20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

My presence of mind in emergencies is proverbial among those who know me. I tore open the cupboard in which he kept his linen – seized a handful of his handkerchiefs – gagged him with one of them, and secured his hands with the others. There was now no danger of his alarming the servants. After tying the last knot, I looked up.

The door between the Englishman’s room and mine was open. My fair friend was standing on the threshold – watching him as he lay helpless on the bed; watching me as I tied the last knot.

‘What are you doing there?’ I asked. ‘Why did you open the door?’

She stepped up to me, and whispered her answer in my ear, with her eyes all the time upon the man on the bed:

‘I heard him scream.’

‘Well?’

‘I thought you had killed him.’

I drew back from her in horror. The suspicion of me which her words implied was sufficiently detestable in itself. But her manner when she uttered the words was more revolting still. It so powerfully affected me that I started back from that beautiful creature as I might have recoiled from a reptile crawling over my flesh.

Before I had recovered myself sufficiently to reply, my nerves were assailed by another shock. I suddenly heard my mistress’s voice calling to me from the stable yard.

There was no time to think – there was only time to act. The one thing needed was to keep Mrs. Fairbank from ascending the stairs, and discovering – not my lady guest only – but the Englishman also, gagged and bound on his bed. I instantly hurried to the yard. As I ran down the stairs I heard the stable clock strike the quarter to two in the morning.

My mistress was eager and agitated. The doctor (in attendance on her) was smiling to himself, like a man amused at his own thoughts.

‘Is Francis awake or asleep?’ Mrs. Fairbank inquired.

‘He has been a little restless, madam. But he is now quiet again. If he is not disturbed’ (I added those words to prevent her from ascending the stairs), ‘he will soon fall off into a quiet sleep.’

‘Has nothing happened since I was here last?’

‘Nothing, madam.’

The doctor lifted his eyebrows with a comical look of distress. ‘Alas, alas, Mrs. Fairbank!’ he said. ‘Nothing has happened! The days of romance are over!’

‘It is not two o’clock yet,’ my mistress answered, a little irritably.

The smell of the stables was strong on the morning air. She put her handkerchief to her nose and led the way out of the yard by the north entrance – the entrance communicating with the gardens and the house. I was ordered to follow her, along with the doctor. Once out of the smell of the stables she began to question me again. She was unwilling to believe that nothing had occurred in her absence. I invented the best answers I could think of on the spur of the moment; and the doctor stood by laughing. So the minutes passed till the clock struck two. Upon that, Mrs. Fairbank announced her intention of personally visiting the Englishman in his room. To my great relief, the doctor interfered to stop her from doing this.

‘You have heard that Francis is just falling asleep,’ he said. ‘If you enter his room you may disturb him. It is essential to the success of my experiment that he should have a good night’s rest, and that he should own it himself, before I tell him the truth. I must request, madam, that you will not disturb the man. Rigobert will ring the alarm bell if anything happens.’

My mistress was unwilling to yield. For the next five minutes, at least, there was a warm discussion between the two. In the end Mrs. Fairbank was obliged to give way – for the time. ‘In half an hour,’ she said, ‘Francis will either be sound asleep, or awake again. In half an hour I shall come back.’ She took the doctor’s arm. They returned together to the house.

Left by myself, with half an hour before me, I resolved to take the Englishwoman back to the village – then, returning to the stables, to remove the gag and the bindings from Francis, and to let him screech to his heart’s content. What would his alarming the whole establishment matter to me after I had got rid of the compromising presence of my guest?

Returning to the yard I heard a sound like the creaking of an open door on its hinges. The gate of the north entrance I had just closed with my own hand. I went round to the west entrance, at the back of the stables. It opened on a field crossed by two footpaths in Mr. Fairbank’s grounds. The nearest footpath led to the village. The other led to the highroad and the river.

Arriving at the west entrance I found the door open – swinging to and fro slowly in the fresh morning breeze. I had myself locked and bolted that door after admitting my fair friend at eleven o’clock. A vague dread of something wrong stole its way into my mind. I hurried back to the stables.