II
THE LIFE-PRESERVER
The Lady Vera Moyle had made herself notorious in a cause that scoredsome points through her allegiance. She it was who cajoled the HomeSecretary outside Palace Yard, and sent him about his weighty businesswith the colors of a hated Union pinned to his unconscious back. It istrue that some of her excesses had less to redeem them, but all werecommitted with a pious zest which recalled the saying that the Moyleswere a race of Irish rebels who had intermarried with the saints. It wasreserved for Lady Vera to combine the truculence of her forefathers withthe serene solemnity of their wives, and to enact her devilments, as shetook their consequences, with a buxom austerity all her own.
But she was not at her best when she went to see Doctor Dollar onChristmas Eve; for it was just two months after the autumn raid, whichhad caused the retirement of Lady Vera Moyle, and some of her politicalfriends, for precisely that period. Otherwise, the autumn raid had beena triumph for the raiders, thanks to a fog of providential density,which had fought on their side as the stars in their courses foughtagainst Sisera for the earliest militant. Never had private propertybeen destroyed on so generous a scale, with fewer casualties on the sideof the destroying angels; and yet there had been one unnecessary blot onthe proceedings, which they were the first to repudiate and condemn.
A vile male member of the common criminal classes had not only takenoccasion to loot a jeweler's window, broken by some innocent lady, buthad coolly murdered a policeman who interfered with him in theperpetration of his selfish crime. Fortunately the wretch had beentraced through the stolen trinkets, expeditiously committed andcondemned, and was on the point of paying the supreme penalty. No saneperson could doubt his guilt, and yet there were those who sought to fixa certain responsibility on the women! The charge of moral complicityhad disgraced and stultified both Press and platform, and the HomeSecretary, pestered for a reprieve, had only sealed the murderer's fateat the eleventh hour. Even the steel nerves of the Vinsons had sufferedunder a complex strain: it was just as well that he was on the point ofdeparture for the holidays.
A deplorable circumstance was the way the Minister's last hours in townhad been embittered by his implacable tormentor, Lady Vera Moyle. Thatingrate had celebrated her release by trying to invade the Home Office,and by actually waylaying the Secretary of State in Whitehall. Anunobtrusive body-guard had nipped the annoyance in the bud; but it hadcaused Topham Vinson to require champagne at his club, whither he wasproceeding on the arm of his last ally and most secret adviser, DoctorJohn Dollar of Welbeck Street. And before dark the doctor had beeninvaded in his turn.
"You must blame the Home Secretary for this intrusion," began Lady Vera,with all the precision of a practised speaker who knew what she had tosay. "He refused, as you heard, to listen to what I had to say to himthis morning; but the detective-in-waiting informed me that you were notonly a friend of Mr. Vinson's, but yourself a medical expert incriminology. I have therefore a double reason for coming to you, DoctorDollar, though it would not have been necessary if Mr. Topham Vinson hadtreated me with ordinary courtesy."
"I am very glad you have done so, Lady Vera," rejoined the doctor in hismost conciliatory manner. "Mr. Vinson, to be frank with you, is not in afit state for the kind of scene he was afraid you were going to make. Heis in a highly nervous condition for a man of his robust temperament.Truth, Lady Vera, compels me to add that you and your friends have hadsomething to do with this, but the immediate cause is a far more unhappycase which he has just settled."
"_Has_ he settled it?" cried Lady Vera, turning paler than beforebetween her winter sables and a less seasonable hat.
"This morning," said Dollar, with a very solemn air.
"He isn't going to hang that poor man?"
No breath came between the opened lips that prison had bleached andparched, but neither did they tremble as the doctor bowed.
"If you mean Alfred Croucher," said he, "convicted of the murder ofSergeant Simpkins during the last suffragist disturbance, I can only saythere would be an end of capital punishment if he had been reprieved."
"Doctor Dollar," returned Lady Vera, under great control, "it was aboutthis case, and nothing else, that I wanted to speak to the HomeSecretary. I never heard of it until this morning, for I have been outof the way of newspapers, as you may know; and it is difficult to takein a whole trial at one hurried reading. Do you mind telling me whyeverybody is so sure that this man is the murderer? Did anybody see himdo it?"
The crime doctor smiled as he shook his head.
