The Green Rust/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
BRIDGERS BREAKS LOOSE
DR. VAN HEERDEN sat by the side of the big four-poster bed, where the girl lay, and his cold blue eyes held a spark of amusement.
"You look very foolish," he said.
Oliva Cresswell turned her head sharply so as to remove the man from her line of vision.
More than this she could not do, for her hands and feet were strapped, and on the pillow, near her head, was a big bath-towel saturated with water which had been employed in stifling her healthy screams which marked her return to understanding.
"You look very foolish," said the doctor, chewing at the end of his cigar, "and you look no more foolish than you have been. Bridgers let you out, eh? Nice man, Mr. Bridgers; what had he been telling you?"
She turned her head again and favoured him with a stare. Then she looked at the angry red mark on her wrists where the straps chafed.
"How Hun-like!" she said; but this time he smiled.
"You will not make me lose my temper again, Little-wife-to-be," he mocked her; "you may call me Hun or Heinz or Fritz or any of the barbarous and vulgar names which the outside world employ to vilify my countrymen, but nothing you say will distress or annoy me. To-morrow you and I will be man and wife."
"This is not Germany," she said scornfully. "You cannot make a woman many you against her will, this is"
"The land of the free," he interrupted suavely. "Yes—I know those lands, on both sides of the Atlantic. But even there curious things happen. And you're going to marry me—you will say 'Yes' to the sleek English clergyman when he asks you whether you will take this man to be your married husband, to love and cherish and all that sort of thing, you'll say 'Yes.'"
"I shall say 'No!'" she said steadily.
"You will say 'Yes," he smiled. "I had hoped to be able to give sufficient time to you so that I might persuade you to act sensibly. I could have employed arguments which I think would have convinced you that there are worse things than marriage with me."
"I cannot think of any," she replied coldly.
"Then you are singularly dense," said the doctor. "I have already told you the conditions under which that marriage will take place. There might be no marriage, you know, and a different end to this adventure," he said, significantly, and she shivered.
He said nothing more for five minutes, simply sitting biting at the cigar between bis teeth and looking at her blankly, as though his thoughts were far away and she was the least of the problems which confronted him.
"I know it is absurd to ask you," he said suddenly, "but I presume you have not devoted any of your studies to the question of capital punishment. I see you haven't; but there is one interesting fact about the execution of criminals which is not generally known to the public, and it is that in many countries, my own for example, before a man is led to execution he is doped with a drug which I will call 'Bromocine.' Does that interest you?"
She made no reply, and he laughed quietly.
"It should interest you very much," he said. "The effect of Bromocine," he went on, speaking with the quiet precision of one who was lecturing on the subject to an interested audience, "is peculiar. It reduces the subject to a condition of extreme lassitude, so that really nothing matters or seems to matter. Whilst perfectly conscious the subject goes obediently to his death, behaves normally and does just what he is told—in fact, it destroys the will."
"Why do you tell me this?" she asked, a sudden fear gripping her heart.
He half-turned in his chair, reached out his hand and took a little black case from the table near the window. This he laid on the bed and opened, and she watched him, fascinated. He took a tiny bottle containing a colourless liquid, and with great care laid it on the coverlet. Then he extracted a small hypodermic syringe and a needle-pointed nozzle. He uncorked the bottle, inserted the syringe and filled it, then he screwed on the needle, pressed the plunger until a fine jet leapt in the air, then he laid it carefully back in the case.
"You say you will not marry me and I presume that you would make a scene when I bring in the good English parson to perform the ceremony. I had hoped," he said apologetically, "to have given you a wedding with all the pomp and circumstance which women, as I understand, love. Failing that, I hoped for a quiet wedding in the little church out yonder." He jerked his head toward the window. "But now I am afraid that I must ask his reverence to carry out the ceremony in this house."
He rose, leant over her and deftly pulled back her sleeve.
"If you scream I shall smother you with the towel," he said. "This won't hurt you very much. As I was going to say, you will be married here because you are in a delicate state of health and you will say 'Yes.'"
She winced as the needle punctured the skin.
