The Crime Doctor Read online

  IV

  THE GOLDEN KEY

  "Shelley was quite right!" exclaimed the young man at the book-shelf,with the prematurely bent back turned upon Doctor Dollar at his old oakdesk.

  "He was never wrong when he stuck to poetry," said the doctor, lookingup from an unfinished prescription on which the ink was neverthelessdry.

  The other gave a guilty start. He was an immaculate young wreck, withthe fashionable glut of hair plastered back from a good enough face, asif to make the most of its haggard pallor. And he was in full eveningdress, for the crime doctor's patients came at all hours.

  "Did I say anything?" he asked with exaggerated embarrassment.

  "You thought something aloud," said Dollar, smiling. "Don't let itworry you; that's not one of the straws that shows an ill wind. What isit of Shelley's, Mr. Edenborough?"

  "Only a bit of one of his letters," said the young man. "I just happenedto open them at something that rather appealed to me." And the book shotback into its place.

  "Not the bit about the prussic acid, I hope?" suggested the doctor, forall the world as if in fun.

  "What was that?" said Edenborough, with a face that would not haveimposed upon an infant.

  "A little commission from Shelley to Trelawny, for a small quantity ofthe 'essential oil of bitter almonds,' as he called it, so that he might'hold in his possession that golden key to the chamber of perpetualpeace.'"

  "That was it," said the youth at length. "I may as well be honest aboutit. But I don't know how on earth you knew!"

  The doctor gave a kindly little laugh.

  "Only by knowing the book," he assured the patient. "It's rather anotorious passage--and you had just been clamoring for at least a silverkey to some chamber of temporary peace!"

  "You said you would give me one, Doctor Dollar."

  "And now I think I won't," said the doctor, rising from his aged chair."No; you shall not go without hearing my reasons, and what I am going topropose to you instead. These keys, Mr. Edenborough"--and he tore theunfinished prescription into little bits--"gold or silver, they are notkeys at all, but burglars' jemmies that injure and vitiate the chambersthey break into. It certainly is so with the night's rest you want atany price; it may be the same with the perpetual peace that Shelley tookfor granted. Yet I happen to have a Chamber of Peace of sorts here inthis house. It's my latest fad. You've found it a name, and in return Ishould like to offer it to you for the night."

  "Do you mean a room that sends you off instead of drugs?"

  "Did I say anything?"]

  Young Edenborough was looking puzzled, but for the moment taken out ofhimself. He had heard of Doctor Dollar as a rather eccentric consultant,but as the very man for him, from no less an authority than the HomeSecretary of England, and no further back than that very evening atdinner. He had come straight round from Portman Square, foreseeingmiracles and magic potions; but he had not foreseen John Dollar, or hisunprofessional conversation, or the slight cast that actually added tohis magnetic eyes, his cheery yet gentle confidence, or (least of all) aserious if casual invitation for the night.

  "That's exactly what I do mean," said the author of these surprises."It's the most silent room in London, and there are other little pointsabout it. I got our friend Topham to give it a trial during the breadstrike. His verdict was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would sleepthe sleep of the just there!"

  Edenborough had a laugh that turned him back into a schoolboy; but hechecked it sharply, as though the sound put him to shame and pain.

  "I would give anything for one decent night," he said. "But you are fartoo good, sir, especially to a man you know nothing at all about."

  "I ought to know more in the morning, Mr. Edenborough, but it will keepvery well till then. Enough for the night that you're a friend of theHome Secretary, and at your worst at just the time when a man wants tobe at his best."

  Edenborough smote his brow like a young man on the stage, but with apiteous spontaneity beyond all histrionic art.

  "It's on Thursday!" he cried, as one in exquisite dread. "My God, I'm tobe married on Thursday, and this is Sunday night! How can I toe the markunless I get some sleep? And how can I sleep----"

  "Leave that to me," said Dollar, cutting a pregnant pause as short aspossible; "leave everything to me, and come straight up-stairs. I keepthe room in constant readiness; you shall be fitted with pajamas, andI'll send a special messenger anywhere you like for whatever you maywant in the morning. Come, my dear man! I am burning to give my Chamberof Peace a crucial test, because I know we shall all come out withflying colors!"

  There was less confidence in the Doctor Dollar who ran down-stairs alittle later and sat at his telephone with an urgent face. In anotherminute he had left the house, and in another two Mr. Topham Vinson wasopening the door to him in Portman Square.

