The Green Rust
by Edgar Wallace · English · Gutenberg #24929 · 479,301 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Green Rust
Author: Edgar Wallace
Release date: March 28, 2008 [eBook #24929]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREEN RUST ***
Produced by D Alexander, Martin Pettit and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)
THE GREEN RUST
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED LONDON AND MELBOURNE
MADE IN ENGLAND
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
THE GREEN RUST
_Novels by_
EDGAR WALLACE
_published by_
WARD, LOCK AND CO., LTD.
_The "Sanders" Stories_
SANDERS OF THE RIVER
BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
BONES
LIEUTENANT BONES
SANDI, THE KING-MAKER
THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER
THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
_Mystery Stories_
THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
BLUE HAND
MR. JUSTICE MAXELL
THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
THE GREEN RUST
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG
THE SECRET HOUSE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE PASSING OF JOHN MILLINBORN 7
II THE DRUNKEN MR. BEALE 14
III PUNSONBY'S DISCHARGE AN EMPLOYEE 24
IV THE LETTERS THAT WERE NOT THERE 35
V THE MAN WITH THE BIG HEAD 43
VI MR. SCOBBS OF RED HORSE VALLEY 50
VII PLAIN WORDS FROM MR. BEALE 58
VIII THE CRIME OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE 67
IX A CRIME AGAINST THE WORLD 74
X A FRUITLESS SEARCH 85
XI THE HOUSE NEAR STAINES 93
XII INTRODUCING PARSON HOMO 102
XIII AT DEANS FOLLY 109
XIV MR. BEALE SUGGESTS MARRIAGE 116
XV THE GOOD HERR STARDT 124
XVI THE PAWN TICKET 132
XVII THE JEW OF CRACOW 139
XVIII BRIDGERS BREAKS LOOSE 148
XIX OLIVA IS WILLING 156
XX THE MARRIAGE 163
XXI BEALE SEES WHITE 169
XXII HILDA GLAUM LEADS THE WAY 177
XXIII AT THE DOCTOR'S FLAT 185
XXIV THE GREEN RUST FACTORY 192
XXV THE LAST MAN AT THE BENCH 198
XXVI THE SECRET OF THE GREEN RUST 204
XXVII A SCHEME TO STARVE THE WORLD 212
XXVIII THE COMING OF DR. MILSOM 219
XXIX THE LOST CODE 227
XXX THE WATCH 233
XXXI A CORNCHANDLER'S BILL 240
XXXII THE END OF VAN HEERDEN 244
CHAPTER I
THE PASSING OF JOHN MILLINBORN
"I don't know whether there's a law that stops my doing this, Jim; but
if there is, you've got to get round it. You're a lawyer and you know
the game. You're my pal and the best pal I've had, Jim, and you'll do it
for me."
The dying man looked up into the old eyes that were watching him with
such compassion and read their acquiescence.
No greater difference could be imagined than existed between the man on
the bed and the slim neat figure who sat by his side. John Millinborn,
broad-shouldered, big-featured, a veritable giant in frame and even in
his last days suggesting the enormous strength which had been his in his
prime, had been an outdoor man, a man of large voice and large capable
hands; James Kitson had been a student from his youth up and had spent
his manhood in musty offices, stuffy courts, surrounded by crackling
briefs and calf-bound law-books.
Yet, between these two men, the millionaire ship-builder and the
successful solicitor, utterly different in their tastes and their modes
of life, was a friendship deep and true. Strange that death should take
the strong and leave the weak; so thought James Kitson as he watched his
friend.
"I'll do what can be done, John. You leave a great responsibility upon
the girl--a million and a half of money."
The sick man nodded.
"I get rid of a greater one, Jim. When my father died he left a hundred
thousand between us, my sister and I. I've turned my share into a
million, but that is by the way. Because she was a fairly rich girl and
a wilful girl, Jim, she broke her heart. Because they knew she had the
money the worst men were attracted to her--and she chose the worst of
the worst!"
He stopped speaking to get his breath.
"She married a plausible villain who ruined her--spent every sou and
left her with a mountain of debt and a month-old baby. Poor Grace died
and he married again. I tried to get the baby, but he held it as a
hostage. I could never trace the child after it was two years old. It
was only a month ago I learnt the reason. The man was an international
swindler and was wanted by the police. He was arrested in Paris and
charged in his true name--the name he had married in was false. When he
came out of prison he took his own name--and of course the child's name
changed, too."
The lawyer nodded.
"You want me to----?"
"Get the will proved and begin your search for Oliva Predeaux. There is
no such person. The girl's name you know, and I have told you where she
is living. You'll find nobody who knows Oliva Predeaux--her father
disappeared when she was six--he's probably dead, and her stepmother
brought her up without knowing her relationship to me--then she died and
the girl has been working ever since she was fifteen."
"She is not to be found?"
"Until she is married. Watch her, Jim, spend all the money you
wish--don't influence her unless you see she is getting the wrong kind
of man...."
His voice, which had grown to something of the old strength, suddenly
dropped and the great head rolled sideways on the pillow.
Kitson rose and crossed to the door. It opened upon a spacious
sitting-room, through the big open windows of which could be seen the
broad acres of the Sussex Weald.
A man was sitting in the window-seat, chin in hand, looking across to
the chequered fields on the slope of the downs. He was a man of thirty,
with a pointed beard, and he rose as the lawyer stepped quickly into the
room.
"Anything wrong?" he asked.
"I think he has fainted--will you go to him, doctor?"
The young man passed swiftly and noiselessly to the bedside and made a
brief examination. From a shelf near the head of the bed he took a
hypodermic syringe and filled it from a small bottle. Baring the
patient's side he slowly injected the drug. He stood for a moment
looking down at the unconscious man, then came back to the big hall
where James Kitson was waiting.
"Well?"
The doctor shook his head.
"It is difficult to form a judgment," he said quietly, "his heart is all
gone to pieces. Has he a family doctor?"
"Not so far as I know--he hated doctors, and has never been ill in his
life. I wonder he tolerated you."
Dr. van Heerden smiled.
"He couldn't help himself. He was taken ill in the train on the way to
this place and I happened to be a fellow-passenger. He asked me to bring
him here and I have been here ever since. It is strange," he added,
"that so rich a man as Mr. Millinborn had no servant travelling with him
and should live practically alone in this--well, it is little better
than a cottage."
Despite his anxiety, James Kitson smiled.
"He is the type of man who hates ostentation. I doubt if he has ever
spent a thousand a year on himself all his life--do you think it is wise
to leave him?"
The doctor spread out his hands.
"I can do nothing. He refused to allow me to send for a specialist and I
think he was right. Nothing can be done for him. Still----"
He walked back to the bedside, and the lawyer came behind him. John
Millinborn seemed to be in an uneasy sleep, and after an examination by
the doctor the two men walked back to the sitting-room.
"The excitement has been rather much for him. I suppose he has been
making his will?"
"Yes," said Kitson shortly.
"I gathered as much when I saw you bring the gardener and the cook in to
witness a document," said Dr. van Heerden.
He tapped his teeth with the tip of his fingers--a nervous trick of his.
"I wish I had some strychnine," he said suddenly. "I ought to have some
by me--in case."
"Can't you send a servant--or I'll go," said Kitson. "Is it procurable
in the village?"
The doctor nodded.
"I don't want you to go," he demurred. "I have sent the car to
Eastbourne to get a few things I cannot buy here. It's a stiff walk to
the village and yet I doubt whether the chemist would supply the
quantity I require to a servant, even with my prescription--you see," he
smiled, "I am a stranger here."
"I'll go with pleasure--the walk will do me good," said the lawyer
energetically. "If there is anything we can do to prolong my poor
friend's life----"
The doctor sat at the table and wrote his prescription and handed it to
the other with an apology.
Hill Lodge, John Millinborn's big cottage, stood on the crest of a hill,
and the way to the village was steep and long, for Alfronston lay nearly
a mile away. Half-way down the slope the path ran through a plantation
of young ash. Here John Millinborn had preserved a few pheasants in the
early days of his occupancy of the Lodge on the hill. As Kitson entered
one side of the plantation he heard a rustling noise, as though somebody
were moving through the undergrowth. It was too heavy a noise for a
bolting rabbit or a startled bird to make, and he peered into the thick
foliage. He was a little nearsighted, and at first he did not see the
cause of the commotion. Then:
"I suppose I'm trespassing," said a husky voice, and a man stepped out
toward him.
The stranger carried himself with a certain jauntiness, and he had need
of what assistance artifice could lend him, for he was singularly
unprepossessing. He was a man who might as well have been sixty as
fifty. His clothes soiled, torn and greasy, were of good cut. The shirt
was filthy, but it was attached to a frayed collar, and the crumpled
cravat was ornamented with a cameo pin.
But it was the face which attracted Kitson's attention. There was
something inherently evil in that puffed face, in the dull eyes that
blinked under the thick black eyebrows. The lips, full and loose, parted
in a smile as the lawyer stepped back to avoid contact with the
unsavoury visitor.
"I suppose I'm trespassing--good gad! Me trespassing--funny, very
funny!" He indulged in a hoarse wheezy laugh and broke suddenly into a
torrent of the foulest language that this hardened lawyer had ever
heard.
"Pardon, pardon," he said, stopping as suddenly. "Man of the world, eh?
You'll understand that when a gentleman has grievances...." He fumbled
in his waistcoat-pocket and found a black-rimmed monocle and inserted it
in his eye. There was an obscenity in the appearance of this foul wreck
of a man which made the lawyer feel physically sick.
"Trespassing, by gad!" He went back to his first conceit and his voice
rasped with malignity. "Gad! If I had my way with people! I'd slit their
throats, I would, sir. I'd stick pins in their eyes--red-hot pins. I'd
boil them alive----"
Hitherto the lawyer had not spoken, but now his repulsion got the better
of his usually equable temper.
"What are you doing here?" he asked sternly. "You're on private
property--take your beastliness elsewhere."
The man glared at him and laughed.
"Trespassing!" he sneered. "Trespassing! Very good--your servant, sir!"
He swept his derby hat from his head (the lawyer saw that he was bald),
and turning, strutted back through the plantation the way he had come.
It was not the way out and Kitson was half-inclined to follow and see
the man off the estate. Then he remembered the urgency of his errand
and continued his journey to the village. On his way back he looked
about, but there was no trace of the unpleasant intruder. Who was he? he
wondered. Some broken derelict with nothing but the memory of former
vain splendours and the rags of old fineries, nursing a dear hatred for
some more fortunate fellow.
Nearly an hour had passed before he again panted up to the levelled
shelf on which the cottage stood.
The doctor was sitting at the window as Kitson passed.
"How is he?"
"About the same. He had one paroxysm. Is that the strychnine? I can't
tell you how much obliged I am to you."
He took the small packet and placed it on the window-ledge and Mr.
Kitson passed into the house.
"Honestly, doctor, what do you think of his chance?" he asked.
Dr. van Heerden shrugged his shoulders.
"Honestly, I do not think he will recover consciousness."
"Heavens!"
The lawyer was shocked. The tragic suddenness of it all stunned him. He
had thought vaguely that days, even weeks, might pass before the end
came.
"Not recover consciousness?" he repeated in a whisper.
Instinctively he was drawn to the room where his friend lay and the
doctor followed him.
John Millinborn lay on his back, his eyes closed, his face a ghastly
grey. His big hands were clutching at his throat, his shirt was torn
open at the breast. The two windows, one at each end of the room, were
wide, and a gentle breeze blew the casement curtains. The lawyer
stooped, his eyes moist, and laid his hand upon the burning forehead.
"John, John," he murmured, and turned away, blinded with tears.
He wiped his face with a pocket-handkerchief and walked to the window,
staring out at the serene loveliness of the scene. Over the weald a
great aeroplane droned to the sea. The green downs were dappled white
with grazing flocks, and beneath the windows the ordered beds blazed
and flamed with flowers, crimson and gold and white.
As he stood there the man he had met in the plantation came to his mind
and he was half-inclined to speak to the doctor of the incident. But he
was in no mood for the description and the speculation which would
follow. Restlessly he paced into the bedroom. The sick man had not moved
and again the lawyer returned. He thought of the girl, that girl whose
name and relationship with John Millinborn he alone knew. What use would
she make of the millions which, all unknown to her, she would soon
inherit? What----
"Jim, Jim!"
He turned swiftly.
It was John Millinborn's voice.
"Quick--come...."
The doctor had leapt into the room and made his way to the bed.
Millinborn was sitting up, and as the lawyer moved swiftly in the
doctor's tracks he saw his wide eyes staring.
"Jim, he has...."
His head dropped forward on his breast and the doctor lowered him slowly
to the pillow.
"What is it, John? Speak to me, old man...."
"I'm afraid there is nothing to be done," said the doctor as he drew up
the bedclothes.
"Is he dead?" whispered the lawyer fearfully.
"No--but----"
He beckoned the other into the big room and, after a glance at the
motionless figure, Kitson followed.
"There's something very strange--who is that?"
He pointed through the open window at the clumsy figure of a man who was
blundering wildly down the slope which led to the plantation.
Kitson recognized the man immediately. It was the uninvited visitor whom
he had met in the plantation. But there was something in the haste of
the shabby man, a hint of terror in the wide-thrown arms, that made the
lawyer forget his tragic environment.
"Where has he been?" he asked.
"Who is he?"
The doctor's face was white and drawn as though he, too, sensed some
horror in that frantic flight.
Kitson walked back to the room where the dying man lay, but was frozen
stiff upon the threshold.
"Doctor--doctor!"
The doctor followed the eyes of the other. Something was dripping from
the bed to the floor--something red and horrible. Kitson set his teeth
and, stepping to the bedside, pulled down the covers.
He stepped back with a cry, for from the side of John Millinborn
protruded the ivory handle of a knife.
CHAPTER II
THE DRUNKEN MR. BEALE
Dr. van Heerden's surgery occupied one of the four shops which formed
the ground floor of the Krooman Chambers. This edifice had been erected
by a wealthy philanthropist to provide small model flats for the
professional classes who needed limited accommodation and a good address
(they were in the vicinity of Oxford Street) at a moderate rental. Like
many philanthropists, the owner had wearied of his hobby and had sold
the block to a syndicate, whose management on more occasions than one
had been the subject of police inquiry.
They had then fallen into the hands of an intelligent woman, who had
turned out the undesirable tenants, furnished the flats plainly, but
comfortably, and had let them to tenants who might be described as
solvent, but honest. Krooman Chambers had gradually rehabilitated itself
in the eyes of the neighbourhood.
Dr. van Heerden had had his surgery in the building for six years.
During the war he was temporarily under suspicion for sympathies with
the enemy, but no proof was adduced of his enmity and, though he had
undoubtedly been born on the wrong side of the Border at Cranenburg,
which is the Prussian frontier station on the Rotterdam-Cologne line,
his name was undoubtedly van Heerden, which was Dutch. Change the "van"
to "von," said the carping critics, and he was a Hun, and undoubtedly
Germany was full of von Heerens and von Heerdens.
The doctor lived down criticism, lived down suspicion, and got together
a remunerative practice. He had the largest flat in the building, one
room of which was fitted up as a laboratory, for he had a passion for
research. The mysterious murder of John Millinborn had given him a
certain advertisement which had not been without its advantages. The
fact that he had been in attendance on the millionaire had brought him a
larger fame.
His theories as to how the murder had been committed by some one who had
got through the open window whilst the two men were out of the room had
been generally accepted, for the police had found footmarks on the
flowerbeds, over which the murderer must have passed. They had not,
however, traced the seedy-looking personage whom Mr. Kitson had seen.
This person had disappeared as mysteriously as he had arrived.
Three months after the murder the doctor stood on the steps of the broad
entrance-hall which led to the flats, watching the stream of pedestrians
passing. It was six o'clock in the evening and the streets were alive
with shop-girls and workers on their way home from business.
He smoked a cigarette and his interest was, perhaps, more apparent than
real. He had attended his last surgery case and the door of the "shop,"
with its sage-green windows, had been locked for the night.
His eyes wandered idly to the Oxford Street end of the thoroughfare, and
suddenly he started. A girl was walking toward him. At this hour there
was very little wheeled traffic, for Lattice Street is almost a
cul-de-sac, and she had taken the middle of the road. She was dressed
with that effective neatness which brings the wealthy and the work-girl
to a baffling level, in a blue serge costume of severe cut; a plain
white linen coat-collar and a small hat, which covered, but did not
hide, a mass of hair which, against the slanting sunlight at her back,
lent the illusion of a golden nimbus about her head.
The eyes were deep-set and wise with the wisdom which is found alike in
those who have suffered and those who have watched suffering. The nose
was straight, the lips scarlet and full. You might catalogue every
feature of Oliva Cresswell and yet arrive at no satisfactory explanation
for her charm.
Not in the clear ivory pallor of complexion did her charm lie. Nor in
the trim figure with its promising lines, nor in the poise of head nor
pride of carriage, nor in the ready laughter that came to those quiet
eyes. In no one particular quality of attraction did she excel. Rather
was her charm the charm of the perfect agglomeration of all those
characteristics which men find alluring and challenging.
She raised her hand with a free unaffected gesture, and greeted the
doctor with a flashing smile.
"Well, Miss Cresswell, I haven't seen you for quite a long time."
"Two days," she said solemnly, "but I suppose doctors who know all the
secrets of nature have some very special drug to sustain them in trials
like that."
"Don't be unkind to the profession," he laughed, "and don't be
sarcastic, to one so young. By the way, I have never asked you did you
get your flat changed?"
She shook her head and frowned.
"Miss Millit says she cannot move me."
"Abominable," he said, and was annoyed. "Did you tell her about Beale?"
She nodded vigorously.
"I said to her, says I," she had a trick of mimicry and dropped easily
into the southern English accent, "'Miss Millit, are you aware that the
gentleman who lives opposite to me has been, to my knowledge,
consistently drunk for two months--ever since he came to live at
Kroomans?' 'Does he annoy you?' says she. 'Drunken people always annoy
me,' says I. 'Mr. Beale arrives home every evening in a condition which
I can only describe as deplorable.'"
"What did she say?"
The girl made a little grimace and became serious.
"She said if he did not speak to me or interfere with me or frighten me
it was none of my business, or something to that effect." She laughed
helplessly. "Really, the flat is so wonderful and so cheap that one
cannot afford to get out--you don't know how grateful I am to you,
doctor, for having got diggings here at all--Miss Millit isn't keen on
single young ladies."
She sniffed and laughed.
"Why do you laugh?" he asked.
"I was thinking how queerly you and I met."
The circumstances of their meeting had indeed been curious. She was
employed as a cashier at one of the great West End stores. He had made
some sort of purchase and made payment in a five-pound note which had
proved to be counterfeit. It was a sad moment for the girl when the
forgery was discovered, for she had to make up the loss from her own
pocket and that was no small matter.
Then the miracle had happened. The doctor had arrived full of apologies,
had presented his card and explained. The note was one which he had been
keeping as a curiosity. It has been passed on him and was such an
excellent specimen that he intended having it framed but it had got
mixed up with his other money.
"You started by being the villain of the piece and ended by being my
good fairy," she said. "I should never have known there was a vacancy
here but for you. I should not have been admitted by the proper Miss
Millit but for the terror of your name."
She dropped her little hand lightly on his shoulder. It was a gesture of
good-comradeship.
She half-turned to go when an angry exclamation held her.
"What is it? Oh, I see--No. 4!"
She drew a little closer to the doctor's side and watched with narrowing
lids the approaching figure.
"Why does he do it--oh, why does he do it?" she demanded impatiently.
"How can a man be so weak, so wretchedly weak? There's nothing justifies
that!"
"That" was apparently trying to walk the opposite kerb as though it
were a tight-rope. Save for a certain disorder of attire, a protruding
necktie and a muddy hat, he was respectable enough. He was young and,
under other conditions, passably good looking. But with his fair hair
streaming over his forehead and his hat at the back of his head he
lacked fascination. His attempt, aided by a walking-stick used as a
balancing-pole, to keep his equilibrium on six inches of kerbing, might
have been funny to a less sensitive soul than Oliva's.
He slipped, recovered himself with a little whoop, slipped again, and
finally gave up the attempt, crossing the road to his home.
He recognized the doctor with a flourish of his hat.
"Glorious weather, my Escu-escu-lapius," he said, with a little slur in
his voice but a merry smile in his eye; "simply wonderful weather for
bacteria trypanosomes (got it) an' all the jolly little microbes."
He smiled at the doctor blandly, ignoring the other's significant glance
at the girl, who had drawn back so that she might not find herself
included in the conversation.
"I'm goin' to leave you, doctor," he went on, "goin' top floor, away
from the evil smells of science an' fatal lure of beauty. Top floor
jolly stiff climb when a fellow's all lit up like the Hotel
Doodledum--per arduis ad astra--through labour to the stars--fine motto.
