The Green Rust/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
THE MAN WITH THE BIG HEAD
NO. 342, Lothbury, is a block of business offices somewhat unpretentious in their approach but of surprising depth and importance when explored. Oliva Cresswell stood for awhile in the great lobby, inspecting the names of the occupants, which were inscribed on porcelain slips in two big frames on each wall of the vestibule.
After a lengthy search she discovered the name of the Beale Agency under the heading "fourth floor" and made her way to the elevator.
Mr. Beale's office was at the end of a seemingly interminable corridor and consisted, as she was to find, of an outer and an inner chamber. The outer was simply furnished with a table, two chairs and a railed fence bisected with a little wooden gateway.
A boy sat at one table, engaged in laborious exercise on a typewriter with one finger of one hand.
He jumped up as she came through the door.
"Miss Cresswell?" he asked. "Mr. Beale will see you."
He opened the wicket-gate and led the way to a door marked "Private."
It was Beale who opened the door in response to the knock.
"Come in, Miss Cresswell," he said cheerily, "I didn't expect you for half an hour."
"I thought I'd start well," she smiled.
She had had many misgivings that morning, and had spent a restless night debating the wisdom of engaging herself to an employer whose known weakness had made his name a by-word. But a promise was a promise and, after all, she told herself, her promise was fulfilled when she had given the new work a trial.
"Here is your desk," he said, indicating a large office table in the centre of the room, "and here is my little library. You will note that it mainly consists of agricultural returns and reports—do you read French?" She nodded. "Good, and Spanish—that's rather too much to expect, isn't it?"
"I speak and read Spanish very well," she said. "When I was a little girl I lived around in Paris, Lyons, and Barcelona—my first regular work—the first I was paid for—was in the Anglo-Spanish Cable office in Barcelona."
"That's lucky," he said, apparently relieved, "though I could have taught you the few words that it is necessary you should know to understand the Argentine reports. What I particularly want you to discover—and you will find two or three hundred local guide-books on that shelf at the far end of the room, and these will help you a great deal—is the exact locations of all the big wheat-growing districts, the number of hectares under cultivation in normal times, the method by which the wheat areas are divided—by fences, roads, etc.—the average size of the unbroken blocks of wheatland and, if possible, the width of the roads or paths which divide them."
"Gracious!" she cried in dismay.
"It sounds a monumental business, but I think you will find it simple. The Agricultural Department of the United States Government, for instance, tabulate all those facts. For example, they compel farmers in certain districts to keep a clear space between each lot so that in case of the crops being fired, the fire may be isolated. Canada, the Argentine and Australia have other methods."
She had seated herself at the desk and was jotting down a note of her duties.
"Anything more?" she asked.
"Yes—I want the names of the towns in the centre of the wheat-growing areas, a list of the hotels in those towns. The guide-books you will find up to date, and these will inform you on this subject. Particularly do I want hotels noted where automobiles can be hired, the address of the local bank and the name of the manager and, where the information is available, the name of the chief constable, sheriff or chef d'gendarmerie in each district."
She looked up at him, her pencil poised.
"Are you serious—of course, I'll do all this, but somehow it reminds me of a story I once read"
"I know it," said Beale promptly, "it is 'The Case of the Red-Haired Man,' one of Doyle's stories about a man who, to keep him away from his shop, was employed on the useless task of copying the 'Encyclopædia Britannica"—no, I am asking you to do serious work, Miss Cresswell—work which I do not want spoken about."
He sat on the edge of the table, looking down at her, and if his eyes were smiling it was because that was their natural expression. She had never seen them when they did not hold the ghost of some joke inwardly enjoyed.
But her instinct told her that he was very much in earnest and that the task he had set her was one which had reason behind it.
