; he approached a tall girl, hot and dusty, just now, but of striking appearance. She flashed a bright smile at him and gaily put out her hand.
“We have just come in,” she laughed, “and I am a sight! I am covered in dust. Have you been here long?”
“About half an hour. How did you get through today?”
“Pretty well; the director was less cross than usual, and we took some good scenes.”
“You must be very tired, my dear,” broke in a decisive voice behind her, and, next moment, a decisive-looking lady was at her side. This lady bowed coldly to Lawrence, who returned her stiff saultation with a precise inclination of the head. Then she gave her attention to the girl.
“Come right upstairs now, Marian, and refresh yourself before we have tea. I will come into your room and help you change, or perhaps you had better first come into mine. Shall I order tea to be brought upstairs for both of us?”
“Oh, it’s awfully good of you to suggest that, Lady Rosedale,” replied Marian, “but I’d rather come down to the lawn for tea, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, it may be nicer,” Lady Rosedale agreed; and linking her arm round the girl’s waist, she took possession of her and carried her away.
Lady Rosedale, in spite of her fifty years, was a very vigorous woman. Her hair had silvered early, but her face was still fresh-looking; her eyes were masterful, her mouth determined. Just a shade below average height, she was inclined to be stout. But she carried herself erect; she walked briskly, spoke briskly; she made her presence felt and seemed to find delight in doing so.
Lady Rosedale was the widow of an English baronet and had been wintering in Jamaica, at the Myrtle Bank Hotel, for about a month when the moving picture company arrived. She was a woman of sudden fancies and quick impulses; her title, her social position and her reputed wealth rendered it easy for her to take under her patronage any girl in the hotel, or in the island for the matter of that; and she did not hesitate after meeting Marian to declare that she had fallen in love with her at first sight. Certainly she always treated Marian with mother, if somewhat fussy, kindness: she seemed devoted to her. But she did not like Lawrence Beaman, Lawrence had had more than one intimation of that fact of late, and the lady’s manner this afternoon had conveyed something more than a hint of it.
He turned and strolled about the lawn, between tea tables set out with tea and cake and surrounded by women and men in afternoon attire, the dresses of the girls rivalling the rainbow in variegated hues. The clatter of cups and of voices made a not unpleasant sound, suggestive of human comradeship, and the lighter, pleasanter things of life; the stylish frocks of the younger woman, the care-free air of the men, the rippling laughter, the setting of green sward and slender palms under a canopy of soft blue appealed to him subtly. For with the eye of his fancy he saw Marian everywhere in this beautiful tropical setting; at home in it. She endowed the scene with meaning for him, established a bond of delightful sympathy between it and him. He was waiting for her now to reappear. He was determined to spend a few minutes in her company this afternoon despite the objections of all the Lady Rosedales in the world.
He was quiet and self-contained, a man of few friends or even acquaintances. Well-built and of middle height, with light brown hair and steady, clear, blue eyes, he gave one the impression of self-confident strength and even of obstinacy. The brown moustache which covered his upper lip did not conceal the firm set of the mouth; the chin was almost square, the nose straight; the forehead suggested keen practical intelligence. Lawrence was of English descent, but Jamaican by birth. He was associated with an English shipping company; held locally, in connection with it, an important position, and was much trusted by his chiefs at the London head office because of his tried and tested devotion to duty. Some of those who worked with him had more than once laughing remarked that Lawrence had no romance in his composition but was merely a business machine, with work and yet more work as his passion in life. He was thirty-three, and they doubted if he had ever once had a love affair; they were positive that passion and he would always be strangers. Thus their judgement, based upon years of association and upon what they believed to be an intimate knowledge of the man. Yet this afternoon he was waiting for a moving picture actress, and counting the moments until she would reappear.
He had met her three weeks before, a few days after her arrival in Jamaica. The company had come to the island to take a series of tropical pictures: during the day they worked outside of the city, but in the afternoons and evening they were free. Most of them lived in the hotel, though some, chiefly men, preferred private lodgings in the upper part of Kingston. In a little while they had made numerous acquaintances; they were sociable in their habits; and, as strangers and artists, they were greatly in demand for all sorts of private social functions. Someone had casually introduced him to a group of them one afternoon: Lawrence had looked into Marian’s eyes and heard her laugh; he had talked with her for a little while; he had lingered longer on the lawn on that occasion than was his wont. Then the habits of reserve, the habits of years, were shaken to their foundations. The next day he returned, and the next; and in the evenings now he was a visitor at the hotel, a rare thing with him in former days.
