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« on: March 12, 2023, 07:49:02 am » |
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DR. WELLS was full of schemes when he had come to Harley Street. He was not sure whether he would set up as a consulting physician, whether he would furbish up his surgery, in which he was not particularly skilled, or whether---and this appealed to him most---he would turn a portion of his house into a nursing home for mental cases.
It was the arrival of Peter, and the extraordinary story he had told, which switched him over to the latter course. He saw possibilities in the housing of the rich and deranged, and, going to work with considerable enthusiasm, he had had two small suites prepared, with sound-proof and padded walls, when he mentioned his project to a more knowledgeable colleague.
"Good Lord, they'll never allow you to do that!" said the shocked medico. "You'll have to get a special permit, and no permit would be granted unless you made ample provision for the patients to take exercise."
Dr. Wells heard the news with consternation. A small courtyard about sixteen by eight behind the house certainly would not fulfil the requirements of the medical authorities. So he abandoned his plan, and found left on his hands two perfectly appointed suites which could never possibly be occupied.
After he had made his decision about the letter he put it in his pocket, walked up the stairs to the second landing. From here another flight of stairs led, but these were closed by a door which was boarded up at the side. The doctor unlocked the door and, locking it behind him, went up the remaining flight, unlocked yet another door and passed into a small apartment.
The woman who was lying on the bed jumped up.
"What is it, Donald?" she asked breathlessly.
"It's all right, don't worry; I'm not going to cut your throat or anything."
He switched on a light, for the room was dark even in daytime.
"You are going to be sensible, Donald, dear?" pleaded Marjorie. "I swear to you I'll never give you any more trouble, and I really will keep a guard on my tongue. Let me go out to-day——"
"You're in Germany," he said calmly, "and you're away for three or four months. I have announced the fact in The Times."
"But what have I done?" she wailed.
"You're too original," he said, "and too clever. You've been clever enough to discover that I've been circulating forged notes, and out of sheer malice you stamped my name and address on the back of one of them. It took me a long time to find that out, but when I did I decided there were only two courses I could take. One was to mourn you as a bereaved husband, and the other was to put you where you could do no further mischief. In fact, Marjorie, you've become a very serious danger, even worse than our dear friend Superintendent Bourke, who has been here threatening me with God knows what."
"But, Donald," she fluttered, "I couldn't give evidence against you. The law would not allow me."
"You've found that out, have you?" His thin lips curled in a smile. "Technically that's very interesting, but it doesn't help me much. You could give material to people who would give evidence against me without the slightest hesitation, and that is what I'm anxious to avoid. You needn't bother—everybody thinks you're abroad. I've even taken the trouble of sending a man over to Holland to wire to your dear young friend, Mrs. Clifton."
"The servants will wonder——" she began.
"I have provided for that. They're all on holiday except Frank, and he leaves to-morrow. I'm going to do the work of the house with the aid of a char-lady, and you'll have to put up with the meals I send you."
"You can't keep me here for ever," she said, with a sudden return of her old petulance.
"I am keeping you here until I can hail you as a real sister in crime," he smiled. And, seeing her perplexity: "You're more silly than I thought. God knows I never had a very high opinion of your intelligence! You're staying here, Marjorie, until you're as much implicated in this business as I am, and till you dare not talk for your neck's sake!"
She sank back.
"Oh, my God! You don't mean that you want me to—kill somebody?"
"Why not?" He was coolness itself. Then suddenly he burst into a fit of laughter. "Not really," he said. "No, I don't want you to dip your hands in blood—nothing so melodramatic. The condition I wish to create is very simple. I want you to be so terrified for your own skin that you'll never commit another indiscretion. I can only do that if you become an active partner in my little scheme."
"I'll do anything, Donald" she said eagerly—too eagerly to please him. "But it is absurd, and—and mediæval to keep me locked up here in this horrid room. I have nothing to read——"
"You can have all the books you want."
"But I shall go mad if I have nobody to speak to!"
