CHAPTER X
A FRUITLESS SEARCH
A LIGHT glowed in the hall, the door was opened and the doctor, in slippers and velvet coat, stood in the entrance. He showed no resentment nor did he have time to show it.
"I want a word with you," said Beale.
"Twenty if you wish," said the doctor cheerfully. "Won't you come in?"
Beale was half-way in before the invitation was issued and followed the doctor to his study.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
"Quite alone. I have very few visitors. In fact, my last visitor was that unhappy man Jackson."
"When did you see Miss Cresswell last?"
The doctor raised his eyebrows.
"By what right?" he began.
"Cut all that out," said Beale roughly. "When did you see Miss Cresswell last?"
"I have not seen her to-day," said the doctor. "I have not been out of my flat since I came back from the inquest."
"I should like to search your flat," said Beale.
"Policeman, eh?" smiled the doctor. "Certainly you can search the flat if you have a warrant."
"I have no warrant, but I shall search your flat."
The doctor's face went dull red.
"I suppose you know you are liable to an action for trespass?"
"I know all about that," said Beale, "but if you have nothing to conceal, Dr. van Heerden, I don't see why you should object."
"I don't object," shrugged the doctor, "search by all means. Where would you like to start? Here?"
He pointed to three upright cases which stood at the end of the room nearest the door.
"You will see nothing very pleasant here, they are anatomical models which have just arrived from Berlin. In fact, I have been trading with the enemy," he smiled. "They are screwed up, but I have a screwdriver here."
Beale hesitated.
"There is only another room," the doctor went on, "my bedroom, but you will not find her there."
Beale twisted round like lightning.
"Her?" he asked. "Who said Her?"
"I gather you are looking for Miss Cresswell," said the doctor coolly. "You are searching for something, and you ask me when I saw her last. Who else could you be looking for?"
"Quite right," he said quietly.
"Let me show you the way." The doctor walked ahead and turned on the light in the inner bedroom.
It was a large apartment, simply furnished with a small steel bed, a hanging wardrobe and a dressing-chest. Beyond that was his bath-room.
Beale was making a casual survey of this when he heard the door of the bedroom click behind him. He turned round, jumped for the door, turned the handle and pulled, but it did not yield. As he did so he thought he heard a mutter of voices.
"Open the door!" he cried, hammering on the panel. There was no answer. Then:
"Mr. Beale!"
His blood froze at the wild appeal in the tone, for it was the voice of Oliva Cresswell, and it came from the room he had quitted.
He smashed at the panel but it was made of tough oak. His revolver was in his hand and the muzzle was against the lock when the handle turned and the door opened.
"Did you lock yourself in?" smiled the doctor, looking blandly at the other's pale face.
"Where is the girl, where is Miss Cresswell?" he demanded. "I heard her voice."
"You are mad, my friend."
"Where is Miss Cresswell?"
His hand dropped on the other's shoulder and gripped it with a force that made the other shrink. With an oath the doctor flung him off.
"Hang you, you madman! How should I know?"
"I heard her voice."
"It was imagination," said the doctor. "I would have opened the door to you before but I had walked out into the passage and had rung Miss Cresswell's bell. I found the door open. I suppose you had been in. I just shut the door and came back here."
Without a word Beale thrust him aside. He had taken one step to the door when he stopped: At the end of the room had been the three long anatomical cases. Now there were only two. One had gone. He did not stop to question the man. He bounded through the door and raced down the stairs. There was no vehicle in sight and only a few pedestrians. At the corner of the street he found a policeman who had witnessed nothing unusual and had not seen any conveyance carrying a box.
As he returned slowly to the entrance of Krooman Mansions something made him look up. The doctor was leaning out of the window smoking a cigar.
"Found her?" he asked mockingly.
Beale made no reply. He came up the stairs, walked straight through the open door of the doctor's flat and confronted that calm man as he leant against the table, his hands gripping the edge, a cigar in the corner of his mouth and a smile of quiet amusement on his bearded lips.
"Well?" he asked, "did you find her?"
"I did not find her, but I am satisfied that you will."
