The Crime Doctor Part 32

"Well done!" cried the girl.

Scarth repaid her with a gleam of saturnine enlightenment; it was the first change in his swarthy, unemotional, unconquerable visage. On the Balkan battle-fields there may have been myriads of such faces, not with the unique intellectual quality of this one, but alike in their fierce contempt of battle, murder, and sudden death, as little matters not worth a qualm, whether in the active or the pa.s.sive party to the business. Among educated Englishmen the temperament is rare, and rarer still the mental att.i.tude; in the combination lie the makings of the h.e.l.l-born villain, and Mostyn Scarth was the finished article.

Stoical in his discomfiture, he saw his opening with no more than a glitter of his insolent eyes, and took it as though he had never foreseen anything else.

"So I've caught you both out, my virtuous friends!" said he. "And you dare to present that thing at me, as though I were here for a felonious purpose!"

"I shall not empty it into you, Scarth, however much you may tempt me,"

replied the crime doctor. "What do you say to clasping both hands behind your head and leading the way down-stairs?"

"I'll see you d.a.m.ned first," said Mostyn Scarth.

"Good! It's exactly the same to me, only you may find it harder not to take one of those hands out of your trousers pockets, and the moment you show a finger I shall cripple you for life. I thought, too, that you might like to hear what we say to the police."

"I don't take the faintest interest in what _you_ say to them," returned Scarth, with a broader gleam to light his meaning.

"Good again! Do you mind going down and ringing up New Scotland Yard, Lady Vera? On your way you might please see if all three doors are shut in the room opposite; then, perhaps--no! I should leave this one open after all, I think." Three seconds had sufficed to close the triple doors, one more quickly than another, behind them.

"I should, if I were you," said Scarth. "And I should think a good many times before carrying out your other instructions--if I were the lady at the bottom of one of the few mysteries that still puzzle Scotland Yard."

There was a pause, in which Dollar heard only a sharp intake of breath on the threshold just behind him; but that was enough.

"I believe I shall have to shoot you, after all," said he, and the hammer of the mother-of-pearl revolver clicked to full c.o.c.k.

"Won't that rather spoil your game?" said Scarth, blandly.

"Mine is not the game that matters at the moment--yours _is_. As, however, you have been fool enough to have a key cut expressly to fit my front-door lock, and have been discovered in my room at midnight----"

"In the most distinguished company! Go on, Dollar. Nothing extenuate--bang the field-piece--tw.a.n.g the lyre!"

His teeth were showing as they had shown on the platform at Winterwald nine months before; the tag from his famous impersonation had slipped out with all the snap and gusto which had captivated an unruly audience then; and it was not without a slight mesmeric effect on the man who had him at his mercy. If Scarth in turn had not held Vera Moyle at _his_ mercy, and if John Dollar had not known him to be utterly devoid of that quality, he could have admired the cool daredevil, swaggering at bay.

"Remember the concert at Winterwald, doctor," he went on, "and our talk afterward, and the last talk we ever had there? He thought I had two tries to kill a fellow, Lady Vera--two bites at such a green young nut!

Better to finish 'em off at one fell blow, isn't it? Not such fun for the widow, or the poor innocent devil who nearly swings for the job, but great work for the militant Millies and their lady leader! Splendid for you all until the truth comes out--as it will the minute a policeman shows his nose!"

It was Lady Vera who had obtained him this hearing. She had stepped up to Dollar, had taken his arm, had even put her other hand in front of her own revolver.

"Let him go on; we may as well know where we are," she had said in the middle of Scarth's speech. And now she asked him what he proposed, as if she were inquiring the price of a dress, with the civility doubly due to an inferior.

"You have had my proposal," said Scarth. "It's not the kind that one repeats before a third party."

"I may as well ring them up," said Lady Vera, trying to disengage her arm; but Dollar's had closed upon it, and his left hand held hers as in a vise.

"You shan't!" he ground out. "It's all bluff. They have no evidence."

"They are welcome to all I can give them," she answered. "I have always regretted I didn't come forward in the beginning. But there was more excuse than there is now--then there was no question of letting a worse person go for the second time."

