The Green Rust, Edgar Wallace [top fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

better get used to being shadowed. It isn't your first experience."

The doctor looked at him under lowered lids and smiled again.

"I could save your man a great deal of trouble," he said, "and myself considerable exertion by giving him a list of the places where I intend calling."

"He will find that out for himself," said Beale.

"I wish him greater success than he has had," replied the other, and passed on, descending the stairs slowly.

Beale went back to his flat, passed to his bedroom and looked down into the street. He made a signal to a man at the corner and received an almost imperceptible answer. Then he returned to the two men.

"This fellow is too clever for us, I am afraid, and London with its tubes, its underground stations and taxi-cabs is a pretty difficult proposition."

"I suppose your man lost him in the tube," said McNorton.

"There are two ways down, the elevator and the stairs, and it is mighty difficult to follow a man unless you know which way he is going."

"But you were interrupted at an interesting moment. What are you going to tell us about the Green Rust?"

"I can only tell you this," said Beale, "that the Green Rust is the greatest conspiracy against the civilized world that has ever been hatched."

He looked sharply at Homo.

"Don't look at me," said the Parson, "I know nothing about it, unless----" He stopped and frowned. "The Green Rust," he repeated, "is that old man Heyler's secret?"

"He's in it," said Beale shortly.

"Is it a swindle of some kind?" asked the Parson curiously. "It never struck me that Heyler was that kind of man."

"There is no swindle in it so far as Heyler's concerned," said Beale, "it is something bigger than a swindle."

A telephone bell rang and he took up the receiver and listened, only interjecting a query or two. Then he hung up the instrument.

"It is as I thought," he said: "the doctor's slipped again. Had a car waiting for him in Oxford Street and when he saw there were no taxi-cabs about, jumped in and was driven eastward."

"Did you get the number of the car?" asked McNorton.

Beale smiled.

"That's not much use," he said, "he's probably got two or three number-plates."

He looked at his watch.

"I'll go along to Kingston," he said.

"I shan't be able to come with you," said McNorton, "I have a meeting with the commissioner at five."

"Before you go," remarked Beale, "you might put your signature to this declaration of my _bona fides_."

He laid on the table a blue foolscap blank.

"What's this?" asked the surprised McNorton, "an application for a special licence--are you going to be married?"

"I hope so," said the other cautiously.

"You don't seem very cheerful about it. I presume you want me to testify to the urgency of the case. I am probably perjuring myself." He signed his name with a flourish. "When are you getting the licence and what's the hurry?"

"I am getting the licence to-morrow," said Beale.

"And the lady's name is----?"

"I thought you had noticed it," smiled the other, deftly blotting and folding the form.

"Not Miss Cresswell?" demanded the police chief in surprise.

"Miss Cresswell it is."

"But I thought----"

"There are circumstances which may be brought to your official notice, McNorton," said the detective, "for the present it is necessary to keep my plan a secret."

"Has it anything to do with the Green Rust?" asked the other jokingly.

"A great deal to do with the Green Rust."

"Well, I'll get along," said McNorton. "I will telephone the Kingston police to give you all the assistance possible, but I am afraid you will learn nothing from the tramp till the morning, and perhaps not then."

He took his leave soon after.

"Now, Homo, it is up to you and me," said Beale. "You will have to keep close to me after to-morrow. Make yourself at home here until I come back."

"One moment," said Homo, as Beale rose and gathered up his hat and gloves to depart. "Before you go I want you to understand clearly that I am taking on this job because it offers me a chance that I haven't had since I fell from grace, if you will excuse the _cliche_."

"That I understand," said Beale.

"I may be doing you a very bad turn."

"I'll take that risk," said Beale.

"On your own head be it," said Homo, his hard face creased in a fleeting smile.

Beale's car was waiting, but his departure was unexpectedly delayed. As he passed down the stairs into the vestibule he saw a stranger standing near the door reading the enamelled name-plates affixed to the wall. Something in his appearance arrested Beale. The man was well dressed in the sense that his clothes were new and well cut, but the pattern of the cloth, no less than the startling yellowness of the boots and that unmistakable sign-manual of the foreigner, the shape and colour of the cravat, stamped him as being neither American nor British.

"Can I be of any assistance?" asked Beale. "Are you looking for somebody?"

The visitor turned a pink face to him.

"You are very good," he said with the faint trace of an accent. "I understand that Doctor van Heerden lives here?"

"Yes, he lives here," said Beale, "but I am afraid he is not at home."