Van Heerden's eyes did not falter.
"I am beginning to think, Mr. Beale, that over-indulgence in alcoholic stimulants has turned your brain," he said mockingly. "You come into my apartment and demand, with an heroic gesture, where I am concealing a beautiful young lady, in whose welfare I am at least as much interested as you, since that lady is my fiancée and is going to be my wife."
There was a pause.
"She is going to be your wife, is she?" said Beale softly. "I congratulate you if I cannot congratulate her. And when is this interesting engagement to be announced?"
"It is announced at this moment," said the doctor. "The lady is on her way to Liverpool, where she will stay with an aunt of mine. You need not trouble to ask me for her address, because I shall not give it to you."
"I see," said Beale.
"You come in here, I repeat, demanding with all the gesture and voice of melodrama, the hiding-place of my fiancée,"—he enunciated the two last words with great relish—"you ask to search my rooms and I give you permission. You lock yourself in through your own carelessness and when I release you you have a revolver in your hand, and are even more melodramatic than ever. I know what you are going to say"
"You are a clever man," interrupted Beale, "for I don't know myself."
"You were going to say, or you think, that I have some sinister purpose in concealing this lady. Well, to resume my narrative, and to show you your conduct from my point of view, I no sooner release you than you stare like a lunatic at my anatomical cases and dash wildly out, to return full of menace in your tone and attitude. Why?"
"Doctor van Heerden, when I came into your flat there were three anatomical cases at the end of that room. When I came out there were two. What happened to the third whilst I was locked in the room?"
Doctor van Heerden shook his head pityingly.
"I am afraid, I am very much afraid, that you are not right in your head," he said, and nodded toward the place where the cases stood.
Beale followed the direction of his head and gasped, for there were three cases.
"I admit that I deceived you when I said they contained specimens. As a matter of fact, they are empty," said the doctor. "If you like to inspect them, you can. You may find some—clue!"
Beale wanted no invitation. He walked to the cases one by one and sounded them. Their lids were screwed on but the screws were dummies. He found in the side of each a minute hole under the cover of the lid and, taking out his knife, he pressed in the bodkin with which the knife was equipped and with a click the lid flew open. The box was empty. The second one answered the same test and was also empty. The third gave no better result. He flashed his lamp on the bottom of the box, but there was no trace of footmarks.
"Are you satisfied?" asked the doctor.
"Far from satisfied," said Beale, and with no other word he walked out and down the stairs again.
Half-way down he saw something lying on one of the stairs and picked it up. It was a shoe, the fellow of that which he had in his pocket, and it had not been there when he came up.
*****
Oliva Cresswell had read the story of the crime in the Post Record, had folded up the paper with a little shiver and was at her tiny writing-bureau when a knock came at the door. It was Dr. van Heerden.
"Can I come in for a moment ? " he asked.
She hesitated.
"I shan't eat you," he smiled, "but I am so distressed by what has happened and I feel that an explanation is due to you."
"I shouldn't trouble about that," she smiled, "but if you want to come in, please do."
She closed the door behind him and left the light burning in the hall. She did not ask him to sit down.
"You have seen the account in the Post Record?" he asked.
She nodded.
"And I suppose you are rather struck with the discrepancy between what I told you and what I told the reporters, but I feel you ought to know that I had a very special reason for protecting this man."
"Of that I have no doubt," she said coldly.
"Miss Cresswell, you must be patient and kind to me," he said earnestly. "I have devoted a great deal of time and I have run very considerable dangers in order to save you."
"To save me?" she repeated in surprise.
"Miss Cresswell," he asked, "did you ever know your father?"
She shook her head, so impressed by the gravity of his tone that she did not cut the conversation short as she had intended.
"No," she said, "I was a girl when he died. I know nothing of him. Even his own people who brought him up never spoke of him."
"Are you sure he is dead?" he asked.
"Sure? I have never doubted it. Why do you ask me? Is he alive?"
He nodded.
"What I am going to tell you will be rather painful," he said: "your father was a notorious swindler." He paused, but she did not protest.