Flying Corps' motto--my motto. Goo' night!"
Off came his hat again and he staggered up the broad stone stairs and
disappeared round a turn. Later they heard his door slam.
"Awful--and yet----"
"And yet?" echoed the doctor.
"I thought he was funny. I nearly laughed. But how terrible! He's so
young and he has had a decent education."
She shook her head sadly.
Presently she took leave of the doctor and made her way upstairs. Three
doors opened from the landing. Numbers 4, 6 and 8.
She glanced a little apprehensively at No. 4 as she passed, but there
was no sound or sign of the reveller, and she passed into No. 6 and
closed the door.
The accommodation consisted of two rooms, a bed-and a sitting-room, a
bath-room and a tiny kitchen. The rent was remarkably low, less than a
quarter of her weekly earnings, and she managed to live comfortably.
She lit the gas-stove and put on the kettle and began to lay the table.
There was a "tin of something" in the diminutive pantry, a small loaf
and a jug of milk, a tomato or two and a bottle of dressing--the high
tea to which she sat down (a little flushed of the face and quite happy)
was seasoned with content. She thought of the doctor and accounted
herself lucky to have so good a friend. He was so sensible, there was no
"nonsense" about him. He never tried to hold her hand as the stupid
buyers did, nor make clumsy attempts to kiss her as one of the partners
had done.
The doctor was different from them all. She could not imagine him
sitting by the side of a girl in a bus pressing her foot with his, or
accosting her in the street with a "Haven't we met before?"
She ate her meal slowly, reading the evening newspaper and dreaming at
intervals. It was dusk when she had finished and she switched on the
electric light. There was a shilling-in-the-slot meter in the bath-room
that acted eccentrically. Sometimes one shilling would supply light for
a week, at other times after two days the lights would flicker
spasmodically and expire.
She remembered that it was a perilous long time since she had bribed the
meter and searched her purse for a shilling. She found that she had
half-crowns, florins and sixpences, but she had no shillings. This, of
course, is the chronic condition of all users of the slot-meters, and
she accepted the discovery with the calm of the fatalist. She
considered. Should she go out and get change from the obliging
tobacconist at the corner or should she take a chance?
"If I don't go out you will," she said addressing the light, and it
winked ominously.
She opened the door and stepped into the passage, and as she did so the
lights behind her went out. There was one small lamp on the landing, a
plutocratic affair independent of shilling meters. She closed the door
behind her and walked to the head of the stairs. As she passed No. 4,
she noted the door was ajar and she stopped. She did not wish to risk
meeting the drunkard, and she turned back.
Then she remembered the doctor, he lived in No. 8. Usually when he was
at home there was a light in his hall which showed through the fanlight.
Now, however, the place was in darkness. She saw a card on the door and
walking closer she read it in the dim light.
+---------------------------------+
| |
| |
| BACK AT 12. WAIT. |
| |
| |
+---------------------------------+
He was out and was evidently expecting a caller. So there was nothing
for it but to risk meeting the exuberant Mr. Beale. She flew down the
stairs and gained the street with a feeling of relief.
The obliging tobacconist, who was loquacious on the subject of Germans
and Germany, detained her until her stock of patience was exhausted; but
at last she made her escape. Half-way across the street she saw the
figure of a man standing in the dark hallway of the chambers, and her
heart sank.
"Matilda, you're a fool," she said to herself.
Her name was not Matilda, but in moments of self-depreciation she was
wont to address herself as such.
She walked boldly up to the entrance and passed through. The man she saw
out of the corner of her eye but did not recognize. He seemed as little
desirous of attracting attention as she. She thought he was rather stout
and short, but as to this she was not sure. She raced up the stairs and
turned on the landing to her room. The door of No. 4 was still ajar--but
what was much more important, so was her door. There was no doubt about
it, between the edge of the door and the jamb there was a good two
inches of space, and she distinctly remembered not only closing it, but
also pushing it to make sure that it was fast. What should she do? To
her annoyance she felt a cold little feeling inside her and her hands
were trembling.
"If the lights were only on I'd take the risk," she thought; but the
lights were not on and it was necessary to pass into the dark interior
and into a darker bath-room--a room which is notoriously adaptable for
murder--before she could reach the meter.
"Rubbish, Matilda!" she scoffed quaveringly, "go in, you frightened
little rabbit--you forgot to shut the door, that's all."
She pushed the door open and with a shiver stepped inside.
Then a sound made her stop dead. It was a shuffle and a creak such as a
dog might make if he brushed against the chair.
"Who's there?" she demanded.
There was no reply.
"Who's there?"
She took one step forward and then something reached out at her. A big
hand gripped her by the sleeve of her blouse and she heard a deep
breathing.
She bit her lips to stop the scream that arose, and with a wrench tore
herself free, leaving a portion of a sleeve in the hands of the unknown.
She darted backward, slamming the door behind her. In two flying strides
she was at the door of No. 4, hammering with both her fists.
"Drunk or sober he is a man! Drunk or sober he is a man!" she muttered
incoherently.
Only twice she beat upon the door when it opened suddenly and Mr. Beale
stood in the doorway.
"What is it?"
She hardly noticed his tone.
"A man--a man, in my flat," she gasped, and showed her torn sleeve, "a
man...!"
He pushed her aside and made for the door.
"The key?" he said quickly.
With trembling fingers she extracted it from her pocket.
"One moment."
He disappeared into his own flat and presently came out holding an
electric torch. He snapped back the lock, put the key in his pocket and
then, to her amazement, he slipped a short-barrelled revolver from his
hip-pocket.
With his foot he pushed open the door and she watched him vanish into
the gloomy interior.
Presently came his voice, sharp and menacing:
"Hands up!"
A voice jabbered something excitedly and then she heard Mr. Beale speak.
"Is your light working?--you can come in, I have him in the
dining-room."
She stepped into the bath-room, the shilling dropped through the
aperture, the screw grated as she turned it and the lights sprang to
life.
In one corner of the room was a man, a white-faced, sickly looking man
with a head too big for his body. His hands were above his head, his
lower lip trembled in terror.
Mr. Beale was searching him with thoroughness and rapidity.
"No gun, all right, put your hands down. Now turn out your pockets."
The man said something in a language which the girl could not
understand, and Mr. Beale replied in the same tongue. He put the
contents, first of one pocket then of the other, upon the table, and the
girl watched the proceedings with open eyes.
"Hello, what's this?"
Beale picked up a card. Thereon was scribbled a figure which might have
been 6 or 4.
"I see," said Beale, "now the other pocket--you understand English, my
friend?"
Stupidly the man obeyed. A leather pocket-case came from an inside
pocket and this Beale opened.
Therein was a small packet which resembled the familiar wrapper of a
seidlitz powder. Beale spoke sharply in a language which the girl
realized was German, and the man shook his head. He said something which
sounded like "No good," several times.
"I'm going to leave you here alone for awhile," said Beale, "my friend
and I are going downstairs together--I shall not be long."
They went out of the flat together, the little man with the big head
protesting, and she heard their footsteps descending the stairs.
Presently Beale came up alone and walked into the sitting-room. And then
the strange unaccountable fact dawned on her--he was perfectly sober.
His eyes were clear, his lips firm, and the fair hair whose tendencies
to bedragglement had emphasized his disgrace was brushed back over his
head. He looked at her so earnestly that she grew embarrassed.
"Miss Cresswell," he said quietly. "I am going to ask you to do me a
great favour."
"If it is one that I can grant, you may be sure that I will," she
smiled, and he nodded.
"I shall not ask you to do anything that is impossible in spite of the
humorist's view of women," he said. "I merely want you to tell nobody
about what has happened to-night."
"Nobody?" she looked at him in astonishment. "But the doctor----"
"Not even the doctor," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "I ask you
this as a special favour--word of honour?"
She thought a moment.
"I promise," she said. "I'm to tell nobody about that horrid man from
whom you so kindly saved me----"
He lifted his head.
"Understand this, Miss Cresswell, please," he said: "I don't want you to
be under any misapprehension about that 'horrid man'--he was just as
scared as you, and he would not have harmed you. I have been waiting for
him all the evening."
"Waiting for him?"
He nodded again.
"Where?"
"In the doctor's flat," he said calmly, "you see, the doctor and I are
deadly rivals. We are rival scientists, and I was waiting for the hairy
man to steal a march on him."
"But, but--how did you get in."
"I had this key," he said holding up a small key, "remember, word of
honour! The man whom I have just left came up and wasn't certain whether
he had to go in No. 8, that's the doctor's, or No. 6--_and the one key
fits both doors!_"
He inserted the key which was in the lock of her door and it turned
easily.
"And this is what I was waiting for--it was the best the poor devil
could do."
He lifted the paper package and broke the seals. Unfolding the paper
carefully he laid it on the table, revealing a teaspoonful of what
looked like fine green sawdust.
"What is it?" she whispered fearfully.
Somehow she knew that she was in the presence of a big elementary
danger--something gross and terrible in its primitive force.
"That," said Mr. Beale, choosing his words nicely, "that is a passable
imitation of the Green Rust, or, as it is to me, the Green Terror."
"The Green Rust? What is the Green Rust--what can it do?" she asked in
bewilderment.
"I hope we shall never know," he said, and in his clear eyes was a hint
of terror.
CHAPTER III
PUNSONBY'S DISCHARGE AN EMPLOYEE
Oliva Cresswell rose with the final despairing buzz of her alarm clock
and conquered the almost irresistible temptation to close her eyes, just
to see what it felt like. Her first impression was that she had had no
sleep all night. She remembered going to bed at one and turning from
side to side until three. She remembered deciding that the best thing to
do was to get up, make some tea and watch the sun rise, and that whilst
she was deciding whether such a step was romantic or just silly, she
must have gone to sleep.
Still, four hours of slumber is practically no slumber to a healthy girl
and she swung her pyjama-ed legs over the side of the bed and spent
quite five minutes in a fatuous admiration of her little white feet.
With an effort she dragged herself to the bath-room and let the tap run.
Then she put on the kettle. Half an hour later she was feeling well but
unenthusiastic.
When she became fully conscious, which was on her way to business, she
realized she was worried. She had been made a party to a secret without
her wish--and the drunken Mr. Beale, that youthful profligate, had
really forced this confidence upon her. Only, and this she recalled with
a start which sent her chin jerking upward (she was in the bus at the
time and the conductor, thinking she was signalling him to stop, pulled
the bell), only Mr. Beale was surprisingly sober and masterful for one
so weak of character.
Ought she to tell the doctor--Dr. van Heerden, who had been so good a
friend of hers? It seemed disloyal, it was disloyal, horribly disloyal
to him, to hide the fact that Mr. Beale had actually been in the
doctor's room at night.
But was it a coincidence that the same key opened her door and the
doctor's? If it were so, it was an embarrassing coincidence. She must
change the locks without delay.
The bus set her down at the corner of Punsonby's great block. Punsonby's
is one of the most successful and at the same time one of the most
exclusive dress-houses in London, and Oliva had indeed been fortunate in
securing her present position, for employment at Punsonby's was almost
equal to Government employment in its permanency, as it was certainly
more lucrative in its pay.
As she stepped on to the pavement she glanced up at the big ornate
clock. She was in good time, she said to herself, and was pushing open
the big glass door through which employees pass to the various
departments when a hand touched her gently on the arm.
She turned in surprise to face Mr. Beale, looking particularly smart in
a well-fitting grey suit, a grey felt hat and a large bunch of violets
in his buttonhole.
"Excuse me, Miss Cresswell," he said pleasantly, "may I have one word
with you?"
She looked at him doubtfully.
"I rather wish you had chosen another time and another place, Mr.
Beale," she said frankly.
He nodded.
"I realize it is rather embarrassing," he said, "but unfortunately my
business cannot wait. I am a business man, you know," he smiled, "in
spite of my dissolute habits."
She looked at him closely, for she thought she detected a gentle mockery
behind his words, but he was not smiling now.
"I won't keep you more than two minutes," he went on, "but in that two
minutes I have a great deal to tell you. I won't bore you with the story
of my life."
This time she saw the amusement in his eyes and smiled against her will,
because she was not feeling particularly amused.
"I have a business in the city of London," he said, "and again I would
ask you to respect my confidence. I am a wheat expert."
"A wheat expert?" she repeated with a puzzled frown.
"It's a queer job, isn't it? but that's what I am. I have a vacancy in
my office for a confidential secretary. It is a nice office, the pay is
good, the hours are few and the work is light. I want to know whether
you will accept the position."
She shook her head, regarding him with a new interest, from which
suspicion was not altogether absent.
"It is awfully kind of you, Mr. Beale, and adds another to the debts I
owe you," she said, "but I have no desire to leave Punsonby's. It is
work I like, and although I am sure you are not interested in my
private business"--he could have told her that he was very much
interested in her private business, but he refrained--"I do not mind
telling you that I am earning a very good salary and I have no intention
or desire to change my situation."
His eyes twinkled.
"Ah well, that's my misfortune," he said, "there are only two things I
can say. The first is that if you work for me you will neither be
distressed nor annoyed by any habits of mine which you may have observed
and which may perhaps have prejudiced you against me. In the second
place, I want you to promise me that if you ever leave Punsonby's you
will give me the first offer of your services."
She laughed.
"I think you are very funny, Mr. Beale, but I feel sure that you mean
what you say, and that you would confine your--er--little eccentricities
to times outside of business hours. As far as leaving Punsonby's is
concerned I promise you that I will give you the first offer of my
invaluable services if ever I leave. And now I am afraid I must run
away. I am awfully obliged to you for what you did for me last night."
He looked at her steadily in the eye.
"I have no recollection of anything that happened last night," he said,
"and I should be glad if your memory would suffer the same lapse."
He shook hands with her, lifted his hat and turned abruptly away, and
she looked after him till the boom of the clock recalled her to the fact
that the head of the firm of Punsonby was a stickler for punctuality.
She went into the great cloak-room and hung up her coat and hat. As she
turned to the mirror to straighten her hair she came face to face with a
tall, dark girl who had been eyeing her thoughtfully.
"Good morning," said Oliva, and there was in her tone more of politeness
than friendship, for although these two girls had occupied the same
office for more than a year, there was between them an incompatibility
which no length of acquaintance could remove.
Hilda Glaum was of Swiss extraction, and something of a mystery. She
was good looking in a sulky, saturnine way, but her known virtues
stopped short at her appearance. She neither invited nor gave
confidence, and in this respect suited Oliva, but unlike Oliva, she made
no friends, entered into none of the periodical movements amongst the
girls, was impervious to the attractions of the river in summer and of
the Proms in winter, neither visited nor received.
"'Morning," replied the girl shortly; then: "Have you been upstairs?"
"No--why?"
"Oh, nothing."
Oliva mounted to the floor where her little office was. She and Hilda
dealt with the registered mail, extracted and checked the money that
came from the post-shoppers and sent on the orders to the various
departments.
Three sealed bags lay on her desk, and a youth from the postal
department waited to receive a receipt for them. This she scribbled,
after comparing the numbers attached to the seals with those inscribed
on the boy's receipt-book.
For some reason Hilda had not followed her, and she was alone and had
tumbled the contents of the first bag on to her desk when the managing
director of Punsonby's made a surprising appearance at the
glass-panelled door of her office.
He was a large, stout and important-looking man, bald and bearded. He
enjoyed an episcopal manner, and had a trick of pulling back his head
when he asked questions, as though he desired to evade the full force of
the answer.
He stood in the doorway and beckoned her out, and she went without any
premonition of what was in store for her.
"Ah, Miss Cresswell," he said. "I--ah--am sorry I did not see you before
you had taken off your coat and hat. Will you come to my office?"
"Certainly, Mr. White," said the girl, wondering what had happened.
He led the way with his majestic stride, dangling a pair of pince-nez
by their cord, as a fastidious person might carry a mouse by its tail,
and ushered her into his rosewood-panelled office.
"Sit down, sit down, Miss Cresswell," he said, and seating himself at
his desk he put the tips of his fingers together and looked up to the
ceiling for inspiration. "I am afraid, Miss Cresswell," he said, "that I
have--ah--an unpleasant task."
"An unpleasant task, Mr. White?" she said, with a sinking feeling inside
her.
He nodded.
"I have to tell you that Punsonby's no longer require your services."
She rose to her feet, looking down at him open-mouthed with wonder and
consternation.
"Not require my services?" she said slowly. "Do you mean that I am
discharged?"
He nodded again.
"In lieu of a month's notice I will give you a cheque for a month's
salary, plus the unexpired portion of this week's salary."
"But why am I being discharged? Why? Why?"
Mr. White, who had opened his eyes for a moment to watch the effect of
his lightning stroke, closed them again.
"It is not the practice of Punsonby's to give any reason for dispensing
with the services of its employees," he said oracularly, "it is
sufficient that I should tell you that hitherto you have given every
satisfaction, but for reasons which I am not prepared to discuss we must
dispense with your services."
Her head was in a whirl. She could not grasp what had happened. For five
years she had worked in the happiest circumstances in this great store,
where everybody had been kind to her and where her tasks had been
congenial. She had never thought of going elsewhere. She regarded
herself, as did all the better-class employees, as a fixture.
"Do I understand," she asked, "that I am to leave--at once?"
Mr. White nodded. He pushed the cheque across the table and she took it
up and folded it mechanically.
"And you are not going to tell me why?"
Mr. White shook his head.
"Punsonby's do nothing without a good reason," he said solemnly, feeling
that whatever happened he must make a good case for Punsonby's, and that
whoever was to blame for this unhappy incident it was not an august firm
which paid its fourteen per cent. with monotonous regularity. "We
lack--ah--definite knowledge to proceed any further in this matter
than--in fact, than we have proceeded. Definite knowledge" (the girl was
all the more bewildered by his cumbersome diplomacy) "definite knowledge
was promised but has not--in fact, has not come to hand. It is all very
unpleasant--very unpleasant," and he shook his head.
She bowed and turning, walked quickly from the room, passed to the lobby
where her coat was hung, put on her hat and left Punsonby's for ever.
It was when she had reached the street that, with a shock, she
remembered Beale's words and she stood stock-still, pinching her lip
thoughtfully. Had he known? Why had he come that morning, hours before
he was ordinarily visible--if the common gossip of Krooman Mansions be
worthy of credence?--and then as though to cap the amazing events of the
morning she saw him. He was standing on the corner of the street,
leaning on his cane, smoking a long cigarette through a much longer
holder, and he seemed wholly absorbed in watching a linesman, perched
high above the street, repairing a telegraph wire.
She made a step toward him, but stopped. He was so evidently engrossed
in the acrobatics of the honest workman in mid-air that he could not
have seen her and she turned swiftly and walked the other way.
She had not reached the end of the block before he was at her side.
"You are going home early, Miss Cresswell," he smiled.
She turned to him.
"Do you know why?" she asked.
"I don't know why--unless----"
"Unless what?"
"Unless you have been discharged," he said coolly.
Her brows knit.
"What do you know about my discharge?" she asked.
"Such things are possible," said Mr. Beale.
"Did you know I was going to be discharged?" she asked again.
He nodded.
"I didn't exactly know you would be discharged this morning, but I had
an idea you would be discharged at some time or other. That is why I
came with my offer."
"Which, of course, I won't accept," she snapped.
"Which, of course, you have accepted," he said quietly. "Believe me, I
know nothing more than that Punsonby's have been prevailed upon to
discharge you. What reason induced them to take that step, honestly I
don't know."
"But why did you think so?"
He was grave of a sudden.
"I just thought so," he said. "I am not going to be mysterious with you
and I can only tell you that I had reasons to believe that some such
step would be taken."
She shrugged her shoulders wearily.
"It is quite mysterious enough," she said. "Do you seriously want me to
work for you?"
He nodded.
"You didn't tell me your city address."
"That is why I came back," he said.
"Then you knew I was coming out?"
"I knew you would come out some time in the day."
She stared at him.
"Do you mean to tell me that you would have waited all day to give me
your address?"
He laughed.
"I only mean this," he replied, "that I should have waited all day."
It was a helpless laugh which echoed his.
"My address is 342 Lothbury," he went on, "342. You may begin work this
afternoon and----" He hesitated.
"And?" she repeated.
"And I think it would be wise if you didn't tell your friend, the
doctor, that I am employing you."
He was examining his finger-nails attentively as he spoke, and he did
not meet her eye.
"There are many reasons," he went on. "In the first place, I have
blotted my copy-book, as they say, in Krooman Mansions, and it might not
rebound to your credit."
"You should have thought of that before you asked me to come to you,"
she said.
"I thought of it a great deal," he replied calmly.
There was much in what he said, as the girl recognized. She blamed
herself for her hasty promise, but somehow the events of the previous
night had placed him on a different footing, had given him a certain
indefinable position to which the inebriate Mr. Beale had not aspired.
"I am afraid I am rather bewildered by all the mystery of it," she said,
"and I don't think I will come to the office to-day. To-morrow morning,
at what hour?"
