Wallace Edgar
The Green Rust
White made a gurgling noise in his throat and held on to the desk for support.
"I have only the haziest information as to what it is all about, but somehow"—McNorton knit his brows in a frown and was speaking half to himself—"I seem to feel that it is a bad business—a damnably bad business."
He took up his hat from the table and walked to the door.
"I don't know whether to say au revoir or good-bye," he said with twitching lips.
"Good-bye—ah—is a very good old-fashioned word," said Mr. White, in an heroic attempt to imitate the other's good humour.
CHAPTER XVIII
BRIDGERS BREAKS LOOSE
Dr. van Heerden sat by the side of the big four-poster bed, where the girl lay, and his cold blue eyes held a spark of amusement.
"You look very foolish," he said.
Oliva Cresswell turned her head sharply so as to remove the man from her line of vision.
More than this she could not do, for her hands and feet were strapped, and on the pillow, near her head, was a big bath-towel saturated with water which had been employed in stifling her healthy screams which marked her return to understanding.
"You look very foolish," said the doctor, chewing at the end of his cigar, "and you look no more foolish than you have been. Bridgers let you out, eh? Nice man, Mr. Bridgers; what had he been telling you?"
She turned her head again and favoured him with a stare. Then she looked at the angry red mark on her wrists where the straps chafed.
"How Hun-like!" she said; but this time he smiled.
"You will not make me lose my temper again, Little-wife-to-be," he mocked her; "you may call me Hun or Heinz or Fritz or any of the barbarous and vulgar names which the outside world employ to vilify my countrymen, but nothing you say will distress or annoy me. To-morrow you and I will be man and wife."
"This is not Germany," she said scornfully. "You cannot make a woman marry you against her will, this is–"
"The land of the free," he interrupted suavely. "Yes—I know those lands, on both sides of the Atlantic. But even there curious things happen. And you're going to marry me—you will say 'Yes' to the sleek English clergyman when he asks you whether you will take this man to be your married husband, to love and cherish and all that sort of thing, you'll say 'Yes.'"
"I shall say 'No!'" she said steadily.
"You will say 'Yes,'" he smiled. "I had hoped to be able to give sufficient time to you so that I might persuade you to act sensibly. I could have employed arguments which I think would have convinced you that there are worse things than marriage with me."
"I cannot think of any," she replied coldly.
"Then you are singularly dense," said the doctor. "I have already told you the conditions under which that marriage will take place. There might be no marriage, you know, and a different end to this adventure," he said, significantly, and she shivered.
He said nothing more for five minutes, simply sitting biting at the cigar between his teeth and looking at her blankly, as though his thoughts were far away and she was the least of the problems which confronted him.
"I know it is absurd to ask you," he said suddenly, "but I presume you have not devoted any of your studies to the question of capital punishment. I see you haven't; but there is one interesting fact about the execution of criminals which is not generally known to the public, and it is that in many countries, my own for example, before a man is led to execution he is doped with a drug which I will call 'Bromocine.' Does that interest you?"
She made no reply, and he laughed quietly.
"It should interest you very much," he said. "The effect of Bromocine," he went on, speaking with the quiet precision of one who was lecturing on the subject to an interested audience, "is peculiar. It reduces the subject to a condition of extreme lassitude, so that really nothing matters or seems to matter. Whilst perfectly conscious the subject goes obediently to his death, behaves normally and does just what he is told—in fact, it destroys the will."
"Why do you tell me this?" she asked, a sudden fear gripping her heart.
He half-turned in his chair, reached out his hand and took a little black case from the table near the window. This he laid on the bed and opened, and she watched him, fascinated. He took a tiny bottle containing a colourless liquid, and with great care laid it on the coverlet. Then he extracted a small hypodermic syringe and a needle-pointed nozzle. He uncorked the bottle, inserted the syringe and filled it, then he screwed on the needle, pressed the plunger until a fine jet leapt in the air, then he laid it carefully back in the case.
