CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH A RED-HAIRED LADY SHEDS TEARS
I HAVE often mentioned to you, I feel sure, among my many rambling letters, that I have always posed as a ladies' man; but that word pose does not include all my dealings with the so-called "fair" sex. I have had my periods of temporary infatuation, even madness, and apropos of the following incident, I repeat my old axiom: "Fight shy of red-haired men, but follow red-haired women."
I had one curious, and somewhat instructive little episode proving my phrase, I think, in which I ran some risk, and from which I only gained the gratitude and temporary affection of a very red-haired woman, and in addition I lost a sovereign—the cost of a wreath for her husband—and an hour of my valuable time expended in attending his funeral.
The Manne-Martyns came to live, as you no doubt will remember, in Phillimore Gardens about four years after I started practice in Cromwell Road, but if I recollect rightly, my dear Brown, you had but little to do with them. The man was certainly very objectionable, although he was without a doubt a gentleman, as far as blood and education were concerned.
I can still easily call to mind the first time that I met Rita Manne-Martyn, although I knew her by sight before.
It was on a cold wet night, and I was comfortably settled in a big chair with a pipe of Perique, and Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe," when the sound of the night-bell made me groan. "Always the way," I growled, "one is certain to have a night visit if the weather is extra bad."
As everybody else was in bed I went to the door, which, as I opened it, admitted a bitter blast of north wind accompanied by drifting sleet, and also a female figure in a white cloak—an opera-cloak—ye gods! for a night like that.
"Are you Dr. d'Escombe," gasped a particularly sweet voice. "Please let me come in, and do shut the door."
"Yes, I am Dr. d'Escombe," I answered, as I carried out her order. "Please come inside. Surely you are very unwise to come out dressed in this way on such a night," and I led the way to my smoking-room with its warm, cosy fire.
I glanced at her as I handed her a chair, and was astonished to see how wonderfully handsome she was, because although I had seen her before on a few occasions, I had not noticed that fact.
"Mrs. Manne-Martyn, I believe?" I ventured to say, and as she sat down I saw that she had on a black, very décolleté evening dress and thin satin drawing-room slippers, which were soaked through and most certainly ruined.
"What can I do for you? I fear there must be something serious the matter to bring you out to me like this," I said as I took her opera-cloak and hung it over the back of a chair. I wondered in my own mind most consumedly why this pretty woman had come to see me in this strange and unorthodox kind of way.
"I—I hardly know how to tell you, Dr. d'Escombe," she replied, her shortness of breath caused, I imagined, partly by the storm blowing outside which she had braved, and partly by agitation. "My husband, he is ill—perhaps dying—I don't know. Oh! you will help me, won't you? because—his people know that we quarrel—and they might say"
Her really beautiful dark blue eyes, full of tears, looked at me most appealingly, as though she thought I could understand everything.
"Say what?"
"Well, I must tell you—nobody else knows—but he smokes 'hasheesh'—Indian hemp, you know—and I'm afraid he's had too much. He's quite different to what he usually is. Will you come now?"
I must say I didn't like the look of things at all. There was evidently something "not quite straight;" not that I cared, from the ordinary point of view. I was only thinking of myself, although I could not restrain a certain regard for this charming red-haired visitor.
"I will order a taxi," I suggested.
"No, no; it's only a quarter of a mile—see, I've walked it once," interupted my visitor. "Won't you come back with me now? I can't wait," she urged.
Certainly if she—a young and delicate-looking woman—could do it, so could I. I considered for a moment.
"Very well, Mrs. Martyn, I will brave the storm; if you can, I can," I said.
She looked at her drenched evening shoes and muddy stockings and gave a little short hard laugh.
"One would think I love my husband very dearly, wouldn't they?" she exclaimed.
"Excuse me one moment," I said, as I went to put on my bad-weather garments, thinking and wondering all the time. She was very pretty; and she was afraid—of what?
We started off through the driving snow together towards Kensington Road. I offered my arm, which was accepted, but so fierce was the wind that conversation was practically impossible. Consequently when I arrived at the house I knew scarcely anything of my case.
