The Green Rust - Edgar Wallace (top 10 ebook reader TXT) 📗

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