"You say you will not marry me and I presume that you would make a scene when I bring in the good English parson to perform the ceremony. I had hoped," he said apologetically, "to have given you a wedding with all the pomp and circumstance which women, as I understand, love. Failing that, I hoped for a quiet wedding in the little church out yonder." He jerked his head toward the window. "But now I am afraid that I must ask his reverence to carry out the ceremony in this house."
He rose, leant over her and deftly pulled back her sleeve.
"If you scream I shall smother you with the towel," he said. "This won't hurt you very much. As I was going to say, you will be married here because you are in a delicate state of health and you will say 'Yes.'"
She winced as the needle punctured the skin.
"It won't hurt you for very long," he said calmly. "You will say 'Yes,' I repeat, because I shall tell you to say 'Yes.'"
Suddenly the sharp pricking pain in her arm ceased. She was conscious of a sensation as though her arm was being blown up like a bicycle tyre, but it was not unpleasant. He withdrew the needle and kept his finger pressed upon the little red wound where it had gone in.
"I shall do this to you again to-night," he said, "and you will not feel it at all, and to-morrow morning, and you will not care very much what happens. I hope it will not be necessary to give you a dose to-morrow afternoon."
"I shall not always be under the influence of this drug," she said between her teeth, "and there will be a time of reckoning for you, Dr. van Heerden."
"By which time," he said calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened and removed the straps at her wrists and about her feet and put them in his pocket.
"You had better get up and walk about," he said, "or you will be stiff. I am really being very kind to you if you only knew it. I am too big to be vindictive. And, by the way, I had an interesting talk with your friend, Mr. Beale, this afternoon, a persistent young man who has been having me shadowed all day." He laughed quietly. "If I hadn't to go back to the surgery for the Bromocine I should have missed our very interesting conversation. That young man is very much in love with you"—he looked amusedly at the growing red in her face. "He is very much in love with you," he repeated. "What a pity! What a thousand pities!"
"How soon will this drug begin to act?" she asked.
"Are you frightened?"
"No, but I should welcome anything which made me oblivious to your presence—you are not exactly a pleasant companion," she said, with a return to the old tone he knew so well.
"Content yourself, little person," he said with simulated affection. "You will soon be rid of me."
"Why do you want to marry me?"
"I can tell you that now," he said: "Because you are a very rich woman and I want your money, half of which comes to me on my marriage."
"Then the man spoke the truth!" She sat up suddenly, but the effort made her head swim.
He caught her by the shoulders and laid her gently down.
"What man—not that babbling idiot, Bridgers?" He said something, but instantly recovered his self-possession. "Keep quiet," he said with professional sternness. "Yes, you are the heiress of an interesting gentleman named John Millinborn."
"John Millinborn!" she gasped. "The man who was murdered!"
"The man who was killed," he corrected. "'Murder' is a stupid, vulgar word. Yes, my dear, you are his heiress. He was your uncle, and he left you something over six million dollars. That is to say he left us that colossal sum."
"But I don't understand. What does it mean?"
"Your name is Prédeaux. Your father was the ruffian–"
"I know, I know," she cried. "The man in the hotel. The man who died. My father!"
"Interesting, isn't it?" he said calmly, "like something out of a book. Yes, my dear, that was your parent, a dissolute ruffian whom you will do well to forget. I heard John Millinborn tell his lawyer that your mother died of a broken heart, penniless, as a result of your father's cruelty and unscrupulousness, and I should imagine that that was the truth."
"My father!" she murmured.
She lay, her face as white as the pillow, her eyes closed.
"John Millinborn left a fortune for you—and I think that you might as well know the truth now—the money was left in trust. You were not to know that you were an heiress until you were married. He was afraid of some fortune-hunter ruining your young life as Prédeaux ruined your mother's. That was thoughtful of him. Now I don't intend ruining your life, I intend leaving you with half your uncle's fortune and the capacity for enjoying all that life can hold for a high-spirited young woman."