"Ten o'clock," he said, "I will be there to explain your duties. Your
salary will be L5 a week. You will be in charge of the office, to which
I very seldom go, by the way, and your work will be preparing
statistical returns of the wheat-crops in all the wheat-fields of the
world for the last fifty years."
"It sounds thrilling," she said, and a quick smile flashed across his
face.
"It is much more thrilling than you imagine," were his parting words.
She reached Krooman Mansions just as the doctor was coming out, and he
looked at her in surprise.
"You are back early!"
Should she tell him? There was no reason why she shouldn't. He had been
a good friend of hers and she felt sure of his sympathy. It occurred to
her at that moment that Mr. Beale had been most unsympathetic, and had
not expressed one word of regret.
"Yes, I've been discharged," she exclaimed.
"Discharged? Impossible!"
She nodded.
"To prove that it is possible it has happened," she said cheerfully.
"My dear girl, this is monstrous! What excuse did they give?"
"None." This was said with a lightness of tone which did not reflect the
indignation she felt at heart.
"Did they give you no reason?"
"They gave me none. They gave me my month's cheque and just told me to
go off, and off I came like the well-disciplined wage-earner I am."
"But it is monstrous," he said indignantly. "I will go and see them. I
know one of the heads of the firm--at least, he is a patient of mine."
"You will do nothing of the kind," she replied firmly. "It really
doesn't matter."
"What are you going to do? By Jove!" he said suddenly, "what a splendid
idea! I want a clinical secretary."
The humour of it got the better of her, and she laughed in his face.
"What is the joke?" he asked.
"Oh, I am so sorry, doctor, but you mustn't think I am ungrateful, but I
am beginning to regard myself as one of the plums in the labour market."
"Have you another position?" he asked quickly.
"I have just accepted one," she said, and he did not disguise his
disappointment, which might even have been interpreted, were Oliva more
conceited, into absolute chagrin.
"You are very quick," said he, and his voice had lost some of its
enthusiasm. "What position have you taken?"
"I am going into an office in the city," she said.
"That will be dull. If you have settled it in your mind, of course, I
cannot alter your decision, but I would be quite willing to give you L5
or L6 a week, and the work would be very light."
She held out her hand, and there was a twinkle in her eye.
"London is simply filled with people who want to give me L5 a week for
work which is very light; really I am awfully grateful to you, doctor."
She felt more cheerful as she mounted the stairs than she thought would
have been possible had such a position been forecast and had she to
speculate upon the attitude of mind with which she would meet such a
misfortune.
Punsonby's, for all the humiliation of her dismissal, seemed fairly
unimportant. Some day she would discover the circumstances which had
decided the high gods who presided over the ready-made clothing business
in their action.
She unlocked the door and passed in, not without a comprehensive and an
amused glance which took in the sober front doors of her new employer
and her would-be employer.
"Sarah, your luck's in," she said, as she banged the door--Sarah was the
approving version of Matilda. "If the wheezy man fires you, be sure
there'll be a good angel waiting on the doorstep to offer you L20 a week
for 'phoning the office once a day."
It occurred to her that it would be wise to place on record her protest
against her summary dismissal, and she went to the little
bookshelf-writing-table where she kept her writing-material to indite
the epistle whilst she thought of it. It was one of those little
fumed-oak contraptions where the desk is formed by a hinged flap which
serves when not in use to close the desk.
She pulled out the two little supports, inserted the key in the lock,
but it refused to turn, for the simple reason that it was unlocked. She
had distinctly remembered that morning locking it after putting away the
bill which had arrived with the morning post.
She pulled down the flap slowly and stared in amazement at the little
which it hid. Every pigeon-hole had been ransacked and the contents were
piled up in a confused heap. The two tiny drawers in which she kept
stamps and nibs were out and emptied.
CHAPTER IV
THE LETTERS THAT WERE NOT THERE
She made a rapid survey of the documents. They were unimportant, and
consisted mainly of letters from the few girl friends she had made
during her stay at Punsonby's--old theatre programmes, recipes copied
from newspapers and bunches of snapshots taken on her last summer
excursion.
She arranged the things in some sort of rough order and made an
inspection of her bedroom. Here, too, there was evidence that somebody
had been searching the room. The drawers of her dressing-table were
open, and though the contents had been little disturbed, it was clear
that they had been searched. She made another discovery. The window of
the bedroom was open at the bottom. Usually it was open half-way down
from the top, and was fastened in that position by a patent catch. This
precaution was necessary, because the window looked upon a narrow iron
parapet which ran along the building and communicated with the
fire-escape. She looked out. Evidently the intruder had both come and
gone this way, and as evidently her return had disturbed him in his
inspection, for it was hardly likely he would leave her papers and
bureau in that state of confusion.
She made a brief inspection of the drawers in the dressing-table, and so
far as she could see nothing was missing. She went back to the
writing-bureau, mechanically put away the papers, little
memorandum-books and letters which had been dragged from their
pigeon-holes, then resting her elbow on the desk she sat, chin in hand,
her pretty forehead wrinkled in a frown, recalling the events of the
morning.
Who had searched her desk? What did they hope to discover? She had no
illusions that this was the work of a common thief. There was something
behind all this, something sinister and terrifying.
What association had the search with her summary dismissal and what did
the pompous Mr. White mean when he talked about definite knowledge?
Definite knowledge of what? She gave it up with a shrug. She was not as
much alarmed as disturbed. Life was grating a little, and she resented
this departure from the smooth course which it had hitherto run. She
resented the intrusion of Mr. Beale, who was drunk one moment and sober
the next, who had offices in the city which he did not visit and who
took such an inordinate interest in her affairs, and she resented him
all the more because, in some indefinable way, he had shaken her
faith--no, not shaken her faith, that was too strong a term--he had
pared the mild romance which Dr. van Heerden's friendship represented.
She got up from the table and paced the room, planning her day. She
would go out to lunch and indulge in the dissipation of a matinee.
Perhaps she would stay out to dinner and come back--she shivered
unconsciously and looked round the room. Somehow she did not look
forward to an evening spent alone in her flat.
"Matilda, you're getting maudlin," she said, "you are getting romantic,
too. You are reading too many sensational novels and seeing too many
sensational films."
She walked briskly into her bedroom, unhooked a suit from the wardrobe
and laid it on the bed.
At that moment there came a knock at the door. She put down the
clothes-brush which was in her hand, walked out into the hall, opened
the door and stepped back. Three men stood in the passage without. Two
were strangers with that curious official look which the plain-clothes
policeman can never wholly eradicate from his bearing. The third was Mr.
White, more pompous and more solemn than ever.
"Miss Cresswell?" asked one of the strangers.
"That is my name."
"May we come inside? I want to see you."
She led the way to her little sitting-room. Mr. White followed in the
rear.
"Your name is Oliva Cresswell. You were recently employed by Punsonby's,
Limited, as cashier."
"That is true," she said, wondering what was coming next.
"Certain information was laid against you," said the spokesman, "as a
result of which you were discharged from the firm this morning?"
She raised her eyebrows in indignant surprise.
"Information laid against me?" she said haughtily. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, that a charge was made against you that you were converting
money belonging to the firm to your own use. That was the charge, I
believe, sir?" He turned to Mr. White.
Mr. White nodded slowly.
"It is a lie. It is an outrageous lie," cried the girl, turning flaming
eyes upon the stout managing director of Punsonby's. "You know it's a
lie, Mr. White! Thousands of pounds have passed through my hands and I
have never--oh, it's cruel."
"If you will only keep calm for a little while, miss," said the man, who
was not unused to such outbreaks, "I will explain that at the moment of
your dismissal there was no evidence against you."
"No definite knowledge of your offence," murmured Mr. White.
"And now?" demanded the girl.
"Now we have information, miss, to the effect that three registered
letters, containing in all the sum of L63----"
"Fourteen and sevenpence," murmured Mr. White.
"Sixty-three pounds odd," said the detective, "which were abstracted by
you yesterday are concealed in this flat."
"In the left-hand bottom drawer of your bureau," murmured Mr. White.
"That is the definite knowledge which has come to us--it is a great
pity."
The girl stared from one to the other.
"Three registered envelopes," she said incredulously; "in this flat?"
"In the bottom drawer of your bureau," mumbled Mr. White, who stood
throughout the interview with his eyes closed, his hands clasped in
front of him, a picture of a man performing a most painful act of duty.
"I have a warrant----" began the detective.
"You need no warrant," said the girl quietly, "you are at liberty to
search this flat or bring a woman to search me. I have nothing in these
rooms which I am ashamed that you should see."
The detective turned to his companion.
"Fred," he said, "just have a look over that writing-bureau. Is it
locked, miss?"
She had closed and locked the secretaire and she handed the man the key.
The detective who had done the speaking passed into the bedroom, and the
girl heard him pulling out the drawers. She did not move from where she
stood confronting her late employer, still preserving his attitude of
somnolent detachment.
"Mr. White," she asked quietly, "I have a right to know who accused me
of stealing from your firm."
He made no reply.
"Even a criminal has a right to that, you know," she said, recovering
some of her poise. "I suppose that you have been missing things for
quite a long while--people always miss things for quite a long while
before the thief is discovered, according to the Sunday papers."
"I do not read newspapers published on the Lord's Day," said Mr. White
reproachfully. "I do not know the habits of the criminal classes, but as
you say, and I fear I must convey the gist of your speech to the
officers of the law, money has been missed from your department for a
considerable time. As to your accuser, acting as--ah--as a good citizen
and performing the duties which are associated with good-citizenship, I
cannot reveal his, her, or their name."
She was eyeing him curiously with a gleam of dormant laughter in her
clear eyes. Then she heard a hurried footstep in the little passage and
remembered that the door had been left open and she looked round.
The new-comer was Dr. van Heerden.
"What is this I hear?" he demanded fiercely, addressing White. "You dare
accuse Miss Cresswell of theft?"
"My dear doctor," began White.
"It is an outrage," said the doctor. "It is disgraceful, Mr. White. I
will vouch for Miss Cresswell with my life."
The girl stopped him with a laugh.
"Please don't be dramatic, doctor. It's really a stupid mistake. I
didn't know you knew Mr. White."
"It is a disgraceful mistake," said the doctor violently. "I am
surprised at you, White."
Mr. White could not close his eyes any tighter than they were closed. He
passed the responsibility for the situation upon an invisible Providence
with one heaving shrug of his shoulders.
"It is awfully kind of you to take this interest, doctor," said the
girl, putting out her hands to him, "it was just like you."
"Is there anything I can do?" he asked earnestly. "You can depend upon
me to the last shilling if any trouble arises out of this."
"No trouble will arise out of it," she said. "Mr. White thinks that I
have stolen money and that that money is hidden in the flat--by the way,
who told you that I had been accused?"
For a moment he was taken aback; then:
"I saw the police officers go into your flat. I recognized them, and as
they were accompanied by White, and you had been dismissed this morning,
I drew my own conclusions."
It was at this moment that the detective came back from the bedroom.
"There's nothing there," he said.
Mr. White opened his eyes to their fullest extent.
"In the bottom drawer of the bureau?" he asked incredulously.
"Neither in the bottom drawer nor the top drawer," said the detective.
"Have you found anything, Fred?"
"Nothing," said the other man.
"Have a look behind those pictures."
They turned up the corners of the carpets, searched her one little
bookcase, looked under the tables, an unnecessary and amusing
proceeding in the girl's eyes till the detective explained with that
display of friendliness which all policemen show to suspected persons
whom they do not at heart suspect, it was not an uncommon process for
criminals to tack the proceeds of bank-note robberies to the underside
of the table.
"Well, miss," said the detective at last, with a smile, "I hope we
haven't worried you very much. What do you intend doing, sir?" He
addressed White.
"Did you search the bottom drawer of the bureau?" said Mr. White again.
"I searched the bottom drawer of the bureau, the top drawer and the
middle drawer," said the detective patiently. "I searched the back of
the bureau, the trinket-drawer, the trinket-boxes----"
"And it was not there?" said Mr. White, as though he could not believe
his ears.
"It was not there. What I want to know is, do you charge this young
lady? If you charge her, of course you take all the responsibility for
the act, and if you fail to convict her you will be liable to an action
for false arrest."
"I know, I know, I know," said Mr. White, with remarkable asperity in
one so placid. "No, I do not charge her. I am sorry you have been
inconvenienced"--he turned to the girl in his most majestic manner--"and
I trust that you bear no ill-will."
He offered a large and flabby hand, but Oliva ignored it.
"Mind you don't trip over the mat as you go out," she said, "the passage
is rather dark."
Mr. White left the room, breathing heavily.
"Excuse me one moment," said the doctor in a low voice. "I have a few
words to say to White."
"Please don't make a fuss," said Oliva, "I would rather the matter
dropped where it is."
He nodded, and strode out after the managing director of Punsonby's.
They made a little group of four.
"Can I see you in my flat for a moment, Mr. White?"
"Certainly," said Mr. White cheerfully.
"You don't want us any more?" asked the detective.
"No," said Mr. White; then: "Are you quite sure you searched the bottom
drawer of the bureau?"
"Perfectly sure," said the detective irritably, "you don't suppose I've
been at this job for twenty years and should overlook the one place
where I expected to find the letters."
Mr. White was saved the labour of framing a suitable retort, for the
door of Mr. Beale's flat was flung open and Mr. Beale came forth. His
grey hat was on the back of his head and he stood erect with the aid of
the door-post, surveying with a bland and inane smile the little knot of
men.
"Why," he said jovially, "it's the dear old doctor, and if my eyes don't
deceive me, it's the jolly old Archbishop."
Mr. White brindled. That he was known as the Archbishop in the intimate
circles of his acquaintances afforded him a certain satisfaction. That a
perfect stranger, and a perfectly drunken stranger at that, should
employ a nickname which was for the use of a privileged few, distressed
him.
"And," said the swaying man by the door, peering through the
half-darkness: "Is it not Detective-Sergeant Peterson and Constable
Fairbank? Welcome to this home of virtue."
The detective-sergeant smiled but said nothing. The doctor fingered his
beard indecisively, but Mr. White essayed to stride past, his chin in
the air, ignoring the greeting, but Mr. Beale was too quick for him. He
lurched forward, caught the lapels of the other's immaculate frock-coat
and held himself erect thereby.
"My dear old Whitey," he said.
"I don't know you, sir," cried Mr. White, "will you please unhand me?"
"Don't know me, Whitey? Why you astonishing old thing!"
He slipped his arm over the other's shoulder in an attitude of
affectionate regard. "Don't know old Beale?"
"I never met you before," said Mr. White, struggling to escape.
"Bless my life and soul," said Mr. Beale, stepping back, shocked and
hurt, "I call you to witnesh, Detective-Sergeant Peterson and amiable
Constable Fairbank and learned Dr. van Heerden, that he has denied me.
And it has come to this," he said bitterly, and leaning his head against
the door-post he howled like a dog.
"I say, stop your fooling, Beale," said the doctor angrily, "there's
been very serious business here, and I should thank you not to
interfere."
Mr. Beale wiped imaginary tears from his eyes, grasped Mr. White's
unwilling hand and shook it vigorously, staggered back to his flat and
slammed the door behind him.
"Do you know that man?" asked the doctor, turning to the detective.
"I seem to remember his face," said the sergeant. "Come on, Fred. Good
morning, gentlemen."
They waited till the officers were downstairs and out of sight, and then
the doctor turned to the other and in a different tone from any he had
employed, said:
"Come into my room for a moment, White," and Mr. White followed him
obediently.
They shut the door and passed into the study, with its rows of heavily
bound books, its long table covered with test-tubes and the
paraphernalia of medical research.
"Well," said White, dropping into a chair, "what happened?"
"That is what I want to know," said the doctor.
He took a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it and the two men
looked at one another without speaking.
"Do you think she had the letters and hid them?"
"Impossible," replied the doctor briefly.
White grunted, took a cigar from a long leather case, bit off the end
savagely and reached out his hand for a match.
"'The best-laid schemes of mice and men!'" he quoted.
"Oh, shut up," said the doctor savagely.
He was pacing the study with long strides. He stopped at one end of the
room staring moodily through the window, his hands thrust in his
pockets.
"I wonder what happened," he said again. "Well, that can wait. Now just
tell me exactly how matters stand in regard to you and Punsonby's."
"I have all the figures here," said Mr. White, as he thrust his hand
into the inside pocket of his frock-coat, "I can raise L40,000 by
debentures and--hello, what's this?"
He drew from his pocket a white packet, fastened about by a rubber band.
This he slipped off and gasped, for in his hands were three registered
letters, and they were addressed to Messrs. Punsonby, and each had been
slit open.
CHAPTER V
THE MAN WITH THE BIG HEAD
No. 342, Lothbury, is a block of business offices somewhat unpretentious
in their approach but of surprising depth and importance when explored.
Oliva Cresswell stood for awhile in the great lobby, inspecting the
names of the occupants, which were inscribed on porcelain slips in two
big frames on each wall of the vestibule.
After a lengthy search she discovered the name of the Beale Agency under
the heading "fourth floor" and made her way to the elevator.
Mr. Beale's office was at the end of a seemingly interminable corridor
and consisted, as she was to find, of an outer and an inner chamber. The
outer was simply furnished with a table, two chairs and a railed fence
bisected with a little wooden gateway.
A boy sat at one table, engaged in laborious exercise on a typewriter
with one finger of one hand.
He jumped up as she came through the door.
"Miss Cresswell?" he asked. "Mr. Beale will see you."
He opened the wicket-gate and led the way to a door marked "Private."
It was Beale who opened the door in response to the knock.
"Come in, Miss Cresswell," he said cheerily, "I didn't expect you for
half an hour."
"I thought I'd start well," she smiled.
She had had many misgivings that morning, and had spent a restless night
debating the wisdom of engaging herself to an employer whose known
weakness had made his name a by-word. But a promise was a promise and,
after all, she told herself, her promise was fulfilled when she had
given the new work a trial.
"Here is your desk," he said, indicating a large office table in the
centre of the room, "and here is my little library. You will note that
it mainly consists of agricultural returns and reports--do you read
French?" She nodded. "Good, and Spanish--that's rather too much to
expect, isn't it?"
"I speak and read Spanish very well," she said. "When I was a little
girl I lived around in Paris, Lyons, and Barcelona--my first regular
work--the first I was paid for--was in the Anglo-Spanish Cable office in
Barcelona."
"That's lucky," he said, apparently relieved, "though I could have
taught you the few words that it is necessary you should know to
understand the Argentine reports. What I particularly want you to
discover--and you will find two or three hundred local guide-books on
that shelf at the far end of the room, and these will help you a great
deal--is the exact locations of all the big wheat-growing districts, the
number of hectares under cultivation in normal times, the method by
which the wheat areas are divided--by fences, roads, etc.--the average
size of the unbroken blocks of wheatland and, if possible, the width of
the roads or paths which divide them."
"Gracious!" she cried in dismay.
"It sounds a monumental business, but I think you will find it simple.
The Agricultural Department of the United States Government, for
instance, tabulate all those facts. For example, they compel farmers in
certain districts to keep a clear space between each lot so that in
case of the crops being fired, the fire may be isolated. Canada, the
Argentine and Australia have other methods."
She had seated herself at the desk and was jotting down a note of her
duties.
"Anything more?" she asked.
"Yes--I want the names of the towns in the centre of the wheat-growing
areas, a list of the hotels in those towns. The guide-books you will
find up to date, and these will inform you on this subject. Particularly
do I want hotels noted where automobiles can be hired, the address of
the local bank and the name of the manager and, where the information is
available, the name of the chief constable, sheriff or chef
d'gendarmerie in each district."
She looked up at him, her pencil poised.
"Are you serious--of course, I'll do all this, but somehow it reminds me
of a story I once read----"
"I know it," said Beale promptly, "it is 'The Case of the Red-Haired
Man,' one of Doyle's stories about a man who, to keep him away from his
shop, was employed on the useless task of copying the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_--no, I am asking you to do serious work, Miss
Cresswell--work which I do not want spoken about."
He sat on the edge of the table, looking down at her, and if his eyes
were smiling it was because that was their natural expression. She had
never seen them when they did not hold the ghost of some joke inwardly
enjoyed.
But her instinct told her that he was very much in earnest and that the
task he had set her was one which had reason behind it.
"Take the districts first and work up the hotels, et cetera," he
suggested, "you will find it more interesting than a novel. Those little
books," he pointed to the crowded shelf by the window, "will carry you
to stations and ranches and farms all over the world. You shall be
wafted through Manitoba, and cross the United States from New England to
California. You will know Sydney and Melbourne and the great cornland at
the back of beyond. And you'll sit in cool patios and sip iced drinks
with Senor Don Perfecto de Cuba who has ridden in from his rancio to
inquire the price of May wheat, or maybe you'll just amble through India
on an elephant, sleeping in bungalows, listening to the howling of
tigers, mosquitoes----"
"Now I know you're laughing at me," she smiled.