"You have me—I know of no more amusing companion," he said. "If you are very good, you may not have to stay a prisoner very long. In a month's time, Marjorie, you will be able to slip away from England—from me, if you like—and spend more money in Paris than ever you've spent before."
"A month!" she said, with an expression of dismay.
"It's not an awfully long time really," he said lightly. "Especially if you're getting something at the end of it."
She brooded on this, and in the end asked a question.
"Bourke? Yes, he's hiding up Peter. I confess he staggered me. I didn't know there was so much corruption in the police force. I've spent a thousand pounds on Rouper and he's not been worth five cents," he went on.
"Donald, tell me something," she interrupted him. "Are you—are you the Clever One?"
"Am I the Clever One?" he mimicked. "I have many accomplishments, my dear, but the forging of bank-notes is not one of them! It requires a life-time's training and study, and I unfortunately am an unworthy servant of medicine."
"But you've had forged money," she insisted. "I've seen it in the house. Once in your room there were two big packets. I tore the paper and saw they were foreign bank-notes."
He sat down on the bed and laughed. For Donald Cheyne Wells had a peculiar sense of humour.
"Marjorie, my dear," he smiled at her kindly enough, "you've given me another argument why I should keep you out of the way. Anything more indiscreet than telling me at this moment that you have surprised a guilty secret I cannot imagine."
He bit his nether lip, eyeing her thoughtfully.
"I never dreamt that I was a sentimentalist, but I suppose we all are. My long association with you has given you an altogether false value."
"I don't know what you're talking about." She shook her head helplessly.
"I'm trying to put into very understandable language the reason you are still alive," he said, almost pleasantly. "No, my dear, I'm not a forger of bank-notes. I am merely a cog in a rather complicated machine. At least," he corrected himself carefully, "I was a cog. I am now amongst the levers, thanks to my perspicacity. A highly complicated machine, Marjorie, with a most wonderful intelligence service. I am getting my hand on that too. Commit all these interesting facts to memory; they will amuse your friends when you next have the opportunity of meeting them. Which will not be just yet. My master is rather a difficult man, and I was rather afraid, when I discussed business with him last night, that in his cold-blooded way he would suggest you should be definitely removed. Happily, he suggested nothing so drastic."
"What do you want me to do?" she asked.
He knew her well enough to realise that she was in an abject state of fear. If this state of mind could be made permanent, he had got a result from an act which he already regretted. Donald Wells would have given a great deal to withdraw a notification which he had sent to the newspapers and a certain telegram dispatched by his agent from Holland. But he had had exhibitions of Marjorie's penitence before, and on one occasion had taken drastic steps to curb her tongue. The effect, however, had worn off all too soon. Before he released Marjorie he must produce a more convincing argument to check a repetition of her follies.
"Your first criminal act will be to write a letter to Peter. You have admitted to me so often that you adore him that you won't find this task a very difficult one. And it will be all the easier if I promise you that I will take no exception to its character, however affectionate. It will be written on the note-paper of the Continental Hotel, Berlin, but it needn't be posted. You had better start 'I am enclosing this letter in one to—who shall we say? Well, any mutual friend you can think of. You can say what you like, but there are certain essentials. You will remind him of the good times you've had together, you will hint that they have not been altogether innocent, you will remind him of his danger and beg him to go to you at once——"
"You want to make Jane jealous?"
He closed his eyes wearily.
"Will you please not be intelligent? As Jane is not in love with the man, it is hardly likely that she will start breaking up the furniture when she reads this."
"But when can I come out of this place?" she persisted. "It's awful for me, Donald. I'm so used to an active life——"
"You once knew quite a lot about Swedish drill," he interrupted her. "I advise you to devote your spare time to those exercises."
He had not closed his eyes the previous night, but after a bath he was as fresh and as bright as though he had risen from a refreshing sleep. There was much to be done; he was at the crisis of his career, and a false step in any direction might involve him in irretrievable ruin. That morning brought Chief Inspector Rouper, ostensibly in connection with the Longford Manor murder.