"I'll not do it, I'll not do it, I'll not do it," she muttered.
He rose from the chair and bent over her.
"My young friend, you are going to sleep," he said to himself, waited a little longer and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He descended to the hall and passed into the big dining-hall beneath the girl's bedroom. The room had two occupants, a stout, hairless man who had neither hair, eyebrows, nor vestige of beard, and a younger man.
"Hello, Bridgers," said van Heerden addressing the latter, "you've been talking."
"Well, who doesn't?" snarled the man.
He pulled the tortoiseshell box from his pocket, opened the lid and took a pinch from its contents, snuffling the powder luxuriously.
"That stuff will kill you one of these days," said van Heerden.
"It will make him better-tempered," growled the hairless man. "I don't mind people who take cocaine as long as they are taking it. It's between dopes that they get on my nerves."
"Dr. Milsom speaks like a Christian and an artist," said Bridgers, with sudden cheerfulness. "If I didn't dope, van Heerden, I should not be working in your beastly factory, but would probably be one of the leading analytical chemists in America. But I'll go back to do my chore," he said rising. "I suppose I get a little commission for restoring your palpitating bride? Milsom tells me that it is she. I thought it was the other dame—the Dutch girl. I guess I was a bit dopey."
Van Heerden frowned.
"You take too keen an interest in my affairs," he said.
"Aw! You're getting touchy. If I didn't get interested in something I'd go mad," chuckled Bridgers.
He had reached that stage of cocaine intoxication when the world was a very pleasant place indeed and full of subject for jocularity.
"This place is getting right on my nerves," he went on, "couldn't I go to London? I'm stagnating here. Why, some of the stuff I cultivated the other day wouldn't react. Isn't that so, Milsom? I get so dull in this hole that all bugs look alike to me."
Van Heerden glanced at the man who was addressed as Dr. Milsom and the latter nodded.
"Let him go back," he said, "I'll look after him. How's the lady?" asked Milsom when they were alone.
The other made a gesture and Dr. Milsom nodded.
"It's good stuff," he said. "I used to give it to lunatics in the days of long ago."
Van Heerden did not ask him what those days were. He never pryed too closely into the early lives of his associates, but Milsom's history was public property. Four years before he had completed a "life sentence" of fifteen years for a crime which had startled the world in '99.
"How are things generally?" he asked.
Van Heerden shrugged his shoulders.
"For the first time I am getting nervous," he said. "It isn't so much the fear of Beale that rattles me, but the sordid question of money. The expenses are colossal and continuous."
"Hasn't your—Government"—Milsom balked at the word—"haven't your friends abroad moved in the matter yet?"
Van Heerden shook his head.
"I am very hopeful there," he said. "I have been watching the papers very closely, especially the Agrarian papers, and, unless I am mistaken, there is a decided movement in the direction of support. But I can't depend on that. The marriage must go through to-morrow."
"White is getting nervous, too," he went on. "He is pestering me about the money I owe him, or rather the syndicate owes him. He's on the verge of ruin."
Milsom made a little grimace.
"Then he'll squeal," he said, "those kind of people always do. You'll have to keep him quiet. You say the marriage is coming off to-morrow?"
"I have notified the parson," said van Heerden. "I told him my fiancée is too ill to attend the church and the ceremony must be performed here."
Milsom nodded. He had risen from the table and was looking out upon the pleasant garden at the rear of the house.
"A man could do worse than put in three or four weeks here," he said. "Look at that spread of green."
He pointed to an expanse of waving grasses, starred with the vari-coloured blossoms of wild flowers.
"I was never a lover of nature," said van Heerden, carelessly.
Milsom grunted.
"You have never been in prison," he said cryptically. "Is it time to give your lady another dose?"
"Not for two hours," said van Heerden. "I will play you at piquet."
The cards were shuffled and the hands dealt when there was a scamper of feet in the hall, the door burst open and a man ran in. He was wearing a soiled white smock and his face was distorted with terror.
