Part 12

"Croucher!" She shuddered almost like a law-abiding lady. "I haven't heard of him since that night in the train."

"I said you wouldn't But I also said, if you remember, that Croucher was only deadly as a tool. Well, he has fallen into the deadliest hands I know--that's all."

It was not, and Lady Vera knew that it was not. The angle of her hat was all amicable attention now, and her eyes shone clear of the brim, with a softer light that made her all at once incredible in her latest incarnation. Dollar's feelings flew back into his face; she read them with a smile that made him wince, by its cynical resemblance to one or two that still enriched his dreams.

"You think I'm as bad as any of them," she divined aloud.

"I think the crime of arson is worse than most crimes," he made sturdy answer, standing up to the little body with the strangest difficulty, as though he were the culprit and she the man. "It's a thing absolutely nothing on earth can possibly excuse. I think you'd have died rather than descend to it--two years ago!"

He had heard a step behind him, and lowered his voice; but Lady Vera raised hers as a burly form halted shyly on the threshold; and her tone was like none that she had taken hitherto.

"Two years ago," she declaimed, "women had not been treated quite so shabbily as they have been since. Then this miserable Government--"

"Look you here!" blustered Dale-Bulmer, striding out of his shyness into the center of the stage.

"Two years ago," she reiterated for his benefit, "it wasn't war to the handle of the knife! Now it would be fire and sword, if we were any good with the sword; as we are not, it's simply fire!"

"You really think you can burn your way to political power?" cried the man of extremes, with ungovernable indignation.

"Political existence is all we ask."

"As a first instalment! I know you! I come from a country where you started just like that!"

"As you told your audience the other night, if you are Mr. Dale-Bulmer," said Lady Vera, with an explosive little sigh.

"I am; and for that I'm to have a house like this burned to the ground; and you ladies think that's the way to advance your cause, to prove your value to the State! Well, I suppose you know your own business best. It's no use reasoning with you; but it really is enough to set one off, after what I caught you doing down-stairs."

"I wish to goodness you hadn't caught me," cried Lady Vera, with quite extraordinary simplicity.

But neither of them took her up; the doctor could only shake his head in professional despair, while the injured householder recovered his composure, and the little criminal looked as if she were trying not to look the mistress of the situation.

"I only came," resumed Dale-Bulmer, rather as one who had no right in the room, "to say that a run-about car has been found in the yard behind one of the empty lodges. As I fancy your friends were on bicycles, it struck me that the two-seater might perhaps be yours?"

Was it just the nature of the man to change his whole manner in a moment, or had the quality of the woman something to do with it? He seemed unconscious of the change himself--unaware that he had dropped into a tone of courteous consideration bordering almost on the apologetic. But the corners of her little mutinous mouth showed that nothing was lost upon Lady Vera.

"It sounds like mine," she confessed without indecent amusement. "But I hope you don't think, because there's room for two, that there's another of us still concealed about the premises? I came down quite by myself, in the car you have discovered. And who's to drive it back to town again, I'm sure _I_ don't know!"

Dale-Bulmer glanced defiantly at Dollar, a flash-light in his eyes.

"I do," he cried. "Yourself!"

"Myself, Mr. Dale-Bulmer? In--handcuffs?"

And it was not her worst smile that was subdued in deference to the full glow of his shamefaced magnanimity.

"Don't talk nonsense!" said he gruffly. "Your car is ready waiting for you at the door."

"Not really?"

"Of course. I buried you alive, didn't I?" His eyes came from the wrecked window-seat. "Won't that meet the immediate case for martyrdom?" And he managed another twinkle after all.

It was a last amenity. He had been thanked, but without the smile which had been ready enough when it was out of place; now that she had cause to smile, the perversity of these women came out, as of course it would! Not that this one took everything quite for granted; on the contrary, she caused an explosion by offering to pay for the damage to the window-seat. The militant party would have wished him to secure ample compensation from his insurance people, she asserted, if the place _had_ been burned down. "Then I might have built the kind of house I really want, instead of trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!" he had retorted in his better manner, as though he had been a fool to interfere.