  "I call this too bad of you," began the doctor, short of breath andshorter still of patience with his powerful friend.

  "My dear fellow, I couldn't help it," vowed the Minister, with disarmingmeekness. "He would go straight to you, and just then I couldn't haverung you up without giving him away at this end."

  "I can stay five minutes," said Dollar, looking at his watch, "to hearas much as you can tell me in the time of what I ought to have knownbefore I saw your neurotic friend."

  "Hasn't he told you all about himself?"

  "Hardly a word worth anything in a case like this, where the causematters more than the effect. Of course I could have insisted, but thatmight have finished him off for the night. I gather, however, that he'sone of the First Lord's secretaries, but a friend of yours, on the brinkof being married, and in more than the normal state about it, orsomething to do with it."

  "I'll take your points in order," said Topham Vinson, who could bebrisker than anybody when he chose. "George Edenborough is not only oneof Stockton's secretaries, but the most private and most confidential ofthe crowd. I don't know about his being a friend of mine; I've been afriend to him for family reasons, and found him a nice enough fellow.But the girl he's going to marry--if they do marry--is one of us."

  "If!" cried the doctor. "Do you mean to say she'd draw back in the lastweek?"

  "She may not be able to help herself," was the grave reply. "GeorgeEdenborough is under a cloud that may burst at any moment."

  "A sudden cloud?"

  "Out of the blue for me. I only heard of it from Stockton on Fridaynight. But it's no new thing to him. He might have told me sooner, Ithink, seeing it was through me that Edenborough ever went to him."

  "In some special capacity, I rather gather?"

  "Yes; he can draw a bit--in fact, he's not a secretary at all except inname, but the First Lord's private draftsman. Stockton's a whale fordetails but a dunce at technicalities. What he likes is the thing onpaper, as he sees it with his own eyes; so he makes his inspectionswith Edenborough and a sketch-block, illustrated notes are taken atevery turn, and all sorts of impossible improvements worked out insubsequent collaboration. I had that this evening from the boy himself.It will show you what chances he has had of giving thingsaway--or--selling them!"

  "Is it as bad as that?"

  "Stockton swears it is. To me it's inconceivable. But he gives chapterand verse of at least one drawing that found its way across the NorthSea early in the year. Edenborough admits that he either lost it or hadit stolen from him. He seems to have been more careful--whichever wayyou look at it--during the summer. But this autumn the trouble has begunagain. A dockyard sketch-map has flown the German Ocean, come home toroost by some means into which we'd better not inquire, and ispronounced by Stockton a bad imitation of one made for him byEdenborough six weeks ago."

  "Why a bad imitation, I wonder?"

  "The original has been in the First Lord's archives ever since; he saysthe copy must have been made from memory; but he has good reasons whynobody but Edenborough could have made it."

  "Reasons that are not so good in law, apparently?"

  "Exactly; as ye
t there's no case and there has been no accusation. But Ivery much fear that traps are being set, and I've taken it on myself toput the madman on his guard."

  "To-night?"

  "Yes; it was the first chance of getting hold of him, and that only byhaving the poor little bride to dinner as well. Heavy work, Dollar,drinking their healths and knowing what was in the air! The only comfortwas that Edenborough knew as well as I did; it was written on his face,if you had the key, and I hadn't to do much beating about the bush whenI got him to myself. He was wonderfully frank, from his point of view.He told me that the air of suspicion was driving him out of his mind; hesaid he hadn't slept for nights and nights."

  "Although no accusation has been made?"

  "Although not an open word has been said to connect him with the badcopy of his own map!"

  "That's the worst thing you've told me," said Dollar quietly. "Heprotested his innocence, of course?"

  "In absolute tears!"

  "And what was your own impression, Mr. Vinson?"

  "Extremely mixed. I felt that he was speaking the truth, and yet not thewhole truth. He had an air of guilty knowledge, if not of actual guilt."

  "His physical condition bears you out," observed the doctor withreluctance. "And the poor devil's to be married in four days' time!"

  "There my pity's on the other side."

  "But the girl's another friend of yours? May I ask her name?"

  "Lucy Trevellyn."

  "Any relation of Admiral Trevellyn?"