"Not altogether," he said quietly; then: "Is there any question you'd
like to ask me? By the way, the key of the office is in the right-hand
drawer; go to lunch when you like and stay away as long as you like.
Your cheque will be paid you every Friday morning."
"But where----?" She looked round the room. "Where do you work?"
"I don't work," he said promptly, "you do the work and I get the honour
and glory. When I come in I will sit on the edge of your desk, which is
not graceful but it is very comfortable. There is one question I meant
to ask you. You said you were in a cable office--do you add to your
accomplishments a working knowledge of the Morse Code?"
She nodded.
"I can see you being useful. If you need me"--he jerked his head toward
a telephone on a small table--"call 8761 Gerrard."
"And where is that?" she asked.
"If I thought you were anything but a very sane young lady, I should
tell you that it is the number of my favourite bar," he said gravely. "I
will not, however, practise that harmless deception upon you."
Again she saw the dancing light of mischief in his eyes.
"You're a queer man," she said, "and I will not make myself ridiculous
by speaking to you for your good."
She heard his soft laughter as the door closed behind him and, gathering
an armful of the guide-books, she settled down for a morning's work
which proved even more fascinating than his fanciful pictures had
suggested. She found herself wondering to what use all this information
she extracted could be put. Was Mr. Beale really a buyer or was he
interested in the sale of agricultural machinery? Why should he want to
know that Jonas Scobbs was the proprietor of Scobbs' Hotel and General
Emporium in the town of Red Horse Valley, Alberta, and what
significance attached to the fact that he had an automobile for hire or
that he ran a coach every Wednesday to Regina?
Then she fell to speculating upon the identity and appearance of this
man who bore this weird name of Scobbs. She pictured him an elderly man
with chin whiskers who wore his pants thrust into top-boots. And why was
Red Horse Valley so called? These unexpected and, to her, hitherto
unknown names of places and people set in train most interesting
processions of thought that slid through the noisy jangle of traffic,
and coloured the drab walls of all that was visible of the City of
London through the window with the white lights and purple shadows of
dream prairies.
When she looked at her watch--being impelled to that act by the
indescribable sensation of hunger--she was amazed to discover that it
was three o'clock.
She jumped up and went to the outer office in search of the boy who, she
faintly remembered, had erupted into her presence hours before with a
request which she had granted without properly hearing. He was not in
evidence. Evidently his petition had also been associated with the
gnawing pangs which assail boyhood at one o'clock in the afternoon.
She was turning back to her office, undecided as to whether she should
remain until his return or close the office entirely, when the shuffle
of feet brought her round.
The outer office was partitioned from the entrance by a long "fence,"
the farther end of which was hidden by a screen of wood and frosted
glass. It was from behind that screen that the noise came and she
remembered that she had noted a chair there--evidently a place where
callers waited.
"Who is there?" she asked.
There was a creak as the visitor rose.
"Eggscuse, mattam," said a wheezy voice, "I gall to eng-vire for Mister
Peale, isn't it?"
He shuffled forward into view, a small man with a dead white face and a
head of monstrous size.
She was bereft of speech and could only look at him, for this was the
man she had found in her rooms the night before her dismissal--the man
who carried the Green Rust.
Evidently he did not recognize her.
"Mister Peale, he tolt me, I must gall him mit der telephone, but der
nomber she vas gone oudt of mine head!"
He blinked at her with his short-sighted eyes and laid a big hairy hand
on the gate.
"You must--you mustn't come in," she said breathlessly. "I will call Mr.
Beale--sit--sit down again."
"Sch," he said obediently, and shuffled back to his chair, "dell him der
Herr Brofessor it was."
The girl took up the telephone receiver with a shaking hand and gave the
number. It was Beale's voice that answered her.
"There's a man here," she said hurriedly, "a--a--the man--who was in my
room--the Herr Professor."
She heard his exclamation of annoyance.
"I'm sorry," and if she could judge by the inflection of his voice his
sorrow was genuine. "I'll be with you in ten minutes--he's quite a
harmless old gentleman----"
"Hurry, please."
She heard the "click" of his receiver and replaced her own slowly. She
did not attempt to go back to the outer office, but waited by the closed
door. She recalled the night, the terror of that unknown presence in her
darkened flat, and shuddered. Then Beale, surprisingly sober, had come
in and he and the "burglar" had gone away together.
What had these two, Mr. Beale and the "Herr Professor," in common? She
heard the snap of the outer door, and Beale's voice speaking quickly. It
was probably German--she had never acquired the language and hardly
recognized it, though the guttural "Zu befel, Herr Peale" was distinct.
She heard the shuffle of the man's feet and the closing of the outer
door and then Beale came in, and his face was troubled.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am that the old man called--I'd forgotten
that he was likely to come."
She leant against the table, both hands behind her.
"Mr. Beale," she said, "will you give me straightforward answers to a
number of plain questions?"
He nodded.
"If I can," he said.
"Is the Herr Professor a friend of yours?"
"No--I know him and in a way I am sorry for him. He is a German who
pretends to be Russian. Immensely poor and unprepossessing to a painful
degree, but a very clever scientist. In fact, a truly great analytical
chemist who ought to be holding a good position. He told me that he had
the best qualifications, and I quite believe him, but that his physical
infirmities, his very freakishness had ruined him."
Her eyes softened with pity--the pity of the strong for the weak, of the
beautiful for the hideous.
"If that is true----" she began, and his chin went up. "I beg your
pardon, I know it is true. It is tragic, but--did you know him before
you met him in my room?"
He hesitated.
"I knew him both by repute and by sight," he said. "I knew the work he
was engaged on and I guessed why he was engaged. But I had never spoken
to him."
"Thank you--now for question number two. You needn't answer unless you
wish."
"I shan't," he said.
"That's frank, anyway. Now tell me, Mr. Beale, what is all this mystery
about? What is the Green Rust? Why do you pretend to be a--a drunkard
when you're not one?" (It needed some boldness to say this, and she
flushed with the effort to shape the sentence.) "Why are you always
around so providentially when you're needed, and," here she smiled (as
he thought) deliciously, "why weren't you round yesterday, when I was
nearly arrested for theft?"
He was back on the edge of the table, evidently his favourite
resting-place, she thought, and he ticked her questions off on his
fingers.
"Question number one cannot be answered. Question number two, why do I
pretend to be a--a drunkard?" he mimicked her audaciously. "There are
other things which intoxicate a man beside love and beer, Miss
Cresswell."
"How gross!" she protested. "What are they?"
"Work, the chase, scientific research and the first spring scent of the
hawthorn," he said solemnly. "As to the third question, why was I not
around when you were nearly arrested? Well, I was around. I was in your
flat when you came in and escaped along the fire parapet."
"Mr. Beale!" she gasped. "Then it was you--you are a detective!"
"I turned your desk and dressing-chest upside down? Yes, it was I," he
said without shame, ignoring the latter part of the sentence. "I was
looking for something."
"You were looking for something?" she repeated. "What were you looking
for?"
"Three registered envelopes which were planted in your flat yesterday
morning," he said, "and what's more I found 'em!"
She put her hand to her forehead in bewilderment.
"Then you----"
"Saved you from a cold, cold prison cell. Have you had any lunch? Why,
you're starving!"
"But----"
"Bread and butter is what you want," said the practical Mr. Beale, "with
a large crisp slice of chicken and stacks of various vegetables."
And he hustled her from the office.
CHAPTER VI
MR. SCOBBS OF RED HORSE VALLEY
Mr. White, managing director of Punsonby's Store, was a man of simple
tastes. He had a horror of extravagance and it was his boast that he had
never ridden in a taxi-cab save as the guest of some other person who
paid. He travelled by tube or omnibus from the Bayswater Road, where he
lived what he described as his private life. He lunched in the staff
dining-room, punctiliously paying his bill; he dined at home in solitary
state, for he had neither chick nor child, heir or wife. Once an elder
sister had lived with him and had died (according to the popularly
accepted idea) of slow starvation, for he was a frugal man.
It seems the fate of apparently rich and frugal men that they either die
and leave their hoardings to the State or else they disappear, leaving
behind them monumental debts. The latter have apparently no vices; even
the harassed accountant who disentangles their estates cannot discover
the channel through which their hundreds of thousands have poured. The
money has gone and, if astute detectives bring back the defaulter from
the pleasant life which the Southern American cities offer to rich
idlers, he is hopelessly vague as to the method by which it went.
Mr. Lassimus White was the managing director and general manager of
Punsonby's. He held, or was supposed to hold, a third of the shares in
that concern, shares which he had inherited from John Punsonby, his
uncle, and the founder of the firm. He drew a princely salary and a
substantial dividend, he was listed as a debenture holder and was
accounted a rich man.
But Mr. White was not rich. His salary and his dividends were absorbed
by a mysterious agency which called itself the Union Jack Investment and
Mortgage Corporation, which paid premiums on Mr. White's heavy life
insurance and collected the whole or nearly the whole of his income. His
secret, well guarded as it was, need be no secret to the reader. Mr.
White, who had never touched a playing-card in his life and who grew
apoplectic at the sin and shame of playing the races, was an inveterate
gambler. His passion was for Sunken Treasure Syndicates, formed to
recover golden ingots from ships of the Spanish Armada; for companies
that set forth to harness the horse-power of the sea to the services of
commerce; for optimistic companies that discovered radium mines in the
Ural Mountains--anything which promised a steady three hundred per cent.
per annum on an initial investment had an irresistible attraction for
Mr. White, who argued that some day something would really fulfil
expectations and his losses would be recovered.
In the meantime he was in the hands of Moss Ibramovitch, trading as the
Union Jack Investment and Mortgage Corporation, licensed and registered
as a moneylender according to law. And being in the hands of this
gentleman, was much less satisfactory and infinitely more expensive than
being in the hands of the bankruptcy officials.
In the evening of the day Oliva Cresswell had started working for her
new employer, Mr. White stalked forth from his gloomy house and his
departure was watched by the two tough females who kept house for him,
with every pleasure. He strutted eastward swinging his umbrella, his
head well back, his eyes half-closed, his massive waistcoat curving
regally. His silk hat was pushed back from his forehead and the
pince-nez he carried, but so seldom wore, swung from the cord he held
before him in that dead-mouse manner which important men affect.
He had often been mistaken for a Fellow of the Royal Society, so learned
and detached was his bearing. Yet no speculation upon the origin of
species or the function of the nebulae filled his mind.
At a moment of great stress and distraction, Dr. van Heerden had arisen
above his horizon, and there was something in Dr. van Heerden's manner
which inspired confidence and respect. They had met by accident at a
meeting held to liquidate the Shining Strand Alluvial Gold Mining
Company--a concern which had started forth in the happiest circumstances
to extract the fabulous riches which had been discovered by an American
philanthropist (he is now selling Real Estate by correspondence) on a
Southern Pacific island.
Van Heerden was not a shareholder, but he was intensely interested in
the kind of people who subscribe for shares in Dreamland Gold mines. Mr.
White had attended incognito--his shares were held in the name of his
lawyer, who was thinking seriously of building an annex to hold the
unprofitable scrip.
Mr. White was gratified to discover a kindred soul who believed in this
kind of speculation.
It was to the doctor's apartment that he was now walking. That gentleman
met him in the entrance and accompanied him to his room. There was a
light in the fanlight of Oliva's flat, for she had brought some of her
work home to finish, but Mr. Beale's flat was dark.
This the doctor noted before he closed his own door, and switched on the
light.
"Well, White, have you made up your mind?" he demanded without
preliminary.
"I--ah--have and I--ah--have not," said the cautious adventurer. "Forty
thousand is a lot of money--a fortune, one might say--yes, a fortune."
"Have you raised it?"
Mr. White sniffed his objection to this direct examination.
"My broker has very kindly realized the debentures--I am--ah--somewhat
indebted to him, and it was necessary to secure his permission and--yes,
I have the money at my bank."
He gazed benignly at the other, as one who conferred a favour by the
mere bestowal of his confidences.
"First, doctor--forgive me if I am a little cautious; first I say, it is
necessary that I should know a little more about your remarkable scheme,
for remarkable I am sure it is."
The doctor poured out a whisky and soda and passed the glass to his
visitor, who smilingly waved it aside.
"Wine is a mocker," he said, "nothing stronger than cider has ever
passed my lips--pray do not be offended."
"And yet I seem to remember that you held shares in the Northern Saloon
Trust," said the doctor, with a little curl of his bearded lips.
"That," said Mr. White hastily, "was a purely commercial--ah--affair. In
business one must exploit even the--ah--sins and weaknesses of our
fellows."
"As to my scheme," said the doctor, changing the subject, "I'm afraid I
must ask you to invest in the dark. I can promise you that you will get
your capital back a hundred times over. I realize that you have heard
that sort of thing before, and that my suggestion has all the appearance
of a confidence trick, except that I do not offer you even the
substantial security of a gold brick. I may not use your money--I
believe that I shall not. On the other hand, I may. If it is to be of
any use to me it must be in my hands very soon--to-morrow."
He wandered restlessly about the room as he spoke, and jerked his
sentences out now to Mr. White's face, now over his shoulder.
"I will tell you this," he went on, "my scheme within the narrow
interpretation of the law is illegal--don't mistake me, there is no
danger to those who invest in ignorance. I will bear the full burden of
responsibility. You can come in or you can stay out, but if you come in
I shall ask you never to mention the name of the enterprise to a living
soul."
"The Green Rust Syndicate?" whispered Mr. White fearfully. "What--ah--is
Green Rust?"
"I have offered the scheme to my--to a Government. But they are scared
of touching it. Scared, by Jove!" He threw up his arms to the ceiling
and his voice trembled with passion. "Germany scared! And there was a
time when Europe cringed at the clank of the Prussian sword! When the
lightest word of Potsdam set ministries trembling in Petrograd and
London. You told me the other day you were a pacifist during the war and
that you sympathized with Prussia in her humiliation. I am a Prussian,
why should I deny it? I glory in the religion of might--I believe it
were better that the old civilization were stamped into the mud of
oblivion than that Prussian Kultur should be swept away by the
licentious French, the mercenary English----"
"British," murmured Mr. White.
"And the dollar-hunting Yankees--but I'm making a fool of myself."
With an effort he regained his calm.
"The war's over and done with. As I say, I offered my Government my
secret. They thought it good but could not help me. They were afraid
that the League would come to learn they were supporting it. They'll
help me in other ways--innocent ways. If this scheme goes through they
will put the full resources of the State at my disposal."
Mr. White rose, groped for his hat and cleared his throat.
"Dr.--ah--van Heerden, you may be sure that I shall--ah--respect your
confidence. With your very natural indignation I am in complete
sympathy.
"But let us forget, ah--that you have spoken at all about the scheme in
any detail--especially in so far as to its legality or otherwise. Let us
forget, sir "--Mr. White thrust his hand into the bosom of his coat, an
attitude he associated with the subtle rhetoric of statesmanship. "Let
us forget all, save this, that you invite me to subscribe L40,000 to a
syndicate for--ah--let us say model dwellings for the working classes,
and that I am willing to subscribe, and in proof of my willingness will
send you by the night's post a cheque for that amount. Good night,
doctor."
He shook hands, pulled his hat down upon his head, opened the door and
ran into the arms of a man whose hand was at that moment raised to press
the electric bell-push by the side of the door.
Both started back.
"Excuse me," mumbled Mr. White, and hurried down the stairs.
Dr. van Heerden glared at the visitor, white with rage.
"Come in, you fool!" he hissed, and half-dragged the man into his room,
"what made you leave Scotland?"
"Scotland I hate!" said the visitor huskily. "Sticking a fellow away in
the wilds of the beastly mountains, eh? That's not playing the game, my
cheery sportsman."
"When did you arrive?" asked van Heerden quickly.
"Seven p.m. Travelled third class! Me! Is it not the most absurd
position for a man of my parts--third class, with foul and common
people--I'd like to rip them all up--I would, by heavens!"
The doctor surveyed the coarse, drink-bloated face, the loose, weak
mouth, half-smiled at the vanity of the dangling monocle and pointed to
the decanter.
"You did wrong to come," he said, "I have arranged your passage to
Canada next week."
"I'll not go!" said the man, tossing down a drink and wiping his lips
with a not over-clean handkerchief. "Curse me, van Heerden, why should I
hide and fly like a--a----"
"Like a man who escaped from Cayenne," suggested the doctor, "or like a
man who is wanted by the police of three countries for crimes ranging
from arson to wilful murder."
The man shuddered.
"All fair fights, my dear fellow," he said more mildly, "if I hadn't
been a boastful, drunken sot, you wouldn't have heard of 'em--you
wouldn't, curse you. I was mad! I had you in my hand like that!" He
closed a not over-clean fist under van Heerden's nose. "I saw it all,
all, I saw you bullying the poor devil, shaking some secret out of him,
I saw you knife him----"
"Hush!" hissed van Heerden. "You fool--people can hear through these
walls."
"But there are no windows to see through," leered the man, "and I _saw_!
He came out of his death-trance to denounce you, by Jove! I heard him
shout and I saw you run in and lay him down--lay him down! Lay him out
is better! You killed him to shut his mouth, my bonnie doctor!"
Van Heerden's face was as white as a sheet, but the hand he raised to
his lips was without a tremor.
"You were lucky to find me that night, dear lad," the man went on. "I
was in a mind to split on you."
"You have no cause to regret my finding you, Jackson," said the doctor.
"I suppose you still call yourself by that name?"
"Yes, Jackson," said the other promptly. "Jack--son, son of Jack. Fine
name, eh--good enough for me and good enough for anybody else. Yes, you
found me and done me well. I wish you hadn't. How I wish you hadn't."
"Ungrateful fool!" said van Heerden. "I probably saved your life--hid
you in Eastbourne, took you to London, whilst the police were searching
for you."
"For me!" snarled the other. "A low trick, by the Everlasting
Virtues----!"
"Don't be an idiot--whose word would they have taken, yours or mine? Now
let's talk--on Thursday next you sail for Quebec...."
He detailed his instructions at length and the man called Jackson,
mellowed by repeated visits to the decanter, listened and even approved.
On the other side of the hallway, behind the closed door, Oliva
Cresswell, her dining-table covered with papers and books, was working
hard.
She was particularly anxious to show Mr. Beale a sample of her work in
the morning and was making a fair copy of what she had described to him
that afternoon as her "hotel list."
"They are such queer names," she said; "there is one called Scobbs of
Red Horse Valley--Scobbs!"
He had laughed.
"Strangely enough, I know Mr. Scobbs, who is quite a personage in that
part of the world. He owns a chain of hotels in Western Canada. You
mustn't leave him out."
Even had she wished to, or even had the name been overlooked once, she
could not have escaped it. For Jonas Scobbs was the proprietor of
Scobbs' Hotel in Falling Star City; of the Bellevue in Snakefence, of
the Palace Hotel in Portage.
After awhile it began to lose its novelty and she accepted the discovery
of unsuspected properties of Mr. Scobbs as inevitable.
She filled in the last ruled sheet and blotted it, gathered the sheets
together and fastened them with a clip.
She yawned as she rose and realized that her previous night's sleep had
been fitful.
She wondered as she began to undress if she would dream of Scobbs
or--no, she didn't want to dream of big-headed men with white faces, and
the thought awoke a doubt in her mind. Had she bolted the door of the
flat? She went along the passage in her stockinged feet, shot the bolts
smoothly and was aware of voices outside. They came to her clearly
through the ventilator above the fanlight.
She heard the doctor say something and then a voice which she had not
heard before.
"Don't worry--I've a wonderful memory, by Jove!..."
The murmur of the doctor did not reach her, but----
"Yes, yes ... Scobbs' Hotel, Red Horse Valley ... know the place well
... good night, dear old thing...."
A door banged, an uncertain footstep died away in the well of the stairs
below, and she was left to recover from her amazement.
CHAPTER VII
PLAIN WORDS FROM MR. BEALE
Oliva Cresswell did not feel at all sleepy, so she discovered, by the
time she was ready for bed. To retire in that condition of wakefulness
meant another sleepless night, and she slipped a kimono over her, found
a book and settled into the big wicker-chair under the light for the
half-hour's reading which would reduce her to the necessary state of
drowsiness. The book at any other time would have held her attention,
but now she found her thoughts wandering. On the other side of the wall
(she regarded it with a new interest) was the young man who had so
strangely intruded himself into her life. Or was he out? What would a
man like that do with his evenings? He was not the sort of person who
could find any pleasure in making a round of music-halls or sitting up
half the night in a card-room.
She heard a dull knock, and it came from the wall.
Mr. Beale was at home then, he had pushed a chair against the wall, or
he was knocking in nails at this hour of the night.
"Thud--thud--thud"--a pause--"thud, tap, thud, tap."
The dull sound was as if made by a fist, the tap by a finger-tip.
It was repeated.