But it was not his best manner; it was almost as unrepresentative as the calm self-centered way in which the released prisoner spent the last minutes looking for her gloves, and, when she failed to find them, held out her bare hand with a brazen air of innocence, and no more thanks than would have become a parting guest.

Even John Dollar felt a new pang of disappointment as the two-seater shrank panting out of sight and ear-shot, beneath the bronzed timber of the disappearing drive, and Dale-Bulmer turned on his heel under the arch.

"Doesn't that take the cake?" he cried, when he had swallowed his pique with a chastened chuckle. "A real well-bred 'un--if ever there was one--playing the very devil, and carrying it off like a little angel of light! That's what did me--the way she carried it off! I wanted to give her a fatherly word, to tell her not to go on making such a wicked little fool of herself. But she simply wouldn't look the part, would she? I hadn't even the cheek to ask her name--had you?"

"No. I don't know why you let her off," said Dollar, irritably; but at the moment he hated Dale-Bulmer for extorting his common gratitude at the expense of his sacred flame.

"Why?" cried that cavalier. "Didn't you guess how I found out about her car?"

"How?"

"Reported to me by the police!"

"The police? Were there any about?"

Dollar felt as cold down the back as though his sacred flame had never flickered behind iron bars.

"Two blighters," said Dale-Bulmer. "I caught sight of 'em just after I had left you to have it out with her. That's what they had to say for themselves when I went out to let off steam; swore they were from Scotland Yard, and trumped up the two-seater when I pretended not to believe them. Nor did I till I'd run them down to the lodge and seen it for myself."

"And then?"

"I swore it belonged to a friend, of course, and sent them both to the devil."

"And--and you were man enough not to say a word about it to--to her?" It was as much as Dollar could do to keep his enthusiastic respect within bounds of discretion.

"Man enough? I wasn't going to have that sort of carrion coming in and spoiling _your_ job!"

Then he perceived how he had spoilt it himself; hung his great head like an elderly elephantine schoolboy; turned his broad back with an inimitable shrug, and stood shaken to the pit with sobs of mirth. Dollar joined him with a shout that relieved them both. And they roared together until a gaunt caretaker appeared on the scene, with a face expressive of such crass bewilderment that their poor clay quaked with a second shock.

"He lives in the bowels of the house," moaned Dale-Bulmer. "He doesn't know a thing that's happened. If he did I might have to double his screw. And--and I'd much rather treble your fee!"

He was solemn once more in his remorse, but not so solemn as the doctor had become within a minute.

"I would _pay_ a fee to take his place till to-morrow morning! I mean it, my dear sir. If you think you owe me any little amends, let me do this, for my own satisfaction!"

This from a Dollar at whom the other stared as though they had only just met. It was the crime doctor come at last.

"Stay here for the night, Doctor Dollar?"

"Yes--alone."

"But why, my good fellow?"

"I can hardly tell you; only let me stay, if you can trust me!"

"You know it isn't that."

"Then do let me! It isn't so much for your sake--I won't pretend it is--yet what if there should be a second attempt on the house? Then I might even earn the fee you talk about; otherwise, not a brass farthing! I wouldn't have missed the case for anything, even as it stands. And you only took my treatment out of my mouth; you did the very thing I was going to beg you to do, but not more earnestly than I beg of you now to leave me in charge here to-night."

"But not without this man of mine to look after you?"

"Especially without that man of yours! He gave me the idea--he's my own height and build--we can change places beautifully. I want him to put on my cap and coat and goggles, and to drive away in my car, so that anybody looking would think they had seen the last of me."

"But who should be looking? Surely not that little----"

"God forbid! But perhaps somebody on her side--or perhaps only somebody on her tracks. Curious about those two detectives; but the whole business bristles with curiosities, which I long to investigate in peace, unknown to the whole outside world. This is the only way it can be done; and this, my dear Mr. Dale-Bulmer, is the one and only thing that you can do for me!"