"Very few murders are actually witnessed, Lady Vera; yet this would havebeen one of the few, but for the fog. Croucher was plainly seen throughthe jeweler's window, helping himself one moment, then struggling withthe unfortunate sergeant."
"Was the struggle seen as plainly as the robbery?"
"Not quite, perhaps, but the evidence was equally convincing aboutboth. Then the stolen goods were found, some of them, still inCroucher's possession; and the way he tried to account for that, in thewitness-box, was only less suicidal than his fatal attempt at an alibi."
"Poor fool!" exclaimed Lady Vera, with perhaps less pity thanimpatience. "Of course he was there--I saw him!"
Dollar was not altogether unprepared for this.
"You were there yourself, then, Lady Vera?"
"I should think I was!"
"It--it wasn't you who broke the window for him?"
"Of course it was! Yet nobody tried to find me as a witness! It is onlyby pure chance that I come out in time to save an innocent man's life,for innocent he is of everything but theft. _I_ know--too well!"
Her voice was no longer under inhuman control; and there was somethingin its passionate pitch that sent a cold thrill of conviction downDollar's spine. He gazed in horror at the unhappy girl, in her luxurioussables, drawn up to her last inch in the pitiless glare of his electriclight; and even as he gazed--and guessed--all horror melted into themost profound emotion he had ever felt. It was she who first found hervoice, and now it was calmer than it had been as yet.
"One thing more about the trial," she said. "What was the weapon he issupposed to have used?"
"His knife."
"Yet it seems to have been a small wound?"
"It had a small blade."
"But was there any blood on it?"
She had to press him for these details; any squeamishness was on hisside, and he a doctor!
"There was," he said. "Croucher had an explanation, but it wasn'tconvincing."
"The truth often isn't," said Lady Vera, bitterly. "You may be surprisedto hear that the blow wasn't struck with a knife at all. It was struckwith--this!"
Her right hand flew from her glossy muff; in it was no flashing steel,but a short, black, round-knobbed life-preserver, that she handed overwithout more words.
"But his skull wasn't smashed!" exclaimed John Dollar, and for aninstant he looked at his visitor with the eye of the alienist. "It was apuncture of the carotid artery, and you couldn't do that with this ifyou tried."
"Hit the floor with it," said Lady Vera, "but don't hold it quite by theend."
Dollar bent down and did as directed; at the blow, a poniard flew out ofthe opposite end to the round knob; the point caught in his sleeve.
"That's how it was done," continued Lady Vera. "And I am the person itwas done by, Doctor Dollar!"
"It was--an accident?" he said, hoarsely. He could look at her as thoughthe accident had not been fatal; he had less command of his voice.
"I call it one; the law may not," said she resignedly. "Yet I didn'teven know that I possessed such a weapon as this; it was sold to me as alife-preserver, and nothing else, out of a pawnbroker's window, where Ihappened to see it on the very morning of the raid. I thought it wouldbe just the thing for smashing other windows, especially with that thongto go round one's wrist. I thought, too--I don't mind telling you--that,if I were roughly handled, it was a thing I could use in self-defense asI couldn't very well use a hammer."
>
And here she showed no more shame than a soldier need feel about hisbayonet after battle; and Dollar met her eyes on better terms. He hadbeen making mechanical experiments with the life-preserver. Some springwas broken. That was why it became a dagger at every blow, instead ofonly when you gave it a jerk.
"And you were roughly handled by Sergeant Simpkins?" he suggestedeagerly.
"Very," she said, with a certain reluctance. "But I expect the poorfellow was as excited as I was when I tried to beat him off."
"I suppose you hardly knew what you were doing, Lady Vera?"
"Not only that, Doctor Dollar, but I didn't know what I had done."
"Thank God for that!"
"But did you imagine it for a moment? That's the whole point andexplanation of everything that has happened. The worst was over in a fewseconds, in the thick of that awful fog, but, of course I never dreamtwhat I had done. I did think that I had knocked him out. But that wasall that ever entered my head until this very morning."
"Were you close to your broken window at the time?"
"Very close, and yet out of sight in the fog."
"And you had seen nothing of this man Croucher, and his hand in theaffair?"