"You must get those wet clothes off at once," I said to my companion. "Shall I wait for you?"
"No—yes—yes. I won't be long. Won't you sit down? and I will be with you in a few moments."
My new patient lived in a very decent house, as you will remember. No doubt they had money, for the room in which I waited was beautifully furnished, and showed the touch of a woman's hand in the various flower-vases and nick-nacks which adorned it.
"Indian hemp," I muttered as I waited. "I wonder how long he has taken it, and if his mind is affected yet?"
The lady returned very soon, and seeing her in the bright light, with her hat off, I noticed that her eyes were swollen and red. She had been crying.
"Will you come up, doctor? I'll show you the way," she said. So I followed her promptly.
Lying on a couch at the foot of a single bed, in a comparatively small room, was a man in a dressing-gown, his face purple and bloated, his breathing slow, heavy and stertorous. This, combined with thin feeble pulse, the condition of the pupils, and the insensitive eye-balls, told me that his wife was correct—he was suffering from poison. Was it what I had been told?
Ideas pass through one's mind swiftly under such circumstances—particularly so, perhaps, in mine—and I kept on wondering. She had told me they quarrelled. The man, as I had seen him before in the street, and as I saw him now, comatose and half dead, gave me the impression of being a brute. Dissipation was written large in his fat face, and I could well understand him being cruel, and repulsive also, to such a woman as this—his wife. Had she attempted to kill him, and was she playing a part?
I decided to be very careful both in word and action, noticing as I did that the demeanour of the servant, elderly and sour of visage, was not that of a friendly domestic. She appeared to be somewhat of an inimical character, and was in close attendance on the sick man.
"You say that he is in the habit of smoking 'hasheesh'?" I inquired of the lady, in a tone of voice which the servant could not help but hear.
"Yes, doctor," was the answer; "and tonight we have been playing bridge and he lost every rubber. This seemed to irritate him, and he retired as soon as our friends left us to have his usual smoke, and after—I found him like this!"
There was but little for me to do, but of course I had my hypodermic case with me, and I gave him some strychnine to pull his heart together, and then, having given a few other minor instructions to the grim-faced woman, I told Mrs. Manne-Martyn that we could now only wait and watch the result.
"Has he ever been like this before?" I queried.
"Not so bad. I was never really frightened before to-night, but, I suppose I ought to tell you, he has been drinking very heavily for the last two days—in fact, more or less for the past two years." Her voice shook as the sentence was completed, and I could look back and see a world of misery, a life of horror, which this refined, sensitive, pretty woman had already passed through.
Don't be irritated with me, Brown, if I do sometimes wax sentimental. You know there is a strain of that trick in me, although you, on reading these lines, would hardly think so.
I felt a great compassion, even pity, for the unfortunate lady. I suppose my expression, or perhaps my voice, told her this; at any rate some subtle form of telepathy occurred between us, because, as I said: "I am afraid you've had a very bad time of it," she interrupted me by laying her head on her bare arms—she was in some négligé which showed the porcelain whiteness and perfect contour of these very distinctly—and breaking into a passion of deep, silent sobs.
It hurt me to see this. I always hate to see a woman really cry; I don't mean the trickle of tears and the red nose which can be produced almost at will, such as you see in the pit of the theatre, but the heart-breaking tears of absolute despair. There I go again! Forgive me, old boy, but I will not offend any more.
I managed, ultimately, to quiet her, and then asked for her story.
It was a sad one, and the man lying upstairs was evidently, as I thought from the look of him, an absolute brute and blackguard. She had plenty of marks to show of his violence at different times. She showed me a hardly-healed cut on her head, luckily hidden by her abundant bronze-red hair.
