CHAPTER VIII
THE CRIME OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE
THE hotel and the café of the Grand Alliance was London's newest rendezvous. Its great palm-court was crowded at the tea-hour and if, as the mysterious Mr. Beale had hinted, any danger was to be apprehended from Dr. van Heerden, it could not come to her in that most open of public places.
She had no fear, but that eighth sense of armed caution, which is the possession of every girl who has to work for her living and is conscious of the perils which await her on every side, reviewed with lightning speed all the possibilities and gave her the passport of approval.
It was later than she had thought. Only a few tables were occupied, but he had evidently reserved one, for immediately on his appearance the waiter with a smirk led him to one of the alcoves and pulled back a chair for the girl. She looked round as she stripped her gloves. The place was not unfamiliar to her. It was here she came at rare intervals, when her finances admitted of such an hilarious recreation, to find comfort for jangled nerves, to sit and sip her tea to the sound of violins and watch the happy crowd at her leisure, absorbing something of the happiness they diffused.
The palm-court was a spacious marble hall, a big circle of polished pillars supporting the dome, through the tinted glass of which the light was filtered in soft hues upon the marble floor below.
"Doctor," she said, suddenly remembering, "I have been reading quite a lot about you to-day."
He raised his eyebrows.
"About me?"
She nodded, smiling mischievously.
"I didn't know that you were such a famous person—I have been reading about the Millinborn murder."
"You have been reading about the Millinborn murder?" he said steadily, looking into her eyes. "An unpleasant case and one I should like to forget."
"I thought it was awfully thrilling," she said. "It read like a detective story without a satisfactory end."
He laughed.
"What a perfectly gruesome subject for tea-table talk," he said lightly, and beckoned the head-waiter. "You are keeping us waiting, Jaques."
"Doctor, it will be but a few minutes," pleaded the waiter, and then in a low voice, which was not so low that it did not reach the girl. "We have had some trouble this afternoon, doctor, with your friend."
"My friend?"
The doctor looked up sharply.
"Whom do you mean?"
"With Mr. Jackson."
"Jackson," said the doctor, startled. "I thought he had left."
"He was to leave this morning by the ten o'clock train, but he had a fainting-fit. We recovered him with brandy and he was too well, for this afternoon he faint again."
"Where is he now?" asked van Heerden, after a pause.
"In his room, monsieur. To-night he leave for Ireland—this he tell me—to catch the mail steamer at Queenstown."
"Don't let him know I am here," said the doctor.
He turned to the girl with a shrug.
"A dissolute friend of mine whom I am sending out to the colonies," he said.
"Won't you go and see him?" she asked. "He must be very ill if he faints."
"I think not," said Dr. van Heerden quietly, "these little attacks are not serious—he had one in my room the other night. It is a result of over-indulgence, and six months in Canada will make a man of him."
She did not reply. With difficulty she restrained an exclamation. So that was the man who had been in the doctor's room and who was going to Red Horse Valley! She would have dearly loved to supplement her information about Mr. Scobbs, proprietor of many hotels, and to have mystified him with her knowledge of Western Canada, but she refrained.
Instead, she took up the conversation where he had tried to break it off.
"Do you know Mr. Kitson?"
"Kitson? Oh yes, you mean the lawyer man," he replied reluctantly. "I know him, but I am afraid I don't know much that is good about him. Now, I'm going to tell you, Miss Cresswell"—he leant across the table and spoke in a lower tone—"something that I have never told to a human being. You raised the question of the Millinborn murder. My view is that Kitson, the lawyer, knew much more about that murder than any man in this world. If there is anybody who knows more it is Beale."
"Mr. Beale?" she said incredulously.
"Mr. Beale," he repeated. "You know the story of the murder: you say you have read it. Millinborn was dying and I had left the room with Kitson when somebody entered the window and stabbed John Millinborn to the heart. I have every reason to believe that that murder was witnessed by this very man I am sending to Canada. He persists in denying that he saw anything, but later he may change his tune."
A light dawned upon her.
"Then Jackson is the man who was seen by Mr. Kitson in the plantation?"