"Take the districts first and work up the hotels, et cetera," he suggested, "you will find it more interesting than a novel. Those little books," he pointed to the crowded shelf by the window, "will carry you to stations and ranches and farms all over the world. You shall be wafted through Manitoba, and cross the United States from New England to California. You will know Sydney and Melbourne and the great cornland at the back of beyond. And you'll sit in cool patios and sip iced drinks with Señor Don Perfecto de Cuba who has ridden in from his rancio to inquire the price of May wheat, or maybe you'll just amble through India on an elephant, sleeping in bungalows, listening to the howling of tigers, mosquitoes"
"Now I know you're laughing at me," she smiled.
"Not altogether," he said quietly; then: "Is there any question you'd like to ask me? By the way, the key of the office is in the right-hand drawer; go to lunch when you like and stay away as long as you like. Your cheque will be paid you every Friday morning."
"But where?" She looked round the room. "Where do you work?"
"I don't work," he said promptly, "you do the work and I get the honour and glory. When I come in I will sit on the edge of your desk, which is not graceful but it is very comfortable. There is one question I meant to ask you. You said you were in a cable office—do you add to your accomplishments a working knowledge of the Morse Code?"
She nodded.
"I can see you being useful. If you need me"—he jerked his head toward a telephone on a small table—"call 8761 Gerrard."
"And where is that?" she asked.
"If I thought you were anything but a very sane young lady, I should tell you that it is the number of my favourite bar," he said gravely. "I will not, however, practise that harmless deception upon you."
Again she saw the dancing light of mischief in his eyes.
"You're a queer man," she said, "and I will not make myself ridiculous by speaking to you for your good."
She heard his soft laughter as the door closed behind him and, gathering an armful of the guide-books, she settled down for a morning's work which proved even more fascinating than his fanciful pictures had suggested. She found herself wondering to what use all this information she extracted could be put. Was Mr. Beale really a buyer or was he interested in the sale of agricultural machinery? Why should he want to know that Jonas Scobbs was the proprietor of Scobbs' Hotel and General Emporium in the town of Red Horse Valley, Alberta, and what significance attached to the fact that he had an automobile for hire or that he ran a coach every Wednesday to Regina?
Then she fell to speculating upon the identity and appearance of this man who bore this weird name of Scobbs. She pictured him an elderly man with chin whiskers who wore his pants thrust into top-boots. And why was Red Horse Valley so called? These unexpected and, to her, hitherto unknown names of places and people set in train most interesting processions of thought that slid through the noisy jangle of traffic, and coloured the drab walls of all that was visible of the City of London through the window with the white lights and purple shadows of dream prairies.
When she looked at her watch—being impelled to that act by the indescribable sensation of hunger—she was amazed to discover that it was three o'clock.
She jumped up and went to the outer office in search of the boy who, she faintly remembered, had erupted into her presence hours before with a request which she had granted without properly hearing. He was not in evidence. Evidently his petition had also been associated with the gnawing pangs which assail boyhood at one o'clock in the afternoon.
She was turning back to her office, undecided as to whether she should remain until his return or close the office entirely, when the shuffle of feet brought her round.
The outer office was partitioned from the entrance by a long "fence," the farther end of which was hidden by a screen of wood and frosted glass. It was from behind that screen that the noise came and she remembered that she had noted a chair there—evidently a place where callers waited.
"Who is there?" she asked.
There was a creak as the visitor rose.
"Eggscuse, mattam," said a wheezy voice, "I gall to eng-vire for Mister Peale, isn't it?"
He shuffled forward into view, a small man with a dead white face and a head of monstrous size.
She was bereft of speech and could only look at him, for this was the man she had found in her rooms the night before her dismissal—the man who carried the Green Rust.
Evidently he did not recognize her.
"Mister Peale, he tolt me, I must gall him mit der telephone, but der nomber she vas gone oudt of mine head!"
He blinked at her with his short-sighted eyes and laid a big hairy hand on the gate.
"You must—you mustn't come in," she said breathlessly. "I will call Mr. Beale—sit—sit down again."