"It won't hurt you for very long," he said calmly. "You will say 'Yes,' I repeat, because I shall tell you to say 'Yes.'"
Suddenly the sharp pricking pain in her arm ceased. She was conscious of a sensation as though her arm was being blown up like a bicycle tyre, but it was not unpleasant. He withdrew the needle and kept his finger pressed upon the little red wound where it had gone in.
"I shall do this to you again to-night," he said, "and you will not feel it at all, and to-morrow morning, and you will not care very much what happens. I hope it will not be necessary to give you a dose to-morrow afternoon."
"I shall not always be under the influence of this drug," she said between her teeth, "and there will be a time of reckoning for you, Dr. van Heerden."
"By which time," he said calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a noxious drug'—that is the terminology which describes the offence—will be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened and removed the straps at her wrists and about her feet and put them in his pocket.
"You had better get up and walk about," he said, "or you will be stiff. I am really being very kind to you if you only knew it. I am too big to be vindictive. And, by the way, I had an interesting talk with your friend, Mr. Beale, this afternoon, a persistent young man who has been having me shadowed all day." He laughed quietly. "If I hadn't to go back to the surgery for the Bromocine I should have missed our very interesting conversation. That young man is very much in love with you"—he looked amusedly at the growing red in her face. "He is very much in love with you," he repeated. "What a pity! What a thousand pities!"
"How soon will this drug begin to act?" she asked.
"Are you frightened?"
"No, but I should welcome anything which made me oblivious to your presence—you are not exactly a pleasant companion," she said, with a return to the old tone he knew so well.
"Content yourself, little person," he said with simulated affection. "You will soon be rid of me."
"Why do you want to marry me?"
"I can tell you that now," he said: "Because you are a very rich woman and I want your money, half of which comes to me on my marriage."
"Then the man spoke the truth!" She sat up suddenly, but the effort made her head swim.
He caught her by the shoulders and laid her gently down.
"What man—not that babbling idiot, Bridgers?" He said something, but instantly recovered his self-possession. "Keep quiet," he said with professional sternness. "Yes, you are the heiress of an interesting gentleman named John Millinborn."
"John Millinborn!" she gasped. "The man who was murdered!"
"The man who was killed," he corrected. "'Murder' is a stupid, vulgar word. Yes, my dear, you are his heiress. He was your uncle, and he left you something over six million dollars. That is to say he left us that colossal sum."
"But I don't understand. What does it mean?"
"Your name is Prédeaux. Your father was the ruffian"
"I know, I know," she cried. "The man in the hotel. The man who died. My father!"
"Interesting, isn't it?" he said calmly, "like something out of a book. Yes, my dear, that was your parent, a dissolute ruffian whom you will do well to forget. I heard John Millinborn tell his lawyer that your mother died of a broken heart, penniless, as a result of your father's cruelty and unscrupulousness, and I should imagine that that was the truth."
"My father!" she murmured.
She lay, her face as white as the pillow, her eyes closed.
"John Millinborn left a fortune for—you and I think that you might as well know the truth now—the money was left in trust. You were not to know that you were an heiress until you were married. He was afraid of some fortune-hunter ruining your young life as Prédeaux ruined your mother's. That was thoughtful of him. Now I don't intend ruining your life, I intend leaving you with half your uncle's fortune and the capacity for enjoying all that life can hold for a high-spirited young woman."
"I'll not do it, I'll not do it, I'll not do it," she muttered.
He rose from the chair and bent over her.
"My young friend, you are going to sleep," he said to himself, waited a little longer and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He descended to the hall and passed into the big dining-hall beneath the girl's bedroom. The room had two occupants, a stout, hairless man who had neither hair, eyebrows, nor vestige of beard, and a younger man.
"Hello, Bridgers," said van Heerden addressing the latter, "you've been talking."
"Well, who doesn't?" snarled the man.
He pulled the tortoiseshell box from his pocket, opened the lid and took a pinch from its contents, snuffling the powder luxuriously.
"That stuff will kill you one of these days," said van Heerden.