"Not after I'd done my part. I did just before. I'm certain it was thesame huge man that they describe. But I heard the whole thing while wewere struggling. They were blowing a police-whistle and calling out'Thieves!' I remember hoping that the policeman would hear them, and letme go. But I suppose his blood was up, as well as mine."
"And after you had--freed yourself?" said the doctor, trying not to sethis teeth.
"I ran off, of course! I knew that I had done much more than I everintended; but that's all I knew, or suspected, even when I found thishorrid thing open in my hand. I tried to shut it again, but couldn't. SoI hid it in my dress, and ran up Dover Street to my club, where I put itstraight into a bag that I had there. Then I made myself decentand--turned out again with a proper hammer."
The doctor groaned; he could not help it. Yet it was his first audibleexpression of disapproval; he had restrained himself while all the worstwas being told; and the girl's face acknowledged his consideration. Hercolor had come at last. Thus far, in recounting her intentionalmisdeeds, as though they were all in the great day's work, she had showna divine indifference to his opinion of her or her proceedings. Therehad been nothing aggressive about it--he merely doubted whether thequestion of his views had ever entered her mind. But now he could seethat it did; he had shown her something that she did not want to lose,and her fine candor hid that fact as little as any other.
"I didn't know what I'd done, remember!" she said with sharp solicitude."I never did know until this morning, when I heard of the case for thefirst time, and for the first time saw the stains on the dagger--atwhich you've been trying so hard not to look! Do look at them, DoctorDollar. Of course, there can be no doubt what they are, but I shall beonly too glad for you to prove it to everybody's satisfaction."
"'Only too glad,' Lady Vera?"
They gazed at each other for several seconds. Her face was tragic tohim now; but emotion, apparently, was the one thing she would condescendto hide. But for her eyes, she might have been incredibly callous andcold-blooded; her blue Irish eyes were great and glassy with a grief notsoluble in tears.
"Doctor Dollar," she said, tensely, "nothing can undo this hideousthing, though I hope to live long enough to make such poor amends as ahuman being can. But in this other direction they must be made at once.It's no use thinking of what can't be undone till we _have_ undone whatwe can--if we are quick! That's why I tried to go straight to the HomeSecretary, and why I have come straight to you. Take me to him, DoctorDollar, and help me to convince him that what I have told you is thewhole truth and nothing else! If you think it will make it easier,satisfy yourself about those blood-stains. Then we can take the daggerwith us."
The doctor applied a crude test on the spot. He stooped over the fire,heated the stained steel between the bars, cooled it at the open window,picked off a scale and examined it briefly under a microscope. All thiswas done with tremendous energy tempered by extreme precision andnicety. And Lady Vera followed the operation with an impersonalinterest that could not but include the operator, so intent upon histask, so obviously thankful to have a task of any sort in hand. But whenhe rose from his microscope it was with a shrug of the shoulders, analmost angry shake of the head.
"Of course, this is all no good, you know!" he cried, as if it were hertest. "It would take hours to make the analysis that's really wanted."
"But as far as you have gone, Doctor Dollar?"
"As far as I have gone--which isn't a legal or medical inch--itcertainly does look like blood, Lady Vera."
"Of course it is blood. There's another thing that will help us, too."
"What's that?"
"One of the best points in the defense, so far as I've had time to makeout, was about the prisoner's knife. Now, if we take this with us,either to the Home Secretary, or, if he still refuses to see me, to NewScotland Yard----"
"Lady Vera!" the doctor interrupted, aghast at her suicidal zeal. "Is itpossible that you realize the position you are in? It isn't only asituation that you've got to face; that you have already done, superbly!But have you any conception of the consequences?"
"I think I have," said Lady Vera, smiling. "I don't believe they willhang me; it would be affectation to pretend I did. But, of course,that's their business--mine is to change places with an innocent man."
"That you will never do," replied the doctor warmly. "There's noinnocent man in the case; this Croucher is a thief and a perjurer,besides being an old convict who has spent half his life in prison! Hewould have had five years for the other night's work, without anyquestion of a murder; they'll simply pack him off to Dartmoor orPortland when we've saved his miserable neck. And save it we will, nofear about that; but at what a price--at what a price!"