The boy with the beard gave way by inches. As long as there was a dog's chance of any further excitement, he did not see why he should be out of it, much less in his own house, and after the humdrum life he had led since Labor and the Ladies had driven him home from Australia. But the man with the stronger will seemed perfectly sincere in his further asservations that there were features in the case which he wanted to study for his own private and professional ends; that he honestly believed, they had no more to fear from their friends the enemy, but that somebody ought to remain on guard, that he was the obvious man. All this rang true enough; and but for Dollar's strange anxiety in the matter, and Dale-Bulmer's sudden discovery that he squinted, the plan might have gained earlier acceptance than it did. It was settled, however, by a timely telephone call from the Australian's furnished house at Esher, to ask if anything had happened to him, and was he never going to tear himself away from Pax Monktons Chase?

Thus it was nearly five o'clock before the crime doctor was alone at last, with certain plain quarters and plainer fare at his disposal, but with every nook and cranny of a country mansion to himself until next morning. The situation had the intrinsic charm of all lonely vigils; even if nothing was likely to come of this one, it would at least afford that continuous possibility of a thrill which becomes more thrilling than the thrill itself. And the whole business was supremely after John Dollar's heart; nothing could have been more congenial to him; and yet, though he did look forward to the night, and whatever the night might still bring forth, it was not for the night's sake that he had maneuvered to remain in the empty house. It was for the residue of daylight, and the systematic investigations it would enable him to make.

On these he started, with the precaution of a seaman marooned on a desolate island, not indubitably uninhabited, as soon as the front door shut upon Dale-Bulmer and the two chauffeurs, with the gaunt caretaker his muffled image in his own car. And these motorists were not followed out of sight or hearing, from the fading pile that looked so empty in the drooping eye of heaven. But it very soon seemed to the man within as if the whole house were a-hum with its own abysmal silence, and his lightest breath a stertorous disturbance of its ponderous peace.

He began by searching the unfurnished room in which the fire would have originated. There could be no doubt about the fell attempt so nearly made. It would have been diabolically certain of success. The scaffolding, like sticks in a gigantic grate; the draft through the joists, where the floor had been taken up; the natural flue formed by the adjoining well, so lofty that an ordinary ladder was too short to reach the landing--all these were as bellows and chimney, and the best of fuel ready laid for lighting. And here were the shavings, all nicely swept together, and the matches spilled at the last moment; as Dollar put them back into the box, his finger-tips ached for all they might have learned from that which they held--for the whole truth about the guilty hand which had let the match-box fall.

It was the whole truth, too, that he was seeking next upon his knees, in the rubble down between the joists; some fresh fact, still inconceivable as a concrete discovery, that he hoped against hope to find and to set against the facts beyond dispute. Facts could not lie, but they might exaggerate; somewhere, surely, there must be something to extenuate, something to redeem even this atrocious attempt, if only the silent walls could speak up for one who never made excuses for herself!

It was a childish instinct, a quite babyish yearning to undo what has once been done, and yet this had been the spring of that dense desire to be left behind in the house at all costs. Then he had only felt it, like a dull ache; now it became a dear and poignant conviction that there was some discovery still to make, and that he was the man to make it; that one of these walls had a word to say to him, and to him alone.

But it was none of the new bricks and mortar, wanting even their first coat of plaster; it was nothing under the lofty rafters of a quiet baronial hall where the builder had not been turned loose, nor any intruder left a trace; it was not in the round room, filled with a first instalment of the Dale-Bulmer furniture, nor yet anywhere else down-stairs, in spite of the shrill tale told by the scullery window. There the Amazons had entered, after breaking a pane like journeymen burglars. They had fled incontinently by the door. But what else had they done, and where else had they been, within those sardonically silent walls?