Sometimes he sat with her alone: these were his times of good fortune. Oftener he had to share her society with others. Not many persons seemed to notice that she was his particular attraction; but there were some who did. Her brother, for example, and Lady Rosedale. Mr. Phipps also, but Mr. Phipps was generally regarded as a curious, prying sort of person, who apparently made it his business to notice everybody and everything.
It was nearly five o’ clock in the afternoon. The early February sun was westering, the sky was azure, dotted here and there with patches of fleecy cloud floating slowly, changing their shapes as they drifted, and sometimes dissolving into the golden, all-pervading ether. The strong wind that had blown steadily during the day had died down, but the air was delightfully cool. There was no sharpness in the sun. The branches of the coconut palms caught and reflected its rays, the metallic surfaces of their fronds shining as they slightly swayed in a gentle breeze. Merely being able to breathe was happiness, and the laughter that rand out at frequent intervals on the lawn told of enjoyment and of delight in life.
Presently she reappeared. She had changed her dress, and all traces of dust and fatigue had gone from her face. Her tall figure, bent slightly forward as she moved, was sinuously graceful; you noticed at once that she had dark, brilliant, slightly slanting eyes, a mass of dark and glossy hair, which even the hat she wore could not completely hide, and a nose, sensitive, delicate, and Grecian. Her face was oval, her complexion ivory, touched by the sun; her lips, pink, and parted now in a little smile, revealed two rows of even, well-formed teeth, and her smile lent to her face a singularly winning if mischievous expression. There was a suggestion of something foreign about her. She looked what she was in reality—a daughter of the South.
Piloted by Lady Rosedale, Marian moved towards one of the small tea tables that had just been vacated by another couple; and, seeing that she was with Lady Rosedale, many of the young men about, both guests in the hotel and residents of the city, hesitated as to whether they should venture to join her. It was a tribute to Lady Rosedale’s personality that few persons ever dared to join her or her party unless distinctly encouraged to do so. Lady Rosedale never froze them with t he stony British stare: she simply did not notice them at all. She could be a very tolerable impersonation of the iceberg when she liked, and she very often liked if she happened to disapprove of the person or persons seeking her society.
But Lawrence Beaman was a man of resolution. He followed Marian and her friend, and when they sat down, and Lady Rosedale had summoned the waiter to order tea, he approached the table and addressed Marian.
“There is only one dance that I know,” he began at once; “the new dances I have never learnt. But once I could waltz, and I hope you will reserve a waltz or two for me this evening. Will you?”
“How long ago was it that you last waltzed?” asked Marian mischievously. “You speak as if it were ages.”
“Nobody waltzes nowadays,” broke in Lady Rosedale; “the waltz is no longer popular. I don’t say that I approve of the change, but young people do and their tastes ought to be considered. I believe it is now considered positively tedious to waltz.”
“I am sure I would not deliberately ask Miss Braeme to do anything painful,” replied Lawrence with a slight smile, understanding perfectly well that Lady Rosedale was suggesting that Marian should not dance with him. “By long ago, Miss Braeme, I mean eight or ten years.”
“Then probably you have forgotten by now,” said Lady Rosedale. “You must be awfully rusty at least.”
“Is that what you think?” he asked, addressing himself directly to Marian.
“You deserve to be,” she replied evasively. “Fancy living in a country where there is dancing all the time, and not joining in a dance even once!”
There was a moment of silence. Lawrence realised that by his own admission he had shown plainly that it was Marian and Marian only with whom he desired to dance. Lady Rosedale had voiced the thought that was in all their minds.
“But for you, my dear,” she remarked, “Mr. Beaman would not think of evening being here tonight. But as you will be dancing he is quite willing to indulge in a pastime in which he indulged but rarely, I imagine, even when he was much younger than he now is.”
“He pays me a great compliment,” Marian answered gaily; then: “I believe there are sixteen dances tonight, Mr. Beaman. I will put down two waltzes for you if you like. They are the only two on the programme.”
Both of them saw the look of disapproval on Lady Rosedale’s face; but Lawrence had previously noticed that while Marian seemed always solicitous to please her friend, she had continued to be nice to him despite that friend’s obvious objections. He was about to bow himself away, having now no further excuse for loitering near them (much as he desired to do so), when, to his surprise, Lady Rosedale herself requested, or rather ordered him, to remain where he was.
“Don’t go, Mr. Beaman,” she said sharply but quietly; “don’t go now, for heaven’s sake!” Her ensuing words gave her reason for this unusual request. “There’s that detestable American person coming, and I don’t want him to join us, which he will certainly do if we two are alone.”
The detestable person, of American nationality, was Mr. Phipps. Lawrence knew him well; he knew also that Mr. Phipps was one of those people who would never be abashed by Lady Rosedale or anyone else in the world. The next moment Mr. Phipp’s voice was heard proclaiming a greeting: it occurred to Lawrence that there was evidently to be no escape for Lady Rosedale.