"I don't see that you need trouble about it," said Lady Vera, concernedat his distress, "beyond putting me in touch with Mr. Vinson. The restwill be up to him, as they say; and, after all, it won't be anything sovery terrible to me. I am an old prisoner myself, you must remember!"
There was a gleam of her notorious audacity with all this; but it waslike the glow of flowers on a grave. The horror of things to happen hadnever possessed her valiant eyes, and yet it must have been there, forall at once Dollar missed it. He read her look. He had relieved her mindabout the man in the cell, only to open it at last to the man in hisgrave. Grief crippled her as horror had not; prisons could be broken,but not the prison to which her hand had sent a fellow creature. Yet hergrief was mastered in its turn, forced out of sight before his eyes,even while her flippant speech rang through him as the bravest utterancehe had ever heard.
It blew a bugle in the man's brain, and the call was clear and definite.He knew his own mind only less instantaneously than he had penetratedhers. Never in all his days had he known his mind quite so well as whenshe thought better of the very words which had enlightened him, and wenton to add to them in another key:
"So now, Doctor Dollar, will you crown all your great kindness bytaking me to see the Home Secretary at once?"
"Lady Vera," he exclaimed, with unreasonable irritation, "what is thegood of asking impossibilities? I couldn't take you to Topham Vinsoneven if I would. He would begin by doubting your sanity; there would beall manner of silly difficulties. Moreover, he's not in town."
She showed displeasure at the statement of fact only.
"Doctor Dollar, are you serious?"
"Perfectly."
"Have you forgot that I saw you together at almost two o'clock?"
"I think not quite so late as that. The Home Secretary left Euston at2:45."
"Where for?"
She looked panic-stricken.
"I'll tell you, Lady Vera, if you promise not to follow him by the nexttrain."
"When does it go?"
"Not for some time. There's only one more
; we debated which he shouldtake. But you mustn't take the other, Lady Vera; you must leave that tome. I want you to leave the whole thing to me--from this very momenttill you hear from me again."
"When would that be, Doctor Dollar?"
"As soon as I have seen Mr. Vinson."
"You would undertake to tell him everything?"
"Every detail, exactly as you have told me."
"Will it seem credible at second-hand?"
"Quite enough so to justify a respite. That's the first object; and thisis the first step to it, believe me! There's plenty of time between thisand--Tuesday."
"Oh! I know that," she returned, bluntly disdainful of a well-meanthesitation. "There's still not a moment to lose while that poor man liesfacing death."
"I'm not sure that he does, Lady Vera. The decision's only just beenmade; it won't be out till the day after to-morrow. I don't believe theywould break it to Croucher on Christmas Day."
"They can break the good news instead. Where is Mr. Vinson? It's allright, I won't attempt to tackle him till you have. That's apromise--and I don't break them like windows!"
John Dollar ignored that boast with difficulty. He saw through hertragic levity as through a glass, and his heart cried out with asympathy hard indeed to keep to himself; but it was obviously the lastthing required of him by Lady Vera Moyle. He gave her the requiredinformation in a voice only less well managed than her own. And hethought her eyes softened with the faintest recognition of hisrestraint.
"I thought the Duke had washed his hands of his notorious nephew," sheremarked. "Well, we shall have to spoil the family gathering, I'mafraid."
"That's my job, Lady Vera."
"And I never thanked you for taking it on! Nor will I, Doctor Dollar;thanks don't meet a case like this!" Very frankly she took his handinstead: it was hotter and less steady than her own. "And now what aboutyour train?"
"I'm afraid there's not one till seven o'clock. Vinson talked of goingdown by it at first."
The time-table confirmed his fear; he threw it down, and plunged intothe telephone directory instead. Lady Vera watched him narrowly. He haddropped into his old oak chair, and the sheen of age on the tablebetrayed his face as though it were bent over clear brown water. Shecould see its anxiety as he had not allowed her to see it yet.
"I suppose you wouldn't care to face it in a motor?"
She was faltering for the first time.
"That's exactly what I mean to do," he answered, without looking up fromthe directory. "I'm just going to telephone for a car."