  "Own daughter to the old sea-dog, and if anything the breezier of thetwo! I couldn't imagine a young girl more like an old salt at heart.She'd go to sea if she could; as she can't, she's a little pillar of theNavy League--and engaged to the First Lord's best young man! Could youconceive a more ingenious irony, or a greater tragedy when the truthcomes out? Dollar, it must come out before Thursday, if it's ever comingout at all!"

  "Is it otherwise a likely match?"

  "The very likeliest, but for this world's goods, and there'll be more ofthem one day. She has go enough for two, and they have tastes in common.I told you he could draw a bit, but she's a little artist, though youwouldn't think it if you saw her teaching him to skate at Prince's ortaking me on at golf! Lucy Trevellyn's the best type ofsportswoman--just as Vera Moyle is one gone wrong."

  John Dollar was on his feet.

  "Well, I've stayed longer than I intended," said he abruptly. "Ipromised to go up within half an hour to see if he was asleep. And hewill be. But what's a night's rest against such a tragedy as the wholething's bound to be!"

  "Or such a mystery?" suggested Topham Vinson. "If you could only get tothe bottom of that, Dollar, we might know how to act."

  "I'm not a detective," returned the doctor--but the stiff words werehardly out before the stiff lips relaxed in a smile. "I've said thatbefore, Vinson, and I shouldn't wonder if you made me say it again. I amout to stop things happening, not to bother about things that have beendone and can't be mended. But in this case discovery may be the motherof prevention, and I must have a shot with both barrels while there'stime."

  He had come in glum and grumbling; he went off gay and incisive, subtlyenlivened by the very gravity of the matter, as he always was. But itwas grave enough, as was Dollar himself behind the sparkling mask thathe wore unawares in all times of stress. And on one point his confidencewas justified without delay; the young man in the Chamber of Peace wasfound drenched already in slumbers worthy of the name he had unwittinglybestowed upon that magic fastness.

  But this was not a case in which the crime doctor could leave wellalone. Every hour of the night he was up-stairs and down again; and, inthe intervals, either deep in such grim reading as the IllustrativeCases of Transitory Mania, in the terrible fourth volume of _Casper'sForensic Medicine_, or deeper yet in his own cognate speculations.

  In the morning it was he who carried up the patient's suit-case, wokehim up, and watched the rising tide of memory drown the thanks in histhroat. Now was the doctor's chance of checking Mr. Vinson's version ofthe young man's troubles; but he waited for George Edenborough to openhis own heart, and waited in vain till the last five minutes, when theboy began to thank him and ended with the whole story.

  It differed very little from the second-hand synopsis, but it confirmedmore than one impression which Dollar would have given much torelinquish. The talk of intolerable suspicions was indeed moreconsistent with a guilty conscience than anything else, since it wasduly followed by the admission that nobody had expressed such suspicionsin anything like so many words. The crime doctor was sorry he had putthe question; it was the only one he asked. But by exhorting Edenboroughto get all the exercise he could, and by saying he had heard greatthings of Miss Trevellyn's skating, the reluctant dissembler had littledifficulty in obtaining an immediate invitation to tea at Prince'sSkating Club.

  Edenborough had departed with a face almost radiant at the prospect; yethe had scarcely spoken of his beloved until the subject of skatingcropped up. It was as though that was the only relation in which hecould still think of her without pain and shame; and in due course hewas discovered on the ice with the same look of lingering pride and joy.

  It was the height of the skating afternoon, and the glassy strip anopaque pane on which a little giant might have been scribbling with abig diamond. The eye swam with pairs rotating as in a circus--withsingle practitioners at work under dashing instructors down the middleof the rink--while the ear sang with a resounding swish of skates. Oneof the workers was George Edenborough, who came off one leg, with aglistening forehead, to find his guest a good place behind the barrier.

  "So glad you're not late for the waltzing," he said nervily. "I've had along day out of town, and didn't get here myself till much later than Iexpected. Lucy's writing a letter in the lounge, but she'll be here in aminute for the enclosure, and after that we'll have tea."

  Dollar ascertained that the waltzing enclosure was a closequarter-of-an-hour for all but those more or less proficient in thatdelicate and astounding art. Edenborough said that he himself was notquite up to the standard of these displays, and suited the action to theword by taking the floor unsteadily on his skates. As he seated himselfa gong sounded, the band struck up, beginners dispersed, confident handsclasped lissome waists, long edges ended in lightning threes, and therink was a maze of sweeping grace and symmetry.