Suddenly the girl jumped up with a little laugh. He was signalling to
her and had sent "O.C."--her initials.
She tapped three times with her finger, struck once with the flat of her
hand and tapped again. She had sent the "Understood" message.
Presently he began and she jotted the message on the margin of her book.
"Most urgent: Don't use soap. Bring it to office."
She smiled faintly. She expected something more brilliant in the way of
humour even from Mr. Beale. She tapped "acknowledged" and went to bed.
"Matilda, my innocent child," she said to herself, as she snuggled up
under the bed-clothes, "exchanging midnight signals with a lodger is
neither proper nor lady-like."
She had agreed with herself that in spite of the latitude she was
allowed in the matter of office hours, that she would put in an
appearance punctually at ten. This meant rising not later than eight,
for she had her little household to put in order before she left.
It was the postman's insistent knocking at eight-thirty that woke her
from a dreamless sleep, and, half-awake, she dragged herself into her
dressing-gown and went to the door.
"Parcel, miss," said the invisible official, and put into the hand that
came round the edge of the door a letter and a small package. She
brought them to the sitting-room and pulled back the curtains. The
letter was type-written and was on the note-paper of a well-known firm
of perfumers. It was addressed to "Miss Olivia Cresswell," and ran:
"DEAR MADAME,--
"We have pleasure in sending you for your use a sample cake of our
new Complexion Soap, which we trust will meet with your approval."
"But how nice," she said, and wondered why she had been singled out for
the favour. She opened the package. In a small carton, carefully wrapped
in the thinnest of paper, was an oval tablet of lavender-coloured soap
that exhaled a delicate fragrance.
"But how nice," she said again, and put the gift in the bath-room.
This was starting the day well--a small enough foundation for happiness,
yet one which every woman knows, for happiness is made up of small and
acceptable things and, given the psychological moment, a bunch of
primroses has a greater value than a rope of pearls.
In her bath she picked up the soap and dropped it back in the tidy again
quickly.
"Don't use soap; bring it to office."
She remembered the message in a flash. Beale had known that this parcel
was coming then, and his "most urgent" warning was not a joke. She
dressed quickly, made a poor breakfast and was at the office ten minutes
before the hour.
She found her employer waiting, sitting in his accustomed place on the
edge of the table in her office. He gave her a little nod of welcome,
and without a word stretched out his hand.
"The soap?" she asked.
He nodded.
She opened her bag.
"Good," he said. "I see you have kept the wrappings, and that, I
presume, is the letter which accompanied the--what shall I say--gift?
Don't touch it with your bare hand," he said quickly. "Handle it with
the paper."
He pulled his gloves from his pocket and slipped them on, then took the
cake of soap in his hand and carried it to the light, smelt it and
returned it to its paper.
"Now let me see the letter."
She handed it to him, and he read it.
"From Brandan, the perfumers. They wouldn't be in it, but we had better
make sure."
He walked to the telephone and gave a number, and the girl heard him
speaking in a low tone to somebody at the other end. Presently he put
down the receiver and walked back, his hands thrust into his pockets.
"They know nothing about this act of generosity," he said.
By this time she had removed her coat and hat and hung them up, and had
taken her place at her desk. She sat with her elbows on the
blotting-pad, her chin on her clasped hands, looking up at him.
"I don't think it's fair that things should be kept from me any longer,"
she said. "Many mysterious things have happened in the past few days,
and since they have all directly affected me, I think I am entitled to
some sort of explanation."
"I think you are," said Mr. Beale, with a twinkle in his grey eyes, "but
I am not prepared to explain everything just yet. Thus much I will tell
you, that had you used this soap this morning, by the evening you would
have been covered from head to foot in a rather alarming and irritating
rash."
She gasped.
"But who dared to send me this?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Who knows? But first let me ask you this, Miss Cresswell. Suppose
to-night when you had looked at yourself in the glass you had discovered
your face was covered with red blotches and, on further examination, you
found your arms and, indeed, the whole of your body similarly
disfigured, what would you have done?"
She thought for a moment.
"Why, of course, I should have sent for the doctor."
"Which doctor?" he asked carelessly.
"Doctor van Heerden--oh!" She looked at him resentfully. "You don't
suggest that Doctor van Heerden sent that hideous thing to me?"
"I don't suggest anything," said Mr. Beale coolly.
"I merely say that you would have sent for a doctor, and that that
doctor would have been Doctor van Heerden. I say further, that he would
have come to you and been very sympathetic, and would have ordered you
to remain in bed for four or five days. I think, too," he said, looking
up at the ceiling and speaking slowly, as though he were working out the
possible consequence in his mind, "that he would have given you some
very palatable medicine."
"What are you insinuating?" she asked quietly.
He did not reply immediately.
"If you will get out of your mind the idea that I have any particular
grievance against Doctor van Heerden, that I regard him as a rival, a
business rival let us say, or that I have some secret grudge against
him, and if in place of that suspicion you would believe that I am
serving a much larger interest than is apparent to you, I think we might
discuss"--he smiled--"even Doctor van Heerden without such a discussion
giving offence to you."
She laughed.
"I am really not offended. I am rather distressed, if anything," she
said, knitting her brows. "You see, Doctor van Heerden has always been
most kind to me."
Beale nodded.
"He got you your rooms at the flats," he replied quietly; "he was also
ready to give you employment the moment you were providentially
discharged from Punsonby's. Does it not strike you, Miss Cresswell, that
every kind act of Doctor van Heerden's has had a tendency to bring you
together, into closer association, I mean? Does it not appear to you
that the net result of all the things that might have happened to you in
the past few days would have been to make you more and more dependent
upon Doctor van Heerden? For example, if you had gone into his employ as
he planned that you should?"
"Planned!" she gasped.
His face was grave now and the laughter had gone out of his eyes.
"Planned," he said quietly. "You were discharged from Punsonby's at
Doctor van Heerden's instigation."
"I will not believe it!"
"That will not make it any less the fact," said Mr. Beale. "You were
nearly arrested--again at Doctor van Heerden's instigation. He was
waiting for you when you came back from Punsonby's, ready to offer you
his job. When he discovered you had already engaged yourself he
telephoned to White, instructing him to have you arrested so that you
might be disgraced and might turn to him, your one loyal friend."
She listened speechless. She could only stare at him and could not even
interrupt him. For her shrewd woman instinct told her so convincingly
that even her sense of loyalty could not eject the doubt which assailed
her mind, that if there was not truth in what he was saying there was at
least probability.
"I suggest even more," Beale went on. "I suggest that for some purpose,
Doctor van Heerden desires to secure a mental, physical and moral
ascendancy over you. In other words, he wishes to enslave you to his
will."
She looked at him in wonder and burst into a peal of ringing laughter.
"Really, Mr. Beale, you are too absurd," she said.
"Aren't I?" he smiled. "It sounds like something out of a melodrama."
"Why on earth should he want to secure a mental ascendancy over me? Do
you suggest----" She flushed.
"I suggest nothing any longer," said Beale, slipping off from the end of
the table. "I merely make a statement of fact. I do not think he has any
designs on you, within the conventional meaning of that phrase, indeed,
I think he wants to marry you--what do you think about that?"
She had recovered something of her poise, and her sense of humour was
helping her out of a situation which, without such a gift, might have
been an embarrassing one.
"I think you have been seeing too many plays and reading too many
exciting books, Mr. Beale," she said, "I confess I have never regarded
Doctor van Heerden as a possible suitor, and if I thought he was I
should be immensely flattered. But may I suggest to you that there are
other ways of winning a girl than by giving her nettle-rash!"
They laughed together.
"All right," he said, swinging up his hat, "proceed with the good work
and seek out the various domiciles of Mr. Scobbs."
Then she remembered.
"Do you know----?"
He was at the door when she spoke and he stopped and turned.
"The name of Mr. Scobbs gives me a cold shiver."
"Why?"
"Answer me this," she said: "why should I who have never heard of him
before until yesterday hear his name mentioned by a perfect stranger?"
The smile died away from his face.
"Who mentioned him! No, it isn't idle curiosity," he said in face of her
derisive finger. "I am really serious. Who mentioned his name?"
"A visitor of Doctor van Heerden's. I heard them talking through the
ventilator when I was bolting my door."
"A visitor to Doctor van Heerden, and he mentioned Mr. Scobbs of Red
Horse Valley," he said half to himself. "You didn't see the man?"
"No."
"You just heard him. No names were mentioned?"
"None," she said. "Is it a frightfully important matter?"
"It is rather," he replied. "We have got to get busy," and with this
cryptic remark he left her.
The day passed as quickly as its predecessor. The tabulation at which
she was working grew until by the evening there was a pile of sheets in
the left-hand cupboard covered with her fine writing. She might have
done more but for the search she had to make for a missing report to
verify one of her facts. It was not on the shelf, and she was about to
abandon her search and postpone the confirmation till she saw Beale,
when she noticed a cupboard beneath the shelves. It was unlocked and she
opened it and found, as she had expected, that it was full of books,
amongst which was the missing documentation she sought.
With a view to future contingencies, she examined the contents of the
cupboard and was arrested by a thin volume which bore no inscription or
title on its blank cover. She opened it, and on the title page read:
"The Millinborn Murder." The author's name was not given and the
contents were made up of very careful analysis of evidence given by the
various witnesses at the inquest, and plans and diagrams with little red
crosses to show where every actor in that tragedy had been.
She read the first page idly and turned it. She was half-way down the
second page when she uttered a little exclamation, for a familiar name
was there, the name of Dr. van Heerden.
Fascinated, she read the story to the end, half-expecting that the name
of Mr. Beale would occur.
There were many names all unknown to her and one that occurred with the
greatest frequency was that of James Kitson. Mr. Beale did not appear to
have played any part. She read for an hour, sitting on the floor by the
cupboard. She reached the last page, closed the book and slipped it back
in the cupboard. She wondered why Beale had preserved this record and
whether his antagonism to the doctor was founded on that case. At first
she thought she identified him with the mysterious man who had appeared
in the plantation before the murder, but a glance back at the
description of the stranger dispelled that idea. For all the reputation
he had, Mr. Beale did not have "an inflamed, swollen countenance,
colourless bloodshot eyes," nor was he bald.
She was annoyed with herself that she had allowed her work to be
interrupted, and in penance decided to remain on until six instead of
five o'clock as she had intended. Besides, she half expected that Mr.
Beale would return, and was surprised to discover that she was
disappointed that he had not.
At six o'clock she dismissed the boy, closed and locked the office, and
made her way downstairs into the crowded street.
To her surprise she heard her name spoken, and turned to face Dr. van
Heerden.
"I have been waiting for you for nearly an hour," he said with
good-humoured reproach.
"And your patients are probably dying like flies," she countered.
It was in her mind to make some excuse and go home alone, but curiosity
got the better of her and impelled her to wait to discover the object of
this unexpected visitation.
"How did you know where I was working?" she asked, as the thought
occurred to her.
He laughed.
"It was a very simple matter. I was on my way to a patient and I saw you
coming out to lunch," he said, "and as I found myself in the
neighbourhood an hour ago I thought I would wait and take you home. You
are doing a very foolish thing," he added.
"What do you mean--in stopping to talk to you when I ought to be on my
way home to tea?"
"No, in engaging yourself to a man like Beale. You know the reputation
he has! My dear girl, I was shocked when I discovered who your employer
was."
"I don't think you need distress yourself on my account, doctor," she
said quietly. "Really, Mr. Beale is quite pleasant--in his lucid
moments," she smiled to herself.
She was not being disloyal to her employer. If he chose to encourage
suspicion in his mode of life he must abide by the consequences.
"But a drunkard, faugh!" The exquisite doctor shivered. "I have always
tried to be a friend of yours, Miss Cresswell, and I hope you are going
to let me continue to be, and my advice to you in that capacity is--give
Mr. Beale notice."
"How absurd you are!" she laughed. "There is no reason in the world why
I should do anything of the sort. Mr. Beale has treated me with the
greatest consideration."
"What is he, by the way?" asked the doctor.
"He's an agent of some sort," said the girl, "but I am sure you don't
want me to discuss his business. And now I must go, doctor, if you will
excuse me."
"One moment," he begged. "I have a cab here. Won't you come and have
tea somewhere?"
"Where is somewhere?" she asked.
"The Grand Alliance?" he suggested.
She nodded slowly.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CRIME OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE
The hotel and the cafe of the Grand Alliance was London's newest
rendezvous. Its great palm-court was crowded at the tea-hour and if, as
the mysterious Mr. Beale had hinted, any danger was to be apprehended
from Dr. van Heerden, it could not come to her in that most open of
public places.
She had no fear, but that eighth sense of armed caution, which is the
possession of every girl who has to work for her living and is conscious
of the perils which await her on every side, reviewed with lightning
speed all the possibilities and gave her the passport of approval.
It was later than she had thought. Only a few tables were occupied, but
he had evidently reserved one, for immediately on his appearance the
waiter with a smirk led him to one of the alcoves and pulled back a
chair for the girl. She looked round as she stripped her gloves. The
place was not unfamiliar to her. It was here she came at rare intervals,
when her finances admitted of such an hilarious recreation, to find
comfort for jangled nerves, to sit and sip her tea to the sound of
violins and watch the happy crowd at her leisure, absorbing something of
the happiness they diffused.
The palm-court was a spacious marble hall, a big circle of polished
pillars supporting the dome, through the tinted glass of which the light
was filtered in soft hues upon the marble floor below.
"Doctor," she said, suddenly remembering, "I have been reading quite a
lot about you to-day."
He raised his eyebrows.
"About me?"
She nodded, smiling mischievously.
"I didn't know that you were such a famous person--I have been reading
about the Millinborn murder."
"You have been reading about the Millinborn murder?" he said steadily,
looking into her eyes. "An unpleasant case and one I should like to
forget."
"I thought it was awfully thrilling," she said. "It read like a
detective story without a satisfactory end."
He laughed.
"What a perfectly gruesome subject for tea-table talk," he said lightly,
and beckoned the head-waiter. "You are keeping us waiting, Jaques."
"Doctor, it will be but a few minutes," pleaded the waiter, and then in
a low voice, which was not so low that it did not reach the girl. "We
have had some trouble this afternoon, doctor, with your friend."
"My friend?"
The doctor looked up sharply.
"Whom do you mean?"
"With Mr. Jackson."
"Jackson," said the doctor, startled. "I thought he had left."
"He was to leave this morning by the ten o'clock train, but he had a
fainting-fit. We recovered him with brandy and he was too well, for this
afternoon he faint again."
"Where is he now?" asked van Heerden, after a pause.
"In his room, monsieur. To-night he leave for Ireland--this he tell
me--to catch the mail steamer at Queenstown."
"Don't let him know I am here," said the doctor.
He turned to the girl with a shrug.
"A dissolute friend of mine whom I am sending out to the colonies," he
said.
"Won't you go and see him?" she asked. "He must be very ill if he
faints."
"I think not," said Dr. van Heerden quietly, "these little attacks are
not serious--he had one in my room the other night. It is a result of
over-indulgence, and six months in Canada will make a man of him."
She did not reply. With difficulty she restrained an exclamation. So
that was the man who had been in the doctor's room and who was going to
Red Horse Valley! She would have dearly loved to supplement her
information about Mr. Scobbs, proprietor of many hotels, and to have
mystified him with her knowledge of Western Canada, but she refrained.
Instead, she took up the conversation where he had tried to break it
off.
"Do you know Mr. Kitson?"
"Kitson? Oh yes, you mean the lawyer man," he replied reluctantly. "I
know him, but I am afraid I don't know much that is good about him. Now,
I'm going to tell you, Miss Cresswell"--he leant across the table and
spoke in a lower tone--"something that I have never told to a human
being. You raised the question of the Millinborn murder. My view is that
Kitson, the lawyer, knew much more about that murder than any man in
this world. If there is anybody who knows more it is Beale."
"Mr. Beale?" she said incredulously.
"Mr. Beale," he repeated. "You know the story of the murder: you say you
have read it. Millinborn was dying and I had left the room with Kitson
when somebody entered the window and stabbed John Millinborn to the
heart. I have every reason to believe that that murder was witnessed by
this very man I am sending to Canada. He persists in denying that he saw
anything, but later he may change his tune."
A light dawned upon her.
"Then Jackson is the man who was seen by Mr. Kitson in the plantation?"
"Exactly," said the doctor.
"But I don't understand," she said, perplexed. "Aren't the police
searching for Jackson?"
"I do not think that it is in the interests of justice that they should
find him," he said gravely. "I place the utmost reliance on him. I am
sending Mr. Jackson to a farm in Ontario kept by a medical friend of
mine who has made a hobby of dealing with dipsomaniacs."
He met her eyes unfalteringly.
"Dr. van Heerden," she said slowly, "you are sending Mr. Jackson to Red
Horse Valley."
He started back as if he had been struck in the face, and for a moment
was inarticulate.
"What--what do you know?" he asked incoherently.
His face had grown white, his eyes tragic with fear. She was alarmed at
the effect of her words and hastened to remove the impression she had
created.
"I only know that I heard Mr. Jackson through the ventilator of my flat,
saying good-bye to you the other night. He mentioned Red Horse
Valley----"
He drew a deep breath and was master of himself again, but his face was
still pale.
"Oh, that," he said, "that is a polite fiction. Jackson knows of this
inebriates' home in Ontario and I had to provide him with a destination.
He will go no farther than----"
"Why, curse my life, if it isn't the doctor!"
At the sound of the raucous voice both looked up. The man called Jackson
had hailed them from the centre of the hall. He was well dressed, but no
tailor could compensate for the repulsiveness of that puckered and
swollen face, those malignant eyes which peered out into the world
through two slits. He was wearing his loud-check suit, his new hat was
in his hand and the conical-shaped dome of his head glistened baldly.
"I'm cursed if this isn't amiable of you, doctor!"
He did not look at the girl, but grinned complacently upon her angry
companion.
"Here I am "--he threw out his arms with an extravagant
gesture--"leaving the country of my adoption, if not birth, without one
solitary soul to see me off or take farewell of me. I, who have
been--well, you know, what I've been, van Heerden. The world has treated
me very badly. By heaven! I'd like to come back a billionaire and ruin
all of 'em. I'd like to cut their throats and amputate 'em limb from
limb, I would like----"
"Be silent!" said van Heerden angrily. "Have you no decency? Do you not
realize I am with a lady?"
"Pardon." The man called Jackson leapt up from the chair into which he
had fallen and bowed extravagantly in the direction of the girl. "I
cannot see your face because of your hat, my dear lady," he said
gallantly, "but I am sure my friend van Heerden, whose taste----"
"Will you be quiet?" said van Heerden. "Go to your room and I will come
up to you."
"Go to my room!" scoffed the other. "By Jove! I like that! That any
whipper-snapper of a sawbones should tell me to go to my room. After
what I have been, after the position I have held in society. I have had
ambassadors' carriages at my door, my dear fellow, princes of the royal
blood, and to be told to go to my room like a naughty little boy! It's
too much!"
"Then behave yourself," said van Heerden, "and at least wait until I am
free before you approach me again."
But the man showed no inclination to move; rather did this rebuff
stimulate his power of reminiscence.
"Ignore me, miss--I have not your name, but I am sure it is a noble
one," he said. "You see before you one who in his time has been a squire
of dames, by Jove! I can't remember 'em. They must number thousands and
only one of them was worth two sous. Yes," he shook his head in
melancholy, "only one of 'em. By Jove! The rest were"--he snapped his
fingers--"that for 'em!"
The girl listened against her will.
"Jackson!"--and van Heerden's voice trembled with passion--"will you go
or must I force you to go?"
Jackson rose with a loud laugh.
"Evidently I am _de trop_," he said with heavy sarcasm.
He held out a swollen hand which van Heerden ignored.
"Farewell, mademoiselle." He thrust the hand forward, so that she could
not miss it.
She took it, a cold flabby thing which sent a shudder of loathing
through her frame, and raised her face to his for the first time.
He let the hand drop. He was staring at her with open mouth and features
distorted with horror.
"You!" he croaked.
She shrunk back against the wall of the alcove, but he made no movement.
She sensed the terror and agony in his voice.
"You!" he gasped. "Mary!"
"Hang you! Go!" roared van Heerden, and thrust him back.
But though he staggered back a pace under the weight of the other's arm,
his eyes did not leave the girl's face, and she, fascinated by the
appeal in the face of the wreck, could not turn hers away.
"Mary!" he whispered, "what is your other name?"
With an effort the girl recovered herself.
"My name is not Mary," she said quietly. "My name is Oliva Cresswell."
"Oliva Cresswell," he repeated. "Oliva Cresswell!"
He made a movement toward her but van Heerden barred his way. She heard
Jackson say something in a strangled voice and heard van Heerden's sharp
"What!" and there was a fierce exchange of words.
The attention of the few people in the palm-court had been attracted to
the unusual spectacle of two men engaged in what appeared to be a
struggle.
