The Crime Doctor Part 21

"Nothing, Scarth."

"Nothing? You intend to do nothing at all?"

Scarth had started, for the first time; but he started to his feet, while he was about it, as though in overpowering disgust.

"Not if he keeps out of England," replied the crime doctor, who had also risen. "I wonder if he's sane enough for that?"

Their four eyes met in a protracted scrutiny, without a flicker on either side.

"What I am wondering," said Scarth deliberately, "is whether this Frankenstein effort of yours exists outside your own imagination, Doctor Dollar."

"Oh! he exists all right," declared the doctor. "But I am charitable enough to suppose him mad--in spite of his method _and_ his motive."

"Did he tell you what that was?" asked Scarth with a sneer.

"No; but Jack did. He seems to have been in the man's power--under his influence--to an extraordinary degree. He had even left him a wicked sum in a will made since he came of age. I needn't tell you that he has now made another, revoking----"

"No, you need not!" cried Mostyn Scarth, turning livid at the last moment. "I've heard about enough of your mares' nests and mythical monsters. I wish you good morning, and a more credulous audience next time."

"That I can count upon," returned the doctor at the door. "There's no saying what they won't believe--at Scotland Yard!"

VI

ONE POSSESSED

Lieutenant-General Neville Dysone, R.E., V.C., was the first really eminent person to consult the crime doctor by regular appointment in the proper hours. Quite apart from the feat of arms which had earned him the most coveted of all distinctions, the gigantic General, deep-chested and erect, virile in every silver-woven hair of his upright head, filled the tiny stage in Welbeck Street and dwarfed its antique properties, as no being had done before. And yet his voice was tender and even tremulous with the pathetic presage of a heartbreak under all.

"Doctor Dollar," he began at once, "I have come to see you about the most tragic secret that a man can have. I would shoot myself for saying what I have to say, did I not know that a patient's confidence is sacred to any member of your profession--perhaps especially to an alienist?"

"I hope we are all alike as to that," returned Dollar, gently. He was used to these sad openings.

"I ought not to have said it; but it hardly is my secret, that's why I feel such a cur!" exclaimed the General, taking his handkerchief to a fine forehead and remarkably fresh complexion, as if to wipe away its n.o.ble flush. "Your patient, I devoutly hope, will be my poor wife, who really seems to me to be almost losing her reason"--but with that the husband quite lost his voice.

"Perhaps we can find it for her," said Dollar, despising the pert professional optimism that told almost like a shot "It is a thing more often mislaid than really lost."

And the last of the other's weakness was finally overcome. A few weighty questions, lightly asked and simply answered, and he was master of a robust address, in which an occasional impediment only did further credit to his delicacy.

"No. I should say it was entirely a development of the last few months,"

declared the General emphatically. "There was nothing of the kind in our twenty-odd years of India, nor yet in the first year after I retired. All this--this trouble has come since I bought my house in the pine country. It's called Valsugana, as you see on my card; but it wasn't before we went there. We gave it the name because it struck us as extraordinarily like the Austrian Tyrol, where--well, of which we had happy memories, Doctor Dollar."

His blue eyes winced as they flew through the open French window, up the next precipice of bricks and mortar, to the beetling sky-line of other roofs, all a little softened in the faint haze of approaching heat. It cost him a palpable effort to bring them back to the little dark consulting-room, with its cool slabs of aged oak and the summer fernery that hid the hearth.

"It's good of you to let me take my time, doctor, but yours is too valuable to waste. All I meant was to give you an idea of our surroundings, as I know they are held to count in such cases. We are embedded in pines and firs. Some people find trees depressing, but after India they were just what we wanted, and even now my wife won't let me cut down one of them. Yet depression is no name for her state of mind; it's nearer melancholy madness, and latterly she has become subject to--to delusions--which are influencing her whole character and actions in the most alarming way. We are finding it difficult, for the first time in our lives, to keep servants; even her own nephew, who has come to live with us, only stands it for my sake, poor boy! As for my nerves--well, thank G.o.d I used to think I hadn't got any when I was in the service; but it's a little hard to be--to be as we are--at our time of life!" His hot face flamed. "What am I saying? It's a thousand times harder on _her_! She had been looking forward to these days for years."

Dollar wanted to wring one of the great brown, restless hands. Might he ask the nature of the delusions?

The General cried: "I'd give ten years of my life if I could tell you!"

"You can tell me what form they take?"

"I must, of course; it is what I came for, after all," the General muttered. He raised his head and his voice together. "Well, for one thing she's got herself a ferocious bulldog and a revolver."

Dollar did not move a doctor's muscle. "I suppose there must be a dog in the country, especially where there are no children. And if you must have a dog, you can't do better than a bulldog. Is there any reason for the revolver? Some people think it another necessity of the country."

"It isn't with us--much less as she carries it."

"Ladies in India get in the habit, don't they?"

"She never did. And now----"

"Yes, General? Has she it always by her?"

"Night and day, on a curb bracelet locked to her wrist!"

This time there were no professional pretenses. "I don't wonder you have trouble with your servants," said Dollar, with as much sympathy as he liked to show.

"You mayn't see it when you come down, doctor, as I am going to entreat you to do. She has her sleeves cut on purpose, and it is the smallest you can buy. But I know it's always there--and always loaded."

Dollar played a while with a queer plain steel ruler, out of keeping with his other possessions, though it too had its history. It stood on end before he let it alone and looked up.

"General Dysone, there must be some sort of reason or foundation for all this. Has anything alarming happened since you have been at--Valsugana?"

"Nothing that firearms could prevent"

"Do you mind telling me what it is that has happened?"

"We had a tragedy in the winter--a suicide on the place."

"Ah!"

"Her gardener hanged himself. Hers, I say, because the garden is my wife's affair. I only paid the poor fellow his wages."

"Well, come, General, that was enough to depress anybody----"

"Yet she wouldn't have even that tree cut down--nor yet come away for a change--not for as much as a night in town!"

The interruption had come with another access of grim heat and further use of the General's handkerchief. Dollar took up his steel tube of a ruler and trained it like a spy-gla.s.s on the ink, with one eye as carefully closed as if the truth lay at the bottom of the blue-black well.

"Was there any rhyme or reason for the suicide?"

"One was suggested that I would rather not repeat."

The closed eye opened to find the blue pair fallen. "I think it might help, General. Mrs. Dysone is evidently a woman of strong character, and anything----"

"She is, G.o.d knows!" cried the miserable man. "Everybody knows it now--her servants especially--though n.o.body used to treat them better.