"This is his last effort," she said with a sickly smile. "He threw a teacup at me, and, as it broke, it cut me, and he laughed when he saw the blood trickle down my face and neck. Oh! how I hate him," she continued, "and yet"
"Why do you go on like this?" I asked. "There are ways" "Yes, but we have one little boy, and I will not, while I can endure, let his name be associated with anything disgraceful. That is why I have borne it these last two years. Not only him," she nodded towards the staircase, "but that woman, who is an old servant of his family, and his mother and sister. They all hate me and make my life more wretched, and will believe nothing against him. I must wire to them as soon as I can."
"What a pity if he should recover," I thought to myself. When, however, I saw him again before going home I felt I was going to be disappointed. His heart was stronger, and a very slight reflex had returned to the eyes. He was going to recover, and I told his wife so.
"You will come in and see him again, won't you. Dr. d'Escombe?" she implored. "You've no idea what a relief it is to have somebody to confide in."
I went again, and yet again, and came to know the man and his relations. But I got to know Mrs. Manne-Martyn better, and it was not long before I decided that her drunken, drug-smoking husband should not cumber the earth very much longer.
If I did carry out my decision, I could not hide from myself the fact that I had a very difficult and even dangerous proposition before me.
There are some folks who, however objectionable, however vile they may appear to be in the eyes of the unbiased observer, have someone whose outlook is blind as to their faults; someone who makes every excuse for their shortcomings and will, at every turn, allocate the blame to every source except the right one.
In this case I had two such individuals to deal with—Mrs. Manne-Martyn senior, and her daughter, the younger sister of my patient.
He did not recover rapidly from his overdose of Indian hemp and alcohol, and at the end of a fortnight I was still in daily attendance.
I do not wish to say much about it, Brown, but in that comparatively short time Mrs. Manne-Martyn and I found ourselves upon distinctly intimate terms. I imagined myself seriously in love with her, and she—well, dear little soul, she had been living a terrible life for at least two years, and a little real sympathy and help appealed to her more, perhaps, than anything else could have done.
So my resolve to dispose of Julius Manne-Martyn, Esquire, became more and more decisive, but I fully appreciated the fact that I had to get through a very vigilant and suspicious defence, in the shape of the mother, sister, and the afore-mentioned domestic.
On several occasions the sick man had become delirious. He had certainly suffered from a mild attack of delirium tremens, masked and mitigated by his drug-taking. While in this condition he never ceased to rave against his wife, although I am quite certain that he had not, even in his sanest moments, any reason up to the present so to do.
"Traitor! traitor!" he would yell out. "I know you hate me! Kill me now! Do for me! I know; I have seen the loathing in your eyes," and so on. His pitying relations would stand by and nod their heads, look at each other and say among themselves: "We always knew it, didn't we? Why did he marry her?" and so on, ad nauseam.
They would not allow her into the sick-room. Not that she cared, for who could have cared for a man like that? But the ignominy, the disgrace in front of the servants, hurt her, and I felt that this could not go on.
The greatest care was necessary. He must certainly die of something which was likely and reasonable—some ailment absolutely above suspicion, something which must, if necessary, stand the searching of an expert post-mortem examination, because it would be fatal to trust in any way whatsoever the ultimate movements or suspicions of the very prejudiced and narrow-minded women with whom I now had to deal and contend.
I paved the way for the idea which I had in my mind by putting some bronchial irritant into the mixture, combining it with small doses of belladonna, I will tell you later why I did so. Then, one day, the thought flashed across me—why it had not occurred to me before I cannot say, except perhaps that I was badly infatuated—how would Rita be situated when he died?
It was a serious consideration. We had had many a quiet talk together, but I fear business matters had been allowed to slide, and I knew nothing of her affairs. And myself—well, I've always been hard-up, and at that particular time things were perhaps even a trifle worse than usual. I was practically living on credit. I could do nothing for her; you see, I had been hard hit in the rubber boom—and, goodness knows, I kept my own expenses low enough.
"Rita, darling," I said one evening, as she sat with me in her cosy boudoir. "how would you be situated if he were to die?"
Her slim fingers tightened upon my arm. "He—die!" she laughed, a quiet hopeless laugh. "Don't dream of it, dear. He will live to make my life a curse."