Rouper was worried and nervous. In his long and not undistinguished career at Scotland Yard there had been several unpleasant incidents, the cumulative effect of which might easily bring disaster if they were raised anew by any fresh inquiry into his conduct.
"I don't think I can do very much more for you, doctor. I've already done too much, and this morning I was almost sorry that I'd ever come into this case at all. Bourke's got me 'taped,' and he's the biggest man at Scotland Yard. I've known him twenty years and I can't understand him. He's not the sort of man who would shield Peter Clifton unless he thought he was innocent, or unless"—he looked straightly at Wells—"unless he was pretty sure he knew the man who did the murder."
"Rot! Who else could it have been?" said Wells, pushing his cigar box to the officer.
"That's what I've been wondering," replied Rouper, ignoring the gesture. "You see, I know Bourke's method. In the Public Prosecutor's office they call him 'Bombshell' Bourke—he doesn't bring forward all the little bits of evidence as he gets them, but waits till he's got his case fixed and ready to the last witness and the last proof before he drops it into the Crown basket. I'll tell you something else, doctor: Bourke wouldn't hide his own brother. If you gave him twenty thousand pounds, or fifty thousand, you couldn't buy him. If he thought Peter Clifton was guilty, then Peter would be in the 'boob' awaiting trial. I'm as scared as hell."
"Scared? You?"
Rouper nodded his grey head.
"I wonder if you know how many detective officers Bourke's put out of Scotland Yard—stripped them of their rank and sent them Mr. Nobodies on foot along the Thames Embankment? That's why I'm afraid of him. The Chief Commissioner and the Commissioner for Discipline take Bourke's word as though he was on his oath."
Donald Wells laughed.
"And you think he'll work his ruthless will on you, do you? Don't be a fool, Rouper; you've nothing to be afraid of; you've done your duty to the best of your ability. You're hiding nobody and you're trying your hardest to bring the murderer to justice. They don't fire people out of Scotland Yard for that, do they?"
Rouper nodded again.
"Yes, if it's the wrong murderer," he said grimly. "There's a lot in this case that I don't understand, doctor. You told me that Clifton had committed the murder, that you had seen him on his bed covered with blood. You told me that his wife had taken his clothes to London and that I'd find 'em in his flat. You told me there was a diary in existence where he kept a record of all the notes he forged. None of those tips have come off. I passed on the information you gave me to the officer in charge of the case at Sydenham, but he says he hasn't found the pistol, and that there's no evidence at all that Peter Clifton was near the house on the night Radlow was shot. How do you know that he was there?"
Rouper's tone was distinctly hostile, and for the first time Donald had begun to have misgivings.
He had spent a very considerable sum on the detective, and might be pardoned if he thought that Rouper was in his pocket.
"Why don't you make a statement to the police if it is true that Clifton confessed to you?" Rouper went on.
It was on the tip of Donald Wells's tongue to say that he had already prepared such a statement, had spent the greater part of the night writing it, and that after due consideration he had consigned the letter to the flames.
"Any news about our clever friend?" he asked.
Rouper hesitated, which was significant. Hitherto he had shown no reticence even about the most precious secrets of Scotland Yard.
"Yes," he said slowly, and seemingly reluctantly. "The French police say that there's to be a big distribution of Dutch notes this week—in London or Paris, I'm not sure which. In Paris, I should imagine. That woman Untersohn is all right again—I thought she was going crazy, but from what I hear she's made a good recovery. Did you know that Hale was her son?"
Donald shook his head.
"That was the most amazing discovery I have made," he said, but did not carry conviction.
Rouper was leaving at once for Longford Manor; his car was at the door. Waiting until he had departed, Donald walked to Oxford Street. He had an important appointment with his bank manager. Donald was a man with a frugal mind, a shrewd, wise investor with a very keen understanding of the markets. At that moment the markets did not require a great deal of understanding. Events in the Far East had brought down even gilt-edged securities with a run, and it was not, as his bank manager told him urgently, the moment to realise his holdings.
"In a fortnight the market will be up again," he said. "We have news from Shanghai——"
Donald stopped him with a smiling gesture.