"Sit down, sit down, you fool! Sit over there. I will come to you in a
minute. Can you swear what you say is true?"
Jackson nodded. He was shaking from head to foot.
"My name is Predeaux," he said; "that is my daughter--I married in the
name of Cresswell. My daughter," he repeated. "How wonderful!"
"What are you going to do?" asked van Heerden.
He had half-led, half-pushed the other to a chair near one of the
pillars of the rotunda.
"I am going to tell her," said the wreck. "What are you doing with her?"
he demanded fiercely.
"That is no business of yours," replied van Heerden sharply.
"No business of mine, eh! I'll show you it's some business of mine. I am
going to tell her all I know about you. I have been a rotter and worse
than a rotter." The old flippancy had gone and the harsh voice was
vibrant with purpose. "My path has been littered with the wrecks of
human lives," he said bitterly, "and they are mostly women. I broke the
heart of the best woman in the world, and I am going to see that you
don't break the heart of her daughter."
"Will you be quiet?" hissed van Heerden. "I will go and get her away and
then I will come back to you."
Jackson did not reply. He sat huddled up in his chair, muttering to
himself, and van Heerden walked quickly back to the girl.
"I am afraid I shall have to let you go back by yourself. He is having
one of his fits. I think it is delirium tremens."
"Don't you think you had better send for----" she began. She was going
to say "send for a doctor," and the absurdity of the request struck her.
"I think you had better go," he said hastily, with a glance at the man
who was struggling to his feet. "I can't tell you how sorry I am that
we've had this scene."
"Stop!"--it was Jackson's voice.
He stood swaying half-way between the chair he had left and the alcove,
and his trembling finger was pointing at them.
"Stop!" he said in a commanding voice. "Stop! I've got something to say
to you. I know ... he's making you pay for the Green Rust...."
So far he got when he reeled and collapsed in a heap on the floor. The
doctor sprang forward, lifted him and carried him to the chair by the
pillar. He picked up the overcoat that the man had been wearing and
spread it over him.
"It's a fainting-fit, nothing to be alarmed about," he said to the
little knot of people from the tables who had gathered about the limp
figure. "Jaques"--he called the head-waiter--"get some brandy, he must
be kept warm."
"Shall I ring for an ambulance, m'sieur?"
"It is not necessary," said van Heerden. "He will recover in a few
moments. Just leave him," and he walked back to the alcove.
"Who is he?" asked the girl, and her voice was shaking in spite of
herself.
"He is a man I knew in his better days," said van Heerden, "and now I
think you must go."
"I would rather wait to see if he recovers," she said with some
obstinacy.
"I want you to go," he said earnestly; "you would please me very much if
you would do as I ask."
"There's the waiter!" she interrupted, "he has the brandy. Won't you
give it to him?"
It was the doctor who in the presence of the assembled visitors
dissolved a white pellet in the brandy before he forced the clenched
teeth apart and poured the liquor to the last drop down the man's
throat.
Jackson or Predeaux, to give him his real name, shuddered as he drank,
shuddered again a few seconds later and then went suddenly limp.
The doctor bent down and lifted his eyelid.
"I am afraid--he is dead," he said in a low voice.
"Dead!" the girl stared at him. "Oh no! Not dead!"
Van Heerden nodded.
"Heart failure," he said.
"The same kind of heart failure that killed John Millinborn," said a
voice behind him. "The cost of the Green Rust is totalling up, doctor."
The girl swung round. Mr. Beale was standing at her elbow, but his
steady eyes were fixed upon van Heerden.
CHAPTER IX
A CRIME AGAINST THE WORLD
"What do you mean?" asked Dr. van Heerden.
"I merely repeat the words of the dead man," answered Beale, "heart
failure!"
He picked up from the table the leather case which the doctor had taken
from his pocket. There were four little phials and one of these was
uncorked.
"Digitalis!" he read. "That shouldn't kill him, doctor."
He looked at van Heerden thoughtfully, then picked up the phial again.
It bore the label of a well-known firm of wholesale chemists, and the
seal had apparently been broken for the first time when van Heerden
opened the tiny bottle.
"You have sent for the police?" Beale asked the agitated manager.
"Oui, m'sieur--directly. They come now, I think."
He walked to the vestibule to meet three men in plain clothes who had
just come through the swing-doors. There was something about van
Heerden's attitude which struck Beale as strange. He was standing in the
exact spot he had stood when the detective had addressed him. It seemed
as if something rooted him to the spot. He did not move even when the
ambulance men were lifting the body nor when the police were taking
particulars of the circumstances of the death. And Beale, escorting the
shaken girl up the broad staircase to a room where she could rest and
recover, looked back over his shoulder and saw him still standing, his
head bent, his fingers smoothing his beard.
"It was dreadful, dreadful," said the girl with a shiver. "I have never
seen anybody--die. It was awful."
Beale nodded. His thoughts were set on the doctor. Why had he stood so
motionless? He was not the kind of man to be shocked by so normal a
phenomenon as death. He was a doctor and such sights were common to him.
What was the reason for this strange paralysis which kept him chained to
the spot even after the body had been removed?
The girl was talking, but he did not hear her. He knew instinctively
that in van Heerden's curious attitude was a solution of Predeaux's
death.
"Excuse me a moment," he said.
He passed with rapid strides from the room, down the broad stairway and
into the palm-court.
Van Heerden had gone.
The explanation flashed upon him and he hurried to the spot where the
doctor had stood.
On the tessellated floor was a little patch no bigger than a saucer
which had been recently washed.
He beckoned the manager.
"Who has been cleaning this tile?" he asked.
The manager shrugged his shoulders.
"It was the doctor, sare--so eccentric! He call for a glass of water and
he dip his handkerchief in and then lift up his foot and with rapidity
incredible he wash the floor with his handkerchief!"
"Fool!" snapped Beale. "Oh, hopeless fool!"
"Sare!" said the startled manager.
"It's all right, M'sieur Barri," smiled Beale ruefully. "I was
addressing myself--oh, what a fool I've been!"
He went down on his knees and examined the floor.
"I want this tile, don't let anybody touch it," he said.
Of course, van Heerden had stood because under his foot he had crushed
the digitalis tablet he had taken from the phial, and for which he had
substituted something more deadly. Had he moved, the powdered tablet
would have been seen. It was simple--horribly simple.
He walked slowly back to where he had left Oliva.
What followed seemed ever after like a bad dream to the girl. She was
stunned by the tragedy which had happened under her eyes and could offer
no evidence which in any way assisted the police in their subsequent
investigation, the sum of which was ably set forth in the columns of the
_Post Record_.
"The tragedy which occurred in the Palm-Court of the Grand Alliance
Hotel yesterday must be added to the already long list of London's
unravelled mysteries. The deceased, a man named Jackson, has been
staying at the hotel for a week and was on the point of departure
for Canada. At the last moment Dr. van Heerden, who was assisting
the unfortunate man, discovered that Jackson was no other than the
wanted man in the Millinborn murder, a crime which most of our
readers will recall.
"Dr. van Heerden stated to our representative that the man had
represented that he was a friend of the late John Millinborn, but
was anxious to get to Canada. He had produced excellent
credentials, and Dr. van Heerden, in a spirit of generosity,
offered to assist him. At the eleventh hour, however, he was struck
with the likeness the man bore to the published description of the
missing man in the Millinborn case, and was on the point of
telegraphing to the authorities at Liverpool, when he discovered
that Jackson had missed the train.
"The present tragedy points to suicide. The man, it will be
remembered, collapsed, and Dr. van Heerden rendered first aid,
administering to the man a perfectly harmless drug. The post-mortem
examination reveals the presence in the body of a considerable
quantity of cyanide of potassium, and the police theory is that
this was self-administered before the collapse. In the man's pocket
was discovered a number of cyanide tablets.
"'I am satisfied,' said Dr. van Heerden, 'that the man already
contemplated the deed, and when I voiced my suspicions in the
palm-court he decided upon the action. The presence in his pocket
of cyanide--one of the deadliest and quickest of poisons--suggests
that he had the project in his mind. I did not see his action or,
of course, I should have stopped him!'"
Oliva Cresswell read this account in her room two nights following the
tragedy and was struck by certain curious inaccuracies, if all that the
doctor had told her was true.
Mr. Beale read the account, smiled across the table grimly to the
bearded superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department.
"How does that strike you for ingenuity?" he said, pushing the paper
over the table.
"I have read it," said the other laconically, "I think we have
sufficient evidence to arrest van Heerden. The tile from the Grand
Alliance shows traces of digitalis."
Beale shook his head.
"The case would fall," he said. "What evidence have you? We did not
confiscate his medicine-case. He might have dropped a tablet of
digitalis by accident. The only evidence you could convict van Heerden
on is proof that he brought with him cyanide tablets which he slipped
into Predeaux's pocket. No, we can prove nothing."
"What is your theory in connection with the crime?"
"I have many theories," said Mr. Beale, rising and pacing the room, "and
one certainty. I am satisfied that Millinborn was killed by Doctor van
Heerden. He was killed because, during the absence of Mr. Kitson in the
village, the doctor forced from the dying man a secret which up till
then he had jealously preserved. When Kitson returned he found his
friend, as he thought, _in extremis_, and van Heerden also thought that
John Millinborn would not speak again. To his surprise Millinborn did
speak and van Heerden, fearful of having his villainy exposed, stabbed
him to the heart under the pretext of assisting him to lie down.
"Something different occurred at the Grand Alliance Hotel. A man swoons,
immediately he is picked up by the doctor, who gives him a harmless
drug--that is to say, harmless in small quantities. In five seconds the
man is dead. At the inquest we find he has been poisoned--cyanide is
found in his pocket. And who is this man? Obviously the identical person
who witnessed the murder of John Millinborn and whom we have been trying
to find ever since that crime."
"Van Heerden won't escape the third time. His presence will be a little
more than a coincidence," said the superintendent.
Beale laughed.
"There will be no third time," he said shortly, "van Heerden is not a
fool."
"Have you any idea what the secret was that he wanted to get from old
Millinborn?" asked the detective.
Beale nodded.
"Yes, I know pretty well," he said, "and in course of time you will
know, too."
The detective was glancing over the newspaper account.
"I see the jury returned a verdict of 'Suicide whilst of unsound mind!'"
he said. "This case ought to injure van Heerden, anyway."
"That is where you are wrong," said Beale, stopping in his stride, "van
Heerden has so manoeuvred the Pressmen that he comes out with an
enhanced reputation. You will probably find articles in the weekly
papers written and signed by him, giving his views on the indiscriminate
sale of poisons. He will move in a glamour of romance, and his
consulting-rooms will be thronged by new admirers."
"It's a rum case," said the superintendent, rising, "and if you don't
mind my saying so, Mr. Beale, you're one of the rummiest men that figure
in it. I can't quite make you out. You are not a policeman and yet we
have orders from the Foreign Office to give you every assistance. What's
the game?"
"The biggest game in the world," said Beale promptly, "a game which, if
it succeeds, will bring misery and suffering to thousands, and will
bring great businesses tumbling, and set you and your children and your
children's children working for hundreds of years to pay off a new
national debt."
"Man alive!" said the other, "are you serious?"
Beale nodded.
"I was never more serious in my life," he said, "that is why I don't
want the police to be too inquisitive in regard to this murder of
Jackson, whose real name, as I say, is Predeaux. I can tell you this,
chief, that you are seeing the development of the most damnable plot
that has ever been hatched in the brain of the worst miscreant that
history knows. Sit down again. Do you know what happened last year?" he
asked.
"Last year?" said the superintendent. "Why, the war ended last year."
"The war ended, Germany was beaten, and had to accept terms humiliating
for a proud nation, but fortunately for her Prussia was not proud, she
was merely arrogant. Her worst blow was the impoverishing conditions
which the Entente Powers imposed. That is to say, they demanded certain
concessions of territory and money which, added to the enormous interest
of war stock which the Germans had to pay, promised to cripple Prussia
for a hundred years."
"Well?" said the detective, when the other had stopped.
"Well?" repeated Beale, with a hard little smile. "Germany is going to
get that money back."
"War?"
Beale laughed.
"No, nothing so foolish as war. Germany has had all the war she wants.
Oh no, there'll be no war. Do you imagine that we should go to war
because I came to the Foreign Office with a crazy story. I can tell you
this, that officially the German Government have no knowledge of this
plot and are quite willing to repudiate those people who are engaged in
it. Indeed, if the truth be told, the Government has not contributed a
single mark to bring the scheme to fruition, but when it is working all
the money required will be instantly found. At present the inventor of
this delightful little scheme finds himself with insufficient capital to
go ahead. It is his intention to secure that capital. There are many
ways by which this can be done. He has already borrowed L40,000 from
White, of Punsonby's."
Superintendent McNorton whistled.
"There are other ways," Beale went on, "and he is at liberty to try them
all except one. The day he secures control of that fortune, that day I
shoot him."
"The deuce you will?" said the startled Mr. McNorton.
"The deuce I will," repeated Beale.
There was a tap at the door and McNorton rose.
"Don't go," said Beale, "I would like to introduce you to this
gentleman."
He opened the door and a grey-haired man with a lean, ascetic face came
in.
Beale closed the door behind him and led the way to the dining-room.
"Mr. Kitson, I should like you to know Superintendent McNorton."
The two men shook hands.
"Well?" said Kitson, "our medical friend seems to have got away with
it." He sat at the table, nervously drumming with his fingers. "Does the
superintendent know everything?"
"Nearly everything," replied Beale.
"Nearly everything," repeated the superintendent with a smile, "except
this great Green Rust business. There I admit I am puzzled."
"Even I know nothing about that," said Kitson, looking curiously at
Beale. "I suppose one of these days you will tell us all about it. It is
a discovery Mr. Beale happed upon whilst he was engaged in protecting
Miss----" He looked at Beale and Beale nodded--"Miss Cresswell," said
Kitson.
"The lady who was present at the murder of Jackson?"
"There is no reason why we should not take you into our confidence, the
more so since the necessity for secrecy is rapidly passing. Miss Oliva
Cresswell is the niece of John Millinborn. Her mother married a scamp
who called himself Cresswell but whose real name was Predeaux. He first
spent every penny she had and then left her and her infant child."
"Predeaux!" cried the detective. "Why you told me that was Jackson's
real name."
"Jackson, or Predeaux, was her father," said Kitson, "it was believed
that he was dead; but after John Millinborn's death I set inquiries on
foot and discovered that he had been serving a life sentence in Cayenne
and had been released when the French President proclaimed a general
amnesty at the close of the war. He was evidently on his way to see John
Millinborn the day my unhappy friend was murdered, and it was the
recognition of his daughter in the palm-court of the Grand Alliance
which produced a fainting-fit to which he was subject."
"But how could he recognize the daughter? Had he seen her before?"
For answer Kitson took from his pocket a leather folder and opened it.
There were two photographs. One of a beautiful woman in the fashion of
25 years before; and one a snapshot of a girl in a modern costume, whom
McNorton had no difficulty in recognizing as Oliva Cresswell.
"Yes," he said, "they might be the same person."
"That's the mother on the left," explained Kitson, "the resemblance is
remarkable. When Jackson saw the girl he called her Mary--that was his
wife's name. Millinborn left the whole of his fortune to Miss Cresswell,
but he placed upon me a solemn charge that she was not to benefit or to
know of her inheritance until she was married. He had a horror of
fortune-hunters. This was the secret which van Heerden surprised--I fear
with violence--from poor John as he lay dying. Since then he has been
plotting to marry the girl. To do him justice, I believe that the
cold-blooded hound has no other wish than to secure her money. His
acquaintance with White, who is on the verge of ruin, enabled him to get
to know the girl. He persuaded her to come here and a flat was found for
her. Partly," said the lawyer dryly, "because this block of flats
happens to be her own property and the lady who is supposed to be the
landlady is a nominee of mine."
"And I suppose that explains Mr. Beale," smiled the inspector.
"That explains Mr. Beale," said Kitson, "whom I brought from New York
especially to shadow van Heerden and to protect the girl. In the course
of investigations Mr. Beale has made another discovery, the particulars
of which I do not know."
There was a little pause.
"Why not tell the girl?" said the superintendent.
Kitson shook his head.
"I have thought it out, and to tell the girl would be tantamount to
breaking my faith with John Millinborn. No, I must simply shepherd her.
The first step we must take"--he turned to Beale--"is to get her away
from this place. Can't you shift your offices to--say New York?"
Beale shook his head.
"I can and I can't," he said. "If you will forgive my saying so, the
matter of the Green Rust is of infinitely greater importance than Miss
Cresswell's safety."
James Kitson frowned.
"I don't like to hear you say that, Beale."
"I don't like hearing myself say it," confessed the other, "but let me
put it this way. I believe by staying here I can afford her greater
protection and at the same time put a spoke in the wheel of Mr. van
Heerden's larger scheme."
Kitson pinched his lips thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you are right," he said. "Now I want to see this young lady,
that is why I have come. I suppose there will be no difficulty?"
"None at all, I think," said Beale. "I will tell her that you are
interested in the work she is doing. I might introduce you as Mr.
Scobbs," he smiled.
"Who is Scobbs?"
"He is a proprietor of a series of hotels in Western Canada, and is, I
should imagine, a most praiseworthy and inoffensive captain of minor
industry, but Miss Cresswell is rather interested in him," he laughed.
"She found the name occurring in Canadian guide-books and was struck by
its quaintness."
"Scobbs," said the lawyer slowly. "I seem to know that name."
"You had better know it if I am going to introduce you as Scobbs
himself," laughed Beale.
"Shall I be in the way?" asked the superintendent.
"No, please stay," said Beale. "I would like you to see this lady. We
may want your official assistance one of these days to get her out of a
scrape."
Mr. Beale passed out of the flat and pressed the bell of the door next
to his. There was no response. He pressed it again after an interval,
and stepped back to look at the fanlight. No light showed and he took
out his watch. It was nine o'clock. He had not seen the girl all day,
having been present at the inquest, but he had heard her door close two
hours before. No reply came to his second ring, and he went back to his
flat.
"She's out," he said. "I don't quite understand it. I particularly
requested her yesterday not to go out after dark for a day or two."
He walked into his bedroom and opened the window. The light of day was
still in the sky, but he took a small electric lamp to guide him along
the narrow steel balcony which connected all the flats with the
fire-escape. He found her window closed and bolted, but with the skill
of a professional burglar he unfastened the catch and stepped inside.
The room was in darkness. He switched on the light and glanced round. It
was Oliva's bedroom, and her workday hat and coat were lying on the bed.
He opened the long cupboard where she kept her limited wardrobe. He
knew, because it was his business to know, every dress she possessed.
They were all there as, also, were the three hats which she kept on a
shelf. All the drawers of the bureau were closed and there was no sign
of any disorder such as might be expected if she had changed and gone
out. He opened the door of the bedroom and walked into the sitting-room,
lighting his way across to the electric switch by means of his lamp.
The moment the light flooded the room he realized that something was
wrong. There was no disorder, but the room conveyed in some
indescribable manner a suggestion of violence. An object on the floor
attracted his attention and he stooped and picked it up. It was a shoe,
and the strap which had held it in place was broken. He looked at it,
slipped it in his pocket and passed rapidly through the other rooms to
the little kitchen and the tiny bath-room, put on the light in the hall
and made a careful scrutiny of the walls and the floor.
The mat was twisted out of its place, and on the left side of the wall
there were two long scratches. There was a faint sickly odour.
"Ether," he noted mentally.
He went quickly into the dining-room. The little bureau-desk was open
and a letter half-finished was lying on the pad, and it was addressed to
him and ran:
"DEAR MR. BEALE,--
Circumstances beyond my control make it necessary for me to leave
to-night for Liverpool."
That was all. It was obviously half finished. He picked it up, folded it
carefully and slipped it in his pocket. Then he returned to the hall,
opened the door and passed out.
He explained briefly what had happened and crossed to the doctor's flat,
and rang the bell.
CHAPTER X
A FRUITLESS SEARCH
A light glowed in the hall, the door was opened and the doctor, in
slippers and velvet coat, stood in the entrance. He showed no resentment
nor did he have time to show it.
"I want a word with you," said Beale.
"Twenty if you wish," said the doctor cheerfully. "Won't you come in?"
Beale was half-way in before the invitation was issued and followed the
doctor to his study.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
"Quite alone. I have very few visitors. In fact, my last visitor was
that unhappy man Jackson."
"When did you see Miss Cresswell last?"
The doctor raised his eyebrows.
"By what right----?" he began.
"Cut all that out," said Beale roughly. "When did you see Miss Cresswell
last?"
"I have not seen her to-day," said the doctor. "I have not been out of
my flat since I came back from the inquest."
"I should like to search your flat," said Beale.
"Policeman, eh?" smiled the doctor. "Certainly you can search the flat
if you have a warrant."
"I have no warrant, but I shall search your flat."
