Juggernaut Part 48

It furnished an excellent, complete alibi, if one could believe it.

After all, why not? It could easily be true.

"He's catching the night train back to Paris," she went on. "He only came for the funeral. You know he was so fond of poor Charles."

"So he's going to South America, after all," mused Roger. "I thought he'd given it up."

"Why should you think that?" she demanded quickly. "He must do something to make a living."

He was not listening, his thoughts busy again with the question of why, if Esther had not gone off with Holliday, she had failed to communicate with him? In one way he felt slightly relieved, yet the business was as mysterious as ever.

"Roger," Therese said suddenly, sitting down on the side of the bed, "I believe you are still worrying about that nurse. Isn't that so?"

He was silent, unwilling to discuss the matter with Therese. Yet, in spite of himself, something in her tone made him look at her attentively.

"If I were you," she continued slowly, "I shouldn't think too much about her. I feel I ought to tell you that."

His eyes flashed at her a belligerent glance.

"Just what do you mean by that?" he demanded.

"I hadn't meant to tell you," she went on with slight hesitation. "But you know I had a reason for sending her away yesterday. If it hadn't been for the fact that your father seemed to like her so much the doctor would have made a change some little time ago. He wasn't altogether ... pleased with her."

"Pleased with her! What are you getting at?"

"Roger, don't upset yourself; lie down quietly, or I won't tell you."

"Very well, I'm perfectly quiet; now tell me. This is something I want to hear. What did he think was wrong about Miss Rowe?"

The hardness in his voice was a challenge. Therese examined the nails of her right hand and lightly polished them on the palm of her left.

Then she replied carefully:

"Well, you know soon after she came here she began to behave just a little oddly at times. At first the doctor did not think it serious, but towards the end he was afraid that she was a little--a little----"

"A little what?"

"Well--unbalanced. Have you ever heard of anyone having 'confusional attacks'?"

"I don't know. Yes, perhaps. What about it?"

"That is what the doctor thinks she has."

"Utter rubbis.h.!.+ Miss Rowe is one of the most normal people I have ever known."

"So she impressed me, at least most of the time. Indeed the doctor says that a person who has those attacks may be quite normal part of the time, only sometimes they get strange ideas into their heads and behave queerly. That was what Miss Rowe was doing. It didn't seem altogether wise to have her here."

There was an ominous glitter in the ill man's eyes, the muscles in his cheeks twitched as his lips tightened.

"What do you mean by 'not altogether wise'?" he inquired coldly.

"I see you don't believe me, Roger. I don't suppose you noticed anything wrong with her. I don't know that I should have done so, if the doctor hadn't told me certain things. But the fact is, she wasn't always quite to be trusted in emergencies. She was a little--what do you call it?--erratic, that's the word. The doctor is even convinced that she was largely responsible for your father's relapse. There! I had not meant to speak of it!"

"That at least is a lie, a barefaced attempt to injure her!" cried Roger, unable to bear any more.

"My dear! How can you!" murmured Therese so incredulously that he felt slightly ashamed.

"I don't say you invented it, Therese, but it's a lie for all that."

"I heard, too, from Dido about her sending you an excited message and then going off without seeing you," continued his stepmother calmly.

"That is quite typical behaviour, so the doctor says. It is just the sort of thing she would do; it is really a mild mental case."

He made a gesture of weariness, suddenly feeling he must get rid of her.

"It may all be true, Therese; I'm sure I don't know. At any rate I think I'll try to get a nap, if you'll leave me. I didn't sleep well last night."

"Of course, dear! Thank Heaven you are going to be sensible. Perhaps, too, you'll let the doctor advise you about that anti-toxin? I should, if I were you."

"Yes, I'll let him talk to me, if you like."

Anything to get rid of her, he thought. He kept his eyes tight closed until she was well out of the room and the door shut behind her. Then he sprang out of bed and with trembling haste put on his clothes. When he was completely dressed he rang for Chalmers and demanded a taxi.

"But you're not going out, Mr. Roger! I don't know what the doctor or your aunt will say, sir!"