"Then you needn't!" she cried joyfully. "We have at least two eatingtheir bonnets off in our mews. I'll go home in a taxi, and send one ofthem straight round with a driver who knows the way, and a coat that youmust promise to wear, Doctor Dollar. All my people are away except mymother, and she won't know; she isn't strong enough to use the cars. ButI mustn't speak of poor mother, or I shall make a fool of myself yet.It's partly my fault as it is, you see, and of course all this will makeher worse. But I'm not so sure of that, either! My mother is the kind ofperson who has all the modern ailments and no modern ideas--but shecould show us all how to play the game at a pinch. She will be the firstto back me up in the only conceivable course."
This speech had not come quite so fluently as might be supposed, thoughDollar had only interrupted it to send for a taxicab. It had interrupteditself when Lady Vera Moyle was betrayed into speaking of poor LadyArmagh, whose heart-felt disapproval of her daughter's escapades waspublic property. Dollar had heard from Topham Vinson--that very day atlunch--that the last one had made her seriously ill; then what indeed ofimpending resolutions, and the nine days' tragic scandal which was thevery least that could come of them unless----
"Unless!"
In the doctor's mind so many broken sentences began with thatwill-o'-the-wisp among words, that others really spoken fell upon stonyears, and he knew as little what he said in reply. In a dream he saw asmall hand wave as the taxicab vanished round the corner to the right;in a dream he sprang up-stairs, hiding under his coat the weapon withwhich that little hand had dealt out death; and awoke in his wintriestclothes, his greatest coat, to find himself called upon to top the lotwith another of unkempt fur sent with the car.
That aluminum clipper--a fifteen-horse-power Invincible Talboys--wasindeed at the door in incredibly quick time. Twin headlights lit longwedges of London mud; two pairs of goblin goggles mounted up behindthem--one sent with the coat and a message that was more than law. Thedapper chauffeur huddled down behind the wheel; the passenger sat boltupright at his side; the Barton family, his faithful creatures, carriedout an impromptu tableau in the background. Mother and son--thoseunpresentable features of a former occasion--now appeared as immaculatecook and page at the top of the area steps and on the lighted thresholdrespectively. Barton himself leaned out of an upper window, still in hiswhite suit--it was the typically muggy Christmas of a degenerate youngcentury--but with all the black cares of the strange establishment quiteapparent on his snowy shoulders. The dapper driver gave his horn aspiteful pinch. And then they were off, only to be held up in OxfordStreet by the Christmas traffic, but doing better in the Edgware Road,and soon on the way to Edgware itself, and Elstree and St. Albans, andall the lighted towns and pitch-dark roads that lie by night between thecapital of England and her smallest county.
"Least trem-lines this wye," said the dapper one, a mile or two out; andsaid no more for another fifty. But he drove like a little genius, andthe car responded to his cunning hands as a horse that knows its master.She proved to be a sound roadster whose only drawback was a lack ofracing speed; the lad had her in prime condition, and the good road ranfrom under her like silk from a silent loom.
Dollar sat beside him, in the shelter of a wind-screen that glazed andframed a continuous study in nocturnal values. Now the fine shades wouldbe broken by a cluster of lights, soon to scatter and go out like sparksfrom a pipe; now only by the acetylene lamps that kept the foreground ina blaze between villages. Often a ghostly portent appeared hovering overthe road ahead; but this was only the doctor's own anxious face, seendimly in the screen.
And yet he was not really anxious for those first fifty miles. At thestart he was too thankful to be under way, and the road was never emptyof exciting and diverting possibilities. But at Bedford they stopped forsupper: it was Dollar's sudden idea, the hour being now between eightand nine; but the treasure at the wheel professed his readiness to pushon, and it would have been better for Dollar to have taken him at hisword. The break in the run also broke up the dreamy lull induced by thekeen air and the low smooth hum of the car. In the warm hotel, all hollyand Christmas cheer, he came back to real life with a thud, and its mostimmediate problem beset him all the rest of the way.
Hitherto his one anxiety had been to get at the Home Secretary thatnight; henceforth he was having the interview over and over again, witha different result every time. He knew, indeed, what he meant to sayhimself; he had known that before he said good-by to Lady Vera Moyle.But what would the Home Secretary say? Was it conceivable that theblood-stained life-preserver would be enough for him? It would besupported by the sworn statement of a man whom he had learned to trust.But was such utterly indirect evidence in the least likely to upset adecision already taken, if not already communicated to the man in thecondemned cell?