The doctor's face went dull red.
"I suppose you know you are liable to an action for trespass?"
"I know all about that," said Beale, "but if you have nothing to
conceal, Dr. van Heerden, I don't see why you should object."
"I don't object," shrugged the doctor, "search by all means. Where would
you like to start? Here?"
He pointed to three upright cases which stood at the end of the room
nearest the door.
"You will see nothing very pleasant here, they are anatomical models
which have just arrived from Berlin. In fact, I have been trading with
the enemy," he smiled. "They are screwed up, but I have a screwdriver
here."
Beale hesitated.
"There is only another room," the doctor went on, "my bedroom, but you
will not find her there."
Beale twisted round like lightning.
"Her?" he asked. "Who said Her?"
"I gather you are looking for Miss Cresswell," said the doctor coolly.
"You are searching for something, and you ask me when I saw her last.
Who else could you be looking for?"
"Quite right," he said quietly.
"Let me show you the way." The doctor walked ahead and turned on the
light in the inner bedroom.
It was a large apartment, simply furnished with a small steel bed, a
hanging wardrobe and a dressing-chest. Beyond that was his bath-room.
Beale was making a casual survey of this when he heard the door of the
bedroom click behind him. He turned round, jumped for the door, turned
the handle and pulled, but it did not yield. As he did so he thought he
heard a mutter of voices.
"Open the door!" he cried, hammering on the panel.
There was no answer. Then:
"Mr. Beale!"
His blood froze at the wild appeal in the tone, for it was the voice of
Oliva Cresswell, and it came from the room he had quitted.
He smashed at the panel but it was made of tough oak. His revolver was
in his hand and the muzzle was against the lock when the handle turned
and the door opened.
"Did you lock yourself in?" smiled the doctor, looking blandly at the
other's pale face.
"Where is the girl, where is Miss Cresswell?" he demanded. "I heard her
voice."
"You are mad, my friend."
"Where is Miss Cresswell?"
His hand dropped on the other's shoulder and gripped it with a force
that made the other shrink. With an oath the doctor flung him off.
"Hang you, you madman! How should I know?"
"I heard her voice."
"It was imagination," said the doctor. "I would have opened the door to
you before but I had walked out into the passage and had rung Miss
Cresswell's bell. I found the door open. I suppose you had been in. I
just shut the door and came back here."
Without a word Beale thrust him aside. He had taken one step to the door
when he stopped: At the end of the room had been the three long
anatomical cases. Now there were only two. One had gone. He did not stop
to question the man. He bounded through the door and raced down the
stairs. There was no vehicle in sight and only a few pedestrians. At the
corner of the street he found a policeman who had witnessed nothing
unusual and had not seen any conveyance carrying a box.
As he returned slowly to the entrance of Krooman Mansions something made
him look up. The doctor was leaning out of the window smoking a cigar.
"Found her?" he asked mockingly.
Beale made no reply. He came up the stairs, walked straight through the
open door of the doctor's flat and confronted that calm man as he leant
against the table, his hands gripping the edge, a cigar in the corner of
his mouth and a smile of quiet amusement on his bearded lips.
"Well?" he asked, "did you find her?"
"I did not find her, but I am satisfied that _you_ will."
Van Heerden's eyes did not falter.
"I am beginning to think, Mr. Beale, that over-indulgence in alcoholic
stimulants has turned your brain," he said mockingly. "You come into my
apartment and demand, with an heroic gesture, where I am concealing a
beautiful young lady, in whose welfare I am at least as much interested
as you, since that lady is my fiancee and is going to be my wife."
There was a pause.
"She is going to be your wife, is she?" said Beale softly. "I
congratulate you if I cannot congratulate her. And when is this
interesting engagement to be announced?"
"It is announced at this moment," said the doctor. "The lady is on her
way to Liverpool, where she will stay with an aunt of mine. You need not
trouble to ask me for her address, because I shall not give it to you."
"I see," said Beale.
"You come in here, I repeat, demanding with all the gesture and voice of
melodrama, the hiding-place of my fiancee,"--he enunciated the two last
words with great relish--"you ask to search my rooms and I give you
permission. You lock yourself in through your own carelessness and when
I release you you have a revolver in your hand, and are even more
melodramatic than ever. I know what you are going to say----"
"You are a clever man," interrupted Beale, "for I don't know myself."
"You were going to say, or you think, that I have some sinister purpose
in concealing this lady. Well, to resume my narrative, and to show you
your conduct from my point of view, I no sooner release you than you
stare like a lunatic at my anatomical cases and dash wildly out, to
return full of menace in your tone and attitude. Why?"
"Doctor van Heerden, when I came into your flat there were three
anatomical cases at the end of that room. When I came out there were
two. What happened to the third whilst I was locked in the room?"
Doctor van Heerden shook his head pityingly.
"I am afraid, I am very much afraid, that you are not right in your
head," he said, and nodded toward the place where the cases stood.
Beale followed the direction of his head and gasped, for there were
three cases.
"I admit that I deceived you when I said they contained specimens. As a
matter of fact, they are empty," said the doctor. "If you like to
inspect them, you can. You may find some--clue!"
Beale wanted no invitation. He walked to the cases one by one and
sounded them. Their lids were screwed on but the screws were dummies. He
found in the side of each a minute hole under the cover of the lid and,
taking out his knife, he pressed in the bodkin with which the knife was
equipped and with a click the lid flew open. The box was empty. The
second one answered the same test and was also empty. The third gave no
better result. He flashed his lamp on the bottom of the box, but there
was no trace of footmarks.
"Are you satisfied?" asked the doctor.
"Far from satisfied," said Beale, and with no other word he walked out
and down the stairs again.
Half-way down he saw something lying on one of the stairs and picked it
up. It was a shoe, the fellow of that which he had in his pocket, and it
had not been there when he came up.
* * * * *
Oliva Cresswell had read the story of the crime in the _Post Record_,
had folded up the paper with a little shiver and was at her tiny
writing-bureau when a knock came at the door. It was Dr. van Heerden.
"Can I come in for a moment?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"I shan't eat you," he smiled, "but I am so distressed by what has
happened and I feel that an explanation is due to you."
"I shouldn't trouble about that," she smiled, "but if you want to come
in, please do."
She closed the door behind him and left the light burning in the hall.
She did not ask him to sit down.
"You have seen the account in the _Post Record_?" he asked.
She nodded.
"And I suppose you are rather struck with the discrepancy between what I
told you and what I told the reporters, but I feel you ought to know
that I had a very special reason for protecting this man."
"Of that I have no doubt," she said coldly.
"Miss Cresswell, you must be patient and kind to me," he said earnestly.
"I have devoted a great deal of time and I have run very considerable
dangers in order to save you."
"To save me?" she repeated in surprise.
"Miss Cresswell," he asked, "did you ever know your father?"
She shook her head, so impressed by the gravity of his tone that she did
not cut the conversation short as she had intended.
"No," she said, "I was a girl when he died. I know nothing of him. Even
his own people who brought him up never spoke of him."
"Are you sure he is dead?" he asked.
"Sure? I have never doubted it. Why do you ask me? Is he alive?"
He nodded.
"What I am going to tell you will be rather painful," he said: "your
father was a notorious swindler." He paused, but she did not protest.
In her life she had heard many hints which did not redound to her
father's credit, and she had purposely refrained from pursuing her
inquiries.
"Some time ago your father escaped from Cayenne. He is, you will be
surprised to know, a French subject, and the police have been searching
for him for twelve months, including our friend Mr. Beale."
"It isn't true," she flamed. "How dare you suggest----?"
"I am merely telling you the facts, Miss Cresswell, and you must judge
them for yourself," said the doctor. "Your father robbed a bank in
France and hid the money in England. Because they knew that sooner or
later he would send for you the police have been watching you day and
night. Your father is at Liverpool. I had a letter from him this
morning. He is dying and he begs you to go to him."
She sat at the table, stunned. There was in this story a hideous
probability. Her first inclination was to consult Beale, but instantly
she saw that if what the doctor had said was true such a course would be
fatal.
"How do I know you are speaking the truth?" she asked.
"You cannot know until you have seen your father," he said. "It is a
very simple matter."
He took from his pocket an envelope and laid it before her.
"Here is the address--64 Hope Street. I advise you to commit it to
memory and tear it up. After all, what possible interest could I have in
your going to Liverpool, or anywhere else for the matter of that?"
"When is the next train?" she asked.
"One leaves in an hour from Euston."
She thought a moment.
"I'll go," she said decidedly.
She was walking back to her room to put on her coat when he called her
back.
"There's no reason in the world why you should not write to Beale to
tell him where you have gone," he said. "You can leave a note with me
and I will deliver it."
She hesitated again, sat down at her desk and scribbled the few lines
which Beale had found. Then she twisted round in her chair in
perplexity.
"I don't understand it all," she said. "If Mr. Beale is on the track of
my father, surely he will understand from this letter that I have gone
to meet him."
"Let me see what you have written," said van Heerden coolly, and looked
over her shoulder. "Yes, that's enough," he said.
"Enough?"
"Quite enough. You see, my idea was that you should write sufficient to
put him off the track."
"I don't understand you--there's somebody in the passage," she said
suddenly, and was walking to the door leading to the hall when he
intercepted her.
"Miss Cresswell, I think you will understand me when I tell you that
your father is dead, that the story I have told you about Beale being on
his track is quite untrue, and that it is necessary for a purpose which
I will not disclose to you that you should be my wife."
She sprang back out of his reach, white as death. Instinctively she
realized that she was in some terrible danger, and the knowledge turned
her cold.
"Your wife?" she repeated. "I think you must be mad, doctor."
"On the contrary, I am perfectly sane. I would have asked you before,
but I knew that you would refuse me. Had our friend Beale not
interfered, the course of true love might have run a little more
smoothly than it has. Now I am going to speak plainly to you, Miss
Cresswell. It is necessary that I should marry you, and if you agree I
shall take you away and place you in safe keeping. I will marry you at
the registrar's office and part from you the moment the ceremony is
completed. I will agree to allow you a thousand a year and I will
promise that I will not interfere with you or in any way seek your
society."
Her courage had revived during this recital of her future.
"What do you expect me to do," she asked contemptuously--"fall on your
neck and thank you, you with your thousand a year and your church-door
partings? No, doctor, if you are sane then you are either a great fool
or a great scoundrel. I would never dream of marrying you under any
circumstances. And now I think you had better go."
This time he did not stop her as she walked to the door and flung it
open. She started back with an exclamation of fear, for there were two
men in the hall.
"What do you----"
So far she got when the doctor's arm was round her and his hand was
pressed against her mouth. One of the men was carrying what looked like
a rubber bottle with a conical-shaped mouthpiece. She struggled, but the
doctor held her in a grip of steel. She was thrown to the ground, the
rubber cap of the bottle was pressed over her face, there came a rush of
cold air heavily charged with a sickly scent, and she felt life slipping
away....
"I think she's off now," said the doctor, lifting up her eyelid, "see if
the coast is clear, Gregory, and open the door of my flat."
The man departed. The doctor lifted the unconscious girl in his arms. He
was in the hall when he felt her move. Half-conscious as she was, she
was struggling to prevent the abduction.
"Quick, the door!" he gasped.
He carried her across the landing into his room, and the door closed
quietly behind him.
CHAPTER XI
THE HOUSE NEAR STAINES
Oliva Cresswell remembered nothing. She did not remember being thrust
limply into a long narrow box, nor hearing Beale's voice, nor the click
of the door that fastened him in Dr. van Heerden's bedroom. If she cried
out, as she did, she had no recollection of the fact.
"Carry her, box and all, to her flat. The door is open," whispered van
Heerden to the two men who had made their lightning disappearance into
the anatomical cases at the sound of Beale's knock.
"What shall we do?"
"Wait till I come to you. Hurry!"
They crossed the landing and passed through the open door of Oliva's
flat and the doctor closed the door behind them and returned in time to
release the savage Beale.
He watched him racing down the stairs, darted to the door of Oliva's
rooms, opened it and went in. In ten seconds she had been lifted from
her narrow prison and laid on her bed, the box had been returned to the
place where it had stood in the doctor's study and the men had returned
to join van Heerden in Oliva's darkened sitting-room.
Van Heerden had switched on the light in the girl's room and then
noticed for the first time that one of her shoes was missing. Quickly he
slipped off the remaining shoe.
"You wait here," he told the men, "until you hear Beale return. Then
make your escape. On your way down leave the shoe on the stairs. It will
help to put our friend off the trail."
Half an hour after the discovery of the shoe on the stairs Beale went
out accompanied by his visitors.
The doctor watched the dark figures disappear into the night from the
window of his sitting-room and made his way back to the girl's flat. She
was lying where he had left her, feeling dizzy and sick. Her eyes closed
in a little grimace of distaste as he put on the light.
"How does my little friend feel now?" he asked coolly.
She made no reply.
"Really, you must not sulk," he said chidingly, "and you must get used
to being polite because you are going to see a great deal of me. You had
better get up and put your coat on."
She noticed that he had a medicine glass in his hand, half-filled with a
milky-white liquor.
"Drink this," he said.
She pushed it away.
"Come, drink it," he said, "you don't suppose I want to poison you, do
you? I don't even want to drug you, otherwise it would have been simple
to have given you a little more ether. Drink it. It will take that hazy
feeling out of your head."
She took the glass with an unsteady hand and swallowed its contents. It
was bitter and hot and burnt her throat, but its effects were magical.
In three minutes her mind had cleared and when she sat up she could do
so without her head swimming.
"You will now put on your coat and hat, pack a few things that you want
for a journey, and come along with me."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," she said, "I advise you to go, Dr. van
Heerden, before I inform the police of your outrageous conduct."
"Put on your hat and coat," he repeated calmly, "and don't talk
nonsense. You don't suppose that I have risked all that I have risked to
let you go at this hour."
"Dr. van Heerden," she said, "if you have any spark of decency or
manhood you will leave me."
He laughed a little.
"Now you are talking like a heroine of Lyceum drama," he said. "Any
appeal you might make, Miss Cresswell, is a waste of time and a waste of
breath. I shall have no hesitation in using violence of the most
unpleasant character unless you do as I tell you."
His voice was quiet, but there was about him a convincing air of
purpose.
"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
"I am going to take you to a place of safety. When I say safety," he
added, "I mean safety for me. You yourself need fear nothing unless you
act foolishly, in which case you have everything to fear. Disabuse your
mind of one thought, Miss Cresswell," he said, "and that is that I am in
love with you and that there is any quality or charm in your admirable
person which would prevent my cutting your throat if it was necessary
for my safety. I am not a brute. I will treat you decently, as well as
any lady could wish to be treated, if you do not cross me, but I warn
you that if in the street you call for help or attempt to escape you
will never know what happened to you."
She stood at the end of her bed, one hand gripping the rail, her white
teeth showing against the red lower lip.
"Don't bite your lips, it does not stimulate thought, I can tell you
that as a medical man, and I can also tell you that this is not the
moment for you to consider plans for outwitting me. Get your coat and
hat on."
His voice was now peremptory, and she obeyed. In a few minutes she was
dressed ready for the street. He led the way out and holding her arm
lightly they passed out into the street. He turned sharply to the left,
the girl keeping in step by his side. To the casual observer, and few
could observe them in the gloom of the ill-lit thoroughfares through
which they passed, they were a couple on affectionate terms, but the arm
locked in hers was the arm of a gaoler, and once when they stood waiting
to cross busy Oxford Circus, and she had seen a policeman a few yards
away and had cautiously tried to slip her arm from his, she found her
wrist gripped with a hand of steel.
At the Marylebone Road end of Portland Place a car was waiting and the
doctor opened the door and pushed her in, following immediately.
"I had to keep the car some distance from Krooman Mansions or Beale
would have spotted it immediately," he said in an easy conversational
tone.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked.
"To a highly desirable residence in the Thames Valley," he said, "in the
days when I thought you might be wooed and wed, as the saying goes, I
thought it might make an excellent place for a honeymoon." He felt her
shrink from him.
"Please don't be distressed, I am rather glad that matters have turned
out as they have. I do not like women very much, and I should have been
inexpressibly bored if I had to keep up the fiction of being in love
with you."
"What do you intend doing?" she asked. "You cannot hope to escape from
Mr. Beale. He will find me."
He chuckled.
"As a sleuth-hound, Mr. Beale has his points," he said, "but they are
not points which keep me awake at night. I have always suspected he was
a detective, and, of course, it was he who planted the registered
envelopes on poor old White--that was clever," he admitted handsomely,
"but Beale, if you will excuse my hurting your feelings--and I know you
are half in love with him----"
She felt her face go hot.
"How dare you!" she flamed.
"Don't be silly," he begged. "I dare anything in these circumstances,
the greater outrage includes the less. If I abdicate you I feel myself
entitled to tease you. No, I think you had better not place too much
faith in Mr. Beale, who doesn't seem to be a member of the regular
police force, and is, I presume, one of those amateur gentlemen who
figure in divorce cases."
She did not reply. Inwardly she was boiling, and she recognized with a
little feeling of dismay that it was not so much the indignity which he
was offering her, as his undisguised contempt for the genius of Beale,
which enraged her.
They had left the town and were spinning through the country when she
spoke again.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me what you intend doing?"
He had fallen into a reverie and it was evidently a pleasant reverie,
for he came back to the realities of life with an air of reluctance.
"Eh? Oh, what am I going to do with you? Why, I am going to marry you."
"Suppose I refuse?"
"You won't refuse. I am offering you the easiest way out. When you are
married to me your danger is at an end. Until you marry me your hold on
life is somewhat precarious."
"But why do you insist upon this?" she asked, bewildered, "If you don't
love me, what is there in marriage for you? There are plenty of women
who would be delighted to have you. Why should you want to marry a girl
without any influence or position--a shop-girl, absolutely penniless?"
"It's a whim of mine," he said lightly, "and it's a whim I mean to
gratify."
"Suppose I refuse at the last moment?"
"Then," he said significantly, "you will be sorry. I tell you, no harm
is coming to you if you are sensible. If you are not sensible, imagine
the worst that can happen to you, and that will be the least. I will
treat you so that you will not think of your experience, let alone talk
of it."
There was a cold malignity in his voice that made her shudder. For a
moment, and a moment only, she was beaten down by the horrible
hopelessness of her situation, then her natural courage, her
indomitable, self-reliance overcame fear. If he expected an outburst of
anger and incoherent reproach, or if he expected her to break down into
hysterical supplication, he was disappointed. She had a firm grip upon
herself, perfect command of voice and words.
"I suppose you are one of those clever criminals one reads about," she
said, "prepared for all emergencies, perfectly self-confident, capable
and satisfied that there is nobody quite so clever as themselves."
"Very likely," he smiled. "It is a form of egotism," he said quietly. "I
read a book once about criminals. It was written by an Italian and he
said that was the chief characteristic of them all."
"Vanity? And they always do such clever things and such stupid things at
the same time, and their beautiful plans are so full of absurd
miscalculations, just as yours are."
"Just as mine are," he said mockingly.
"Just as yours are," she repeated; "you are so satisfied that because
you are educated and you are a scientist, that you are ever so much more
clever than all the rest of the world."
"Go on," he said. "I like to hear you talking. Your analysis is nearly
perfect and certainly there is a lot of truth in what you say."
She held down the surging anger which almost choked her and retained a
calm level. Sooner or later she would find the joint in his harness.
"I suppose you have everything ready?"
"My staff work is always good," he murmured, "marriage licence, parson,
even the place where you will spend your solitary honeymoon after
signing a few documents."
She turned toward him slowly. Against the window of the big limousine
his head was faintly outlined and she imagined the smile which was on
his face at that moment.
"So that is it!" she said. "I must sign a few documents saying that I
married you of my own free will!"
"No, madam," he said, "the circumstances under which you marry me
require no justification and that doesn't worry me in the slightest."
"What documents have I to sign?" she asked.
"You will discover in time," said he. "Here is the house, unless my
eyesight has gone wrong."
The car turned from the road, seemed to plunge into a high hedge, though
in reality, as the girl saw for a second as the lamps caught the stone
gate-posts, it was the entrance to a drive, and presently came to a stop
before a big rambling house. Van Heerden jumped down and assisted her to
alight. The house was in darkness, but as they reached the door it was
opened.
"Go in," said van Heerden, and pushed her ahead.
She found herself in an old-fashioned hall, the walls panelled of oak,
the floor made of closely mortised stone flags. She recognized the man
who had admitted them as one of those she had seen in her flat that same
night. He was a cadaverous man with high cheekbones and short, bristly
black hair and a tiny black moustache.
"I won't introduce you," said the doctor, "but you may call this man
Gregory. It is not his name, but it is good enough."
The man smiled furtively and eyed her furtively, took up the candle and
led the way to a room which opened off the hall at the farther end.