"Sch," he said obediently, and shuffled back to his chair, "dell him der Herr Brofessor it was."
The girl took up the telephone receiver with a shaking hand and gave the number. It was Beale's voice that answered her.
"There's a man here," she said hurriedly, "a—a—the man—who was in my room—the Herr Professor."
She heard his exclamation of annoyance.
"I'm sorry," and if she could judge by the inflection of his voice his sorrow was genuine. "I'll be with you in ten minutes—he's quite a harmless old gentleman"
"Hurry, please."
She heard the "click" of his receiver and replaced her own slowly. She did not attempt to go back to the outer office, but waited by the closed door. She recalled the night, the terror of that unknown presence in her darkened flat, and shuddered. Then Beale, surprisingly sober, had come in and he and the "burglar" had gone away together.
What had these two, Mr. Beale and the "Herr Professor," in common? She heard the snap of the outer door, and Beale's voice speaking quickly. It was probably German—she had never acquired the language and hardly recognized it, though the guttural "Zu befel, Herr Peale" was distinct.
She heard the shuffle of the man's feet and the closing of the outer door and then Beale came in, and his face was troubled.
"I can't tell you how sorry I am that the old man called—I'd forgotten that he was likely to come."
She leant against the table, both hands behind her.
"Mr. Beale," she said, "will you give me straight-forward answers to a number of plain questions?"
He nodded.
"If I can," he said.
"Is the Herr Professor a friend of yours?"
"No—I know him and in a way I am sorry for him. He is a German who pretends to be Russian. Immensely poor and unprepossessing to a painful degree, but a very clever scientist. In fact, a truly great analytical chemist who ought to be holding a good position. He told me that he had the best qualifications, and I quite believe him, but that his physical infirmities, his very freakishness had ruined him."
Her eyes softened with pity—the pity of the strong for the weak, of the beautiful for the hideous.
"If that is true" she began, and his chin went up. "I beg your pardon, I know it is true. It is tragic, but—did you know him before you met him in my room?"
He hesitated.
"I knew him both by repute and by sight," he said. "I knew the work he was engaged on and I guessed why he was engaged. But I had never spoken to him."
"Thank you—now for question number two. You needn't answer unless you wish."
"I shan't," he said.
"That's frank, anyway. Now tell me, Mr. Beale, what is all this mystery about? What is the Green Rust? Why do you pretend to be a—a drunkard when you're not one?" (It needed some boldness to say this, and she flushed with the effort to shape the sentence.) "Why are you always around so providentially when you're needed, and," here she smiled (as he thought) deliciously, "why weren't you round yesterday, when I was nearly arrested for theft?"
He was back on the edge of the table, evidently his favourite resting-place, she thought, and he ticked her questions off on his fingers.
"Question number one cannot be answered. Question number two, why do I pretend to be a—a drunkard?" he mimicked her audaciously. "There are other things which intoxicate a man beside love and beer, Miss Cresswel."
"How gross!" she protested. "What are they?"
"Work, the chase, scientific research and the first spring scent of the hawthorn," he said solemnly. "As to the third question, why was I not around when you were nearly arrested? Well, I was around. I was in your flat when you came in and escaped along the fire parapet."
"Mr. Beale!" she gasped. "Then it was you—you are a detective!"
"I turned your desk and dressing-chest upside down? Yes, it was I," he said without shame, ignoring the latter part of the sentence. "I was looking for something."
"You were looking for something?" she repeated. "What were you looking for?"
"Three registered envelopes which were planted in your flat yesterday morning," he said, "and what's more I found 'em!"
She put her hand to her forehead in bewilderment.
"Then you"
"Saved you from a cold, cold prison cell. Have you had any lunch? Why, you're starving!"
"But"
"Bread and butter is what you want," said the practical Mr. Beale, "with a large crisp slice of chicken and stacks of various vegetables."
And he hustled her from the office.