The very thought of that hapless wretch was fraught with definite andvivid horror. The crime doctor had once seen the inside of a condemnedcell; he could see it still. The door was open, the pitiful occupant atexercise in an adjacent yard. He had looked in. The cell was not sogloomy as it should have been. Texts on the walls, sunlight through thebars, and on the fixed flap of clean worn wood, a big open book.
Dollar recalled every detail with morbid fidelity. He had gone in tolook at the book, and found it a bound volume of _Good Words_, open at alaudable serial by a lady then in vogue with the virtuous. Yet thatparticular reader had cut a woman's throat over a quarrel about ashilling, and Dollar had see
n him striding jauntily up and down thenarrow yard, cracking some joke with the attendant warders, a smile onhis scrubby lips and in his bold blue eyes. He could see the fellow ashe had seen him for ten seconds years ago. Yet his pity for one in thesame awful case, for a crime he had not committed, was as nothing to hisinfinite sorrow and compassion for her who had committed it unawares,comparatively light as the punishment for such a deed was bound to be.
But was it? Not for Lady Vera Moyle, at all events! Either she would goscot-free, or her punishment might well be worse than death. It mighteasily kill her mother; then the tragedy would be a double tragedyafter all, and Lady Vera would still be its author. Supposing she hadnot discovered her own crime! Croucher would have been no loss to thecommunity; life-long criminals like Croucher were best out of the way,murderers or no murderers. The crime doctor was convinced of that. Theywere the incurables; extermination was the only thing for them.
"I would shut up my penitentiaries, but enlarge my lethal chamber," hesometimes said, and would be quite serious about it. Yet not for amoment could he have carried his ideas to their logical conclusion inthe concrete case of Alfred Croucher and Lady Vera Moyle. He could havelet a man of that stamp go technically innocent to the gallows--or hethought he could just then. But he could not have allowed the greatestmonster to suffer for Lady Vera's sins--and that he felt in his bones.It was the personal equation as supplied by her that made the thingimpossible. Such a load on such a soul! Better any punishment than that!
At Kettering a right-hand turn led up-hill and down-dale into littleRutland, and Dollar ceased glaring at his own ghost in the wind-screen;a healthily immediate anxiety kept him peering at his watch instead.But now they were skirting one of the longest and stumpiest stone wallsin feudal England, and all of a sudden it parted in twin turrets joinedby triple gates. Over the central arch heraldic monsters pawed thestars; underneath an arc lamp hung resplendent; all three gates wereopen, and the drive beyond was a perspective of guiding lights. It wasevidently a case of Christmas festivities on a suitable scale atStockersham Hall.
Miles up the drive, a semicircle of motor-cars fringed a country editionof the Horseguards Parade, dominated by an escaped hotel; and the carthat really was from London had becoming palpitations in the zone oflight. Before a comparatively simple portico a superlatively splendidmenial looked askance at the doctor's borrowed furs, but was notunimpressed by a curt inquiry for Mr. Topham Vinson, and consented toinquire in his turn.
"Be quick and quiet, and give him this card," said the doctor, slippinghalf-a-sovereign underneath it. "I want to see Mr. Vinson--no oneelse--on urgent business from the Home Office."
Yet the next minute merely brought forth an imposing personage whom thedapper driver did not fail to salute; even Dollar was not positivewhether it was the Duke or his butler until summoned indoors with thesubtle condescension of the supreme servitor. He went as he was, inhirsute coat and goggles, the butler stalking at arm's length, with anair of personal repudiation happily not lost upon the little London lynxin charge of the car.
That artist would have been an endless joy to eyes not turned within.His silent endurance and efficiency, his phlegmatic zest in an adventurewhich might have a professional interest for him, but obviously did notengage his curiosity, were qualities which even the tormented Dollar hadappreciated at intervals on the road. But now he missed a treat. Thelittle Cockney ran his engine till the first flunkey returned and saidthings through the noise. Then he looked under his bonnet, as a monkeyinto its offspring's head. But the climax arrived with sandwiches on alordly tray, when a glass of beer was sent back, and one of champagnebrought instead to this choice specimen of a contemporary type. It wasscarcely down before the passenger reappeared, accompanied by anotherswollen figure in motoring disguise, as well as by my Lord Duke, whosaw them off himself, and did look less ducal than the butler after all.