"This is the dining-room," said van Heerden. "It is chiefly interesting
to you as the place where the ceremony will be performed. Your room is
immediately above. I am sorry I did not engage a maid for you, but I
cannot afford to observe the proprieties or consider your reputation.
The fact is, I know no woman I could trust to perform that duty, and
you will have to look after yourself."
He led the way upstairs, unlocked a door and passed in. There was one
window which was heavily curtained. He saw her glance and nodded.
"You will find the windows barred," he said. "This was evidently the
nursery and is admirably suited to my purpose. In addition, I might tell
you that the house is a very old one and that it is impossible to walk
about the room without the door creaking and, as I spend most of my time
in the dining-room below, you will find it extremely difficult even to
make preparations for escape without my being aware of the fact."
The room was comfortably furnished. A small fire was alight in the tiny
grate and a table had been laid, on which were displayed sandwiches, a
thermos flask and a small silver basket of confectionery.
There was a door by the big four-poster bed.
"You may consider yourself fortunate in having the only room in the
house with a bath-room attached," he said. "You English people are
rather particular about that kind of thing."
"And you German people aren't," she said coolly.
"German?" he laughed. "So you guessed that, did you?"
"Guessed it?"--it was her turn to laugh scornfully. "Isn't the fact
self-evident? Who but a Hun----"
His face went a dull red.
"That is a word you must not use to me," he said roughly--"hang your
arrogance! Huns! We, who gave the world its kultur, who lead in every
department of science, art and literature!"
She stared at him in amazement.
"You are joking, of course," she said, forgetting her danger for the
moment in face of this extraordinary phenomenon. "If you are a German,
and I suppose you are, and an educated German at that, you don't for a
moment imagine you gave the world anything. Why, the Germans have never
been anything but exploiters of other men's brains."
From dull red, his face had gone white, his lip was trembling with
passion and when he spoke he could scarcely control his voice.
"We were of all people ordained by God to save the world through the
German spirit."
So far he got when she burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. It
was so like all the caricatures of German character she had read or seen
depicted. He looked at her, his face distorted with rage, and before she
had realized what had happened he had raised his hand and struck her
across the mouth.
She staggered back, speechless. To her had happened the most incredible
thing in the world, more incredible than her abduction, more incredible
than all the villainies known or suspected, in this man.
He stood there glowering at her, unrepentant, half-tempted, it seemed,
to repeat the blow. He had struck a woman and was not overwhelmed by
shame. All her views of men and things, all her conceptions of the codes
which govern mankind in their dealings one with the other, crumbled
away. If he had fallen on his knees and asked her pardon, if he had
shown any contrition, any fear, any shame, she might have gone back to
her old standards.
"You swine cat!" he said in German, "Herr Gott, but I will punish you if
you laugh at me!"
She was staring at him in intense curiosity. Her lip was bleeding a
little, the red mark of his fingers showed against her white face, but
she seemed to have forgotten the pain or the shock of the actual blow
and was wholly concerned in this new revelation.
"A Hun," she said, but she seemed to be speaking to herself, "of course
he's a Hun. They do that sort of thing, but I never believed it before."
He took a step toward her, but she did not flinch, and he turned and
walked quickly from the room, locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER XII
INTRODUCING PARSON HOMO
When Beale left Krooman Mansions with his two companions he had only the
haziest idea as to where he should begin his search. Perhaps the
personal interest he had in his client, an interest revealed by the
momentary panic into which her disappearance had thrown this usually
collected young man, clouded his better judgment.
A vague discomfort possessed him and he paused irresolutely at the
corner of the street. There was a chance that she might still be
concealed in the building, but a greater chance that if he followed one
of the three plans which were rapidly forming in his mind he might save
the girl from whatever danger threatened her.
"You are perfectly sure you heard her voice?"
"Certain," replied Beale shortly, "just as I am sure that I smelt the
ether."
"She may have been using it for some other purpose. Women put these
drugs to all sorts of weird purposes, like cleaning gloves, and----"
"That may be," interrupted Beale, "but I wasn't mistaken about her
voice. I am not subject to illusions of that kind."
He whistled. A man who had been lurking in the shadow of a building on
the opposite side of the road crossed to him.
"Fenson," said Beale, "watch these flats. If you see a car drive up just
go along and stand in front of the door. Don't let anybody enter that
car or carry any bundle into that car until you are sure that Miss
Cresswell is not one of the party or the bundle. If necessary you can
pull a gun--I know it isn't done in law-abiding London," he smiled at
Superintendent McNorton, "but I guess you've got to let me do a little
law-breaking."
"Go all the way," said the superintendent easily.
"That will do, Fenson. You know Miss Cresswell?"
"Sure, sir," said the man, and melted back into the shadows.
"Where are you going now?" asked Kitson.
"I am going to interview a gentleman who will probably give me a great
deal of information about van Heerden's other residences."
"Has he many?" asked Kitson, in surprise.
Beale nodded.
"He has been hiring buildings and houses for the past three months," he
said quietly, "and he has been so clever that I will defy you to trace
one of them. All his hiring has been done through various lawyers he has
employed, and they are all taken in fictitious names."
"Do you know any of them?"
"Not one," said Beale, with a baffled little laugh, "didn't I tell you
he's mighty clever? I got track of two of them but they were the only
two where the sale didn't go through."
"What does he want houses for?"
"We shall learn one of these days," said Beale cryptically. "I can tell
you something else, gentlemen, and this is more of a suspicion than a
certainty, that there is not a crank scientist who has ever gone under
through drink or crime in the whole of this country, aye, and America
and France, too, that isn't working for him. And now, gentlemen, if you
will excuse me----"
"You don't want any assistance?" asked the superintendent.
"I guess not," said Beale, with a smile, "I guess I can manage the Herr
Professor."
* * * * *
On the south side of the River Thames is a congested and thickly
populated area lying between the Waterloo and the Blackfriars Roads.
Here old houses, which are gauntly picturesque because of their age,
stand cheek-by-jowl with great blocks of model dwellings, which make up
in utility all that they lack in beauty. Such dwelling-places have a
double advantage. Their rent is low and they are close to the centre of
London. Few of the houses are occupied by one family, and indeed it is
the exception that one family rents in its entirety so much as a floor.
In a basement room in one of those houses sat two men as unlike one
another as it is possible to conceive. The room itself was strangely
tidy and bare of anything but the necessary furniture. A camp bed was
under the window in such a position as to give its occupant a view of
the ankles of those people who trod the pavement of the little street.
A faded cretonne curtain hid an inner and probably a smaller room where
the elder of the men slept. They sat on either side of a table, a
kerosene lamp placed exactly in the centre supplying light for their
various occupations.
The elder of the two was bent forward over a microscope, his big hands
adjusting the focus screw. Presently he would break off his work of
observation and jot down a few notes in crabbed German characters. His
big head, his squat body, his long ungainly arms, his pale face with its
little wisp of beard, would have been recognized by Oliva Cresswell, for
this was Professor Heyler--"the Herr Professor," as Beale called him.
The man sitting opposite was cast in a different mould. He was tall,
spare, almost aesthetic. The clean-shaven face, the well-moulded nose and
chin hinted at a refinement which his shabby threadbare suit and his
collarless shirt freakishly accentuated. Now and again he would raise
his deep-set eyes from the book he was reading, survey the absorbed
professor with a speculative glance and then return to his reading.
They had sat in silence for the greater part of an hour, when Beale's
tap on the door brought the reader round with narrow eyes.
"Expecting a visitor, professor?" he asked in German.
"Nein, nein," rambled the old man, "who shall visit me? Ah yes"--he
tapped his fat forefinger--"I remember, the Fraeulein was to call."
He got up and, shuffling to the door, slipped back the bolt and turned
it. His face fell when he saw Beale, and the man at the table rose.
"Hope I am not disturbing you," said the detective. "I thought you
lived alone."
He, too, spoke in the language which the professor understood best.
"That is a friend of mine," said old Heyler uncomfortably, "we live
together. I did not think you knew my address."
"Introduce me," said the man at the table coolly.
The old professor looked dubiously from one to the other.
"It is my friend, Herr Homo."
"Herr Homo," repeated Beale, offering his hand, "my name is Beale."
Homo shot a keen glance at him.
"A split! or my criminal instincts fail me," he said, pleasantly enough.
"Split?" repeated Beale, puzzled.
"American I gather from your accent," said Mr. Homo; "pray sit down.
'Split' is the phrase employed by the criminal classes to describe a
gentleman who in your country is known as a 'fly cop'!"
"Oh, a detective," smiled Beale. "No, in the sense you mean I am not a
detective. At any rate, I have not come on business."
"So I gather," said the other, seating himself, "or you would have
brought one of the 'busy fellows' with you. Here again you must pardon
the slang but we call the detective the 'busy fellow' to distinguish him
from the 'flattie,' who is the regular cop. Unless you should be under
any misapprehension, Mr. Beale, it is my duty to tell you that I am a
representative of the criminal classes, a fact which our learned
friend," he nodded toward the distressed professor, "never ceases to
deplore," and he smiled blandly.
They had dropped into English and the professor after waiting
uncomfortably for the visitor to explain his business had dropped back
to his work with a grunt.
"I am Parson Homo and this is my _pied-a-terre_. We professional
criminals must have somewhere to go when we are not in prison, you
know."
The voice was that of an educated man, its modulation, the confidence
and the perfect poise of the speaker suggested the college man.
"So that you shall not be shocked by revelations I must tell you that I
have just come out of prison. I am by way of being a professional
burglar."
"I am not easily shocked," said Beale.
He glanced at the professor.
"I see," said Parson Homo, rising, "that I am _de trop_. Unfortunately I
cannot go into the street without risking arrest. In this country, you
know, there is a law which is called the Prevention of Crimes Act, which
empowers the unemployed members of the constabulary who find time
hanging on their hands to arrest known criminals on suspicion if they
are seen out in questionable circumstances. And as all circumstances are
questionable to the unimaginative 'flattie,' and his no less obtuse
friend the 'split,' I will retire to the bedroom and stuff my ears with
cotton-wool."
"You needn't," smiled Beale, "I guess the professor hasn't many secrets
from you."
"Go on guessing, my ingenious friend," said the parson, smiling with his
eyes, "my own secrets I am willing to reveal but--_adios!_"
He waved his hand and passed behind the cretonne curtain and the old man
looked up from his instrument.
"It is the Donovan Leichmann body that I search for," he said solemnly;
"there was a case of sleeping-sickness at the docks, and the Herr
Professor of the Tropical School so kindly let me have a little blood
for testing."
"Professor," said Beale, sitting down in the place which Parson Homo had
vacated and leaning across the table, "are you still working for van
Heerden?"
The old man rolled his big head from side to side in an agony of
protest.
"Of the learned doctor I do not want to speak," he said, "to me he has
been most kind. Consider, Herr Peale, I was starving in this country
which hates Germans and regard as a mad old fool and an ugly old devil,
and none helped me until the learned doctor discovered me. I am a
German, yes. Yet I have no nationality, being absorbed in the larger
brotherhood of science. As for me I am indifferent whether the Kaiser or
the Socialists live in Potsdam, but I am loyal, Herr Peale, to all who
help me. To you, also," he said hastily, "for you have been most kind,
and once when in foolishness I went into a room where I ought not to
have been you saved me from the police." He shrugged his massive
shoulders again. "I am grateful, but must I not also be grateful to the
learned doctor?"
"Tell me this, professor," said Beale, "where can I find the learned
doctor to-night?"
"At his so-well-known laboratory, where else?" asked the professor.
"Where else?" repeated Beale.
The old man was silent.
"It is forbidden that I should speak," he said; "the Herr Doctor is
engaged in a great experiment which will bring him fortune. If I betray
his secrets he may be ruined. Such ingratitude, Herr Peale!"
There was a silence, the old professor, obviously distressed and ill at
ease, looking anxiously at the younger man.
"Suppose I tell you that the Herr Doctor is engaged in a dangerous
conspiracy," said Beale, "and that you yourself are running a
considerable risk by assisting him?"
The big hands were outspread in despair.
"The Herr Doctor has many enemies," mumbled Heyler. "I can tell you
nothing, Herr Peale."
"Tell me this," said Beale: "is there any place you know of where the
doctor may have taken a lady--the young lady into whose room you went
the night I found you?"
"A young lady?" The old man was obviously surprised. "No, no, Herr
Peale, there is no place where a young lady could go. Ach! No!"
"Well," said Beale, after a pause, "I guess I can do no more with you,
professor." He glanced round at the cretonne recess: "I won't
inconvenience you any longer, Mr. Homo."
The curtains were pushed aside and the aesthetic-looking man stepped
out, the half-smile on his thin lips.
"I fear you have had a disappointing visit," he said pleasantly, "and it
is on the tip of your tongue to ask me if I can help you. I will save
you the trouble of asking--I can't."
Beale laughed.
"You are a bad thought-reader," he said. "I had no intention of asking
you."
He nodded to the old man, and with another nod to his companion was
turning when a rap came at the door. He saw the two men exchange glances
and noted in the face of the professor a look of blank dismay. The knock
was repeated impatiently.
"Permit me," said Beale, and stepped to the door.
"Wait, wait," stammered the professor, "if Mr. Peale will permit----"
He shuffled forward, but Beale had turned the latch and opened the door
wide. Standing in the entrance was a girl whom he had no difficulty in
recognizing as Hilda Glaum, sometime desk companion of Oliva Cresswell.
His back was to the light and she did not recognize him.
"Why did you not open more quickly?" she asked in German, and swung the
heavy bag she carried into the room, "every moment I thought I should be
intercepted. Here is the bag. It will be called for to-morrow----"
It was then that she saw Beale for the first time and her face went
white.
"Who--who are you?" she asked; then quickly, "I know you. You are the
man Beale. The drunken man----"
She looked from him to the bag at her feet and to him again, then before
he could divine her intention she had stooped and grasped the handle of
the bag. Instantly all his attention was riveted upon that leather case
and its secret. His hand shot out and gripped her arm, but she wrenched
herself free. In doing so the bag was carried by the momentum of its
release and was driven heavily against the wall. He heard a shivering
crash as though a hundred little glasses had broken simultaneously.
Before he could reach the bag she snatched it up, leapt through the
open door and slammed it to behind her. His hand was on the latch----
"Put 'em up, Mr. Beale, put 'em up," said a voice behind him. "Right
above your head, Mr. Beale, where we can see them."
He turned slowly, his hands rising mechanically to face Parson Homo, who
still sat at the table, but he had discarded his Greek book and was
handling a business-like revolver, the muzzle of which covered the
detective.
"Smells rotten, doesn't it?" said Homo pleasantly.
Beale, too, had sniffed the musty odour, and knew that it came from the
bag the girl had wrenched from his grasp. It was the sickly scent of the
Green Rust!
CHAPTER XIII
AT DEANS FOLLY
With her elbows resting on the broad window-ledge and her cheeks against
the cold steel bars which covered the window, Oliva Cresswell watched
the mists slowly dissipate in the gentle warmth of the morning sun. She
had spent the night dozing in a rocking-chair and at the first light of
day she had bathed and redressed ready for any emergency. She had not
heard any sound during the night and she guessed that van Heerden had
returned to London.
The room in which she was imprisoned was on the first floor at the back
of the house and the view she had of the grounds was restricted to a
glimpse between two big lilac bushes which were planted almost on a
level with her room.
The house had been built on the slope of a gentle rise so that you might
walk from the first-floor window on to the grassy lawn at the back of
the house but for two important obstacles, the first being represented
by the bars which protected the window and the second by a deep area,
concrete-lined, which formed a trench too wide to jump.
She could see, however, that the grounds were extensive. The high wall
which, apparently, separated the garden from the road was a hundred
yards away. She knew it must be the road because of a little brown gate
which from time to time she saw between the swaying bushes. She turned
wearily from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. She was not
afraid--irritated would be a better word to describe her emotion. She
was mystified, too, and that was an added irritation.
Why should this man, van Heerden, who admittedly did not love her, who
indeed loved her so little that he could strike her and show no signs of
remorse--why did this man want to marry her? If he wanted to marry her,
why did he kidnap her?
There was another question, too, which she had debated that night. Why
did his reference to the American detective, Beale, so greatly embarrass
her?
She had reached the point where even such tremendous subjects of debate
had become less interesting than the answer to that question which was
furnished, when a knock came to her door and a gruff voice said:
"Breakfast!"
She unlocked the door and pulled it open. The man called Gregory was
standing on the landing. He jerked his thumb to the room opposite.
"You can use both these rooms," he said, "but you can't come downstairs.
I have put your breakfast in there."
She followed the thumb across the landing and found herself in a plainly
furnished sitting-room. The table had been laid with a respectable
breakfast, and until she had appeased her healthy young appetite she
took very little stock of her surroundings.
The man came up in half an hour to clear away the table.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me where I am?" asked Oliva.
"I am not going to tell you anything," said Gregory.
"I suppose you know that by detaining me here you are committing a very
serious crime?"
"Tell it to the doctor," said the man, with a queer little smile.
She followed him out to the landing. She wanted to see what sort of
guard was kept and what possibilities there were of escape. Somehow it
seemed easier to make a reconnaissance now under his very eyes than it
had been in the night, when in every shadow had lurked a menace.
She did not follow him far, however. He put down the tray at the head of
the stairs and reaching out both his hands drew two sliding doors from
the wall and snapped them in her face. She heard the click of a door and
knew that any chance of escape from this direction was hopeless. The
doors had slid noiselessly on their oiled runners and had formed for her
a little lobby of the landing. She guessed that the sliding doors had
been closed after van Heerden's departure. She had exhausted all the
possibilities of her bedroom and now began an inspection of the other.
Like its fellow, the windows were barred. There was a bookshelf, crowded
with old volumes, mostly on matters ecclesiastical or theological. She
looked at it thoughtfully.
"Now, if I were clever like Mr. Beale," she said aloud, "I could deduce
quite a lot from this room."
A distant church bell began to clang and she realized with a start that
the day was Sunday. She looked at her watch and was amazed to see it was
nearly eleven. She must have slept longer than she had thought.
This window afforded her no better view than did that of the bedroom,
except that she could see the gate more plainly and what looked to be
the end of a low-roofed brick building which had been erected against
the wall. She craned her neck, looking left and right, but the bushes
had been carefully planted to give the previous occupants of these two
rooms greater privacy.
Presently the bell stopped and she addressed herself again to an
examination of the room. In an old-fashioned sloping desk she found a
few sheets of paper, a pen and a bottle half-filled with thick ink.
There were also two telegraph forms, and these gave her an idea. She
went back to the table in the middle of the room. With paper before her
she began to note the contents of the apartment.
"I am trying to be Bealish," she admitted.
She might also have confessed that she was trying to keep her mind off
her possibly perilous position and that though she was not afraid she
had a fear of fear.
"A case full of very dull good books. That means that the person who
lived here before was very serious-minded."
She walked over and examined the titles, pulled out a few books and
looked at their title pages. They all bore the same name, "L. T. B.
Stringer." She uttered an exclamation. Wasn't there some directory of
clergymen's names?--she was sure this was a clergyman, nobody else would
have a library of such weighty volumes.
Her fingers ran along the shelves and presently she found what she
wanted--Crocker's Clergy List of 1879. She opened the book and presently
found, "Stringer, Laurence Thomas Benjamin, Vicar of Upper Staines,
Deans Folly, Upper Reach Village, near Staines."
Her eyes sparkled. Instinctively she knew that she had located her
prison. Van Heerden had certainly hired the house furnished, probably
from the clergyman or his widow. She began to search the room with
feverish haste. Near the window was a cupboard built out. She opened it
and found that it was a small service lift, apparently communicating
with the kitchen. In a corner of the room was an invalid chair on
wheels.
She sat down at the table and reconstructed the character of its
occupant. She saw an invalid clergyman who had lived permanently in this
part of the house. He was probably wheeled from his bedroom to his
sitting-room, and in this cheerless chamber had spent the last years of
his life. And this place was Deans Folly? She took up the telegraph form
and after a few minutes' deliberation wrote:
"To Beale, Krooman Mansions."
She scratched that out, remembering that he had a telegraphic address
and substituted:
"Belocity, London." She thought a moment, then wrote: "Am imprisoned at
Deans Folly, Upper Reach Village, near Staines. Oliva." That looked too
bold, and she added "Cresswell."
She took a florin from her bag and wrapped it up in the telegraph form.
She had no exact idea as to how she should get the message sent to the
telegraph office, and it was Sunday, when all telegraph offices would be
closed. Nor was there any immediate prospect of her finding a messenger.
She supposed that tradesmen came to the house and that the kitchen door
was somewhere under her window, but tradesmen do not call on Sundays.
She held the little package irresolutely in her hand. She must take her
chance to-day. To-morrow would be Monday and it was certain somebody
would call.
With this assurance she tucked the message into her blouse. She was in
no mood to continue her inspection of the room, and it was only because
in looking again from the window she pulled it from its hook that she
saw the strange-looking instr
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