"Yes," I interrupted; "but if he did?"
"If he did?" she repeated. "The heavens would fall. Why, I should be free, and I should have the three hundred a year he settled on me at first."
"You're sure?" I felt that this had sealed his fate. "You are quite sure?"
"Yes, yes; he has often cursed himself for a fool for doing it."
Every man has his moment of madness. I have seldom given myself away, I think. Luckily I had no cause to regret it; but I did do so now.
"Then he dies," I said, my arm around her, the words whispered into her ear. It sounds melodramatic, but it was not. It was dead serious determination. "And," I continued, looking into her face, "you must help me."
"I—help you—how—what do you mean, Archie?" was the whispered answer.
"I can manage it easily, but I must have a chance to get him by myself. Those women must be got out of the way. Three—two—minutes will do it, but it must be certain."
"Julius—die," she muttered, clinging close up to me in the semi-darkness. "Do you mean it?"
"Yes, yes, dear, I am speaking in earnest," I answered. "I cannot see you go on like this—with that man and those awful women. I must help you."
"And the risk?"
"I'll chance the risk," I answered, kissing her, as I thought to myself that it was not the first I had run by many.
"You must go now, Archie," said my companion. "They'll miss me; I am always spied upon, but—yes, I'll help you. Oh, how can I thank you?—but you must not do it. Why take this awful risk?"
"None at all, Rita," I replied as we kissed good-night. "None—if you can keep the secret."
"I would die sooner than say one word which would implicate you; I swear it. Oh, only"
I stopped her; she was inclined to get hysterical. She was one of those highly-strung, nervous women with an infinity of pluck under trying circumstances, but who, curiously enough, break down very easily when their affections or sympathies are aroused. I knew she had grown very fond of me, so I felt compelled to put on the brake, as it were.
"Pull yourself together, dear," I spoke quietly, and very quickly soothed her excited nerves.
God! Laurence, I'm fond of her still—if only things had turned out right! But there, they did not.
"Come and see me at my consulting hour to-morrow," I said as I kissed her again, and strolled down Phillimore Gardens home, to think matters over.
I had started Manne-Martyn with an artificial cough, and I had given him dilated pupils, which his attendants had noticed. So far I was on the road.
But the opportunity had to be made, and Rita, much as I disliked the idea, must help me, must draw off the enemy, while I, the preliminaries having been arranged, brought off the final coup.
"What do you think of my son, doctor," asked my patient's mother on the morning following my revelation to Rita. "Is he really improving? He is sure to get well again—is he not?"
"As far as I can see, madam."
"I believe it is all Rita's fault," she said; "she has treated him shamefully, poor fellow! He has been driven to do wrong"
"That is really nothing to do with me, Mrs. Manne-Martyn," I declared, for I feared that if she went on in that strain I might arouse suspicion in her mind. If I showed the slightest regard for Rita my prestige as family doctor was gone.
"When do you think you will allow him out of bed?" asked his sister—a seriously-dressed lady in tailor-made coat and skirt, and with a hard, most unpleasant expression on her face.
"He's slow in picking up," I answered, "but the nursing is just now everything. I must congratulate you on your knowledge of such work. The way you manage him is really wonderful."
He was still quite unable to do anything by himself alone, and required constant help.
"I ought to warn you," I continued, "against the possible risk of a relapse. Such things are not uncommon in cases like this."
"Oh, doctor, I do hope not," chimed in the mother. "He is getting every attention, and we are doing all we can. Your instructions are being carried out to the very letter."
This was what I was anxious to know, as the idea in my mind made time, punctuality, that is to say, the essential factor.
I had another long talk with Rita on the subject of her husband's decease, and ultimately the innate devil in her broke through the veneer of morality, and we laid our plans carefully, and without reserve on either side.
"And after?" said she.
After—I hardly knew. I was desperately in love with her for the time; I'll defy any man with an eye to the artistic, and a mind, a soul, an inner consciousness of sex, call it what you like, untrammelled by artificial laws and customs, to be anything else. I am positive there are some women whom no man can resist—that is, if the woman is in real dead earnest. Rita was one of those.