Had they been up-stairs before Vera Moyle ran up the ladder? Dollar returned to that speaking spot, and climbed up gingerly, in an agony of enthusiasm for her misused pluck. The gap between the top rung and the new landing was unpleasant even for him, and he was at least a foot taller than the little fool. The little fool! A pretty way to think of her, even now; but there was a worse way; and still there was a better, vaguely haunting him all the time, but almost ceasing to be vague in the room where he had found her in the flesh. He could see her there again. She had not faced him like a little fool, but a little heroine, God forgive her! Not so much as a pout about her horrible imprisonment under the window-seat! Not a moment's loss of dignity, even after that; not a moment's loss of temper. Head up, and eyes shining in the shadow of her wicked little hat!

Here, to an inch, he had caught her gazing out of that window, out and down into the chase--rolling right up to the house on this side--beating against a breakwater of a sunk fence just underneath, and dotted with leafy sail. Deer in the distance, and swallows darting across and across the window, like shuttles weaving the scene in silk, brought the picture back to good dry land. But the wide sky was still rather like a sea-sky; and it had lightened again with the approach of evening; there were silver rims to the clouds, as John Dollar tore himself from the enchanted scene.

It was nearly dark when he returned unsteadily, with a face like a cheer--with a face that would have lighted up a tomb. In his hands he clasped a pair of innocent little gloves, that anybody might have found, and somebody traced to their beloved little owner. But that was not all. A wall had spoken, in certain handwriting hastily rubbed out, and a whole bathroom had told a yet more eloquent tale!

Hours later they were speaking still, wafting sweet music through the corridors, filling the honored room with strains of joy for the enchanted man on the broken window-seat, all in the dark at dead of night. There might have been a moon; he did not know. There might have been a stealthy advance, in very open order--a taking of cover behind trees wide apart--a joining of forces down there in the dark, that was not so dark if one was used to it. But Dollar had been for hours gazing into his own heart, and that was still so dazzlingly alight that he might not have seen anything if he had looked out; it still sang so loud that he heard nothing down-stairs until there was noise enough to wake a deeper dreamer out of actual sleep.

Even then he scarcely knew what had brought him so suddenly to feet grown numb, but not more numb than the whole outer man in the endless inner joy of that which he believed himself to have discovered along with his dear lady's gloves. Those sacred relics he still clasped in his hands, and that fond belief he was still hugging in his heart, when a louder sound pricked his undertaking to the quick. It was the sound of voices in the empty house. He tore off his shoes, limped over to the door, opened it as softly, and stood listening in a heavy horror. They were women's voices, accompanied by the scuttle of women's feet!

In an instant, but still with an instinctive stealth, he was out on the landing at the head of the stairs. And there, but only there, his fond dream ended in an awakening as terrible as any nightmare; for one woman stood on the half-landing between the two prongs of the forked staircase; all attention she stood, as if on guard; hair silvered by a shaft of moonshine through the staircase window, shoulders hunched intently, but the head itself just tilted as if in sudden alarm, and full in the moonlight the wicked unmistakable little hat of Lady Vera Moyle.

Her gloves dropped out of his hands. Did she hear them fall? She looked as if she had; he had not the heart to make sure. He had nothing like the heart to confront and shame her first--at her worst a passive party to the crime--when her guiltier companions were even then at their vile work lower down. The ladder was the thing! Then he could scare those others first, and she and he need never meet at all. Better never again than at this hideous juncture! And as for him, better death itself than such a death to such a dream!

It was a sheer stampede the man made now, back along the landing with great heavy strides, even shouting as he went to put the she-devils to flight. It was what he called them as he ran; had they not dragged an angel into this. And they heard him, and he heard them--scuttling and clucking in headlong flight.

