CHAPTER XI
THE HOUSE NEAR STAINES
OLIVA CRESSWELL remembered nothing. She did not remember being thrust limply into a long narrow box, nor hearing Beale's voice, nor the click of the door that fastened him in Dr. van Heerden's bedroom. If she cried out, as she did, she had no recollection of the fact.
"Carry her, box and all, to her flat. The door is open," whispered van Heerden to the two men who had made their lightning disappearance into the anatomical cases at the sound of Beale's knock.
"What shall we do?"
"Wait till I come to you. Hurry!"
They crossed the landing and passed through the open door of Oliva's flat and the doctor closed the door behind them and returned in time to release the savage Beale.
He watched him racing down the stairs, darted to the door of Oliva's rooms, opened it and went in. In ten seconds she had been lifted from her narrow prison and laid on her bed, the box had been returned to the place where it had stood in the doctor's study and the men had returned to join van Heerden in Oliva's darkened sitting-room.
Van Heerden had switched on the light in the girl's room and then noticed for the first time that one of her shoes was missing. Quickly he slipped off the remaining shoe.
"You wait here," he told the men, "until you hear Beale return. Then make your escape. On your way down leave the shoe on the stairs. It will help to put our friend off the trail."
Half an hour after the discovery of the shoe on the stairs Beale went out accompanied by his visitors.
The doctor watched the dark figures disappear into the night from the window of his sitting-room and made his way back to the girl's flat. She was lying where he had left her, feeling dizzy and sick. Her eyes closed in a little grimace of distaste as he put on the light.
"How does my little friend feel now?" he asked coolly.
She made no reply.
"Really, you must not sulk," he said chidingly, "and you must get used to being polite because you are going to see a great deal of me. You had better get up and put your coat on."
She noticed that he had a medicine glass in his hand, half-filled with a milky-white liquor.
"Drink this," he said.
She pushed it away.
"Come, drink it," he said, "you don't suppose I want to poison you, do you? I don't even want to drug you, otherwise it would have been simple to have given you a little more ether. Drink it. It will take that hazy feeling out of your head."
She took the glass with an unsteady hand and swallowed its contents. It was bitter and hot and burnt her throat, but its effects were magical. In three minutes her mind had cleared and when she sat up she could do so without her head swimming.
"You will now put on your coat and hat, pack a few things that you want for a journey, and come along with me."
"I shall do nothing of the sort," she said, "I advise you to go, Dr. van Heerden, before I inform the police of your outrageous conduct."
"Put on your hat and coat," he repeated calmly, "and don't talk nonsense. You don't suppose that I have risked all that I have risked to let you go at this hour."
"Dr. van Heerden," she said, "if you have any spark of decency or manhood you will leave me."
He laughed a little.
"Now you are talking like a heroine of Lyceum drama," he said. "Any appeal you might make, Miss Cresswell, is a waste of time and a waste of breath. I shall have no hesitation in using violence of the most unpleasant character unless you do as I tell you."
His voice was quiet, but there was about him a convincing air of purpose.
"Where are you going to take me?" she asked.
"I am going to take you to a place of safety. When I say safety," he added, "I mean safety for me. You yourself need fear nothing unless you act foolishly, in which case you have everything to fear. Disabuse your mind of one thought, Miss Cresswell," he said, "and that is that I am in love with you and that there is any quality or charm in your admirable person which would prevent my cutting your throat if it was necessary for my safety. I am not a brute. I will treat you decently, as well as any lady could wish to be treated, if you do not cross me, but I warn you that if in the street you call for help or attempt to escape you will never know what happened to you."
She stood at the end of her bed, one hand gripping the rail, her white teeth showing against the red lower lip.
"Don't bite your lips, it does not stimulate thought, I can tell you that as a medical man, and I can also tell you that this is not the moment for you to consider plans for outwitting me. Get your coat and hat on."
His voice was now peremptory, and she obeyed. In a few minutes she was dressed ready for the street. He led the way out and holding her arm lightly they passed out into the street. He turned sharply to the left, the girl keeping in step by his side. To the casual observer, and few could observe them in the gloom of the ill-lit thoroughfares through which they passed, they were a couple on affectionate terms, but the arm locked in hers was the arm of a gaoler, and once when they stood waiting to cross busy Oxford Circus, and she had seen a policeman a few yards away and had cautiously tried to slip her arm from his, she found her wrist gripped with a hand of steel.
