A Duel Part 45

"I can't think where I put it; those brutes can't have had it. I had it myself last night, I know. Where did I put it? I can't wait to think--I can't wait; besides it doesn't matter. Anything will do to open it."

She took a polished bra.s.s poker. With it she made a hole in the lid of the case large enough to enable her to insert her fingers. Then, with her hands, she tore the lid away--a sufficiently easy task, since the wood proved to be less than an eighth of an inch in thickness. The case contained six bottles.

She took out one; it was labelled "Pure Ether--Poison".

Withdrawing the stopper, paying no attention to the statement on the label, she poured out nearly a winegla.s.sful, which she instantly swallowed, coupling with it, as it were, a somewhat gruesome sentiment. "Here's to Isaac Luker! I wish he was in reach; I'd like to kill him."

Scarcely were the words out of her lips than the door opened to admit her husband. He stared at her.

"Belle, there doesn't seem to be a servant in the place--not a creature. Where are they all off to? What's it mean?"

She replied to his question with another.

"Gregory, doesn't there seem to you to be something singular about this bedroom?"

"Bedroom? It's not a bedroom; it's a boudoir. What do you mean?

Belle, what's the matter with the house? What have you got in your hand? What are you drinking?"

Mrs. Lamb was looking round her in a fas.h.i.+on which induced her husband to draw back, as if in doubt.

"Have you ever seen it before--anywhere? Isn't there something strange about it?--especially the bed?"

Mr. Lamb seemed to be of opinion that his wife's manner was distinctly disagreeable; apparently he did not know what to make of it.

"Bed?--what bed? There's no bed here. You're--you're not well.

Don't talk like that; you make me go all over creeps. I say, Belle, I do wish you'd give me some coin--if it's only a tenner.

I'm broke to the wide."

"Gregory!"

"Well?"

"Come here; I want to speak to you."

"Thank you, I'm awfully sorry, but I've got an appointment with a man; I can't stop. About that money--Belle! now, what's up?"

With a swift, unexpected movement, interposing herself between him and the door, his wife had slipped her arm through his, and was looking at him with something in her big black eyes which made him more uncomfortable than he would have cared to admit.

Considering the bold, ringing, almost bl.u.s.terous tones in which she was wont to speak, there was something unpleasantly significant in the half-whisper in which she addressed him now.

"Gregory, you must stop--you mustn't go. There's something which I wish to say to you--a great deal which I wish to say to you, and I must say it to you now--here"--her voice sank still lower--"in Cuthbert Grahame's bedroom."

CHAPTER XXVIII

MR. LAMB IN A COMMUNICATIVE MOOD

In the evening of that day Margaret Wallace and Harry Talfourd dined with Dr. Twelves. The young lady, who throughout the day had remained in a curious mood, was indisposed to avail herself of the doctor's hospitality; but she was over-persuaded by the doctor, who was insistent, and by Mr. Talfourd, who was on his side. Throughout the day they had talked and talked and talked.

Harry was of opinion that, on a certain theme, they had talked too much. There was something about Margaret which was new to him; which he did not understand. It troubled him. So when the doctor changed the subject by asking them to dine with him he accepted, for himself, at once; and when Margaret hummed and hawed, and began to make excuses, for her also. He told her that she would have to dine with the doctor--and she had to. The two men bore her off with them in triumph.

The doctor entertained his guests at the Holborn Restaurant. In his youth he had known the place when it was a dancing-hall; had visited it while undergoing various transformations during his recurrent trips to town, and, whenever he came to London, made a point of patronising it still. The meal was hardly a jovial one.

The host and Harry did all they could to keep the conversation on impersonal and frivolous lines, but Margaret would have none of it. She could scarcely be induced to open her lips to put food between them; talk she would not. The colloquial gifts for which she was famous seemed to have deserted her entirely; she was tongue-tied. When, in a dinner party of three, the lady, who is both young and charming, cannot be persuaded to speak, the meal is apt to prove but a qualified success. The doctor's little festive gathering turned out to be not quite so festive as it might have been.

As chance, or fate, had it, the two men's well-meant efforts to keep the conversation in exhilarating channels were doomed to meet with complete fiasco. After the meal was finished, as they strolled along Holborn, enjoying the fine evening, considering whether to take a cab, and if so, where to tell the cabman to take them to--for the doctor was firm in his conviction that this was an occasion on which they were bound to make a night of it--the issue was taken out of their hands in a wholly unexpected fas.h.i.+on. A gentleman, who did not seem to be so capable of seeing where he was going as he ought to have been, all but cannoned against Mr. Talfourd, drawing back to apologise just in time.

"Beg pardon! Why, it's Talfourd! Hollo, Talfourd! who's the lady? and who's----" The speaker was staring at the doctor.

"Hollo! I've seen you somewhere before!"

The doctor was returning him look for look.

"And I've seen you. You're Mr. Gregory Lamb, who lodged one time at David Blair's over the other side of Pitmuir, to whom I was foolish enough to loan a brace of sovereigns, for four-and-twenty hours, as I understood, but which you've never paid me back unto this day."

Mr. Lamb was not at all abashed; he never was by reminders of that kind--they were legion.

"Why, of course, it's the doctor--the cranky old doctor. I remember you quite well. How are you, old chap? You haven't--you haven't a brace of sovereigns on you now?"

"I have not a brace which you are likely to be able to bag, Mr.

Lamb. I understand that you have married since I saw you last."

"Since you saw me! I was married then."

"Indeed? But I gathered that you had since married the widow of an old friend of mine--Mrs. Cuthbert Grahame."

"Widow? She wasn't his widow; she never was his wife."

"Pardon me, but she went through the Scotch form of marriage with him in my presence."

"That was all her dashed impudence. She was my wife long before that; before she ever knew that he was in the world. Doctor, my wife's a devil of a woman, and she's been treating me in a devil of a way. If I were to tell you all that she's been doing, so far as I can understand, mind you--it's quite between ourselves--you'd go straight to a police station, and you'd ask for a warrant; but I'm her husband, so I can't. Listen to me--this is between ourselves--if you'll come to a place I know, and where they know me--most respectable place--and do me the pleasure of having a drink with me--and Talfourd, and the lady--never leave out a lady when it's a question of a little refreshment--I'll tell you what she's just been telling me, not five minutes ago. It'll surprise you. Good as confessed to committing murder; half expected her to murder me--give you my word it's a fact. Come and have a little something and I'll tell you all about it--between ourselves, you know."

The doctor exchanged glances with Mr. Talfourd and with Margaret.

"It seems to me, Mr. Lamb, that you've had more than a little something already."

"You're wrong, old chap--quite wrong; do a.s.sure you. It's ether--beastly ether."

"Ether?"

"Ever heard of the stuff before? I never did. Seems she lives on it; takes it in quarts. She crammed some of it down my throat--fairly took me by the throat and crammed it down. I'm like a child in her hands--give you my word. She's a devil of a woman. Never tasted anything like it before; seems to have sent me stark staring mad. Don't know whether I'm standing on my head or heels. Let's go and have some Christian liquor, and I'll tell you all about it."

Again the doctor exchanged glances with his companions.

"If you'll allow me to offer you a seat in my cab I'll take you to a friend who'll be able to give you some of the finest whisky in England, and there, at your leisure, you can tell us all about it."

"My dear old chap, when they called you cranky I always said that there was more in you than they might think, and I stand to it to the present moment. I say----"

The doctor did not wait to hear what he said; he bundled him into a four-wheeled cab after Margaret and Harry. When the cab had started Margaret asked--

"Where are you taking us?"