The Crime Doctor Part 15

Dollar started, not at the thing that had to come, but at the manner in which it came. It seemed, indeed, the last word in wickedness--impenitent, unblus.h.i.+ng, even vainglorious to eye and ear alike. His glance flew to the curtained window, but no sound or movement came from the iron stair outside.

"True that you sold those drawings to this man Rocchi?" he heard himself saying at last, in a tone so childish that he scarcely wondered at the smile it drew.

"Perfectly true," said Miss Trevellyn.

"Drawings made by George Edenborough for the First Lord of the Admiralty, and shown to you because you were the stronger character and insisted on seeing them, but only in such confidence as might almost be justified between future man and wife?"

"I didn't sell his drawings," said Miss Trevellyn, impatiently. "I copied them, more or less from memory, and sold my own efforts."

"Of course I know that! It was a slip of the tongue," he admonished her, while marveling more and more. "And you can put the whole thing plainly without so much as a blus.h.!.+"

"I am going to put you to the blush instead, Doctor Dollar," returned the lady, with a lighter touch. "You are very clever at finding out what I did, but you don't ask why I did it; that's not so clever of such a clever man, and I must just enlighten you before I go. The first drawing was not a copy; it was the original they got that time, and it was stolen from Mr. Edenborough on his way home from the Admiralty. He never knew exactly where it was stolen, but I always thought I knew. You are a bit of a detective, Doctor Dollar; well, so am I in my way. You have not let me into the secret of your success, and I shouldn't think of boring you with mine. I thought it happened at Prince's, and I suspected Rocchi, that was all. It was last spring, and I had all the summer to think about it. But when Prince's opened I set to work, for there was Rocchi making up to us both as before. He didn't get much change out of George, but perhaps I made amends when George wasn't there, and sometimes even when he was! He could waltz, you see, and so can I,"

said Lucy Trevellyn, with something like a sigh for her bereavement on the rink.

"Yet you copied the other two drawings, and you even admit you sold him the copies?"

"I sold them quite well," said Miss Trevellyn, with sparkling eyes--"and you may guess what I did with the money--but it's not fair to call them copies. I made them as inaccurate as possible without spoiling everything, and indeed I couldn't have made them very accurate from memory, and they were only rough sketches to begin with! Of course George was wrong to let me see them, but he was a.s.sisting in the best of causes. Rocchi was an expert professional spy. I soon sized him down as one. But he was not a naval expert--and I'm that as well! That's my last boast, Doctor Dollar; but it's not unjustifiable, if you come to think of George and me between us keeping a national enemy out of serious mischief, feeding a friendly Power with false plans, and giving the money to our own dear Navy League!"

Dollar surveyed the radiant minx with eyes that needed rubbing. His only sorrow was that Edenborough did not burst through the curtains without more ado; he must have extraordinary self-control, when he liked.

"Not that George was a conscious party to the fraud; he wouldn't have approved of it, he couldn't possibly, poor George!" said George's bride.

"But I shall tell him all about it now; of course I always meant to tell him--after to-morrow--but he has had quite enough bothers of his own, and this was my show. I suppose you don't know what's been bothering him, Doctor Dollar? He says it's overwork, and I do think Lord Stockton's an old slave-driver; do you know, I haven't even seen George since the day before yesterday at Prince's?"

"Nor I," said Dollar, no longer with the least compunction, "from that hour to this."

"Of course I know he's all right," concluded Miss Trevellyn, as they were parting perfect friends, "because he has rung me up several times to say so, and he looked better on Monday than for ever so long. But I must own I shall be glad when I get him away for a real good rest."

She had refused to hear another word from Dollar in explanation, or of regret, and she made her departure with all the abruptness of a const.i.tutionally decided person. But she had blushed once at least in the last few minutes. And the doctor ran back into his den with singing heart, ready to fall upon his patient's neck in deep thanksgiving and even more profound congratulation.

No patient was there to meet him even now, but the curtain swayed a little before the open window. Dollar reached it at a bound; but there was n.o.body outside on the iron steps, and the curtain filled behind him as the inner door banged in the draft. The horrid little s.p.a.ce at the back of the house, between the high black walls with the broken-bottle coping, lay empty of all life in the plentiful light from the back windows--but for an early cat that fled before Dollar's precipitate descent into the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"The gentleman's gone," said Mrs. Barton at once. "He come through this way some time ago--said he couldn't wait no longer out there!"

"How long do you suppose he had waited?"

"Not long," said Mrs. Barton firmly. "Bob here was at his tea when he had to go up to show the young lady in; and the young gentleman, it couldn't've been more than three or four minutes before he was through 'ere as if something had 'appened."

"I didn't hear him."

"He was anxious you shouldn't be disturbed, sir."

"Did you show him out, Bobby?"

The master had never been so short with them. Mrs. Barton felt that something was the matter, but Bobby quaked.

"Yes, sir!"

"Which way did he go--and how--foot or taxi?"

"I--please, sir--I never stopped to see, sir!"

Dollar flew to his telephone; forsook it for a taxicab; drew Edenborough's rooms in vain; inquired as vainly (as an anonymous wedding guest, uncertain of the church) at Admiral Trevellyn's; was at the House of Commons by half past six, and at Scotland Yard (armed with written injunctions from the Secretary of State) before seven.

At that hour and place the matter pa.s.sed out of the hands of Doctor John Dollar, who could only hasten home to Welbeck Street, there to enter upon the most shattering vigil of his life--the terrible telephone at his elbow--and still more terrible inquirers on the telephone as the night wore on!

But never one word of news.

Toward midnight Topham Vinson arrived with the elaborate sandwiches and even the champagne that he had found awaiting him at home. It was the measure of a born leader; the doctor had not broken his fast since lunch; and in the small hours he once dozed for some minutes in his chair.

But the politician had not the temperament to wait for the telephone to talk to him; he talked repeatedly into the telephone, set a round dozen of myrmidons by the ears, and at last was rightly served by being sent off to Hammersmith to identify the dead body of a defaulting clerk, just recovered from the Thames.

"I'm not coming with you," Dollar had said, even when the description seemed to tally. "Edenborough wouldn't drown himself--and this is my place."

It was a being ten years older who opened his own front door again at daybreak. His face was as gray as the wintry dawn, the whole man bowed and broken. Topham Vinson stood aghast on the step.

"It isn't all over, is it?"

The doctor nodded with compressed lips.

"When and where?"

"I don't know. Come in. They're getting up down-stairs; there'll be some tea in a minute."

"For G.o.d's sake tell me what you've heard!"

"Haven't I told you? They rang up just after you went. He bought prussic acid yesterday!"

Dollar had dropped into his elaborate old chair; the bent head between his hands drooped over its own reflection in the monastic writing-table.

"Who rang up?" asked the man on his legs.

"Some of your people."

"Was that all they had to tell you?"

"That was all; we shan't have long to wait for the rest."

"Where did he buy it?"

"At his own chemist's--'to put a poor old dog out of its misery!' His very words, Vinson, so they tell me! I shall hear them all my life."

"And it has taken all night to learn this, has it, from the chemist's where the poor devil dealt!"

Dollar understood this outburst of truculent emotion.

"That was my fault," said he. "I told them to confine their attention to entries made in the poison books after five o'clock yesterday afternoon. Edenborough had signed his name and got the stuff earlier in the day."

"Before you told him anything?"