"That I quite understand, Mr. Reed," he said, "but in the next week I shall require a lot of money, and I really must sell even if I drop a point in the matter of profit."
In a fortnight, he thought as he walked along Oxford Street, the question of a point or two could hardly affect him.
He was making preparations for a debacle. His light-hearted threats to keep his wife a prisoner for three months were so much bluff. Unless his coup materialised in the next week he would have need of all his ready money, and more need of his ready wits.
Marjorie was a problem. He was rather annoyed with himself about Marjorie. He had acted in a temper when he had imprisoned her and given out the story of her going abroad. A temper is akin to panic. The psychologist in him was revolted at this lapse from balance. Marjorie behind locked doors was a menace. If she had the energy and initiative she might easily attract attention from the window; and it would be an extremely awkward situation if he came back to Harley Street to find a gaping crowd, and a policeman on the doorstep inquiring into the mysterious appearance at an upper window.
On the other hand, Marjorie, free and brought into allegiance, might be a very potent helper; the only helper on whom he could absolutely rely.
He had been in a fury when by accident she had told him she was with Jane on the night of the Hale murder, and when, in her terror at his insensate rage, she had confessed to the confidences she had given to the girl, he could have killed her. Instead, he had acted in a fury—bundled her upstairs and locked her into the padded room, and had sent one of his men post-haste to Holland. That was stupid. He had manœuvred himself into an unnecessary danger. The first step to be taken was to rectify the position so far as Marjorie was concerned, and gain her complete assistance.
When he returned home, the footman who opened the door to him, and who was already dressed in his street clothes, for he was leaving that afternoon, told him that Rouper had rung up twice.
"He seemed a little agitated, sir," said the footman.
Donald looked at him blankly.
"He was agitated, was he? That will do, Frank. What time do you leave?"
"I was leaving at once, sir. Are you going out to lunch?"
Wells nodded.
"I'll go when you have left," he said.
The man came out from the basement, where his room was, carrying his bag, to find Cheyne Wells standing at the door of his room.
"I gave you a fortnight, didn't I? Well, you may reckon on three weeks' vacation. If anything happens and I want you back, I will wire to you."
He waited till the front door closed on the servant, and then went slowly up the stairs to his wife's pleasant little prison.
"You can come out," he said curtly, and flung the door open.
She was incoherent in her thanks.
"Oh, Donald, you are a reasonable darling! Really, this place was getting on my nerves. I'm sure I should have gone mad . . ."
He let her talk without interruption as he led the way down to the little dining-room at the back of the house. A cold meal was spread on the table. He himself opened a bottle of champagne and filled her glass. She was bubbling over with relief.
"It would have been stupid to have kept me up there. Of course you can trust me, Donald——"
"Have you drafted that letter?" he asked.
She produced from amongst the papers she had brought down a sheet written in her flourishing hand.
"Of course, it's rather odd—you're not going to be hurt by anything I've said in this?" she began a little nervously. "You told me to——"
"Shut up!" he snarled, and read the letter through word for word, cut out a few lines, inserted a sentence here and there, and nodded. "That's splendid," he said, "but it wasn't necessary to disparage me."
"I thought it would be more artistic," she said, and he smiled.
"That is the right conspirator touch, Marjorie. Really, I shall be able to make something of you. Go on with your lunch; I will do all the talking that's necessary."
He himself ate sparingly, but drank the greater part of the wine he had opened.
There was a little writing-table in the corner of the dining-room. He got up, went into his study and brought back some sheets of paper and an envelope.
"Copy this letter," he said, "and after you've done that I shall have something to say to you."
He sat at the table, smoking a cigarette, a frown on his forehead, and waited patiently until she had copied the letter. He read it through carefully, folded it and put it in the envelope which she had already addressed.
"Excellent," he said. "Finish your wine."
"You can write to the newspapers and say it was a mistake about my having gone abroad, can't you? I can't stay in this house all the time."
She quailed under the look he gave her.
