A Rogue by Compulsion, Victor Bridges [best books to read for knowledge TXT] 📗

can be conducted in a back bedroom. I should want a large shed of some kind, and the farther away it was from any houses the better. There is always the chance of blowing oneself up at this sort of business, and in that case an explosive like mine would probably wreck everything within a couple of miles."

"You shall work under any conditions you please," said McMurtrie amiably. "If it suits you we will fix you up a hut and some sheds down on the Thames marshes, and you can live there till the experiments are finished."

"But I should be recognized," I objected. "I am bound to be recognized. I am fairly well known as it is, and with my picture and description placarded all over England, I shouldn't stand a dog's chance. However lonely a place it was, some one would be bound to see me and give me away sooner or later."

McMurtrie shook his head. "You may be seen," he said, "but there is no reason why you should be recognized."

I paused in the act of lighting my cigarette. "What do you mean?" I asked with some curiosity.

"My dear Mr. Lyndon," said McMurtrie, courteously, "as a scientist yourself you don't imagine that it's beyond the art of an intelligent surgeon to cope with a little difficulty like that?"

"But in what way?" I objected. "A disguise? Any one can see through a disguise except in novels."

The doctor smiled. "I am not suggesting a wig and a pair of spectacles," he observed. "It is rather too late in the world's history for that sort of thing." Then he stopped and studied me for an instant attentively. "In a fortnight, and practically without hurting you," he added, "I can make you as safe from the police as if you were dead and buried."

I sat up in bed. "Under the circumstances," I said, "you'll excuse my being a little inquisitive."

"Oh, there is no secret about it. Any surgeon could do it. I have only to alter the shape of your nose a trifle, and make your forehead rather higher and wider. A stain of some sort will do the rest."

"Yes," I said; "but what about the first part of the programme?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Child's play," he answered. "Merely a question of paraffin injections and the X-rays."

He spoke with such careless confidence that for once it was impossible to doubt his sincerity.

I lay back again and drew in a large exulting lungful of cigarette smoke. I had suddenly realized that if McMurtrie's offer was genuine, and he could really do what he promised, there were no longer any difficulties in the way of my getting at George. The idea of meeting him, and perhaps even speaking to him, without his being able to recognize me filled me with a wicked satisfaction that no words can do justice to.

I don't think I betrayed my emotion, however, for McMurtrie's keen eyes were on me, and I was not in the least anxious to take him into my confidence. I blew out the smoke in a grey cloud, and then, raising myself on my elbow carefully flicked the ash off my cigarette.

"How am I to know that you will keep your promise?" I asked.

Savaroff made an angry movement, but before he could speak, McMurtrie had broken in.

"You forget what an embarrassing position we shall be putting ourselves in, Mr. Lyndon," he said with perfect good temper. "Shielding a runaway convict is an indictable offence—to say nothing of altering his appearance. As for the money"—he made a little gesture of contempt—"well, do you think it would pay us to cheat you? There is always the chance that a gentleman who can invent things like this explosive and the Lyndon-Marwood torpedo may have other equally satisfactory notions."

"Very well," I said quietly. "I will accept the offer on one condition—that I can have a week in London before beginning work."

With an oath Savaroff started up from the window-sill.

"Gott in Himmel! and who are you to make terms?" he exclaimed roughly. "Why, we have only to send you back to the prison and you will be flogged like a dog!"

"In which distressing event," I observed, "you would not get your explosive."

"My dear Savaroff," interrupted McMurtrie, soothingly, "there is no need to threaten Mr. Lyndon. I am sure that he appreciates the situation." Then he turned to me. "I suppose you have some reason for making this condition?"

Silently in my heart I invoked the shade of Ananias.

"If you had been in Dartmoor three years," I said, with a rather well-forced laugh, "you would find several excellent reasons for wanting a week in London."

My acting must have been good, for I could have sworn I saw a faint expression of relieved contempt flicker across McMurtrie's face.

"I see. A little holiday—a brief taste of the pleasures of liberty! Well, that seems to me a very natural and reasonable request. What do you think, Savaroff?"

That gentleman contented himself with a singularly ungracious grunt.

"I don't think there would be much risk about it," I said boldly. "If you can change my appearance as completely as you say you can, no one would be the least likely to recognize me. After three years of that dog's life up there I can't settle down in a hut on the Thames marshes without having a few days' fun first. I should be very careful what I did naturally. I have had quite enough of the prison to appreciate being outside."

McMurtrie nodded. "Very well," he said slowly. "I see no objection to your having your 'few days' fun' in London if you want them. It would be safer perhaps to get you away from this house as soon as possible. I should think three weeks would be quite enough for our purposes here—and I daresay it will take us a month to fix up a satisfactory place for you to work in." Then he paused. "Of course if you go to town," he added, "you will have to stay at some address we shall arrange for, and you will have to be ready to start work directly we tell you to."