He thought it might be a patient or a summons to a patient.

"Not at home?" The man's face fell. "But how unfortunate! Could you tell me where I can find him, my business is immediate and I have come a long way."

From Germany, guessed Beale. The mail train was due at Charing Cross half an hour before.

"I am a friend of Doctor van Heerden and possibly I can assist you. Is the business very important? Does it concern," he hesitated, "the Green Rust?"

He spoke the last sentence in German and the man started and looked at him with mingled suspicion and uncertainty.

"It is a matter of the greatest importance," he repeated, "it is of vital importance."

He spoke in German.

"About the Green Rust?" asked Beale, in the same language.

"I do not know anything of the Green Rust," said the man hurriedly. "I am merely the bearer of a communication which is of the greatest importance." He repeated the words--"the greatest importance."

"If you give me the letter," said Beale, "I will see that it is sent on to him," and he held out his hand with the assurance of one who shared the dearest secrets of the doctor. The stranger's hand wandered to his breast pocket, but came back empty.

"No, it must be given--I must see the doctor himself," he said. "He does not expect me and I will wait."

Beale thought quickly.

"Well, perhaps you will come upstairs to my flat and wait," he said genially, and led the way, and the man, still showing evidence of uneasiness, was ushered into his room, where the sight of the Rev. Parson Homo tended to reassure him.

Would he have tea? He would not have tea. Would he take coffee? He would not take coffee. A glass of wine perhaps? No, he did not drink wine nor beer, nor would he take any refreshment whatever.

"My man," thought the desperate Beale, "I either chloroform you or hit you on the head with the poker, but I am going to see that letter."

As if divining his thought, but placing thereon a wrong construction, the man said:

"I should avail myself of your kindness to deliver my letter to Doctor van Heerden, but of what service would it be since it is only a letter introducing me to the good doctor?"

"Oh, is that all?" said Beale, disappointed, and somehow he knew the man spoke the truth.

"That is all," he said, "except of course my message, which is verbal. My name is Stardt, you may have heard the doctor speak of me. We have had some correspondence."

"Yes, yes, I remember," lied Beale.

"The message is for him alone, of course, as you will understand, and if I deliver it to you," smiled Herr Stardt, "you should not understand it, because it is one word."

"One word?" said Beale blankly. "A code--hang!"


CHAPTER XVI

THE PAWN TICKET


Oliva Cresswell awoke to consciousness as she was being carried up the stairs of the house. She may have recovered sooner, for she retained a confused impression of being laid down amidst waving grasses and of hearing somebody grunt that she was heavier than he thought.

Also she remembered as dimly the presence of Dr. van Heerden standing over her, and he was wearing a long grey dust-coat.

As her captor kicked open the door of her room she scrambled out of his arms and leant against the bed-rail for support.

"I'm all right," she said breathlessly, "it was foolish to faint, but--but you frightened me."

The man grinned, and seemed about to speak, but a sharp voice from the landing called him, and he went out, slamming the door behind him. She crossed to the bath-room, bathed her face in cold water and felt better, though she was still a little giddy.

Then she sat down to review the situation, and in that review two figures came alternately into prominence--van Heerden and Beale.

She was an eminently sane girl. She had had the beginnings of what might have been an unusually fine education, had it not been interrupted by the death of her foster-mother. She had, too, the advantage which the finished young lady does not possess, of having grafted to the wisdom of the schools the sure understanding of men and things which personal contact with struggling humanity can alone give to us.

The great problems of life had been sprung upon her with all their hideous realism, and through all she had retained her poise and her clear vision. Many of the phenomena represented by man's attitude to woman she could understand, but that a man who admittedly did not love her and had no other apparent desire than to rid himself of the incubus of a wife as soon as he was wed, should wish to marry her was incomprehensible. That he had already published the banns of her marriage left her gasping at his audacity. Strange how her thoughts leapt all the events of the morning: the wild rush to escape, the struggle with the hideously masked man, and all that went before or followed, and went back to the night before.

Somehow she knew that van Heerden had told her the truth, and that there was behind this act of his a deeper significance than she could grasp. She remembered what he had said about Beale, and flushed.

"You're silly, Matilda," she said to herself, employing the term of address which she reserved for moments of self-depreciation, "here is a young man you have only met half a dozen times, who is probably a very nice married policeman with a growing family and you are going hot and cold at the suggestion that you're in love with him." She shook her head reproachfully.

And yet upon Beale all her thoughts were centred, and however they might wander it was to Beale they returned. She could