Juggernaut Part 64

Cold horror gripped him. It seemed unthinkable that this tender young creature so close to him had lately pa.s.sed through the h.e.l.l she described. In a daze he listened to the dry, hoa.r.s.e voice as it continued:

"Oh, I know all right. He kept me stupefied. I never knew how I got there; I didn't even know I was there ... it was only through an accident that I came to at all, otherwise... Such a silly accident!

All because Captain Holliday didn't give me the injection properly."

"_Holliday?_"

He wondered if he had heard aright. She did not answer, going off, at first softly, then with increasing vehemence into convulsions of laughter that shook her from head to foot. He clasped her close in his arms and held her to him, smoothing her rough curls and whispering:

"Steady on, Esther dear! It's all over now. You're safe with me; I sha'n't let anything happen to you!"

She subsided at last, the tears spilling over her lashes and down her cheeks unheeded. He wiped them away, realising how spent she was with the effort of relating, even so briefly, her terrible experience.

"Rest now, darling. You must keep absolutely quiet. I don't want to hear any more now, except... Esther, I wonder if I dare ask you one thing. Don't speak if you don't feel like it. But ... you realise we can't make a definite charge of any kind until we know what we're about. You understand that, I know. Tell me, dear, are there any proofs of this horrible story? I mean proofs of the plot you spoke of to murder my father, and also of your being sequestered in the laboratory."

He saw her eyes narrow with thought. She lay very still, as though to focus all her strength to give him a connected answer.

"I understand, of course, there must be more than my word, for he'll do his utmost to discredit me. Listen: If the police or someone will go to the Route de Gra.s.se before the doctor can get there, they'll find a good deal of evidence. Of course he'll get there as soon as he can--I'm surprised he hasn't gone already--and he'll do his best to cover up the signs. He can't mend that skylight in a hurry, though,"

she added thoughtfully.

"Esther, how does Holliday come into this? Was he in the plot?"

"No, not at all--not actively, that is. He was dragged into it at the last simply to stand guard over me and see I didn't get away. Even he had to see that it was absolutely necessary to dispose of me," she finished coolly. "It would have ruined everything if they hadn't."

"Good G.o.d..."

"Now about the proofs. I believe Lady Clifford has been giving you typhoid culture in your mineral water. I heard the doctor say so. I don't know that we can prove that, or that she gave it to your father in his milk, either; that's all done with. But there's one thing we can prove. There's a little chemist named Cailler--I can tell you where the shop is--who has an a.n.a.lysis of a hypodermic needle the doctor used on your father. It was what caused that sudden relapse.

The needle had pure toxin of typhoid in it. I know, because I took it to the chemist myself."

"_You_ did?"

"Certainly. It was too late to save your poor father--nothing could have saved him--but I was afraid they were trying to get you as well, and I had to be sure before I dared say anything. I didn't get the report till after the funeral, when I heard it over the telephone.

Then I sent you that message by Chalmers."

"I see! Then what happened? I was only three minutes getting downstairs, but you were nowhere to be seen."

"Of course, that was because the doctor was waiting behind the door to grab me. He stuck that awful needle of his in my arm, and after that I can't tell you anything. I didn't know any more until two days later, when I found myself lying on a bed in the laboratory."

A slight fit of trembling overtook her again. He took her two limp hands in his and kissed them, moved by a new and overpowering emotion.

With startling vividness he realised the whole stupendous thing, what she had done, what she had risked and suffered. Even that stupid incident of what the servant-girl had told about seeing her with Holliday in his car became clear as day. Of course--and he had suspected her of a flirtation!

"Esther, my own Esther--you splendid, marvellous girl! To think that I never knew, that you might have died, and I should never have known what became of you! Do you know what I was thinking? I spent two days searching for you in every hotel and pension in Cannes..."

"I know," she said softly, her eyes suddenly misty.

"I can't take it in yet, Esther; it's too overwhelming."