"M'sieur, m'sieur," he cried, "that imbecile Bridgers!"
"What's wrong?" Van Heerden sprang to his feet.
"I think he is mad. He is dancing about the grounds, singing, and he has with him the preparation!"
Van Heerden rapped out an oath and leapt through the door, the doctor at his heels. They took the short cut and ran up the steps leading from the well courtyard, and bursting through the bushes came within sight of the offender.
But he was not dancing now. He was standing with open mouth, staring stupidly about him.
"I dropped it, I dropped it!" he stammered.
There was no need for van Heerden to ask what he had dropped, for the green lawn which had excited Milsom's admiration was no longer to be seen. In its place was a black irregular patch of earth which looked as though it had been blasted in the furnaces of hell, and the air was filled with the pungent mustiness of decay.
CHAPTER XIX
OLIVA IS WILLING
It seemed that a grey curtain of mist hung before Oliva's eyes. It was a curtain spangled with tiny globes of dazzling light which grew from nothing and faded to nothing. Whenever she fixed her eyes upon one of these it straightway became two and three and then an unaccountable quantity.
She felt that she ought to see faces of people she knew, for one half of her brain had cleared and was calmly diagnosing her condition, but doing so as though she were somebody else. She was emerging from a drugged sleep; she could regard herself in a curious impersonal fashion which was most interesting. And people who are drugged see things and people. Strange mirages of the mind arise and stranger illusions are suffered. Yet she saw nothing save this silvery grey curtain with its drifting spots of light and heard nothing except a voice saying, "Come along, come along, wake up." A hundred, a thousand times this monotonous order was repeated, and then the grey curtain faded and she was lying on the bed, her head throbbing, her eyes hot and prickly, and two men were looking down at her, one of them a big barefaced man with a coarse mouth and sunken eyes.
"Was it my father really?" she asked drowsily.
"I was afraid of that second dose you gave her last night," said Milsom. "You are getting a condition of coma and that's the last thing you want."
"She'll be all right now," replied van Heerden, but his face was troubled. "The dose was severe—yet she seemed healthy enough to stand a three-minim injection."
Milsom shook his head.
"She'll be all right now, but she might as easily have died," he said. "I shouldn't repeat the dose."
"There's no need," said van Heerden.
"What time is it?" asked the girl, and sat up. She felt very weak and weary, but she experienced no giddiness.
"It is twelve o'clock; you have been sleeping since seven last night. Let me see if you can stand. Get up."
She obeyed meekly. She had no desire to do anything but what she was told. Her mental condition was one of complete dependence, and had she been left to herself she would have been content to lie down again.
Yet she felt for a moment a most intense desire to propound some sort of plan which would give this man the money without going through a marriage ceremony. That desire lasted a minute and was succeeded by an added weariness as though this effort at independent thought had added a new burden to her strength. She knew and was mildly amazed at the knowledge that she was under the influence of a drug which was destroying her will, yet she felt no particular urge to make a fight for freedom of determination. "Freedom of determination." She repeated the words, having framed her thoughts with punctilious exactness, and remembered that that was a great war phrase which one was constantly discovering in the newspapers. All her thoughts were like this—they had the form of marshalled language, so that even her speculations were punctuated.
"Walk over to the window," said the doctor, and she obeyed, though her knees gave way with every step she took. "Now come back—good, you're all right."
She looked at him, and did not flinch when he laid his two hands on her shoulders.
"You are going to be married this afternoon—that's all right, isn't it?"
"Yes," she said, "that is all right."
"And you'll say 'yes' when I tell you to say 'yes,' won't you?"
"Yes, I'll say that," she said.
All the time she knew that this was monstrously absurd. All the time she knew that she did not wish to marry this man. Fine sentences, pompously framed, slowly formed in her mind such as: "This outrage will not go unpunished, comma, and you will suffer for this, comma, Dr. van Heerden, full stop."