"Exactly," said the doctor.
"But I don't understand," she said, perplexed. "Aren't the police searching for Jackson?"
"I do not think that it is in the interests of justice that they should find him," he said gravely. "I place the utmost reliance on him. I am sending Mr. Jackson to a farm in Ontario kept by a medical friend of mine who has made a hobby of dealing with dipsomaniacs."
He met her eyes unfalteringly.
"Dr. van Heerden," she said slowly, "you are sending Mr. Jackson to Red Horse Valley."
He started back as if he had been struck in the face, and for a moment was inarticulate.
"What—what do you know?" he asked incoherently.
His face had grown white, his eyes tragic with fear. She was alarmed at the effect of her words and hastened to remove the impression she had created.
"I only know that I heard Mr. Jackson through the ventilator of my flat, saying good-bye to you the other night. He mentioned Red Horse Valley"
He drew a deep breath and was master of himself again, but his face was still pale.
"Oh, that," he said, "that is a polite fiction. Jackson knows of this inebriates' home in Ontario and I had to provide him with a destination. He will go no farther than"
"Why, curse my life, if it isn't the doctor!"
At the sound of the raucous voice both looked up. The man called Jackson had hailed them from the centre of the hall. He was well dressed, but no tailor could compensate for the repulsiveness of that puckered and swollen face, those malignant eyes which peered out into the world through two slits. He was wearing his loud-check suit, his new hat was in his hand and the conical-shaped dome of his head glistened baldly.
"I'm cursed if this isn't amiable of you, doctor!"
He did not look at the girl, but grinned complacently upon her angry companion.
"Here I am"—he threw out his arms with an extravagant gesture—"leaving the country of my adoption, if not birth, without one solitary soul to see me off or take farewell of me. I, who have been—well, you know, what I've been, van Heerden. The world has treated me very badly. By heaven! I'd like to come back a billionaire and ruin all of 'em. I'd like to cut their throats and amputate 'em limb from limb, I would like"
"Be silent!" said van Heerden angrily. "Have you no decency? Do you not realize I am with a lady?"
"Pardon." The man called Jackson leapt up from the chair into which he had fallen and bowed extravagantly in the direction of the girl. "I cannot see your face because of your hat, my dear lady," he said gallantly, "but I am sure my friend van Heerden, whose taste"
"Will you be quiet?" said van Heerden. "Go to your room and I will come up to you."
"Go to my room!" scoffed the other. "By Jove! I like that! That any whipper-snapper of a sawbones should tell me to go to my room. After what I have been, after the position I have held in society. I have had ambassadors' carriages at my door, my dear fellow, princes of the royal blood, and to be told to go to my room like a naughty little boy! It's too much!"
"Then behave yourself," said van Heerden, "and at least wait until I am free before you approach me again."
But the man showed no inclination to move; rather did this rebuff stimulate his power of reminiscence.
"Ignore me, miss—I have not your name, but I am sure it is a noble one," he said. "You see before you one who in his time has been a squire of dames, by Jove! I can't remember 'em. They must number thousands and only one of them was worth two sous. Yes," he shook his head in melancholy, "only one of 'em. By Jove! The rest were"—he snapped his fingers—"that for 'em!"
The girl listened against her will.
"Jackson!"—and van Heerden's voice trembled with passion—"will you go or must I force you to go?"
Jackson rose with a loud laugh.
"Evidently I am de trop," he said with heavy sarcasm.
He held out a swollen hand which van Heerden ignored.
"Farewell, mademoiselle." He thrust the hand forward, so that she could not miss it.
She took it, a cold flabby thing which sent a shudder of loathing through her frame, and raised her face to his for the first time.
He let the hand drop. He was staring at her with open mouth and features distorted with horror.
"You!" he croaked.
She shrunk back against the wall of the alcove, but he made no movement. She sensed the terror and agony in his voice.
"You!" he gasped. "Mary!"
"Hang you! Go!" roared van Heerden. and thrust him back.
