V
A SCHOOLMASTER ABROAD
It is a small world that flocks to Switzerland for the Christmasholidays. It is also a world largely composed of that particular classwhich really did provide Doctor Dollar with the majority of his cases.He was therefore not surprised, on the night of his arrival at the greatExcelsior Hotel, in Winterwald, to feel a diffident touch on theshoulder, and to look round upon the sunburned blushes of a quite recentpatient.
George Edenborough had taken Winterwald on his wedding trip, and nothingwould suit him and his nut-brown bride but for the doctor to join themat their table. It was a slightly embarrassing invitation, but there wasgood reason for not persisting in a first refusal. And the bride carriedthe situation with a breezy vitality, while her groom chose a wineworthy of the occasion, and the newcomer explained that he had arrivedby the afternoon train, but had not come straight to the hotel.
"Then you won't have heard of our great excitement," said Mrs.Edenborough, "and I'm afraid you won't like it when you do!"
"If you mean the strychnine affair," returned Dollar, with a certaindeliberation, "I heard one version before I had been in the place anhour. I can't say that I did like it. But I should be interested to knowwhat you both think about it all."
Edenborough returned the wine-list to the waiter with sepulchralinjunctions.
"Are you telling him about our medical scandal?" he inquired briskly ofthe bride. "My dear doctor, it'll make your professional hair stand onend! Here's the local practitioner been prescribing strychnine pillswarranted to kill in twenty minutes!"
"So I hear," said the crime doctor, dryly.
"The poor brute has been frightfully overworked," continued Edenborough,in deference to a more phlegmatic front than he had expected of theBritish faculty. "They say he was up two whole nights last week; heseems to be the only doctor in the place, and the hotels are full offellows doing their level best to lay themselves out. We've had twoconcussions of the brain and one complicated fracture this very week.Still, to go and give your patient a hundred times more strychnine thanyou intended----"
And he stopped himself, as though the subject, which he had taken upwith a purely nervous zest, was rather near home after all.
"But what about his patient?" adroitly inquired the doctor. "If halfthat one hears is true, he wouldn't have been much loss."
"Not much, I'm afraid," said Lucy Edenborough, with the air of a Romanmatron turning down her thumbs.
"He's a fellow who was at my private school, just barely twenty-one, andmaking an absolute fool of himself," exclaimed Edenborough, touching hisglass. "It's an awful pity. He used to be such a nice little chap, JackLaverick."
"He was nice enough when he was out here a year ago," the brideadmitted, "and he's still a sportsman. He won half the toboggan raceslast season, and took it all delightfully; he's quite another personnow, and gives himself absurd airs on top of everything else. Still, Ishall expect Mr. Laverick either to sweep the board or break his neck.He evidently wasn't born to be poisoned."
"Did he come to grief last year, Mrs. Edenborough?"
"He only nearly had one of his ears cut off, in a spill on the ice-run.So they said; but he was tobogganing again next day."
"Doctor Alt looked after him all right then, I hear," added Edenborough,as the champagne arrived. "But I only wish _you_ could take the fellowin hand! He really used to be a decent chap, but it would take even youall your time to make him one again, Doctor Dollar."
The crime doctor smiled as he raised his glass and returned complimentsacross the bubbles. It was the smile of a man with bigger fish to fry.Yet it was he who came back to the subject of young Laverick, asking ifhe had not a tutor or somebody to look after him, and what the man meantby not doing his job.
In an instant both the Edenboroughs had turned upon their friend. PoorMr. Scarth was not to blame! Poor Mr. Scarth, it appeared, had been amaster at the preparatory school at which Jack Laverick and GeorgeEdenborough had been boys. He was a splendid fellow, and very popular inthe hotel, but there was nothing but sympathy with him in the matterunder discussion. His charge was of age, and in a position to send himoff at any moment, as indeed he was always threatening in his cups. Butthere again there was a special difficulty: one cup was more than enoughfor Jack Laverick, whose weak head for wine was the only excuse for him.
"Yet there was nothing of the kind last year," said Mrs. Edenborough, ina reversionary voice; "at least, one never heard of it And that makes itall the harder on poor Mr. Scarth."
Dollar declared that he was burning to meet the unfortunate gentleman;the couple exchanged glances, and he was told to wait till after theconcert, at which he had better sit with them. Was there a concert? Hisface lengthened at the prospect, and the bride's eyes sparkled at hisexpense. She would not hear of his shirking it, but went so far as tocut dinner short in order to obtain good seats. She was one of thoseyoung women who have both a will and a way with them, and Dollar soonfound himself securely penned in the gallery of an ambitious ballroomwith a stage at the other end.
The concert came up to his most sardonic expectations, and he resignedhimself to a boredom only intensified by the behavior of some crudehumorists in the rows behind. Indifferent song followed indifferentsong, and each earned a more vociferous encore from those gay younggods. A not unknown novelist told dialect stories of purely territorialinterest; a lady recited with astounding spirit; another fiddled, noless courageously; but the back rows of the gallery were quite out ofhand when a black-avised gentleman took the stage, and had not openedhis mouth before those back rows were rows of Satan's reproving sin andclapping with unsophisticated gusto.
"Who's this!" asked Dollar, instantly aware of the change behind him.But even Lucy Edenborough would only answer, "Hush, doctor!" as she bentforward with shining eyes. And certainly a hairpin could not have beendropped unheard before the dark performer relieved the tension byplunging into a scene from _Pickwick_.