"You must manage to put a small narcotic dose into his food or drink to-morrow morning at breakfast time. You can manage that—can't you, Rita?" I inquired. "I will give you a little phial when I see you to-night. It will be a very tiny dose."
I intended to give the doomed man—for doomed he was as soon as my plans were laid—enough of a concentrated preparation of belladonna to send him off into a sound sleep for some hours.
That being accomplished, I proposed to make my daily call in the afternoon, because the "dragon" and her daughter invariably drove for an hour or two after lunch, visiting and shopping. So I had then only one enemy to deal with.
Now I had decided some time since to use, if I used anything at all for a deadly purpose, bacteria called the diplococcus lanceolatus, which I have mentioned to you once before—a germ which in the lung causes pneumonia, but which, curiously enough, if it takes its habitat in some other portion of the body, sets up a totally different set of symptoms, such as inflammation of the brain, or of a joint, the main point being that the result is almost invariably fatal, and quite beyond the possibility of discovery by ordinary methods.
If I had three minutes with Mr. Manne-Martyn on the following afternoon I could, assisted by my faithful hypodermic, put into his circulation a sufficient amount of this germ-infection to, with the smallest pinch of luck, assist him rapidly to leave a world which he certainly did not adorn.
It was impossible to say where he would be attacked. Time alone would show. But I had to depend upon Rita to create a diversion, to remove for a sufficiently long time the sourvisaged Martha. This was the weak point of the plan of campaign.
Would my fellow-conspirator be successful?
"What will you do?" I had inquired of her.
"Leave it to me; I will manage it," was the answer I got. And no more information was given. "Only be ready when Martha leaves you alone with him," she added.
I gave the poor little ill-used woman the narcotic dose that night, and as I left her she said, almost gaily: "Au revoir, till to-morrow at half-past three. You may rely upon me."
True to time, with the germ-culture in the barrel of my syringe, I arrived at the house and, of course, found Martha at the bedside of my patient.
"He's just gone off into a heavy sleep, doctor," she informed me, after I had told her that an important case had kept me during the morning, "and Mrs. Manne-Martyn hardly liked leaving him, but I promised her that I would not leave the room, or let her," she nodded towards the staircase, "come in."
I proceeded in a methodical manner to examine my patient. He was breathing heavily, snoring in fact. But I had hardly finished taking his pulse-rate—much I cared about it!—when a terrified shriek rang through the house—a most thrilling and ear-piercing scream.
It was Rita's voice. What had happened?
I started for the door, and then, "Martha, Martha, come quickly," the voice of the housemaid came from below.
The old servant listened for a second or two, and then another scream resounded through the house, and turning to me, she said hurriedly:
"Will you excuse me for one moment, doctor? Somebody is hurt, I'm afraid. It sounds like young Mrs. Martyn."
"All right, run along quickly and see," I answered, but I felt upset, and hardly knew what to do. Had Rita really hurt herself? Surely those cries of pain were not simulated.
However, for the moment I hardened my heart, screwed the needle on to the syringe and, pushing the point deep into the back of the sleeper's neck, pressed the piston down to the bottom of the barrel.
The apparently unconscious man aroused with a yell. The pain of the needle had awakened him. He turned so rapidly as to break off the point of the needle and leave it deeply imbedded in the tissues!
Then, as I hurriedly pocketed the remainder of the broken instrument, he sat up in bed, howling out: "Help, help! murder"
My wits almost left me for a moment. What was wrong downstairs I knew not, but I felt very anxious with this new complication.
It takes time to write this, Brown, but the whole business, from start to finish, had occurred in a few seconds, and, to make matters worse, who should appear in the doorway but the sick man's mother and sister.
"Why, whatever is the matter?" inquired the elder lady breathlessly. "Has this house gone mad?"
Rushing up to the man, who was still calling out and howling, she put her hand on his head.