But the effort of creating the protest exhausted her so that she could not utter it. And she knew that the words were stilted and artificial, and the working-cells of her brain whispered that she was recalling and adapting something she had heard at the theatre. She wanted to do the easiest thing, and it seemed absurdly easy to say "yes."
"You will stay here until the parson comes," said van Heerden, "and you will not attempt to escape, will you?"
"No, I won't attempt to escape," she said.
"Lie down."
She sat on the bed and swung her feet clear of the ground, settling herself comfortably.
"She'll do," said van Heerden, satisfied. "Come downstairs, Milsom, I have something to say to you."
So they left her, lying with her cheek on her hand, more absorbed in the pattern on the wall-paper than in the tremendous events which threatened.
"Well, what's the trouble?" asked Milsom, seating himself in his accustomed place by the table.
"This," said van Heerden, and threw a letter across to him. "It came by one of my scouts this morning—I didn't go home last night. I cannot risk being shadowed here."
Milsom opened the letter slowly and read:
"A man called upon you yesterday afternoon and has made several calls since. He was seen by Beale, who cross-examined him. Man calls himself Stardt, but is apparently not British. He is staying at Saraband Hotel, Berners Street."
"Who is this?" asked Milsom.
"I dare not hope–" replied the doctor, pacing the room nervously.
"Suppose you dared, what form would your hope take?"
"I told you the other day," said van Heerden, stopping before his companion, "that I had asked my Government to assist me. Hitherto they have refused, that is why I am so desperately anxious to get this marriage through. I must have money. The Paddington place costs a small fortune—you go back there to-night, by the way–"
Milsom nodded.
"Has the Government relented?" he asked.
"I don't know. I told you that certain significant items in the East Prussian newspapers seemed to hint that they were coming to my assistance. They have sent no word to me, but if they should agree they would send their agreement by messenger."
"And you think this may be the man?"
"It is likely."
"What have you done?"
"I have sent Gregory up to see the man. If he is what I hope he may be, Gregory will bring him here—I have given him the password."
"What difference will it make?" asked Milsom. "You are on to a big fortune, anyway."
"Fortune?" The eyes of Dr. van Heerden sparkled and he seemed to expand at the splendour of the vision which was conjured to his eyes.
"No fortune which mortal man has ever possessed will be comparable. All the riches of all the world will lie at my feet. Milliards upon milliards–"
"In fact, a lot of money," said the practical Dr. Milsom. "'Umph! I don't quite see how you are going to do it. You haven't taken me very much into your confidence, van Heerden."
"You know everything."
Milsom chuckled.
"I know that in the safe of my office you have a thousand sealed envelopes addressed, as I gather, to all the scallywags of the world, and I know pretty well what you intend doing; but how do you benefit? And how do I benefit?"
Van Heerden had recovered his self-possession.
"You have already benefited," he said shortly, "more than you could have hoped."
There was an awkward pause; then Milsom asked:
"What effect is it going to have upon this country?"
"It will ruin England," said van Heerden fervently, and the old criminal's eyes narrowed.
"'Umph!" he said again, and there was a note in his voice which made van Heerden look at him quickly.
"This country hasn't done very much for you," he sneered.
"And I haven't done much for this country—yet," countered the other.
The doctor laughed.
"You're turning into a patriot in your old age," he said.
"Something like that," said Milsom easily. "There used to be a fellow at Portland—you have probably run across him—a clever crook named Homo, who used to be a parson before he got into trouble."
"I never met the gentleman, and talking of parsons," he said, looking at his watch, "our own padre is late. But I interrupted you."
"He was a man whose tongue I loathed, and he hated me poisonously," said Milsom, with a little grimace, "but he used to say that patriotism was the only form of religion which survived penal servitude. And I suppose that's the case. I hate the thought of putting this country in wrong."
"You'll get over your scruples," said the other easily. "You are putting yourself in right, anyway. Think of the beautiful time you're going to have, my friend."