"It will make him better-tempered," growled the hairless man. "I don't mind people who take cocaine as long as they are taking it. It's between dopes that they get on my nerves."
"Dr. Milsom speaks like a Christian and an artist," said Bridgers, with sudden cheerfulness. "If I didn't dope, van Heerden, I should not be working in your beastly factory, but would probably be one of the leading analytical chemists in America. But I'll go back to do my chore," he said rising. "I suppose I get a little commission for restoring your palpitating bride? Milsom tells me that it is she. I thought it was the other dame—the Dutch girl. I guess I was a bit dopey."
Van Heerden frowned.
"You take too keen an interest in my affairs," he said.
"Aw! You're getting touchy. If I didn't get interested in something I'd go mad," chuckled Bridgers.
He had reached that stage of cocaine intoxication when the world was a very pleasant place indeed and full of subject for jocularity.
"This place is getting right on my nerves," he went on, "couldn't I go to London? I'm stagnating here. Why, some of the stuff I cultivated the other day wouldn't react. Isn't that so, Milsom? I get so dull in this hole that all bugs look alike to me."
Van Heerden glanced at the man who was addressed as Dr. Milsom and the latter nodded.
"Let him go back," he said, "I'll look after him. How's the lady?" asked Milsom when they were alone.
The other made a gesture and Dr. Milsom nodded.
"It's good stuff," he said. "I used to give it to lunatics in the days of long ago."
Van Heerden did not ask him what those days were. He never pryed too closely into the early lives of his associates, but Milsom's history was public property. Four years before he had completed a "life sentence" of fifteen years for a crime which had startled the world in '99.
"How are things generally?" he asked.
Van Heerden shrugged his shoulders.
"For the first time I am getting nervous," he said. "It isn't so much the fear of Beale that rattles me, but the sordid question of money. The expenses are colossal and continuous."
"Hasn't your—Government"—Milsom balked at the word—"haven't your friends abroad moved in the matter yet?"
Van Heerden shook his head.
"I am very hopeful there," he said. "I have been watching the papers very closely, especially the Agrarian papers, and, unless I am mistaken, there is a decided movement in the direction of support. But I can't depend on that. The marriage must go through to-morrow."
"White is getting nervous, too," he went on. "He is pestering me about the money I owe him, or rather the syndicate owes him. He's on the verge of ruin."
Milsom made a little grimace.
"Then he'll squeal," he said, "those kind of people always do. You'll have to keep him quiet. You say the marriage is coming off to-morrow?"
"I have notified the parson," said van Heerden. "I told him my fiancée is too ill to attend the church and the ceremony must be performed here."
Milsom nodded. He had risen from the table and was looking out upon the pleasant garden at the rear of the house.
"A man could do worse than put in three or four weeks here," he said. "Look at that spread of green."
He pointed to an expanse of waving grasses, starred with the van-coloured blossoms of wild flowers.
"I was never a lover of nature," said van Heerden, carelessly.
Milsom grunted.
"You have never been in prison," he said cryptically. "Is it time to give your lady another dose?"
"Not for two hours," said van Heerden. "I will play you at piquet."
The cards were shuffled and the hands dealt when there was a scamper of feet in the hall, the door burst open and a man ran in. He was wearing a soiled white smock and his face was distorted with terror.
"M'sieur, m'sieur," he cried, "that imbecile Bridgers!"
"What's wrong?" Van Heerden sprang to his feet.
"I think he is mad. He is dancing about the grounds, singing, and he has with him the preparation!"
Van Heerden rapped out an oath and leapt through the door, the doctor at his heels. They took the short cut and ran up the steps leading from the well courtyard, and bursting through the bushes came within sight of the offender.
But he was not dancing now. He was standing with open mouth, staring stupidly about him.
"I dropped it, I dropped it!" he stammered.
There was no need for van Heerden to ask what he had dropped, for the green lawn which had excited Milsom's admiration was no longer to be seen. In its place was a black irregular patch of earth which looked as though it had been blasted in the furnaces of hell, and the air was filled with the pungent mustiness of decay.