At the Marylebone Road end of Portland Place a car was waiting and the doctor opened the door and pushed her in, following immediately.
"I had to keep the car some distance from Krooman Mansions or Beale would have spotted it immediately," he said in an easy conversational tone.
"Where are you taking me?" she asked.
"To a highly desirable residence in the Thames Valley," he said, "in the days when I thought you might be wooed and wed, as the saying goes, I thought it might make an excellent place for a honeymoon." He felt her shrink from him.
"Please don't be distressed, I am rather glad that matters have turned out as they have. I do not like women very much, and I should have been inexpressibly bored if I had to keep up the fiction of being in love with you."
"What do you intend doing?" she asked. "You cannot hope to escape from Mr. Beale. He will find me."
He chuckled.
"As a sleuth-hound, Mr. Beale has his points," he said, "but they are not points which keep me awake at night. I have always suspected he was a detective, and, of course, it was he who planted the registered envelopes on poor old White—that was clever," he admitted handsomely, "but Beale, if you will excuse my hurting your feelings—and I know you are half in love with him"
She felt her face go hot.
"How dare you!" she flamed.
"Don't be silly," he begged. "I dare anything in these circumstances, the greater outrage includes the less. If I abdicate you I feel myself entitled to tease you. No, I think you had better not place too much faith in Mr. Beale, who doesn't seem to be a member of the regular police force, and is, I presume, one of those amateur gentlemen who figure in divorce cases."
She did not reply. Inwardly she was boiling, and she recognized with a little feeling of dismay that it was not so much the indignity which he was offering her, as his undisguised contempt for the genius of Beale, which enraged her.
They had left the town and were spinning through the country when she spoke again.
"Will you be kind enough to tell me what you intend doing?"
He had fallen into a reverie and it was evidently a pleasant reverie, for he came back to the realities of life with an air of reluctance.
"Eh? Oh, what am I going to do with you? Why, I am going to marry you."
"Suppose I refuse?"
"You won't refuse. I am offering you the easiest way out. When you are married to me your danger is at an end. Until you marry me your hold on life is somewhat precarious."
"But why do you insist upon this?" she asked, bewildered, "If you don't love me, what is there in marriage for you? There are plenty of women who would be delighted to have you. Why should you want to marry a girl without any influence or position—a shop-girl, absolutely penniless?"
"It's a whim of mine," he said lightly, "and it's a whim I mean to gratify."
"Suppose I refuse at the last moment?"
"Then," he said significantly, "you will be sorry. I tell you, no harm is coming to you if you are sensible. If you are not sensible, imagine the worst that can happen to you, and that will be the least. I will treat you so that you will not think of your experience, let alone talk of it."
There was a cold malignity in his voice that made her shudder. For a moment, and a moment only, she was beaten down by the horrible hopelessness of her situation, then her natural courage, her indomitable, self-reliance overcame fear. If he expected an outburst of anger and incoherent reproach, or if he expected her to break down into hysterical supplication, he was disappointed. She had a firm grip upon herself, perfect command of voice and words.
"I suppose you are one of those clever criminals one reads about," she said, "prepared for all emergencies, perfectly self-confident, capable and satisfied that there is nobody quite so clever as themselves."
"Very likely," he smiled. "It is a form of egotism," he said quietly. "I read a book once about criminals. It was written by an Italian and he said that was the chief characteristic of them all."
"Vanity? And they always do such clever things and such stupid things at the same time, and their beautiful plans are so full of absurd miscalculations, just as yours are."
"Just as mine are," he said mockingly.
"Just as yours are," she repeated; "you are so satisfied that because you are educated and you are a scientist, that you are ever so much more clever than all the rest of the world."
"Go on," he said. "I like to hear you talking. Your analysis is nearly perfect and certainly there is a lot of truth in what you say."
She held down the surging anger which almost choked her and retained a calm level. Sooner or later she would find the joint in his harness.
"I suppose you have everything ready?"
"My staff work is always good," he murmured, "marriage licence, parson, even the place where you will spend your solitary honeymoon after signing a few documents."
She turned toward him slowly. Against the window of the big limousine his head was faintly outlined and she imagined the smile which was on his face at that moment.