"I think of nothing else," said Milsom, "but still–" He shook his head.
Van Heerden had taken up the paper he had brought down and was reading it, and Milsom noted that he was perusing the produce columns.
"When do we make a start?"
"Next week," said the doctor. "I want to finish up the Paddington factory and get away."
"Where will you go?"
"I shall go to the Continent," replied van Heerden, folding up the paper and laying it on the table. "I can conduct operations from there with greater ease. Gregory goes to Canada. Mitchell and Samps have already organized Australia, and our three men in India will have ready workers."
"What about the States?"
"That has an organization of its own," Van Heerden said; "it is costing me a lot of money. All the men except you are at their stations waiting for the word 'Go.' You will take the Canadian supplies with you."
"Do I take Bridgers?"
Van Heerden shook his head.
"I can't trust that fool. Otherwise he would be an ideal assistant for you. Your work is simple. Before you leave I will give you a sealed envelope containing a list of all our Canadian agents. You will also find two code sentences, one of which means 'Commence operations,' and the other, 'Cancel all instructions and destroy apparatus.'"
"Will the latter be necessary?" asked Milsom.
"It may be, though it is very unlikely. But I must provide against all contingencies. I have made the organization as simple as possible. I have a chief agent in every country, and on receipt of my message by the chief of the organization, it will be repeated to the agents, who also have a copy of the code."
"It seems too easy," said Milsom. "What chance is there of detection?"
"None whatever," said the doctor promptly. "Our only danger for the moment is this man Beale, but he knows nothing, and so long as we only have him guessing there is no great harm done—and, anyway, he hasn't much longer to guess."
"It seems much too simple," said Milsom, shaking his head.
Van Heerden had heard a footfall in the hall, stepped quickly to the door and opened it.
"Well, Gregory?" he said.
"He is here," replied the other, and waved his hand to a figure who stood behind him. "Also, the parson is coming down the road."
"Good, let us have our friend in."
The pink-faced foreigner with his stiff little moustache and his yellow boots stepped into the room, clicked his heels and bowed.
"Have I the honour of addressing Doctor von Heerden?"
"Van Heerden," corrected the doctor with a smile "that is my name."
Both men spoke in German.
"I have a letter for your excellency," said the messenger. "I have been seeking you for many days and I wish to report that unauthorized persons have attempted to take this from me."
Van Heerden nodded, tore open the envelope and read the half a dozen lines.
"The test-word is 'Breslau,'" he said in a low voice, and the messenger beamed.
"I have the honour to convey to you the word." He whispered something in van Heerden's ear and Milsom, who did not understand German very well and had been trying to pick up a word or two, saw the look of exultation that came to the doctor's face.
He leapt back and threw out his arms, and his strong voice rang with the words which the German hymnal has made famous:
"Gott sei Dank durch alle Welt, Gott sei Dank durch alle Welt!"
"What are you thanking God about?" asked Milsom.
"It's come, it's come!" cried van Heerden, his eyes ablaze. "The Government is with me; behind me, my beautiful country. Oh, Gott sei Dank!"
"The parson," warned Milsom.
A young man stood looking through the open door.
"The parson, yes," said van Heerden, "there's no need for it, but we'll have this wedding. Yes, we'll have it! Come in, sir."
He was almost boyishly jovial. Milsom had never seen him like that before.
"Come in, sir."
"I am sorry to hear your fiancée is ill," said the curate.
"Yes, yes, but that will not hinder the ceremony. I'll go myself and prepare her."
Milsom had walked round the table to the window, and it was he who checked the doctor as he was leaving the room.
"Doctor," he said, "come here."
Van Heerden detected a strain of anxiety in the other's voice.
"What is it?" he said.
"Do you hear somebody speaking?"
They stood by the window and listened intently.
"Come with me," said the doctor, and he walked noiselessly and ascended the stairs, followed more slowly by his heavier companion.