But though he staggered back a pace under the weight of the other's arm, his eyes did not leave the girl's face, and she, fascinated by the appeal in the face of the wreck, could not turn hers away.
"Mary!" he whispered, "what is your other name?"
With an effort the girl recovered herself.
"My name is not Mary," she said quietly. "My name is Oliva Cresswell."
"Oliva Cresswell," he repeated. "Oliva Cresswell!"
He made a movement toward her but van Heerden barred his way. She heard Jackson say something in a strangled voice and heard van Heerden's sharp "What!" and there was a fierce exchange of words.
The attention of the few people in the palm-court had been attracted to the unusual spectacle of two men engaged in what appeared to be a struggle.
"Sit down, sit down, you fool! Sit over there. I will come to you in a minute. Can you swear what you say is true?"
Jackson nodded. He was shaking from head to foot.
"My name is Prédeaux," he said; "that is my daughter—I married in the name of Cresswell. My daughter," he repeated. "How wonderful!"
"What are you going to do?" asked van Heerden.
He had half-led, half-pushed the other to a chair near one of the pillars of the rotunda.
"I am going to tell her," said the wreck. "What are you doing with her?" he demanded fiercely.
"That is no business of yours," replied van Heerden sharply.
"No business of mine, eh! I'll show you it's some business of mine. I am going to tell her all I know about you. I have been a rotter and worse than a rotter." The old flippancy had gone and the harsh voice was vibrant with purpose. "My path has been littered with the wrecks of human lives," he said bitterly, "and they are mostly women. I broke the heart of the best woman in the world, and I am going to see that you don't break the heart of her daughter."
"Will you be quiet?" hissed van Heerden. "I will go and get her away and then I will come back to you."
Jackson did not reply. He sat huddled up in his chair, muttering to himself, and van Heerden walked quickly back to the girl.
"I am afraid I shall have to let you go back by yourself. He is having one of his fits. I think it is delirium tremens."
"Don't you think you had better send for" she began. She was going to say "send for a doctor," and the absurdity of the request struck her.
"I think you had better go," he said hastily, with a glance at the man who was struggling to his feet. "I can't tell you how sorry I am that we've had this scene."
"Stop!"—it was Jackson's voice.
He stood swaying half-way between the chair he had left and the alcove, and his trembling finger was pointing at them.
"Stop!" he said in a commanding voice. "Stop! I've got something to say to you. I know . . . he's making you pay for the Green Rust. . . ."
So far he got when he reeled and collapsed in a heap on the floor. The doctor sprang forward, lifted him and carried him to the chair by the pillar. He picked up the overcoat that the man had been wearing and spread it over him.
"It's a fainting-fit, nothing to be alarmed about," he said to the little knot of people from the tables who had gathered about the limp figure. "Jaques"—he called the head-waiter—"get some brandy, he must be kept warm."
"Shall I ring for an ambulance, m'sieur?"
"It is not necessary," said van Heerden. "He will recover in a few moments. Just leave him," and he walked back to the alcove.
"Who is he?" asked the girl, and her voice was shaking in spite of herself.
"He is a man I knew in his better days," said van Heerden, "and now I think you must go."
"I would rather wait to see if he recovers," she said with some obstinacy.
"I want you to go," he said earnestly; "you would please me very much if you would do as I ask."
"There's the waiter!" she interrupted, "he has the brandy. Won't you give it to him?"
It was the doctor who in the presence of the assembled visitors dissolved a white pellet in the brandy before he forced the clenched teeth apart and poured the liquor to the last drop down the man's throat.
Jackson or Prédeaux, to give him his real name, shuddered as he drank, shuddered again a few seconds later and then went suddenly limp.
The doctor bent down and lifted his eyelid.
"I am afraid—he is dead," he said in a low voice.
"Dead!" the girl stared at him. "Oh no! Not dead!"
Van Heerden nodded.
"Heart failure," he said.
"The same kind of heart failure that killed John Millinborn," said a voice behind him. "The cost of the Green Rust is totalling up, doctor."
The girl swung round. Mr. Beale was standing at her elbow, but His steady eyes were fixed upon van Heerden.