19000 Pound Part 37

CHAPTER XXV

A WOULD BE SUICIDE

At Finsbury Circus next morning dentist Lennox was in attendance.

He had been growing very ill lately, mentally and physically, and this morning he had turned over in his bed with the intention of remaining in it for the day.

Dental patients were so few and far between that he did not fear losing much by his absence.

But when his wife--as was her custom--brought up his cup of tea, and morning letters, there was a post-card from Sawyer--his boy. It was to tell him that a patient would call about his teeth at eleven o'clock.

Despite his really ill condition, he bathed and dressed, and got to the city somehow.

He was in time for his appointment, and waited long for the coming patient. But eleven o'clock struck and he came not.

Calling Sawyer in, he questioned him minutely as to the person making the appointment, and the likelihood of his turning up later.

"Oh, he meant coming right enough, sir. Had been recommended here by a friend who had been."

"Oh, who was that?"

"Dunno his name, sir. That American agent, sir, what came the day Mr.

Arthur went away."

The dentist controlled his emotion, checked an exhibition of it by gripping the arms of his chair, and inquired:

"What did he say?"

"Said the American gent had spoken very 'ighly of the painless manner in which you treated him when he called here."

The dead man, the cut up man, had spoken highly of his treatment!

The dentist's lip was kept from trembling by the grip of his teeth on it. He wiped away the beads of perspiration from his brow, and inquired:

"This gentleman who called was a friend of his?"

"Yus, sir; was most interested about him. Arst a lot of questions, sir, and showed me his picture which he had in his pocket."

Not a word from the dentist; he seemed frozen to his chair.

His head was turned from the boy. Could Sawyer have seen it, he would have wondered at the stony look of fright in his master's face.

For the dentist feared the worst. He guessed that the man coming was a detective. Conscience doth make cowards of us all.

He sat there, waiting--a prey to indescribable fear. Useless, he knew, to attempt to escape--perhaps even now the place was being watched.

Well! let them arrest him; it would be the end of all--of all the worry and trouble which he felt was hastening him to the grave.

And then he thought of his wife, of his girl child, and groaned aloud.

Was his widow to be shamed by his death; was he to cast a cloud over his child's life, to give people a chance of saying of her: "Her father was hanged for murder."

He groaned again in his mental agony.

Suicide! Ah! why had he not thought of that?

It would save all--the exposure, the torture of the trial, the disgraceful death at the hangman's hand. What a fool that the idea had not occurred to him before!

His brother died with his throat cut, why should he not do the same?

Life with its overhanging fears and terrors was not worth the living to him. He would shuffle off this mortal coil.

He walked quietly to the door, and gently turned the key in the lock.

Then he unlocked a small safe in the corner of the room, and from the drawer thereof he took out the nineteen Bank of England notes he had always been afraid to attempt to cash.

He looked at them and shuddered--blood money! Their rustle gave him no pleasure now.

To his desk--then inserting the notes in an envelope, he directed it on the outside, "To the Police, Scotland Yard."

His hand trembled so he could not write more. He had intended giving an explanation of the whole thing, but as he asked himself--who would believe so wildly improbable--so incredible--a story?

He sat, pen in his trembling fingers, intending to write to his wife, and then it occurred to him that to do so would mean ruin to her--that were his death ascribed to suicide, the moneys payable under his insurance policies would be forfeited.

The thought made him pause.

No, he must run no risk. Those sc.r.a.ped together premiums on the policies must not be lost.

He reflected that it was better to die. That then there would be an end to that grinding, sc.r.a.ping, pinching poverty at home--that looking at every sixpence before it was spent.

He was insured for fifteen hundred pounds--a policy issued for the benefit of his wife, so that she would get the whole sum without his creditors being able to touch a penny of it, or any deduction for death dues.

He thought how it would lighten the burden of the woman to whom he had been bound till death should them part.

Death! He feared it--feared it horribly. He loathed himself for his cowardice all the while he feared. It was his duty to destroy himself.

His daughter Edith, too--his little Edie--how different her future would be! She would be sent to a first-cla.s.s school, where they turned out women, and not mechanical scholars, the result of the cramming process of the bra.s.s plated Seminary for Young Ladies.

He thought of all this as he considered how he should compa.s.s the death which was to bring about these things.

He must do it in such a way that no suspicion should arise; there must be no doubt about the death--it must be ascribed to an accident.

He looked around. His eyes rested on his dead brother's case of surgical instruments.

The case had remained in his rooms since--he shuddered at the recollection of their use. He walked to the side table and opened the box.

The cold glitter of the polished steel made him shudder again, and from his lips came the whispered prayer:

"Oh, G.o.d, give me courage to do this thing."