Джек Лондон - Hearts of Three [С англо-русским словарем]

Several times, late that afternoon and evening, the Queen was called up by the slave of the flying speech and enabled to talk with her husband. To her delight, in her own room, by her bedside, she found a telephone, through which, by calling up Collins’ office, she gave her good night to Francis. Also, she essayed to kiss her heart to him, and received back, queer and vague of sound, his answering kiss.

She knew not how long she had slept, when she awoke. Not moving, through her half-open eyes she saw Francis peer into the room and across to her. When he had gone softly away, she leapt out of bed and ran to the door in time to see him start down the staircase.

More trouble with the great god Business was her surmise. He was going down to that wonderful room, the library, to read more of the dread god’s threats and warnings that were so mysteriously made to take form of written speech to the clicking of the ticker. She looked at herself in the mirror, adjusted her hair, and with a little love-smile of anticipation on her lips put on a dressing-gown another of the marvelous pretties of Francis’ forethought and providing.

At the entrance of the library she paused, hearing the voice of another than Francis. At first thought she decided it was the flying speech, but immediately afterward she knew it to be too loud and near and different. Peeping in, she saw two men drawn up in big leather chairs near to each other and facing. Francis, tired of face from the day’s exertions, still wore his business suit; but the other was clad in evening dress. And she heard him call her husband ‘Francis,’ who, in turn, called him ‘Johnny.’ That, and the familiarity of their conversation, conveyed to her that they were old, close friends.

‘And don’t tell me, Francis,’ the other was saying, ‘that you’ve frivoled through Panama all this while without losing your heart to the señoritas a dozen times.’

‘Only once,’ Francis replied, after a pause, in which the Queen noted that he gazed steadily at his friend.

‘Further,’ he went on, after another pause, ‘I really lost my heart but not my head. Johnny Pathmore, O Johnny Pathmore, you are a mere flirtatious brute, but I tell you that you’ve lots to learn. I tell you that in Panama I found the most wonderful woman in the world, a woman that I was glad I had lived to know, a woman that I would gladly die for; a woman of fire, of passion, of sweetness, of nobility, a very queen of women.’

And the Queen, listening and looking upon the intense exaltation of his face, smiled with proud fondness and certitude to herself, for had she not won a husband who remained a lover?

‘And did the lady, er, ah — did she reciprocate?’ Johnny Pathmore ventured.

The Queen saw Francis nod as he solemnly replied.

‘She loves me as I love her — this I know in all absoluteness.’ He stood up suddenly. ‘Wait. I will show her to you.’

And as he started toward the door, the Queen, in roguishness of a very extreme of happiness at her husband’s confession she had overheard, fled trippingly to hide in the wide doorway of a grand room which the maid had informed her was the drawing room, whatever such room might be. Deliciously imagining Francis’ surprise at not finding her in bed, she watched him go up the wide marble staircase. In a few moments he descended. With a slight chill at the heart she observed that he betrayed no perturbation at not having found her. In his hand he carried a scroll or roll of thin, white cardboard. Looking neither to right nor left, he re-entered the library.

Peeping in, she saw him unroll the scroll, present it before Johnny Pathmore’s eyes, and heard him say: ‘Judge for yourself. There she is.’

‘But why be so funereal about it, old man?’ Johnny Pathmore queried, after a prolonged examination of the photograph.

‘Because we met too late. I was compelled to marry another. And I left her forever just a few hours before she was to marry another, which marriage had been compelled before either of us ever knew the other existed. And the woman I married, please know, is a good and splendid woman. She will have my devotion forever. Unfortunately, she will never posses my heart.’

In a great instant of revulsion, the entire truth came to the Queen. Clutching at her heart with clasped hands, she nearly fainted of the vertigo that assailed her. Although they still talked inside the library, she heard no further word of their utterance as she strove with slow success to draw herself together. Finally, with indrawn shoulders, a little forlorn sort of a ghost of the resplendent woman and wife she had been but minutes before, she staggered across the hall and slowly, as if in a nightmare wherein speed never resides, dragged herself upstairs. In her room, she lost all control. Francis’ ring was torn from her finger and stamped upon. Her boudoir cap and her turtle-shell hairpins joined the general havoc under her feet. Convulsed, shuddering, muttering to herself in her extremity, she threw herself upon her bed and only managed, in an ecstasy of anguish, to remain perfectly quiet when Francis peeped in on his way to bed.

An hour, that seemed a thousand centuries, she gave him to go to sleep. Then she arose, took in hand the crude jeweled dagger which had been hers in the Valley of the Lost Souls, and softly tiptoed into his room. There on the dresser it was, the large photograph of Leoncia. In thorough indecision, clutching the dagger until the cramp of her palm and fingers hurt her, she debated between her husband and Leoncia. Once, beside his bed, her hand raised to strike, an effusion of tears into her dry eyes obscured her seeing so that her dagger-hand dropped as she sobbed audibly.

Stiffening herself with changed resolve, she crossed over to the dresser. A pad and pencil lying handy, caught her attention. She scribbled two words, tore off the sheet, and placed it upon the face of Leoncia as it lay flat and upturned on the surface of polished wood. Next, with an unerring drive of the dagger, she pinned the note between the pictured semblance of Leoncia’s eyes, so that the point of the blade penetrated the wood and left the haft quivering and upright.

Meanwhile, after the manner of cross purposes in New York, wherein Regan craftily proceeded with his gigantic raid on all Francis’ holdings while Francis and Bascom vainly strove to find his identity, so in Panama were at work cross purposes which involved Leoncia and the Solanos, Torres and the Jefe, and, not least in importance, one, Yi Poon, the rotund and moon-faced Chinese.

The little old judge, who was the Jefe’s creature, sat asleep in court in San Antonio. He had slept placidly for two hours, occasionally nodding his head and muttering profoundly, although the case was a grave one, involving twenty years in San Juan, where the strongest could not survive ten years. But there was no need for the judge to consider evidence or argument. Before the case was called, decision and sentence were in his mind, having been put there by the Jefe. The prisoner’s lawyer ceased his perfunctory argument, the clerk of the court sneezed, and the judge woke up. He looked about him briskly and said: ‘Guilty.’ No one was surprised, not even the prisoner.

‘Appear to-morrow morning for sentence. Next case.’

Having so ordered, the judge prepared to settle down into another nap, when he saw Torres and the Jefe enter the courtroom. A gleam in the Jefe’s eye was his cue, and he abruptly dismissed court for the day.

‘I have been to Rodriguez Fernandez,’ the Jefe was explaining five minutes later, in the empty courtroom. ‘He says it was a natural gem, and that much would be lost in the cutting, but that nevertheless he would still give five hundred gold for it. Show it to the judge, Señor Torres, and the rest of the handful of big ones.’