Juggernaut Part 68

It was at this moment that the door opened and Roger came in, his arms filled with an immense bunch of pale pink roses. She rose hurriedly, brushing the tears away with a feeling of shame, and smiling at him.

He came close and looked with a grave face at the drops still clinging to her lashes.

"What are those for?" he inquired in a serious tone.

"Nothing at all. If I tell you, you'll think me such a fool! I--I was only thinking to myself how happy I was to be alive, and--and all that."

He looked down at her for a long moment with so penetrating a gaze that she grew embarra.s.sed.

"There--that's the look of yours I like so much," he said at last, watching her colour rise. "You know you are just a nice child, Esther--an awfully nice child! That's how I first thought of you."

With a gesture half-afraid he put up one finger and touched a tendril of hair that had strayed loose on her neck. She felt shyer than before, and turned her attention to the roses.

"For me?" she asked, burying her face in their cool depths. "How too beautiful! I don't think I've ever seen roses so lovely before.

There's--there's something special about them, somehow," she added truthfully.

"There is," he replied gravely, as he deposited his burden on the table.

Suddenly tongue-tied, she made an effort to speak naturally of other matters, avoiding the personal.

"Any news of ... of that man?" she inquired.

Stupid that she still could not speak of him easily!

Roger saw that a faint shadow had darkened her upturned eyes, and it cut him to the heart.

"No, nothing yet--but don't let that distress you. The fellow is bound to be caught; it's only a question of time. You are not to be worried about it. Look at me! You are worrying, this minute."

"I'm not at all," she denied stoutly. "Why should I bother about him--now?"

For answer he drew forward the biggest arm-chair and gently made her sit down. The slight hollow of her delicate cheek, the dark circles under the eyes, caused him acute suffering.

"Seriously, Esther, when I think of what you have been through, when I think that it must have left a terrible impression on you and that nothing I can do can remove that impression, it is almost more than I can bear. I feel it is all our fault."

"How perfectly absurd! It was n.o.body's fault. And you ought to be thankful it has turned out as it has. I am, I can tell you. As for me, I shall get over this, don't worry! I'm not neurotic or anything queer, whatever that man wanted to make you believe. I am really frightfully normal."

"Yes, thank G.o.d! I feel an a.s.s to think I could ever have doubted it."

"I don't know. When I think what I must have looked like bursting in on you that night--a sort of Curfew-Shall-Not-Ring-To-night, I suppose--I don't wonder at anyone's thinking me a lunatic. How I ever got there at all is a mystery to me. I believe I was unconscious part of the time. I scarcely remember it; the whole thing seems like a sort of feverish nightmare. When the taxi came to a standstill I simply gave everything up for lost. I only set out to walk that last mile in a sort of dogged desperation; I never thought I should get there, or that if I did it would be in time. It was all uphill, too. I remember the perspiration running in trickles with the rain down my face, all in my eyes, so that I could scarcely see. Every little while I just toppled over altogether and lay on the sidewalk. It was the purest good luck that I wasn't run in for a drunken person. That would have finished it!"

"My dear!"

"Oh, well, let's not talk about it any more. I want to forget all that part of it--if I can."

He sat down close to her on the window-seat, silent for a moment. Then he said:

"Esther, tell me one thing. What first put the suspicion into your head that there was something not quite straight about my father's illness?"

She knit her brow and thought hard for a bit.

"I hardly know," she replied at last. "It's awfully difficult to say.

There were certain tiny, unimportant things that I noticed, even before I took on the case, but taken separately not one would have meant anything much. I don't believe I can say exactly when I first began to feel uncomfortable about the situation. Perhaps I shouldn't have done so at all if it hadn't been for the pure accident of overhearing a conversation between your stepmother and Captain Holliday that afternoon I told you about."

"I know you saw them together, but you never told me you heard what they were talking about."

"Well, I did hear quite a lot. I listened hard, pretending not to, of course. I got tremendously interested. He was saying he had almost made up his mind to go to South America with his Spanish friend, and she showed very plainly that she was afraid to let him go, that she believed he wouldn't come back to her. Then she made it pretty clear that it was the att.i.tude of a person she called 'Charles' which had caused all the trouble. Of course I didn't know who Charles was! But after that she said something which interested me enormously. She described a visit to a crystal-gazer, or a medium of some kind, and she said the woman saw 'Charles' lying ill in bed, with a nurse beside him and a doctor. And who do you think she said the doctor was?

Sartorius!"

"You don't mean it!"

"You see, I had just come from Sartorius's house. I had gone there that afternoon to try to get a job. You may imagine how interested I was to find this woman was a patient of the man I expected to work for.

And then ... I got the idea that both Lady Clifford and the young man seemed disappointed because the medium didn't see anything further, and Captain Holliday was very bitter about it and said that Charles would recover and live to be ninety, which upset the lady very much."

"Do you think at that time..."

"No, I don't. What I believe is that Lady Clifford had no definite determination to do anything until she heard Holliday say he would probably be sailing on the 8th. I think it was the certainty of losing him so soon that drove her to take a positive step. No doubt she knew a good deal about the doctor through Holliday, and how he might be got at through his desire to be free from routine. As for him, human life as such meant nothing whatever to him--I heard him say so. All he cares for is science."

"Do you think Holliday had anything to do with it?" Roger asked tentatively, playing with the window-cord.

"I am fairly sure he hadn't, though he may have suspected something.

At the last he was dragged into it quite against his will, or at least I got that idea. He was in a blue funk, too--simply dying to clear out."

"Just the same," remarked Roger rather grimly, "our friend Arthur is not going to be able to skin out of the affair so easily as he thinks.

A wireless has already been sent to the boat he sailed on, and when he reaches port he'll be detained and sent back here. In any case, he'll be wanted as an accessory after the act, which may prove an unpleasant business for him.... Go on, though; tell me how you actually came to make up your mind that something was wrong."

"I never did make up my mind until it was too late--that was the awful part! When I think it all over, though, I can see that the thing that most roused my suspicions--not altogether by itself, but taken together with what happened later--was the doctor's flying into a pa.s.sion with me for mislaying a hypodermic needle. I haven't told you that yet, have I?"

"No. Was it after _the_ injection?"

"It was, and at the very moment when you cut your hand. I put the needle down to attend to you, and I completely forgot where I had laid it. He was fearfully angry, called me names and abused me in a way that got my back up. There seemed no reason for it; I couldn't understand it at all. Then the same day your father got suddenly worse, you remember, and I should have forgotten all about the beast's nasty temper, only..."

"Yes, what happened?"

"Why, quite suddenly, I found the needle! Where do you think? Inside a big book of drawings! I began wondering; I put two and two together.... You see, I didn't dare mention my awful suspicion--I couldn't! It might have ruined me for ever if I was wrong. So I did the only thing I could think of: I took the needle to that chemist and got it a.n.a.lysed. You know all the rest."

"If only you had confided in me, Esther!"

"Even so it was too late to save your father; nothing would have saved him. And you quite understand that if the suspicion had proved unfounded it would have finished me as a nurse for all time!"

He looked at her intently.

"Would that have meant so much to you?"

"Well, what do you think? I've got to earn my living."

"But as far as that goes you might have guessed--that is you might have..."

He broke off as a knock at the door heralded the entrance of a waiter bearing a tray with two frosty c.o.c.ktails.