This time they could afford to fly; their second attempt was no failure like the first. The little new landing was like a gridiron over a flickering glare from the well beneath. Dollar flung his full length on the brink--hung dangling from the armpits--hung lashing out for the ladder like a boy on a horizontal bar with a mattress just underneath. The top rung took some finding in his reckless haste; and then his hands had to change places with his feet; and it was all a pretty desperate business for no light-weight, in a frenzy of excitement, at the tip-top of a tremulous ladder that leaned against thin air. But his very recklessness saw him down somehow with unbroken bones, and on the threshold of the burning room before the fire had really taken hold. And there he stopped, instead of dashing in; there he stood shrinking from the red light within.

For again one of the women had stayed behind the rest; and through a forest of scaffolding poles, and a swirl of smoke and steam, he beheld her in a glow already dying by her hand, under a hissing stream flung right and left, in glittering coils and spirals, as coolly as a gardener waters the grass. It was his very dream, come true in the end! And Dollar stood there because he was ashamed to look Vera Moyle in the face--after fearing for one moment that it was nothing but a dream!

But last of all the stream played through the darkness and the smoke, upon the threshold even at his feet, and a dry voice cried:

"I see you all right! I saw you up-stairs; come round and tell me why you ran away."

But it was no moment for going round. He went to her through sparks and splinters in his socks, and felt the pain no more than the relief when he stood beside her on the cool flags of the corridor, with both her hands in his.

"I might have known!" he spluttered through the smoke. "I might have known it even from the first!"

"It's jolly bad luck that you should know it at all," said Lady Vera, in the same dry little voice. "I'm not proud of it, I can tell you."

"Not of stopping an absolutely wanton crime?"

"Not of turning against my old lot--and I haven't, either!" cried Lady Vera, with more passion than he had ever heard from her. "I feel everything I said up-stairs. I think we've all been treated more abominably than ever. I don't blame them a bit for all this sort of thing----"

"Vera, you do--you know you do!"

"I don't; how can I? Haven't I done worse? I may think they're going rather far, and I may put in my spoke----"

"This is not the first time!" he exulted, still only with her hands in his, yet little knowing how he hurt them.

"That's my business," she said, with a sudden laugh that broke her voice. "It's the least I can do--after two years ago."

"And I knew you'd done it!" he was quick to cry. "I knew it hours back, though you did frighten me again just now. I found the hose-pipe in the bathroom with your gloves, and their rotten message rubbed out on the wall! I knew the hose was yours, because I'd just been told there wasn't such a thing in the house. But I was looking for something of the kind. I knew there was something to be found, that the whole thing wasn't what it seemed. And ever since it's been the happiest night of my life, on top of my most miserable hour!"

"I'll motor you back to town for that," said Lady Vera, with another poor little laugh. "I--I'm sorry I didn't tell you this afternoon."

"I'm not!"

"Somehow it didn't seem quite the game by the others, though of course I hoped you would guess that I had only come in after them as a kind of scarecrow. Of course I don't know if it will make you the least bit less miserable----" But there she stuck.

"If what will?"

And now it was she who held his hands the faster--only across a gulf of darkness like a solid wall--only with a kindness that reminded him it was nothing else--only with a glow more dear than an embrace.

"If it makes you the very least bit happier," she whispered, "why, of course it was only just your own game, doctor, that I was trying to play!"

VIII

THE SECOND MURDERER

It was yet another Lady Vera who brought her own sunshine out of the weeping dusk of that October morning. To veil embarrassment on either side, Dollar had switched off the light by which he had just read the line scribbled on her card; but there was no sanction for his nervous sensibility in the little picture he beheld next moment. An audacious study in Venetian red--a tripping fashion-plate with a practical waist--it was only Vera by virtue of the radiant face between the donkey-eared toque and the modish modicum of fur. And though the radiance was lovely as ever in his eyes, and lovelier still as a surprise, this frivolous modernity was pain and puzzledom to Dollar until their hands met, and the one in the tight glove trembled.

"It's no use beating about the bush," said Vera Moyle, and there was no sort of tremor in her voice. "Do you mind telling me exactly what you know of a Mr. Mostyn Scarth?"