"You will stay in this house for at least five days," he said. "In fact, until the case of Peter is brought to a satisfactory finish. I am seeing him to-day. I've got to trust you, but I'll trust you better when you're isolated from an interested audience."
"You trusted me before, didn't you?" she flamed out, something of her old self again. "Did I betray you? Did I tell the police at Nunhead that I'd seen you making up old Miss Stillman's medicine? Did I tell them about the little bottles of stuff that came from India——"
"You didn't," he said calmly, "and if you had it would not have been much use to the police, because a wife cannot give evidence against her husband."
"What are you going to do with Peter?" she demanded. "What is the scheme?"
That tantalising smile of his never failed to rouse her to fury.
"I'm sick and tired of all this scheming and plotting. I wish to God we'd never left Nunhead! I was happy there till that business came along——"
"Exactly. But that business, as you call it, ruined me. And I don't seem to remember that you were particularly happy in a fifteen-shilling apartment. I have a distinct recollection of your daily whine about poverty; but you're a woman and therefore inconsistent, and I'm not annoyed with you. You're a lover of good things too, Marjorie—good clothes, good food. You have the Rolls-Royce-Ranelagh-box-at-Ascot complex, and the argument I am now going to put before you will, I think, be quite sufficient to make you behave sensibly. Unless you help me whole-heartedly and without any reservations, there is a danger that I may get into very serious trouble. So serious that I shall have to skip this country, and in skipping I shall take every penny I possess. In that case you would be left to the charity of your friends—and where are they? You have a fatal facility for making enemies, my dear. If you sat down with a pencil and a piece of paper for the next two hours and wrote down the names of people who would lend you or give you a hundred, I don't think you'd get much farther than Peter. Which means that you would have to work for your living, retire into a drab Pimlico lodging and live meanly for the rest of your life. I can see you standing in the pit queue, watching your old-time friends drive past on their way to dinner. And that is not a pleasing prospect, is it, my dear?"
She shivered. He knew her all too well.
"I'm not using any heroic arguments. I think a little stern fact is all that is needed to convince you that your interests lie with me. I'm not going to tell you that I shall poison you, or that if you betray me I shall come back and cut your throat; I am merely pointing out just what will happen to you, living!"
She was near to tears.
"Don't be a beast, Donald. Of course I'll do anything! But it's going to be very dangerous—I mean if I do things that are illegal."
He shook his head.
"A wife cannot be prosecuted if she has acted under the coercion of her husband," he said. "I'm putting all my cards on the table, Marjorie. My position may be as safe as the Bank of England. On the other hand, it may be so serious that I should be on my way to the Continent. I want your friendship and help and I'm willing to pay you."
He took a slip of paper out of his pocket and pushed it across the table to her.
"I have this morning paid ten thousand pounds into your account, to make you absolutely safe."
He saw her eyes brighten and cut short her fervent thanks. He had lived too long with Marjorie to misunderstand her. She was a worshipper of money and the comforts that money bought.
"There were three things I could do about Peter Clifton," he said. "I'm going to try the first to-day. The second is too dangerous; and the third, though it is difficult, is possible. It is very likely that I shall succeed at the first shot, but if I don't, I'm relying on you."
"I'll do anything, Donald—anything. It was sweet of you to give me all that money—really too sweet of you. You made my blood run cold when you talked about pit queues and things—I loathe poverty. What do you wish me to do?"
"First—and this is rather important—you're to stay in the house without showing yourself. It means that you'll have to do housemaid's job and cook's job, but it'll only be for a few days. Secondly, I want you to be ready—I'll have your passport visaed—to leave for the United States."
She nodded.
"Of course I'll do anything——" she began, but again he interrupted her.
"I'll turn that ten thousand into fifty thousand if you're a good girl."
He was almost benevolent. He opened another bottle of champagne. They sat for another hour whilst he discussed means and methods, and found in her a complacent, indeed a willing helper.
He was on the point of going out to one of his two appointments when the telephone bell rang in his study. It was Rouper.
"I've been trying to get you all the morning." Rouper's voice was impatient, but there was a note of exultation in it too.
"What has happened?" asked Donald quickly.