He buried his head in the covers beside her. She put her hand upon his hair and caressed it with a clinging touch that sent a thrill through him. Like this they remained for long minutes, and the communion was to him the sweetest he had ever known. Strange that this complete ecstasy should come to him at the very moment when he was shocked to the depths of his being by the disclosure of the vile crime perpetrated in their midst.

After a little while Esther drifted off to sleep once more, leaving him to face again the problem of those two murderers, as he now knew them to be, still at large and still under the roof with him. What was to be done? Would they make any attempt to escape, or would they brazen it out till the last? He had a strong suspicion that they would both adopt this latter course. He foresaw a long and difficult trail, a defence skilfully engineered by Sartorius, whose reputation would stand him in good stead. In his imagination he pictured a French jury swayed by the beauty and emotional appeal of Therese. Why, they might easily win; it was perfectly possible. He had an Englishman's contempt for French jurisdiction. As for the doctor, he felt sure that that man would employ every diabolical means in his power to discredit Esther's statement, to blacken her character; he would impute false motives to her or make a convincing case against her sanity, perhaps both. The very notion made him boil with rage. The cold-blooded infamy of the plot to do away with his father was as nothing compared with the wanton brutality of the attempt on Esther's life. To think of this fresh and lovely body, so near to him now that he could feel the throbbing of her heart, dismembered, defiled in the work of annihilation, filled him with unspeakable horror. He had to take a firm grip on himself to keep from forcing his way into the neighbouring room and wreaking personal vengeance on the author of so b.e.s.t.i.a.l an outrage. The man's stolid calm, which had appeared a proof of innocence, now made him seem a monster of insensibility. Sartorius was not human; he was the python of Esther's dream, slow-blooded, impersonal, relentless....

The clock struck four. Some time after this he must have lost consciousness, for gradually his waking thoughts blurred imperceptibly into unreal, his head resting heavily on the bed beside the sleeping girl. He was roused by a touch on his shoulder and a voice saying tensely in his ear:

"Mr. Roger! Mr. Roger, sir!"

Dizzily he raised his head, blinking in the grey daylight that filled the room. Then he struggled to his feet, stiff and cramped.

"Yes, Chalmers, what is it?"

"Her ladyship, sir--she's not in her room. She's not in the house.

She's gone, sir!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVII

"Gone! What do you mean? How could she get away?"

"That's what we don't know, sir. We----"

"Who is we?" demanded Roger sharply.

"I mean Aline, sir; it was she who found it out. I've been about the house the whole night, sir; I've never closed my eyes. No one could have got past me without my knowing it."

Roger glanced at the bed. Esther still slept, the rings around her eyes darker than ever in the cold morning light.

"Come outside," he said in a lower tone. "We mustn't disturb Miss Rowe. Now tell me."

"It's just as I say, sir. It seems she had told Aline to bring her some tea at six o'clock. I couldn't say what she had in mind to be wanting it so early; it seems as if she was planning to go out before anyone was up, but I don't know, sir. Anyhow, when Aline did bring the tea a moment ago, the room was empty; the bed hadn't been touched."

"You've searched the house?"

"Only partly, sir."

"What about the back stairs?"

"I don't think she could have come out of her room at all, sir, without my knowing; and in any case last night I locked the tradesmen's door and put the key in my pocket."

Roger rapidly reconnoitred.

"Stay here till I call my aunt," he ordered. "Whatever you do, don't stir from this spot. I am afraid to leave Miss Rowe alone for a single moment."

In a few minutes he returned with Miss Clifford, whom he had found wide awake, on the point of donning her dressing-gown to come and relieve him. He told her nothing about Therese's disappearance, merely cautioning her strongly against leaving Esther unguarded.

"You must grasp this fact, Dido," he said gravely, looking her straight in the eyes. "Esther is no more out of her mind than you or I. There is something very serious behind this, and that man Sartorius is a terrible menace to her safety. I can't explain now, but you'll know it all soon enough."

He left her bewildered and shaken, and rejoined the butler in the hall.

Outside the boudoir door stood Aline, her brows drawn together under her ragged fringe of hair, her thin lips set in a line that betokened anxiety.