  Dollar had never seen anything like it in his life, for artificial icewas in its infancy in London before the war, and ever since he had beena busy man. He followed first one couple and then another, and eachseemed to him more competent and graceful than the last. Yet the firstshort waltz was not over before an involuntary selection had eliminatedall but a dark strong girl in red and a swarthy man with bright eyes anda black mustache.

  "Those two are the best," said he--"that girl in red and the heavyalien."

  "Do you think so?" cried the delighted Edenborough. "Then you're ajudge, because that's Lucy!"

  "I didn't mean to insult her partner," said Dollar in some dismay. "He'sthe best waltzer on the ice except Miss Trevellyn."

  "He's an Italian marquis," returned Edenborough, in another voice."Rocchi's his beastly name. I've no use for the fellow. But he canskate."

  The first waltz finished there were two more in quick succession, andEdenborough had a better word for Miss Trevellyn's next partner. He wasonly a glowing schoolboy, home from Eton for his leave, but the pastmistress lent herself to his dash and fling with a gusto equal to hisown.

  "I'm glad that's over," said Edenborough, as she escaped with her lifefrom the desperado's clutches. "I say, confound that fellow Rocchi!"

  She was waltzing with the handsome brute again; for he looked no less,with his deep blue chin and insolent eyes, and his air of consciousmastery. Edenborough plainly loathed him, chafing visibly as the pairswept past with certainly the appearance of some extra verve for hisbenefit. Dollar himself was very disagreebly impressed, and that down tothe end, when Rocchi skated up with the lady, whom h
e surrendered with agleam of palpable bravado.

  Yet that impression altered with the very opening of Miss Trevellyn'snot less resolute mouth. She had good teeth and a hearty voice, andeyes of a breezy and humane audacity. Dollar thought of Topham Vinson'stribute, and agreed with all except the odious comparison. There was,indeed, no comparing types as different as Lucy Trevellyn and VeraMoyle; but the one had never puzzled him in the past more completelythan did the other before he took his leave.

  And they had talked about the wedding, and their presents, and thewedding trip, as though neither God nor man could interfere!

  "Only three days to go!" said Dollar to himself. And two of the threewere soon gone without alarums or excursions, except on the part of thecrime doctor himself. He was neglecting his practise for the case inhand; he was nowhere to be found when badly wanted on the Tuesday night,nor yet on the Wednesday morning; and this was the more extraordinary inthat it was George Edenborough who wanted him, now with an ashier facethan ever, and now on the telephone in a frantic voice.

  At dusk on the Wednesday his key turned in the latch, and next day'sbridegroom burst from the waiting-room at the same moment.

  "At last!" cried Edenborough; and looked so ghastly in the electriclight that Dollar did not switch it on in the consulting-room, or ask aquestion as he shut the door.

  It was one of those mild unseasonable days on which the best of servantskeep up the biggest fires; the doctor opened the French window that ledfrom his den, down rusty steps, into a foul and futile enclosure ofgrimy gravel and moribund shrubs. In the meantime Edenborough had nottaken a seat as mechanically bidden, but had planted himself in defiantpose before the fire; and the glow showed restless hands twitching intofists, but not the face of which one look had been enough.

  "You might have left word where you were!" he began with greatbitterness.

  "I have just done so," returned Dollar, "at your rooms. I was wanting tosee you--presently. It seems like fate, to find you here before me."

  "I suppose you've heard the latest, wherever you've been?" pursuedEdenborough, aware and jealous of some independent perplexity on thepart of Dollar.

  "I have heard so much!" said the doctor, dropping into a chair. "Betterbe explicit--and as expeditious as you can, my dear fellow. I have anappointment almost directly."

  "Oh! there's not much to say," rejoined the other sardonically. "Youremember when you came to Prince's, doctor?"

  "I do, indeed."

  They both spoke as if it were weeks ago.

  "You know I told you I'd had a hard day out of town?"

  "I remember."

  "I meant with my chief--Lord Stockton--seeing his new brood ofsubmarines."

  "In their unfledged state, I suppose?"

  "That was it--and making the usual sketches. That's my job--or was! Iwas Stockton's walking Kodak until yesterday afternoon; then I got theboot for a wedding present, and a chance of the jug for my honeymoon!"

  The harsh voice broke, for all its sudden slang and satire. Dollar wasdriven to his only policy.