But this was not said for the worse person's benefit; for the Vera Moyles it is impossible to speak _at_ the worst person in the world. The point was merely urged as an argument for Dollar's private ear. But the Mostyn Scarths are expert listeners; not a syllable was lost upon the consummate chieftain of that foul family; and he grinned gaily through as much of the open door as he could see from this point.

"So you admit that you administered his coup de grace to the late lamented Sergeant Simpkins?"

But the heavy shaft was not winged by one of Mostyn Scarth's feathered glances. His grinning gaze still sped past them to the landing.

"I have never denied it in my life."

"Hear that, Croucher?" cried Scarth. "'Full confession by Lady Vera Moyle--extry spechul.'"

The pair stood closer as one of them looked round; and there, indeed, on the threshold, bulked Alfred Croucher, larger than life in a white bathgown that sat better on him than his loudest clothes. And his unwholesome face looked only a shade less white than all the rest of him, but for the little red sleepless eyes fixed on Mostyn Scarth, who still enjoyed the crime doctor's undivided attention.

"'Ow the 'ell did _you_ get 'ere?" said Croucher huskily.

"I'm obliged to you for asking. Our virtuous friends are so ready to take a felony for granted, that it seems never to have occurred to them that I walked in at the door--partly to see you--chiefly to bowl them out." Lady Vera could not help smiling at that which seemed never to have occurred to her; nothing else left any mark, save upon John Dollar, on whom Scarth now trained his ivory grin. "The worst of a Yale lock, doctor," he went on, "is that all the keys are numbered; the worst of a Turkish bath is that your enemy may do that thing, and have a look at your latch-key if you will leave it in your pocket on its chain.

Northumberland Avenue may be a good place after a bad night, but that's where I really found my way into your house. You didn't see me because I had the bad taste to prefer the cave of electricity to the public hot-rooms and your capital company."

The note of insolence had been forced for Croucher's benefit, the libretto elaborated to impress that elemental mind, and it was to Croucher that Scarth turned for applause. It might have been more articulate; there was little merriment in the guttural laugh; and it was not in open mockery, if not with any visible respect, that the little red eyes sought the silent object of these insults.

Dollar met them for a moment with a sidelong flash; that was as much as the little red eyes could stand. Scarth glowered, but Mr. Croucher was not looking up any more. Between the two strong men, one spitting insults with his tongue, the other darting questions with his eyes, flabby Croucher found it convenient to study the toes of his bedroom slippers. But his right hand shook deep in the far pocket of the voluminous bathgown. None of them saw that but Mostyn Scarth, and him it filled with gleaming confidence.

"Come, Alfred," said he, "get into your street clothes, if they haven't been taken away from you. If they have, go down as you are and call a taxi. I'm going to take you out of this hole. You look more dead than alive. I thought you might; that's one reason why I came."

"Croucher is going to do something for me first," said the crime doctor.

"_Then_ he can do what he likes."

"Sorry you haven't got a soul to call your own, Alfred."

"Who says I haven't?"

"Doctor Dollar. Didn't you hear him?"

"If he does, he's a----"

"Croucher! Croucher!" said the doctor. "All I want you to do is to hand me the razor case from the dressing-table. In fact you needn't do all that; just arm yourself with the weapon you ought to find there. Then somebody will be more of a match for me. And Mr. Scarth isn't raising any further objection, you will notice."

What Croucher noticed, as the red eyes came up at last, was that Mostyn Scarth had suddenly lost a little of his usual healthy tan; but the bedroom slippers remained planted where they were.

And then without a word Lady Vera stepped from the doctor's side, took the razor-case in both her hands, pulled it in two and exhibited the empty halves.

"Which of you has borrowed my razor?" said John Dollar.

"Not _me_!" cried Croucher with tremendous emphasis. But his right hand was still in his far pocket, as only Mostyn Scarth could see; and the sight restored a little of that healthy tan which so becomes dark faces.

"Not you, Croucher?"

"No, not me, by Gawd!"

"Yet I believe your original mission in this house was to possess yourself of that razor--and--use it?"

Dollar did not finish the sentence without feeling for a little hand with his left; that little hand met it half-way, and was the first to give a rea.s.suring squeeze.