In her life she had heard many hints which did not redound to her father's credit, and she had purposely refrained from pursuing her inquiries.
"Some time ago your father escaped from Cayenne. He is, you will be surprised to know, a French subject, and the police have been searching for him for twelve months, including our friend Mr. Beale."
"It isn't true," she flamed. "How dare you suggest?"
"I am merely telling you the facts, Miss Cresswell, and you must judge them for yourself," said the doctor. "Your father robbed a bank in France and hid the money in England. Because they knew that sooner or later he would send for you the police have been watching you day and night. Your father is at Liverpool. I had a letter from him this morning. He is dying and he begs you to go to him."
She sat at the table, stunned. There was in this story a hideous probability. Her first inclination was to consult Beale, but instantly she saw that if what the doctor had said was true such a course would be fatal.
"How do I know you are speaking the truth?" she asked.
"You cannot know until you have seen your father," he said. "It is a very simple matter."
He took from his pocket an envelope and laid it before her.
"Here is the address—64 Hope Street. I advise you to commit it to memory and tear it up. After all, what possible interest could I have in your going to Liverpool, or anywhere else for the matter of that?"
"When is the next train?" she asked.
"One leaves in an hour from Euston."
She thought a moment.
"I'll go," she said decidedly.
She was walking back to her room to put on her coat when he called her back.
"There's no reason in the world why you should not write to Beale to tell him where you have gone," he said. "You can leave a note with me and I will deliver it."
She hesitated again, sat down at her desk and scribbled the few lines which Beale had found. Then she twisted round in her chair in perplexity.
"I don't understand it all," she said. "If Mr. Beale is on the track of my father, surely he will understand from this letter that I have gone to meet him."
"Let me see what you have written," said van Heerden coolly, and looked over her shoulder. "Yes, that's enough," he said.
"Enough?"
"Quite enough. You see, my idea was that you should write sufficient to put him off the track."
"I don't understand you—there's somebody in the passage," she said suddenly, and was walking to the door leading to the hall when he intercepted her.
"Miss Cresswell, I think you will understand me when I tell you that your father is dead, that the story I have told you about Beale being on his track is quite untrue, and that it is necessary for a purpose which I will not disclose to you that you should be my wife."
She sprang back out of his reach, white as death. Instinctively she realized that she was in some terrible danger, and the knowledge turned her cold.
"Your wife?" she repeated. "I think you must be mad, doctor."
"On the contrary, I am perfectly sane. I would have asked you before, but I knew that you would refuse me. Had our friend Beale not interfered, the course of true love might have run a little more smoothly than it has. Now I am going to speak plainly to you, Miss Cresswell. It is necessary that I should many you, and if you agree I shall take you away and place you in safe keeping. I will marry you at the registrar's office and part from you the moment the ceremony is completed. I will agree to allow you a thousand a year and I will promise that I will not interfere with you or in any way seek your society."
Her courage had revived during this recital of her future.
"What do you expect me to do," she asked contemptuously—"fall on your neck and thank you, you with your thousand a year and your church-door partings? No, doctor, if you are sane then you are either a great fool or a great scoundrel. I would never dream of marrying you under any circumstances. And now I think you had better go."
This time he did not stop her as she walked to the door and flung it open. She started back with an exclamation of fear, for there were two men in the hall.
"What do you"
So far she got when the doctor's arm was round her and his hand was pressed against her mouth. One of the men was carrying what looked like a rubber bottle with a conical-shaped mouthpiece. She struggled, but the doctor held her in a grip of steel. She was thrown to the ground, the rubber cap of the bottle was pressed over her face, there came a rush of cold air heavily charged with a sickly scent, and she felt life slipping away. . . .
"I think she's off now," said the doctor, lifting up her eyelid, "see if the coast is clear, Gregory, and open the door of my flat."
The man departed. The doctor lifted the unconscious girl in his arms. He was in the hall when he felt her move. Half-conscious as she was, she was struggling to prevent the abduction.
"Quick, the door!" he gasped.
He carried her across the landing into his room, and the door closed quietly behind him.