The Crime Doctor Part 33

"You were to do something to me with it, I believe, and to leave it in my hand to show I'd done it myself?"

And then, under another sidelong flash, that steadied down into a will-destroying gleam, Croucher came out with a dreadful phrase.

"To guide yer 'and!" said he, hoa.r.s.ely.

"To guide my hand! Exactly! But it was not exactly your idea?"

"No. It was----"

But here his eyes rolled into Mostyn Scarth's, and dropped once more.

"Exactly!" repeated Dollar. "But you didn't quite feel like doing it, so at last your master had to come in to do it for you?"

"He ain't my master now, blast 'im!"

"Steady, Croucher. May I ask what that is in your hand?"

It was a letter. Only a letter out of that far pocket, after all!

Scarth's eyes started, and he found his tongue once more.

"You--give--that--to me, Croucher!"

Croucher wavered at his voice; it was terribly threatening, each subtle tone a poisoned barb.

"What if I don't?"

"You know what!"

"The game deepens," said the crime doctor; and he did not know that his left hand had dropped the hand of hands for him.

"_Your_ game's up if you show that letter!" cried Scarth to Croucher, who only showed him the broad of his back.

"Can you be tried twice for the same thing, doctor?" he began--but in the same breath he desperately added: "I don't care whether you can or you can't! You read that, whether or no!"

The letter was in an envelope superscribed "To THE CORONER," in a wonderful imitation of Dollar's handwriting; but the letter itself, written on his own stamped paper, was a still more marvelous forgery, in which the crime doctor bade farewell to the world before stultifying his own life's work by the crime of suicide.

"That's better than anything you did in Switzerland," said Dollar, nodding to the livid man between the curtains.

"But it ain't the best thing 'e's done," cried Croucher, and stopped to roll his eyes and gloat. "The bounder's best bit was squeezin' two people for the same job--the guilty an' the innercent--'er as thought she must 've done it, an' 'im as knew 'e done it all the time!"

"That's the end of _you_," said Scarth, with sardonic satisfaction.

"It's the beginning of us all!" said the crime doctor, in a voice they hardly knew. "Do you--can you mean yourself and this lady?"

That lady shook her head and smiled.

"I do, if I swing to-morrow!" swore Alfred Croucher. "I told '_im_"--with a truculent thrust of the bullet head--"one night in me cups; an' fust 'e starts squeezin' 'er to marry 'im, an' then squeezin'

me to do yer in before yer forbids 'is banns! Oh, 'e's a nut, I tell yer--though we've been the nuts an' 'im the cracker!"

Lady Vera looked like a little ghost, still unable to believe her ears, still staring into s.p.a.ce as if the trouble were rather with those great Irish eyes of hers.

But the doctor was the doctor an instant longer. His left hand went out to his patient first.

"You'll sleep to-night! I'll give you the other when it's free," he said, still covering the man with his hands in his pockets, the curtains on each side of him, and a back window just behind.

Then two things happened in quick succession; but the first brought the lover back to life with such a throb that the second was not even seen.

Just saying, "I'm afraid I'm going to make a fool of myself," all that he loved on earth collapsed at his feet. The doctor was down on his knees beside her, getting the girl into his arms. And even Mr. Croucher did not see the curtains close, or hear anything happen behind them; for he, too, was on his knees, holding out a dripping sponge, and babbling faster than the drops pattered on the floor.

"It's right! I done it ... that pore copper in the fog! She sent 'im reelin'--into me arms--but I done all the rest. Never meant to, mind yer, but that's neither here nor there. Ready to swing, I was, an' don't care now if I do! She saved me--little knock-out--an' look 'ow I went an' tret 'er for it!... Gawd, doctor, wot a fair swine I was!"

But the crime doctor had even less time to listen to him now; for the eyes of eyes had opened, were gazing up into his; and not one of them had heard the window raised behind the curtains, or the clanging thud upon the iron steps just underneath.

THE END