The Crime Doctor Part 12

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Did I say anything?"]

Young Edenborough was looking puzzled, but for the moment taken out of himself. He had heard of Doctor Dollar as a rather eccentric consultant, but as the very man for him, from no less an authority than the Home Secretary of England, and no further back than that very evening at dinner. He had come straight round from Portman Square, foreseeing miracles and magic potions; but he had not foreseen John Dollar, or his unprofessional conversation, or the slight cast that actually added to his magnetic eyes, his cheery yet gentle confidence, or (least of all) a serious if casual invitation for the night.

"That's exactly what I do mean," said the author of these surprises.

"It's the most silent room in London, and there are other little points about it. I got our friend Topham to give it a trial during the bread strike. His verdict was that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would sleep the sleep of the just there!"

Edenborough had a laugh that turned him back into a schoolboy; but he checked it sharply, as though the sound put him to shame and pain.

"I would give anything for one decent night," he said. "But you are far too good, sir, especially to a man you know nothing at all about."

"I ought to know more in the morning, Mr. Edenborough, but it will keep very well till then. Enough for the night that you're a friend of the Home Secretary, and at your worst at just the time when a man wants to be at his best."

Edenborough smote his brow like a young man on the stage, but with a piteous spontaneity beyond all histrionic art.

"It's on Thursday!" he cried, as one in exquisite dread. "My G.o.d, I'm to be married on Thursday, and this is Sunday night! How can I toe the mark unless I get some sleep? And how can I sleep----"

"Leave that to me," said Dollar, cutting a pregnant pause as short as possible; "leave everything to me, and come straight up-stairs. I keep the room in constant readiness; you shall be fitted with pajamas, and I'll send a special messenger anywhere you like for whatever you may want in the morning. Come, my dear man! I am burning to give my Chamber of Peace a crucial test, because I know we shall all come out with flying colors!"

There was less confidence in the Doctor Dollar who ran down-stairs a little later and sat at his telephone with an urgent face. In another minute he had left the house, and in another two Mr. Topham Vinson was opening the door to him in Portman Square.

"I call this too bad of you," began the doctor, short of breath and shorter still of patience with his powerful friend.

"My dear fellow, I couldn't help it," vowed the Minister, with disarming meekness. "He would go straight to you, and just then I couldn't have rung you up without giving him away at this end."

"I can stay five minutes," said Dollar, looking at his watch, "to hear as much as you can tell me in the time of what I ought to have known before I saw your neurotic friend."

"Hasn't he told you all about himself?"

"Hardly a word worth anything in a case like this, where the cause matters more than the effect. Of course I could have insisted, but that might have finished him off for the night. I gather, however, that he's one of the First Lord's secretaries, but a friend of yours, on the brink of being married, and in more than the normal state about it, or something to do with it."

"I'll take your points in order," said Topham Vinson, who could be brisker than anybody when he chose. "George Edenborough is not only one of Stockton's secretaries, but the most private and most confidential of the crowd. I don't know about his being a friend of mine; I've been a friend to him for family reasons, and found him a nice enough fellow.

But the girl he's going to marry--if they do marry--is one of us."

"If!" cried the doctor. "Do you mean to say she'd draw back in the last week?"

"She may not be able to help herself," was the grave reply. "George Edenborough is under a cloud that may burst at any moment."

"A sudden cloud?"

"Out of the blue for me. I only heard of it from Stockton on Friday night. But it's no new thing to him. He might have told me sooner, I think, seeing it was through me that Edenborough ever went to him."

"In some special capacity, I rather gather?"

"Yes; he can draw a bit--in fact, he's not a secretary at all except in name, but the First Lord's private draftsman. Stockton's a whale for details but a dunce at technicalities. What he likes is the thing on paper, as he sees it with his own eyes; so he makes his inspections with Edenborough and a sketch-block, ill.u.s.trated notes are taken at every turn, and all sorts of impossible improvements worked out in subsequent collaboration. I had that this evening from the boy himself.

It will show you what chances he has had of giving things away--or--selling them!"

"Is it as bad as that?"

"Stockton swears it is. To me it's inconceivable. But he gives chapter and verse of at least one drawing that found its way across the North Sea early in the year. Edenborough admits that he either lost it or had it stolen from him. He seems to have been more careful--whichever way you look at it--during the summer. But this autumn the trouble has begun again. A dockyard sketch-map has flown the German Ocean, come home to roost by some means into which we'd better not inquire, and is p.r.o.nounced by Stockton a bad imitation of one made for him by Edenborough six weeks ago."

"Why a bad imitation, I wonder?"

"The original has been in the First Lord's archives ever since; he says the copy must have been made from memory; but he has good reasons why n.o.body but Edenborough could have made it."

"Reasons that are not so good in law, apparently?"

"Exactly; as yet there's no case and there has been no accusation. But I very much fear that traps are being set, and I've taken it on myself to put the madman on his guard."

"To-night?"

"Yes; it was the first chance of getting hold of him, and that only by having the poor little bride to dinner as well. Heavy work, Dollar, drinking their healths and knowing what was in the air! The only comfort was that Edenborough knew as well as I did; it was written on his face, if you had the key, and I hadn't to do much beating about the bush when I got him to myself. He was wonderfully frank, from his point of view.

He told me that the air of suspicion was driving him out of his mind; he said he hadn't slept for nights and nights."

"Although no accusation has been made?"

"Although not an open word has been said to connect him with the bad copy of his own map!"

"That's the worst thing you've told me," said Dollar quietly. "He protested his innocence, of course?"

"In absolute tears!"

"And what was your own impression, Mr. Vinson?"

"Extremely mixed. I felt that he was speaking the truth, and yet not the whole truth. He had an air of guilty knowledge, if not of actual guilt."

"His physical condition bears you out," observed the doctor with reluctance. "And the poor devil's to be married in four days' time!"

"There my pity's on the other side."

"But the girl's another friend of yours? May I ask her name?"

"Lucy Trevellyn."

"Any relation of Admiral Trevellyn?"

"Own daughter to the old sea-dog, and if anything the breezier of the two! I couldn't imagine a young girl more like an old salt at heart.

She'd go to sea if she could; as she can't, she's a little pillar of the Navy League--and engaged to the First Lord's best young man! Could you conceive a more ingenious irony, or a greater tragedy when the truth comes out? Dollar, it must come out before Thursday, if it's ever coming out at all!"

"Is it otherwise a likely match?"

"The very likeliest, but for this world's goods, and there'll be more of them one day. She has go enough for two, and they have tastes in common.

I told you he could draw a bit, but she's a little artist, though you wouldn't think it if you saw her teaching him to skate at Prince's or taking me on at golf! Lucy Trevellyn's the best type of sportswoman--just as Vera Moyle is one gone wrong."

John Dollar was on his feet.

"Well, I've stayed longer than I intended," said he abruptly. "I promised to go up within half an hour to see if he was asleep. And he will be. But what's a night's rest against such a tragedy as the whole thing's bound to be!"

"Or such a mystery?" suggested Topham Vinson. "If you could only get to the bottom of that, Dollar, we might know how to act."