"So that is it!" she said. "I must sign a few documents saying that I married you of my own free will!"
"No, madam," he said, "the circumstances under which you marry me require no justification and that doesn't worry me in the slightest."
"What documents have I to sign?" she asked.
"You will discover in time," said he. "Here is the house, unless my eyesight has gone wrong."
The car turned from the road, seemed to plunge into a high hedge, though in reality, as the girl saw for a second as the lamps caught the stone gate-posts, it was the entrance to a drive, and presently came to a stop before a big rambling house. Van Heerden jumped down and assisted her to alight. The house was in darkness, but as they reached the door it was opened.
"Go in," said van Heerden, and pushed her ahead.
She found herself in an old-fashioned hall, the walls panelled of oak, the floor made of closely mortised stone flags. She recognized the man who had admitted them as one of those she had seen in her flat that same night. He was a cadaverous man with high cheekbones and short, bristly black hair and a tiny black moustache.
"I won't introduce you," said the doctor, "but you may call this man Gregory. It is not his name, but it is good enough."
The man smiled furtively and eyed her furtively, took up the candle and led the way to a room which opened off the hall at the farther end.
"This is the dining-room," said van Heerden. "It is chiefly interesting to you as the place where the ceremony will be performed. Your room is immediately above. I am sorry I did not engage a maid for you, but I cannot afford to observe the proprieties or consider your reputation. The fact is, I know no woman I could trust to perform that duty, and you will have to look after yourself."
He led the way upstairs, unlocked a door and passed in. There was one window which was heavily curtained. He saw her glance and nodded.
"You will find the windows barred," he said. "This was evidently the nursery and is admirably suited to my purpose. In addition, I might tell you that the house is a very old one and that it is impossible to walk about the room without the door creaking and, as I spend most of my time in the dining-room below, you will find it extremely difficult even to make preparations for escape without my being aware of the fact."
The room was comfortably furnished. A small fire was alight in the tiny grate and a table had been laid, on which were displayed sandwiches, a thermos flask and a small silver basket of confectionery.
There was a door by the big four-poster bed.
"You may consider yourself fortunate in having the only room in the house with a bath-room attached," he said. "You English people are rather particular about that kind of thing."
"And you German people aren't," she said coolly.
"German?" he laughed. "So you guessed that, did you?"
"Guessed it?"—it was her turn to laugh scornfully. "Isn't the fact self-evident? Who but a Hun"
His face went a dull red.
"That is a word you must not use to me," he said roughly—"hang your arrogance! Huns! We, who gave the world its kultur, who lead in every department of science, art and literature!"
She stared at him in amazement.
"You are joking, of course," she said, forgetting her danger for the moment in face of this extraordinary phenomenon. "If you are a German, and I suppose you are, and an educated German at that, you don't for a moment imagine you gave the world anything. Why, the Germans have never been anything but exploiters of other men's brains."
From dull red, his face had gone white, his lip was trembling with passion and when he spoke he could scarcely control his voice.
"We were of all people ordained by God to save the world through the German spirit."
So far he got when she burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. It was so like all the caricatures of German character she had read or seen depicted. He looked at her, his face distorted with rage, and before she had realized what had happened he had raised his hand and struck her across the mouth.
She staggered back, speechless. To her had happened the most incredible thing in the world, more incredible than her abduction, more incredible than all the villainies known or suspected, in this man.
He stood there glowering at her, unrepentant, half-tempted, it seemed, to repeat the blow. He had struck a woman and was not overwhelmed by shame. All her views of men and things, all her conceptions of the codes which govern mankind in their dealings one with the other, crumbled away. If he had fallen on his knees and asked her pardon, if he had shown any contrition, any fear, any shame, she might have gone back to her old standards.
"You swine cat!" he said in German, "Herr Gott, but I will punish you if you laugh at me!"
She was staring at him in intense curiosity. Her lip was bleeding a little, the red mark of his fingers showed against her white face, but she seemed to have forgotten the pain or the shock of the actual blow and was wholly concerned in this new revelation.
"A Hun," she said, but she seemed to be speaking to herself, "of course he's a Hun. They do that sort of thing, but I never believed it before."
He took a step toward her, but she did not flinch, and he turned and walked quickly from the room, locking the door behind him.