"We've found something."
He heard a chuckle at the other end. Evidently the footman's description of Mr. Rouper as agitated was not far-fetched.
"There's an old well at the back of Longford Manor, and one of the local police, who was nosing round the grounds this morning, turned up the cover and put the light of his lamp down. What do you think we found?"
Donald could guess, but he did not advance an opinion.
"A printing press and plates—the complete plant of a forged note factory! And we've got the evidence of the gardener's son. He was up at the house the night before the murder to collect empty milk bottles from the kitchen, and saw Clifton carrying something in the direction of the well."
"Does Bourke know?"
Again a delighted chuckle.
"No. The two men he left down here were away in the village, making inquiries. But of course he'll know later in the day. I've got workmen down the well now, and practically all the stuff is up."
Donald hung up the phone with a smile upon his thin lips. He was not quite certain whether this discovery would help him or be a handicap.
Passing into his laboratory, he opened a little safe which stood in one corner, unlocked a drawer and took out the folded page of a newspaper. He brought this to his study and inserted it into an envelope. At this crisis he must leave nothing to chance. At any moment Bourke might arrive, armed with authority to examine every paper, every secret possession he had. There was only one place for that torn page of a country newspaper twenty-five years old, and that was in the strong room of his lawyer.
He scribbled on the envelope "Private. To go with my documents and not to be opened," and, putting the envelope in a larger one, sealed it down. He was doing this when Marjorie came in.
"Are you busy?" she asked. "I've been thinking about what I told Jane—trying to remember every word, and how she took it. Donald, you're not making a mistake about her, are you?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"She's no fool, and I don't think she's going to be as easy as you think. If I were you, I shouldn't count on her being indifferent as to what happens to Peter. She's fond of him."
"Stuff!" he said scornfully. "If what I think is true, and she's the person who——" He did not complete the sentence, and she knew nothing about the condition in which Peter Clifton found himself that morning. "If she is defending Peter, it is only from a sense of duty."
Marjorie shook her head.
"She is very fond of him," she said emphatically. "I don't say that she's madly in love with him. And she's suspicious of me and you."
"Thanks to your blabbing tongue, she probably is," growled Donald. "But she's fond of her father too, my friend, and when it comes to making a decision she will take John Leith's advice."
Marjorie shook her head.
"I wonder," she said. "That certainly isn't the impression I have!"
"All right." He jerked his head towards the door. "I think you're mistaken, but I'll be on my guard."
He sat frowning down at the unaddressed letter to his lawyer. Jane Clifton? He had never regarded her as anything but a pawn in the great game; a charming girl, modern, a little superficial. She was not his kind, therefore he had never troubled to understand her.
Donald Wells had not a very high opinion of women's intelligence, and he had certainly not counted Jane Clifton as a likely obstacle. It was irritating that he should have to consider a new factor at this stage. Jane Clifton? He shrugged her out of existence, addressed the envelope rapidly and slipped it into his pocket. Anyway, he would be seeing her that afternoon, and, forewarned, would be better able to judge her in the light of Marjorie's warning.
He walked into Wigmore Street, registered his letter, still thinking of the girl, and a little uneasy for some reason which he could not trace. He had a subconscious conviction that he had fallen into error—not over Jane Clifton?
All the way to St. John's Wood he had that irritating discomfort. It was not Marjorie, it could not be Jane. Rouper's jubilation had entirely obliterated the unpleasantness of the morning. It was not Peter—he was a permanent unease. He got out before John Leith's house and told the taxi-driver to wait. The maid who admitted him said that Mr. Leith was in the garden, which was exactly where Donald expected to find him.
It was a fair-sized patch of ground at the back of the house, and at the end was a rustic summer-house, which differed from most of its kind in that it was well built and comfortably furnished. John Leith was strolling towards this when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw his visitor coming and walked slowly down to the door of this rustic pavilion and there awaited him.
"Well?" he said. His voice lacked that assurance which was usual in him, and he betrayed a certain nervousness which was altogether new.