  "I'm not going to pretend I don't know of this," he said. "I know of itfrom the Home Secretary. A duplicate of one of those last drawings ofyours----"

  "A duplicate!"

  "Well, a bad imitation, if you like."

  The doctor paused as though he had finished a sentence, as though theamended phrase had interrupted his thought.

  "Well?" said Edenborough grimly. "Did you hear how they got hold of it?"

  "Intercepted in the post, I gathered, on its way abroad."

  "In our post," said Edenborough. "Almost a _casus belli_ in itself, Ishould have thought!"

  "And have you no idea how it came there?" asked the doctor bluntly--butnow he meant to be blunt; he was not sorry when his man flew into afeeble passion on the spot.

  "What the devil do you mean, Doctor Dollar? I know no more about thematter than--I was going to say, than you do--but I begin to think youknow more than you pretend!"

  "I didn't think I had pretended," said Dollar, simply.

  "Well, what _do_ you know?" demanded Edenborough, in a fury ofsuspicion. "All, I suppose?" he added, with a schoolboy sneer, when theanswer was slow to come.

  "Yes; all," said the doctor, very gravely and reluctantly, as thoughdriven into a pronouncement of life or death.

  There was no outcry of surprise from Edenborough. He had some pride. Buthis knees began to tremble in the firelight, and his unclenched hands totwitch.

  "I don't believe it," he exclaimed at length. "You tell me what youknow!"

  "All that you yourself suspected, and made yourself ill withsuspecting--and couldn't sleep for suspecting--long ago!"

  Pitiful tone and tender hand carried a heavier conviction than thewords. And now it was the patient who had sunk into the chair, thedoctor bending over his bowed and quivering shoulders.

  "Mark my words closely"]

  "You are not the first man, my dear Edenborough," he went on, "who wouldseem to have been betrayed in cold blood by a woman--by _the_ woman.Mark my words closely. I say it seems so. I would not condemn thegreatest malefactor unheard. I meant to hear Miss Trevellynfirst--feeling in my bones, against all reason, that there may still besome unimaginable explanation. But, if the worst be true of her, thenthe best is true of you; for you are the first man I have known bear thebrunt as you have borne it, my very dear fellow!"

  "What makes you suspect her?" groaned Edenborough to the ground.

  "It's not a case of suspicion--don't deceive yourself as to that,Edenborough. I _know_ that Miss Trevellyn produced--and partedwith--those last two sketches about which there's been all the trouble.I only _suspect_ that she got you to show her the originals, almost assoon as they were made, on the plea of her tremendous interest in theNavy."

  "Quite true; she did," said Edenborough, but as though he did notappreciate what he was saying, as though something else had stuck in hismind. "But it _was_ a tremendous interest!" he exclaimed, jumping up."It was her father's interest; his life, indeed! Isn't it inconceivablethat his daughter--apart from everything else I've found her--that sheof all people should do a thing like this?"

  "I am afraid the inconceivable happens almost as often as theunexpected," said Dollar, with a sigh. "Criminology, indeed, prepares usfor little else. Think of the perfectly good mothers who have flown toinfanticide as the first relief of a mind unhinged! The inversion of theruling passions is one of the sure symptoms of insanity."

  "But of course she's mad," cried Edenborough, "if she's guilty at all.But that's what I can't and won't believe. I can believe it one minutebut not the next, just as I've suspected and laughed at my suspicionsall this nightmare time. One look in her face has always been enough,and would be at this minute."

  "Well, we shall soon see," said Dollar, glancing at the clock. "But Ican only warn you that my evidence is overwhelming."

  "Let's have it, then; what is your evidence?" demanded Edenborough, in afresh fit of stone-blind defiance.

  "My dear fellow, you force my hand!" said Dollar. "God knows you have aright--and it can't make matters worse than they are. My evidenceconsists of a full and circumstantial confession by a scoundrel to whomI took your own dislike at sight, and whose career I have spent the weekinvestigating. I needn't tell you I mean the infamous Rocchi."

  "Rocchi!" whispered Edenborough at the second attempt, as though hisvery tongue rejected the abhorrent name. Yet now he stood perfectlystill, like a man who sees at last. "Well," he added in an ominouslyrational voice, "I must live long enough to send _him_ to hell, whateverelse I do."

  "You will have to find him first," said Dollar. "He has gone back to hispaymasters--not his own countrymen--they kicked him out long ago. I'vetaken it on myself to do the same, instead of handing him over to thepolice and doing an infinite deal more harm than good."