"Look here, Chalmers, you're not going to mention this to anyone, do you hear? I'm absolutely all right; I know what I'm about. Just you get me that taxi and be quick about it."

Five minutes later he slipped quietly out of the house and with a whirling head fell into the waiting taxi. He might or might not be doing a foolish thing, but no matter what happened he intended to scour Cannes in search of Esther.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Out of what seemed a long dark night, filled with shapeless images, Esther woke at last. She believed herself in her comfortable bed at the Villa Firenze, and for a brief moment she wondered at the hardness of the mattress beneath her. Next she was aware that her head throbbed dully and that her mouth felt dry and harsh. She swallowed several times. Was she ill? Had anything happened? Then followed the discovery that she was fully dressed, even to her coat and shoes. How could that be? It was vaguely disquieting.

She opened her eyes wider and let them roam slowly around. The light was failing; it was almost dusk. She saw on one side of her, close, a bare, blank wall, on the other a wide opening, more than a doorway, hung at the sides with heavy, dusty curtains of a dingy red material.

The curtains looked familiar. Where had she seen them before? She lay perfectly motionless, pondering the matter idly, not deeply interested.

All at once it came to her: they were the portieres of the doctor's laboratory; she was in the alcove of the room; this bed that felt so hard and unyielding was Sartorius's bed....

Instantly memory flooded back upon her in a vast wave. She sat up, sick with terror, and clapped her hand over her mouth to keep from screaming aloud. Her hand itself trembled, her whole body shook as though with ague, but she made no sound. Instead she leaned against the wall for support and with her heart beating like a trip-hammer continued to stare about her, listening acutely. All around was dead stillness; she could hear nothing except the steady drip-drip of water from a leaky tap. The room was empty but for herself, perhaps there was no one in the whole house. Beside her was an old bedside table with two or three dusty paper-bound books on it. Through the curtains she could just see the end of the long work-table and one of the cupboards.

The time puzzled her. It had just been getting dark when she last remembered anything; it was getting dark now. Yet surely she had been here more than, say, half an hour? She thought of her wrist-watch. It had stopped, the hands pointing to a quarter to one. That meant it had run down, for she had wound it at a quarter to one--was it yesterday?

How could she tell? She caught herself yawning heavily, overcome with fatigue and drowsiness. The one thing she instinctively desired with her whole being was to lie down again and drift off to sleep.

"Good G.o.d, I can't do that!" she muttered, shaking herself. "I've got to think, to think hard. I've got to find a way out of this!"

There was no doubt in her mind as to why she was here. She was dangerous to the doctor; she possessed information which would ruin him. He had overheard her conversation on the telephone; more than that he had probably received and opened the chemist's report when it came to the villa. Without doubt he had had something of this sort in mind when he came and suggested driving her to her pension. He hadn't meant to let her out of his sight; he had even inquired about what friends she had to ascertain whether there was much danger of her being traced. He had meant to get her alone in his car, then stupefy her in some way and bring her here. Her telephoning to the chemist had precipitated matters, made him take a desperate chance and act quickly.

At least that was how she construed things. How he had managed to get her out and into his car was a mystery. She had just sent that message to Roger, she recalled. Two minutes, one minute's delay, and the bold plan would have miscarried. Would they miss her at the villa--Miss Clifford or Roger? With a sinking heart she knew they were not likely to for some days. She had said good-bye to the former. Roger indeed might think it a little odd, her sending for him and then going away, but he would hardly imagine anything seriously wrong. No, there was no chance at all of her being sought for, at any rate not here. No one would ever think of looking here.

How had she lost consciousness so completely, so instantaneously? Ah, of course! That stab in her arm, it had been the wound of a hypodermic needle, that weapon she now so closely a.s.sociated with the doctor. Her arm felt sore to the touch, a spot near the shoulder. She had been doped, kept stupefied--she had no idea for how long. What a risk the man had taken! That proved conclusively how much he feared her. She knew him for a murderer, she alone. His own life was in peril, as well as all his hopes for reaping the benefit of his crime, as long as she was free to tell what she knew. There was no one but herself to give him away, no one else to say how he had cold-bloodedly done away with one victim and now was laying a trap for another one... for Roger....