Donald followed him into the summer-house and dropped into a cane chair with a sigh.
"To-night I consult the oracle," he said lightly.
"I wish you joy of him," growled John Leith.
He sat on the edge of a chair, his elbows on his knees, his white hands pulling nervously at his moustache. Donald looked at him curiously.
"I have often wondered how you came into this combination, John."
John Leith shrugged his shoulders.
"Perhaps you've often wondered how I live," he said sardonically. "I tell you it is very much the same way as you came in—I am guessing here, because I know nothing. I love travel, I speak several languages, I have the entrée to decent society—in many ways, Donald, you've had considerable advantages over me in that respect."
Donald leaned forward and lowered his voice.
"Have you ever seen the Clever One?" he asked.
"Consciously, no," said John Leith. "Probably you and I have had the same experience. I've spoken with him in that theatrical room of his; I've handled his money, and have carried it, with my heart in my mouth, as far east as Bukarest."
Donald lit a cigarette.
"I'm worried a little," he said. "Worried for myself, for you, for Jane."
"Why for Jane?" asked John Leith quickly. Then, as he saw the other look up: "You needn't be afraid. This little house is sound-proof. You can shut the door if you like, but it will be beastly hot."
"I'll tell you why I'm worried." Donald pulled his chair closer to the other. "Suppose we bring this thing off; suppose I persuade Peter to allow himself to be certified, and hand over the administration of his estate to Jane—that has been the scheme from the start, only we've bungled the method a little. Is our clever friend coming in to take the fruits of our labours?"
John Leith shook his head.
"I don't know. I've been thinking of that," he said. "He has always acted generously, and the idea was there should be a cut for everybody."
Then suddenly he dropped his face into his hands and groaned.
"O God, what a brute I've been! I thought things could be arranged quickly and easily. I never dreamt that Basil would be killed—that was ghastly. The idea was that he was to disappear, and that you were to fake a murder." He looked keenly at the other. "That murder, Donald, is too much of a coincidence for my liking."
"He was killed by poachers, I tell you," said Donald calmly. "Rouper agrees with that theory. Basil must have been prowling about the grounds when somebody coshed him. There had been one or two men in the grounds snaring rabbits."
John Leith looked at him for a long time without speaking.
"Was Radlow also killed by poachers?" he asked. "Why was he murdered, Donald? I'm terrified—terrified! This thing has gone too far, gone in the wrong direction. Radlow's death bewilders me."
"Splendid!" said the other sarcastically. "You now come into the category of the profoundly astonished, in which I am an inconsiderable unit. No, no, my dear friend, I know no more about Radlow's death than of Basil Hale's."
"What was he writing?" asked Leith. "The police accounts say that six sheets of manuscript were missing."
He got up, moved towards the door as if he was leaving, then turned suddenly.
"I have never asked you how you came into this business, but since we're being so confidential perhaps you will tell me the terms on which you're working; what you hope to gain; what is your idea of the ultimate end?"
Here Donald Wells had reason for cogitation. For years these men had been in daily contact; for years they had talked obliquely of their occupation, never putting into words the relationship which was tacitly understood. To Donald, this easygoing weakling of a man was an uncomplaining and incurious tool of the organisation which for twenty years had been fleecing Europe and America. Wells had a fatal knack of grading men. He saw John Leith from the first as one who had taken the line of least resistance, had not so much chosen a life of crime as had had that career chosen for him, and had folded his hands and bowed to circumstances. As he came to know John Leith better, he had learnt to respect him less. He was, as he once told Marjorie, one of life's drifters. His majestic volition owed everything to the accidental current in which he was caught. He had been paid well for what service he could render—Donald suspected him of being the real head of the Clever One's intelligence department—but the contempt which the unknown held was sufficiently advertised by the choice of Jane as victim and her father's meek agreement that she should play that rôle.