“Ah, Lady Rosedale, and our little movie star! Just the two folks that I would have picked out to meet this afternoon, and here they are! To tell you the truth, I was looking for you. Seek and ye shall find, saith the Scriptures, and I sought and have found.”
“So it seems,” remarked Lady Rosedale distantly.
“Beaman, too. Say, but you know I am in luck!”
“Why, Mr. Phipps?” asked Marian.
“Because, my little movie star, I am a man of varied social tastes. I admire nobility of mind as expressed in uplifting conversation, and though I am American I have an inborn respect for noble birth. Lady Rosedale fulfils these requirements. Beauty, too, I simply adore, and youthful innocence and grace and that’s sure you. And I like manly strength and dogged devotion and all the rest of the sort of thing that you get in a fifth chapter of the latest novel when the strong, silent man comes upon the scene and begins to be strong and silent. Friend Beaman here fills that part beautifully, especially the silent part. And how are you, this afternoon, Lady Rosedale?”
“As well as I was at noon, when I saw you last,” replied Lady Rosedale, bringing her arctic manner into play, though with a despairing sense of its being sufficiently adequate to freeze Mr. Phipps.
“Well, that’s a blessing!” exclaimed Mr. Phipps fervently, “I am always anxious about your health, Lady Rosedale, for you are not yet acclimatised, and there is no telling what may not happen to one between lunch and tea in the tropics. I have known men die between those two meals.”
While speaking, his quick eyes had been roaming about the grounds in search of something. “Wait a moment!” he cried, “I’ll be right back in a moment.” He darted away, towards a chair from which someone had risen the instance before, and probably intended to resume almost immediately. But Mr. Phipps seized the chair, and, with a rapid, “thank you,” to its original possessor, he sped back towards Lady Rosedale’s table. Placing the chair near the table, he sat down as though he had been expressingly invited to form one of the party, and took out his cigarette case. Lady Rosedale ostentatiously poured out tea without offering to order a cup for him.
“Tea,” said Mr. Phipps, “is an English institution implanted out here by the English, along with the penitentiary and the protestant religion. All these are useful things, the penitentiary being especially good for the natives. As an American, I have never taken to tea. Will you have a cigarette, Beaman?”
Lawrence smilingly refused.
“The ladies don’t mind my smoking,” Mr. Phipps explained. “I regard them as old friends now, though we haven’t known one another for long. It is community of spirit and not length of acquantanceship that makes friends, isn’t it, Lady Rosedale? The moment I saw you in this hotel, giving us object lessons in true majesty of deportment and nobility of mind, I said to myself, ‘I can see we two are going to be friends.’ As to my little movie star, why, we were all in love with her from the star. Why don’t you sit down, Beaman? What’s the big idea in your standing?”
Lawrence hesitated. He had been invited by Lady Rosedale to remain, but the purpose of that invitation had not been achieved; still, he had been invited, but no seat was available. Again Mr. Phipps’s keen eyes swept the grounds, and he pointed out to Lawrence a vacant chair some distance away. “Better run and get that one,” he advised, “or it will be snapped up by some selfish person. There is not much consideration for others to be expected in this world.”
Lawrence walked leisurely away to fetch the chair, meanwhile Lady Rosedale angrily resigned herself to another quarter of an hour’s torture (so she inwardly termed it) in the company of two persons who she detested.
Mr.Phipps appeared to be enjoying his cigarette. He was a spare, middle-sized man, about fifty-and-five years of age, with scanty hair, small mobile features and agile manner. A heavy pair of moustaches, once brown, now almost completely grey, covered his lip; but a careful observer would have noticed that that lip was a very long one, coming firmly down on the under-lip, and that the chin beneath, though small, was well formed and strong, with a slight suggestion of aggressiveness. Mr. Phipps’s keen grey eyes seemed hardly ever in response; he was constantly glancing at everything and everybody. He was well-dressed, a sort of elderly dandy. Light flannel trousers, a dark blue jacket beautifully cut, an upstanding collar set off with a spotted blue butterfly tie, a jaunty straw hat and highly polished brown shoes completed his attire this afternoon. His hands were small and well-kept; his whole appearance indicated a man who thought very highly of himself and treated himself very well indeed. He apparently assumed that his company was in request by everyone, and his conversation most entertaining. Mr. Phipps, it was said by his acquaintances, loved the sound of his own voice.
“A nice young man that,” he observed, when Lawrence had got out of hearing distance, “A reliable, intelligent young fellow. I feel that I share your opinion of him, Lady Rosedale.”