The many lights of Stockersham dwindled and disappeared into the nightand one long wave of incandescence flowed back as it had come, byfinespun hedge and wirework thicket, through dead villages and sleepingtowns, like phosphorescent foam before a vessel's bows. And in thetorpedo body of the Invincible Talboys, where Dollar now sat behind hiscompanion of the outward trip, and the Home Secretary of England behinda fat cigar, there was a strained silence through two entire counties,but something like an explosion on the confines of the third.
"Do you still refuse to give her name?" demanded Topham Vinson, exactlyas though they had been talking all the time. The stump of his secondcigar was so short that angry light and angry mouth were one.
"I must," said Dollar, in a muffled voice, and he pointed to the hunchedshoulders within a yard of their noses.
"In that case we have no secrets," replied the Home Secretary with asneer. "But why must you, Dollar? She seems to have made no reservationswith you, yet you would make this enormous one with me."
"It's a secret of the consulting-room, Mr. Vinson; those of theconfessional are not more sacred, as you know perfectly well."
"And you expect me to eat my decision on the strength of a hearsayanonymous confession?"
"I do--in the first instance," said Dollar decidedly. "An immediaterespite would commit you to nothing, but I don't ask even for that onthe unsupported strength of what I told you at Stockersham. You knowwhat you've got in your overcoat pocket. Hand it over to your ownanalyst; have an exhumation, if you like, and see if the weapon doesn'tactually fit the wound; if it doesn't, hang your man."
"I'm much obliged for your valuable advice. But it's got to be one thingor the other, once for all; the poor devil has been on tenter-hooksquite long enough."
"And have you forgotten how nearly you decided in his favor, Mr.Vinson, without all this to turn the scale?"
It was perhaps an ominous feature of their mushroom intimacy that theyounger man had not yet been invited to drop the formal prefix inaddressing his senior by a short decade. But this would not have beenthe moment even for a familiarity encouraged in happier circumstances.And yet Dollar dared to pat the great man's arm as he spoke; and thegesture was as the button on the foil; it prevented a shrewd thrust fromdrawing blood, and if anything it improved Topham Vinson's temper.
"It's no good, my dear fellow!" he exclaimed in friendly settlement ofthe general question. "I must have the lady's name, unless she'sdetermined to defeat her own ends."
"Do you mean to say that it's her name or Croucher's life?"
Topham Vinson had not meant to say any such thing--in so many words--andit was annoying to have them put into his mouth. But he had decided notto be annoyed any more. It did not pay with this fellow Dollar; atleast, it had not paid on that occasion; but anybody might be at adisadvantage after a heavy political strain, a lengthy journey, anexcellent dinner, and a development as untimely as it was embarrassing.Mr. Vinson relapsed into silence and an attitude unconsciously modeledon that of the gallant little driver. His body sank deep into the rugs,his head as deep between his shoulders. It was almost Hertfordshirebefore he spoke again.
"Vera Moyle was one of the Oxford Street division," he remarked at last."I know all about her movements on the night of battle; otherwise Ishould want to know about them now. If I thought _she_ was thewoman----"
"What's that?" said Dollar lethargically. "I was almost asleep."
The remarks did not gain weight by repetition, but the broken sentencewas finished with some effect: "I'd let her drain the cup."
"I don't wonder," rejoined Dollar, sympathetically.
"Yet you would have me risk my political existence for one of herkidney!"
"I don't follow."
"You would reprieve the apparent murderer, and let the real one continuemilitant here on earth?"
"I believe she has had her fill of militancy."
"Not she!"
"I'll go bail for her if you like. It was an accident She isheart-broken about it--and you don't know her--I do! I'd back her not torun the risk of such another accident!"
"And what i
f she rounded on me? However such a thing came out, it wouldbe my ruin, Dollar."
"It wouldn't come out through her!"
A certain fervor crept into the doctor's voice. It was obviouslyunconscious, and Topham Vinson was far too astute a person to engenderconsciousness and caution by so much as a rallying syllable. But he didhazard a leading question, subtly introduced as nothing of the sort.