"I came to the big man probably as you came," he said, watching the other. "I was broke, desperate, and I had a note from Blonberg offering me a loan on extraordinarily easy terms. I thought there was a catch in it, but I was clutching at straws that day and I went up to Knowlby Street and had my interview in his theatrically dark room. He was brutally frank; told me that he wanted an agent, a man of education, to distribute his forgeries. Then and there he gave me a thousand pounds in real money to get myself out of the mess I was in, and at the next meeting he put up the scheme of establishing myself in Harley Street. Nobody knew better than he that I hadn't the qualifications that would induce the most simple-minded doctor to consult me about anything. But it suited his purpose, and voilà! It has been a profitable enterprise."
"It was you who told him about Peter?" stated rather than asked Leith.
Donald Wells nodded.
"Yes, that was an extraordinary bit of luck. Peter came to my house to have a tooth stopped—somebody had recommended him to the surgeon-dentist who occupied the house before I bought it. We got talking, and little by little he told me of his trouble and his fear. Of course I remembered the Welerson case, and put two and two together."
"And it was you who suggested the scheme—and brought Jane into this?"
"And you who accepted it without protest," accused Donald. "My dear fellow, this is not the moment for recriminations. I am perfectly certain that that little plan is going to work out. Of course, it's tough luck on Jane; she'll get a lot of publicity——"
"She loves him," said John Leith quietly.
Donald stared at him.
"Rubbish! How could she love him! She knows nothing definitely about him except that he's a lunatic."
"She loves him," said Leith again, and shook his head. "That's queer. I never dreamt that Jane would love anybody. I was mad to listen to you, but two millions dazzled me, and it looked so very easy."
And then, to Donald's embarrassment:
"You haven't told me all you know about Peter, have you? There's something you're keeping back. I've got a feeling that inside and behind all these schemes you're working for the big 'un, you've got a little plan of your own, that belongs to Donald Wells and to nobody else, and that you're playing a lone hand for something—what is it?"
Donald forced a smile.
"What utter drivel you talk——" he began, but John Leith cut him short.
"That's the feeling I have. At the back of that cunning mind of yours is a Something that even the big fellow doesn't know; a little private game that is being played parallel and independent of the other."
He was too uncomfortably near the truth for Donald Wells's liking.
"You're getting jumpy, and if I'm not careful you'll make me nervous, too."
John Leith's eyes did not leave his face.
"When I find a man is making preparations to fly the country, I am entitled to think either that there's a bigger danger than I know, or that's he working for his own ends. Your bank has been selling securities of yours for the past three days. You went to your manager this morning and were in his private room for the greater part of an hour."
Donald was startled, but he hid his amazement with a loud laugh.
"Hail, chief of the intelligence department!" he said mockingly. "Hail and congratulations! Unworthy servant as I am of the Grand Cham of Criminals, I can admire efficiency even when it's directed against me! Chief spy of the mighty one, I salute you!"
John Leith dropped his eyes.
"I do the job I've got to do," he said sullenly. "I'm not as young as I was, and I can't go gallivanting over Europe, dropping parcels of dud bills."
"Don't apologise," said Donald as he rose, flicking some cigarette ash from his waistcoat and adjusting his cravat. "And get that idea out of your head that I'm double-crossing the Great White Chief." Then, briskly: "I'll let you know what Peter says, though it is probably unnecessary, for you're likely to have a spy hidden in a near-by cupboard. One rather fancies that he will accept the general proposition I shall put before him, in which case there remain only a few legal formalities to be gone through, and lo! we are all near-millionaires."
John Leith did not answer him. He watched the dapper figure of the doctor as he walked up the garden path and disappeared through the open French windows of the study, and then his eyes fell to the ground, and for a long time he sat twining and untwining his fingers, turning over in his mind a hundred possibilities, each a little more disagreeable than the last.
In the end he got up, opened a small cupboard in the wall and took out a flask of brandy and poured a generous portion into a tumbler. This he drank at a gulp. He went back into the house to receive a telephone message from a woman who had served him well on many occasions.
"Excuse me, sir," said an uneducated voice, "but I think it's only right to tell you that Mrs. Untersohn keeps a loaded revolver in her bedroom. I see her looking at it to-day."
"Thank you," said John Leith, almost brightly.
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