"What have you done. Dr. d'Escombe?" she asked severely. "Poor boy—my poor dear boy!" addressing the fat-faced son, who kept on murmuring "Help! murder!"
The old lady looked suspiciously at me. "Something has brought him to this state, and Martha is not here, doctor. What does this mean?"
"Don't be alarmed, madam," I said as quietly as I could. The position was very awkward, especially with that broken needle to be reckoned with. And then, Rita! I must go and find out what was wrong with her.
"There has been some accident downstairs, I fear," I continued. "What is it? Can I help?"
"No, no, doctor; don't leave Julius. It is only that silly girl. She has scalded her hand; Martha is there, but how dare she leave this room? What a lucky thing we were anxious, and returned early."
"Is Ri—is Mrs. Martyn injured?"—my voice shook a little I am sure. "I hope it's not serious?"
"No, not at all," answered the unsympathetic old lady. "Please attend to my son."
He was still rolling about in bed, but getting a little more rational.
"Poor old Julius," said his hard-faced sister; "it's all right; nobody will hurt you." But all the time I was on tenter-hooks. Would that broken needle be discovered?
"I think Mrs. Manne-Martyn's cries upset him," I explained. "There is nothing wrong with him; in fact, he is much better."
"It was very wrong of Martha to leave him," persisted the elder woman. Her callousness as to the sufferer downstairs made me so cross that I threw caution to the winds, and said: "I think I ought to go and see if I can do anything for Mrs. Martyn." And I strode out of the room.
Poor, brave little woman; she had purposely poured some boiling water over her left hand so that no suspicion could arise as to the cause of her diversion of Martha's watchfulness. I found her crying with pain. However, I dissembled my fears of discovery, and gave her a reassuring nod. After her plucky way of going to work I felt compelled to make the best of things.
I dressed her hand, with various little surreptitious squeezings, and went home, still wondering what would happen.
Was I to be discovered, after all, in an affair which brought me nothing? Or would my luck still hold good? Much depended upon how the diplococcus acted—where would it form a colony of poisonous germs, ever growing and spreading through the blood-stream? Would he die of meningitis, pneumonia or pyæmia? I did not want pneumonia. I could only hope for the quickest end.
One thing was certain. I must be in constant attendance, and if I could get a moment, remove the broken half of that tell-tale needle.
Next morning I called early, when my patient's mother received me coldly. I could see she had taken offence at my action of the previous afternoon. But so far all was well. As to my patient, his temperature had already risen a degree and a half. Something was at work—somewhere. Where?
It was a curious waiting for a day or two, Brown. I knew that a determination must arise, but was helpless to say what. I only saw the little woman just to dress her badly scalded hand, and, when I got a chance, to reprimand her severely for taking so drastic a course.
"I promised you, dear," she said, "and I meant to keep my word thoroughly."
On the third day Manne-Martyn became delirious and so seriously ill that his mother demanded a consultation.
We got Hubert Harrison, of Harley Street, but as I told him beforehand about the hasheesh and the alcohol he did not bother himself. In fact asked me what I would like him to say.
"He's certainly going to die, is he not?" I suggested.
"Most certainly," answered the specialist. "It looks like acute meningitis."
"Then tell them straight out," I said. "And mention that I could not, in your opinion, have done anything more."
"Of course, of course," replied the great man. "I'm sure of that. Really a good thing, I expect," he concluded.
There was, of course, intense agitation and many tears as the result of his opinion; but I took no heed. I could not forget the sick man's treatment of his wife.
Well—he died, and when I made my final examination by myself, I managed to withdraw that incriminating piece of steel.
I ran a very big risk over that. If only he had at any time been rational enough to locate the seat of his pain I should have probably been discovered.
But the Devil looks after his own, and certainly he kept a watchful eye over me on that occasion.
I saw a good deal of the widow for some months after this, but I was too busy to see her often enough, and she found and married a fellow on the Stock Exchange.
Yes, Rita was very charming, but dangerous—and fickle.