"I'm not trying to get at what I want in a roundabout way," he had thenerve to state. "I've given up trying to pump you, Dollar; but--would itmake a _very_ great scandal if we had to fix this thing on thisparticular young lady?"
"I can't answer about scandals," replied the still not unwary doctor."It would break hearts--probably cause death--make her a double murdererin her own eyes, and God knows what else as a result! And it wouldn't doanybody the least bit of good, because you would still have to giveCroucher a suitable term for his authentic offense."
It was three o'clock on Christmas morning when they saw the lights ofLondon from the top of Brockley Hill; a minute later they were on thetram-lines at the foot, and almost immediately in the purlieus of thetown.
The trip did not end without a telling taste of Mr. Vinson's veryindividual quality. In Maida Vale he suddenly announced his intention ofhaving the life-preserver identified in those very small hours by thepawnbroker who had sold it on the morning of the autumn raid. The crimedoctor was terrified; for aught he knew the man might be well aware thathe had sold it to Lady Vera Moyle. She was notorious enough, in allconscience; his only hope lay in the fact that he himself had not knownher by sight before that day. In vain he raised various objections; theywere well met by his own previous arguments for the immediate reprieveof Alfred Croucher, and he feared to press them. He knew only the nameof the pawnbroker's street, but here Cockney sharpness came in again,and they were pounding on the right shutters by half past three. Anup-stairs window flew alight, up went a sash, and out came an angryhead.
"My name is Topham Vinson," said one of the swaddled men in a sepulchralvoice. "I'm the Home Secretary, but I can't force you to come down andspeak to me because of that. I can only make it more or less worth yourwhile."
He was fishing for his sovereign-case as he spoke. In another minute theprivate door had shut behind him and Doctor Dollar, and an obsequioussack of humanity shuffled before them into a sanctum still redolent of asomewhat highly-seasoned meal.
"I remember 'aving it in the thop," said the unkempt head protrudingfrom the sack. "But I can't thay 'ow it came here--that I can thwear ina court of juthtith, my lord! It'th a narthy, beathly thing, but Ithwear it wath here when I took over the bithneth."
"I don't care how or when it came here," said Topham Vinson, countingthe sovereigns in the gold case attached to the watch-chain of othermemories. "I want to know if you remember selling this life-preserver?"
"Yeth, I do!"
"When?"
"It would be--let me thee--thome time lartht October or November."
"Do you remember who bought it?"
"Yeth--a young lady!"
Dollar breathed again. The man did not know her name; at first he wasextremely shaky on the point of personal appearance. But the doctorassisted him by unscrupulously suggesting a number of markedcharacteristics which Lady Vera Moyle did not happen to possess. The manfell straight into the trap, recalled every imaginary feature, andfinally earned big gold by quite convincingly connecting the sale of thelife-preserver with the date of the great women's raid. Mr. Vinsonlooked very stern as he led the way out into the street; and it was hewho sharply woke the little chauffeur, who was snoring heartily over hiswheel.
"I like that lad," he muttered in the car. "He does nothing by halves.No more do I! Do you mind dropping me first at Portman Square?"
Dollar gave the order, and they slid through the empty streets as thoughman and car were fresh from the garage. There was not a soul in PortmanSquare, or a light in any of the houses except the Home Secretary's.They had telephoned through from Stockersham after his departure, andthe door opened as he emptied his remaining sovereigns into thechauffeur's hand, before taking Dollar's with no lack of warmth.
"I can't ask you in this time," said Topham Vinson, smiling. "Apart fromthe hour, I've got to go straight to the telephone, get through toPentonville, and spoil the Governor's night!"
"Reprieved?" gasped the doctor. It was the one word that would come.
The Home Secretary nodded rather grimly, but was smiling as he shut thedoor almost on the hand with which John Dollar would have seized hisonce more. There was a shooting of bolts inside.
Dollar turned slowly round, wondering if at last he could tell thelittle driver something about the night's enterprise in which he hadplayed so heroic a part. There was no need. The driver had kept eyes andears wide open--and collapsed once more over the wheel. This time it wasnot in sleep, but in a dead faint; and the driving goggles were allawry, the driver's hat had tumbled off, the driver's hair had brokenbounds.
It was a girl's hair, and the girl was Lady Vera Moyle.