  But Edenborough was not listening to a word; he was talking to himself,and he talked aloud as soon as he was given a chance.

  "Now we know why she
was so keen on my wretched job ... on the wholeNavy?... No, not a life-long fraud like that.... And she pretended todislike that brute as much as I did! I believe she did, too, but for hiswaltzing.... No, never jealous of him, and I'm not now ... but so muchthe worse, so much the more damnably cold-blooded!"

  Dying philosopher could not have displayed a more acute detachment. Butthe last touch was lost upon Dollar, whose expectant ear had caught theting of an electric bell.

  "Edenborough," he said, in the voice of urgent conciliation, "the timehas come for you to show what's in you. So far you have kept your headand played the man; keep it now, and you will play the hero! I stillcan't imagine what Miss Trevellyn can have to say for herself--but Iimplore you to hear her out, for I believe she is being admitted at thismoment."

  "Lucy--here--and you expected her?"

  "I told you I had another appointment. But you were here first, onething led to another, and it may be better as it is. You were bound tohave this out between you--and to-day. If you wish me to bepresent--but no human being can help!"

  "Unless it's you!" suggested Edenborough in a panic-stricken whisper. "Ican't face her alone--I can't trust myself!"

  Dollar took no notice of a knock at the door. "Edenborough, you must,"he said gently; "and whatever she may have to say--much or little, andit may be much--you must hear patiently to the end. It's your duty, man!Don't flinch from it, for God's sake!"

  "But I do flinch from it!" cried Edenborough below his breath. "I flinchfrom it for her sake as much as mine. I'm not the one to shame her, evenif Rocchi's telling----"

  The door opened in response to Dollar's decisive call. It was the littleBarton boy, to say that Miss Trevellyn was in the waiting-room.

  "Show her in," said Dollar. "I have more than Rocchi's bare word,Edenborough."

  The distracted youth looked about him like a wild creature in a cage,and saw his loophole at the last moment.

  "I won't be the one to shame her, whatever she has done!" he whimperedthrough his teeth. "If there's any explanation, she need never know Iknew; if there's not, good-by!"

  And he slipped through the open window, out upon the iron steps, asDollar switched on the lights that turned the outer dusk to darkness;and the door opened even as the curtain was drawn in desperation, with alast signal to Edenborough to stand his ground and at least hear all.

  "Good evening, Doctor Dollar," said Miss Trevellyn, briskly, and withthat she stopped in her sturdy stride. "Is anything the matter?"

  "Is it possible you don't know what?"

  "Is it anything to do with George? You're his doctor, aren't you?" Thesequestions quicker, but with a sensible check on any premature anxiety.

  "He has consulted me, but the matter more directly concerns yourself.It's no use beating about the bush, Miss Trevellyn!" exclaimed thedoctor, with a sudden irritation at her straight carriage and straighterlook. "I have to speak to you about the Marchese Rocchi."

  "Have you, indeed!"

  Miss Trevellyn had winced at the name, but already her eyes lookedbrighter and bolder, and the firm face almost serenely obdurate.

  "The Marchese Rocchi," he continued, "fled the country yesterday, MissTrevellyn."

  "I wondered why he was not at Prince's!"

  "He fled because of a scandal in which you are implicated," said Dollarvery sternly. "He has been trafficking in naval secrets--this country'ssecrets, Miss Trevellyn--and he swears you sold them to him. Is ittrue?"

  "One moment," said the girl, with a first trace of emotion. "Is all thisof your own accord, or on behalf of Mr. Edenborough?"

  "Of my own accord entirely."

  "You've been ferreting things out for yourself, have you?"

  "You are entitled to put it so."

  "Detective as well as doctor, it appears?"

  "Miss Trevellyn, I implore you to tell me if these things are true!"

  "So that you may tell your patient, I suppose?"

  "No. I shall not tell him," said Dollar, disingenuously enough, but withthe deeper sorrow.

  "Very well! I'll tell you, and you can shout it from the roof for all Icare now. It's perfectly true!"

  Dollar started, not at the thing that had to come, but at themanner in which it came. It seemed, indeed, the last word inwickedness--impenitent, unblushing, even vainglorious to eye and earalike. His glance flew to the curtained window, but no sound or movementcame from the iron stair outside.

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

  "Perfectly true," said Miss Trevellyn.