"Naturally," I said; "I only want—"

I was saved from finishing my falsehood by a sudden sound from outside—the sound of a swing gate banging against its post. For a moment I had a horrible feeling that it might be the police.

Savaroff jumped up and looked out of the window. Then with a little guttural exclamation he turned back to McMurtrie.

"Hoffman!" he muttered, apparently in some surprise.

Who Mr. Hoffman might be I had not the faintest notion, but the mention of the name brought the doctor to his feet at once. I think he was rather annoyed with Savaroff for being unnecessarily communicative. When he spoke, however, it was with his usual perfect composure.

"Well, we will leave you at peace now, Mr. Lyndon. I should try to go to sleep again for a little while if I were you. I will come up later and see whether you would like some supper." He stopped and looked round the room. "Is there anything else you want that you haven't got?"

"If you could advance me a box of cigarettes," I said, "it shall be the first charge on the new explosive."

He nodded, smiling. "I will send Sonia up with it," he answered. Then, following Savaroff, he went out into the passage, carefully closing the door after him.

Left alone, I lay back on the pillow in a frame of mind which I believe novelists describe as "chaotic." I had expected something rather unusual from my interview with McMurtrie, but these proposals of his could hardly be classed under such a mild heading as that. For sheer unexpectedness they about took the biscuit.

I had read in books of a man's appearance being altered so completely that even his best friends failed to recognize him, but it had never occurred to me that such a thing could be done in real life—let alone in the simple fashion outlined by the doctor. Of course, if he was speaking the truth, there seemed no reason why his plan, fantastic as it might sound, should not turn out perfectly successful. A private hut on the Thames marshes was about the last place in which you would look for an escaped Dartmoor convict, especially when he had vanished into thin air within a few miles of Devonport.

What worried me most in the matter was my apparent good luck in having fallen on my feet in this amazing fashion. There is a limit to one's belief in coincidences, and the extraordinary combination of chances suggested by McMurtrie's smooth explanations was just a little too stiff for me to swallow. I felt sure that he was lying in some important particulars—but precisely which they were I was unable to guess for certain.

That he wanted the secret of the new explosive, and wanted it badly, there could be no doubt, but neither he nor Savaroff in the least suggested to me a successful manufacturer of cordite or anything else. They seemed to me to belong to a much more interesting if less conventional type, and I couldn't help wondering what on earth such a curious trio as they and Sonia could be doing tucked away in an ill-furnished, deserted-looking country house in a corner of South Devon.

However it was no good worrying, for as far as I was concerned it was painfully clear that there was no alternative. If I declined their offer and refused to let McMurtrie carve my face about, they had only to turn me out, and in a few hours I should probably be back in my cell with the cheerful prospect of chains, a flogging, and six months' semi-starvation in front of me.

Anything was better than that—even the wildest of plunges in the dark. Indeed I am not at all sure that the mystery that surrounded McMurtrie's offer did not lend it a certain charm in my eyes. My life had been so infernally dull for the last three years that the prospect of a little excitement, even of an unpleasant kind, was by no means wholly disagreeable.

At least I had my week's "fun" in London to look forward to, and the thought of that alone would have been quite enough to make me go through with anything. I had lied to McMurtrie about my object, but the falsehood, such as it was, did not sit very heavily on my conscience. The precise meaning of "fun" is purely a matter of opinion, and I was as much entitled to my definition as he was to his. After all, if a convicted murderer can't be a little careless about the exact truth, who the devil can?

CHAPTER VI THE FACE OF A STRANGER

McMurtrie had left me under the impression that he meant to start work on my face the next day, but as it turned out the impression was a mistaken one. Both the paraffin wax and the X-ray outfit had to be procured from London, and according to Sonia it was to see about these that her father went off to town early the following morning. She told me this when she brought me up my breakfast, just after I had heard the car drive away from the house.

"Well, I suppose I had better get up too," I said. "I can't stop in bed and be waited on by you."

"You've got to," she replied curtly, "unless you would rather I sent up Mrs. Weston."

"Who's Mrs. Weston?" I inquired.

Sonia placed the tray on my bed. "She's our housekeeper. She's deaf and dumb."

"There are worse things," I observed, "in a housekeeper." Then I sat up and pulled my breakfast towards me. "Of course I would much rather you looked after me. I was only thinking of the trouble I'm giving you."

"Oh, it's not much trouble," she said; then after a little pause she added, in a rather curious voice: "Anyway I shouldn't mind if it was."

"But I am feeling perfectly fit this morning," I persisted. "I might just as well get up if your father would lend me some kit. I don't think I could squeeze into McMurtrie's."

She shook her head. "The doctor says you are to stop where you are. He is coming up to see you." Then she hesitated. "One of the prison warders called here last night to warn us that you were probably hiding in the neighbourhood."

"That was kind," I said, "if a little belated. Had they found the bicycle?"

"No,"