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

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

  "Of course I know that! It was a slip of the tongue," he admonishedher, while marveling more and more. "And you can put the whole thingplainly without so much as a blush!"

  "I am going to put you to the blush instead, Doctor Dollar," returnedthe lady, with a lighter touch. "You are very clever at finding out whatI did, but you don't ask why I did it; that's not so clever of such aclever man, and I must just enlighten you before I go. The first drawingwas not a copy; it was the original they got that time, and it wasstolen from Mr. Edenborough on his way home from the Admiralty. He neverknew exactly where it was stolen, but I always thought I knew. You are abit of a detective, Doctor Dollar; well, so am I in my way. You have notlet me into the secret of your success, and I shouldn't think of boringyou with mine. I thought it happened at Prince's, and I suspectedRocchi, that was all. It was last spring, and I had all the summer tothink about it. But when Prince's opened I set to work, for there wasRocchi making up to us both as before. He didn't get much change out ofGeorge, but perhaps I made amends when George wasn't there, andsometimes even when he was! He could waltz, you see, and so can I,"said Lucy Trevellyn, with something like a sigh for her bereavement onthe rink.

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

  "I sold them quite well," said Miss Trevellyn, with sparkling eyes--"andyou may guess what I did with the money--but it's not fair to call themcopies. I made them as inaccurate as possible without spoilingeverything, and indeed I couldn't have made them very accurate frommemory, and they were only rough sketches to begin with! Of courseGeorge was wrong to let me see them, but he was assisting in the best ofcauses. Rocchi was an expert professional spy. I soon sized him down asone. But he was not a naval expert--and I'm that as well! That's my lastboast, Doctor Dollar; but it's not unjustifiable, if you come to thinkof George and me between us keeping a national enemy out of seriousmischief, feeding a friendly Power with false plans, and giving themoney to our own dear Navy League!"

  Dollar surveyed the radiant minx with eyes that needed rubbing. His onlysorrow was that Edenborough did not burst through the curtains withoutmore ado; he must have extraordinary self-control, when he liked.

  "Not that George was a conscious party to the fraud; he wouldn't haveapproved 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 tellhim--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 botheringhim, Doctor Dollar? He says it's overwork, and I do think LordStockton's an old slave-driver; do you know, I haven't even seen Georgesince the day before yesterday at Prince's?"

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

  "Of course I know he's all right," concluded Miss Trevellyn, as theywere parting perfect friends, "because he has rung me up several timesto say so, and he looked better on Monday than for ever so long. But Imust 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 ofregret, and she made her departure with all the abruptness of aconstitutionally decided person. But she had blushed once at least inthe last few minutes. And the doctor ran back into his den with singingheart, ready to fall upon his patient's neck in deep thanksgiving andeven more profound congratulation.

  No patient was there to meet him even now, but the curtain swayed alittle before the open window. Dollar reached it at a bound; but therewas nobody outside on the iron steps, and the curtain filled behind himas the inner door banged in the draft. The horrid little space at theback of the house, between the high black walls with the broken-bottlecoping, lay empty of all life in the plentiful light from the backwindows--but for an early cat that fled before Dollar's precipitatedescent into the basement.

  "The gentleman's gone," said Mrs. Barton at once. "He come through thisway 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 hehad to go up to show the young lady in; and the young gentleman, itcouldn'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 thatsomething 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; drewEdenborough's rooms in vain; inquired as vainly (as an anonymous weddingguest, uncertain of the church) at Admiral Trevellyn's; was at the Houseof Commons by half past six, and at Scotland Yard (armed with writteninjunctions from the Secretary of State) before seven.

  At that hour and place the matter passed out of the hands of Doctor JohnDollar, who could only hasten home to Welbeck Street, there to enterupon the most shattering vigil of his life--the terrible telephone athis elbow--and still more terrible inquirers on the telephone as thenight wore on!

  But never one word of news.

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

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

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

  It was a being ten years older who opened his own front door again atdaybreak. His face was as gray as the wintry dawn, the whole man bowedand 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 sometea in a minute."

  "For God's sake tell me what you've heard!"

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

  Dollar had dropped into his elaborate old chair; the bent head betweenhis 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!' Hisvery 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'swhere the poor devil dealt!"

  Dollar understood this outburst of truculent emotion.

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

  "Before you told him anything?"

  "He had his own suspicions, you must remember. I had confirmed them--and_her_ first words left no more to be said, that he could bear to hear!If only he had waited another minute! If only I had dragged him back toface it out!" groaned Dollar, in a bottomless pit of self-reproach. "Icall myself a crime doctor, yet I let my patient creep into space with abottle of prussic acid, and commit the one crime I had to prevent!"

  "Why prussic acid, I wonder?"

  The idle question was not asked for information, but it happened to beone that Dollar could answer, and it brought him to his book-shelveswith a certain alacrity.

  "I know," he said, "though I never thought of it till this minute! I wastrying to write him a prescription on Sunday night, when the poor chapsuddenly remarked that Shelley was right, and I found him dipping intothese Letters, and had the luck to spot the very bit he'd struck. Itwas this"--and he read out the passage beginning: "You, of course, enterinto society at Leghorn: should you meet with any scientific person,capable of preparing the _Prussic Acid, or essential oil of bitteralmonds_, I should regard it as a great kindness if you could procure mea small quantity"--down to "it would be a comfort to me to hold in myhands that golden key to the chamber of perpetual peace."

  Topham Vinson's only comment was to pick up the book, which had fallento the floor with the concluding words. Dollar was swaying where hestood, glancing in horror toward the door; at that moment it opened, andMrs. Barton entered with the tea-tray.

  "Mrs. Barton," said the doctor, in a voice that failed him as it had notdone all night, "I don't want to hurt your feelings, but did that boy ofyours speak the truth when he told me he had seen Mr. Edenborough out?"

  "He did not, sir, and his father thrashed him for it!" cried the goodwoman. "And that was very wrong of Barton, because I was as bad as theboy, in not telling you at the time. So we've all done wrong together,and we don't deserve to stay, as I told the both of them!"

  The poor soul was forgiven and consoled, with an unconscious sympathynot lost on Topham Vinson, to whom it was extended a moment later.

  "Take a drink of your tea," said Dollar. "It will do you good."

  "What about you?"

  "I'm going up-stairs first."

  "You've thought of something!"

  "I have," replied Dollar in a tragic whisper. "I've thought of my'chamber of perpetual peace.'"

  That sanctuary was on the second floor, and it had triple doors sospaced that each could be shut in turn before the next was opened. Thehouse might have been in an uproar, and yet one might have entered thisroom without admitting the slightest sound by the door. The window wasof triple glass that would have deadened an explosion on its sill, andthe walls were thickly wadded behind an inner paneling of aromatic pine.

  The first sensation on entering was one of ineffable peace and quiet;next came a subtle, soothing scent, as of all the spices of Arabia; andlastly a surprising sense of scientific ventilation, as though the foursound-proof walls were yet not impervious to the outer air, but asthough it were the pungent air of pine-clad mountains, in miraculouscirculation here in the heart of London.

  All this would have struck the visitor by degrees; but to John Dollar,who had devised and superintended every detail, it all came hometogether and afresh as he entered softly with the Home Secretary; and acertain composite effect, unforeseen in the beginning and stillunexplained, fell upon him even now, and with it all the weight of hisown fatigue; so that he could have flung himself on bed or c
ouch as adoomed wretch sinks into the snow, but for the light in the room andwhat the light revealed.

  It was light of a warm, strange, coppery shade, that he had found forhimself by dyeing frosted electric lamps as children dye Easter eggs; itwas the very softest and yet least sensuous shade that eyes everpenetrated with perfect ease, and it turned the room into a little hallof bronze. The simple curtains might have been golden lace, richlytarnished with age; the furniture solid copper; the bed an Easterndivan, and the form upon the bed a sleeping Arab.

  It was George Edenborough lying there in all his clothes, a girl'sphotograph beside him on the coverlet, and beside the photograph a tinyphial that caught the light.

  "Stay where you are!" whispered Dollar in a voice that thrilled hiscompanion to the core. And he stole to the bed, stooped over it for alittle lifetime, and so came stealing back.

  "How long has he been dead?" said Topham Vinson, harshly; but in realtyhis blood was freezing at an unearthly smile in that unearthly light.

  "Dead?" was the doctor's husky echo. "Don't you know the smell of bitteralmonds, and have you smelt it yet? Here's the golden bottle he hadn'topened when he lay down--perhaps for the first time since he was here onSunday night--and this is his wedding morning, and he's only--only fastasleep!"