It was the scene of Mr. Jingle's monologue on the Rochester coach--andthe immortal nonsense was inimitably given. Yet nobody could have beenless like the emaciated prototype than this tall tanned man, with theshort black mustache, and the flashing teeth that bit off every wordwith ineffable snap and point.
"Mother--tall lady, eating sandwiches--forgot thearch--crash--knock--children look round--mother's head off--sandwich inher hand--no mouth to put it in----" and his own grim one only added tothe fun and swelled the roar.
He waited darkly for them to stop, the wilful absence of any amusementon his side enormously increasing that of the audience. But when it cameto the episode of Donna Christina and the stomach-pump, with theculminating discovery of Don Bolaro Fizzgig in the main pipe of thepublic fountain, the guffaws of half the house eventually drew from theother half the supreme compliment of exasperated demands for silence.Mrs. George Edenborough was one of the loudest offenders. Georgehimself had to wipe his eyes. And the crime doctor had forgot that therewas such a thing as crime.
"That chap's a genius!" he exclaimed, when a double encore had beensatisfied by further and smaller doses of Mr. Jingle, artfully held inreserve. "But who is he, Mrs. Edenborough?"
"Poor Mr. Scarth!" crowed the bride, brimming over with triumphant fun.
But the doctor's mirth was at an end.
"That the fellow who can't manage a bit of a boy, when he can hold anaudience like this in the hollow of his hand?"
And at first he looked as though he could not believe it, and then allat once as though he could. But by this time the Edenboroughs wereurging Scarth's poverty in earnest, and Dollar could only say that hewanted to meet him more than ever.
The wish was not to be gratified without a further side-light and afresh surprise. As George and the doctor were repairing to thebilliard-room, before the conclusion of the lengthy program, they founda group of backs upon the threshold, and a ribald uproar in full swingwithin. One voice was in the ascendent, and it was sadly indistinct;but it was also the voice of the vanquis
hed, belching querulousfutilities. The cold steel thrusts of an autocratic Jingle cut itshorter and shorter. It ceased altogether, and the men in the doorwaymade way for Mr. Scarth, as he hurried a disheveled youth off the scenein the most approved constabulatory manner.
"Does it often happen, George?" Dollar's arm had slipped through hisformer patient's as they slowly followed at their distance.
"Most nights, I'm afraid."
"And does Scarth always do what he likes with him--afterward?"
"Always; he's the sort of fellow who can do what he likes with mostpeople," declared the young man, missing the point. "You should haveseen him at the last concert, when those fools behind us behaved evenworse than to-night! It wasn't his turn, but he came out and put themright in about a second, and had us all laughing the next! It was justthe same at school; everybody was afraid of Mostyn Scarth, boys and menalike; and so is Jack Laverick still--in spite of being of age andhaving the money-bags--as you saw for yourself just now."
"Yet he lets this sort of thing happen continually?"
"It's pretty difficult to prevent. A glass about does it, as I told you,and you can't be at a fellow's elbow all the time in a place like this.But some of Jack's old pals have had a go at him. Do you know whatthey've done? They've taken away his Old Etonian tie, and quite righttoo!"
"And there was nothing of all this last year?"
"So Lucy says. I wasn't here. Mrs. Laverick was, by the way; she mayhave made the difference. But being his own master seems to have senthim to the dogs altogether. Scarth's the only person to pull him up,unless--unless you'd take him on, doctor! You--you've pulled hardercases out of the fire, you know!"
They had been sitting a few minutes in the lounge. Nobody was very nearthem; the young man's face was alight and his eyes were shining. Dollartook him by the arm once more, and they went together to the lift.
"In any case I must make friends with your friend Scarth," said he. "Doyou happen to know his number?"
Edenborough did--it was 144--but he seemed dubious as to anotherdoctor's reception after the tragedy that might have happened in theadjoining room.
"Hadn't I better introduce you in the morning?" he suggested with muchdeference in the lift. "I--I hate repeating things--but I want you tolike each other, and I heard Scarth say he was fed up with doctors!"
This one smiled.
"I don't wonder at it."
"Yet it wasn't Mostyn Scarth who gave Doctor Alt away."
"No?"
Edenborough shook his head as they left the lift together. "No, doctor.It was the chemist here, a chap called Schickel; but for him JackLaverick would be a dead man; and but for him again, nobody need everhave heard of his narrow shave. He spotted the mistake, and then startedall the gossip."
"I know," said the doctor, nodding.
"But it was a terrible mistake! Decigrams instead of milligrams, so Iheard. Just a hundred times too much strychnine in each pill."
"You are quite right," said John Dollar quietly. "I have theprescription in my pocket."
"_You_ have, doctor?"
"Don't be angry with me, my dear fellow! I told you I had heard oneversion of the whole thing. It was Alt's. He's an old friend--but youwouldn't have said a word about him if I had told you that at first--andI still don't want it generally known."
"You can trust me, doctor, after all you've done for me."
"Well, Alt once did more for me. I want to do something for him, that'sall."
And his knuckles still ached from the young man's grip as they rappedsmartly at the door of No. 144.
II
It was opened a few inches by Mostyn Scarth. His raiment was still atconcert pitch, but his face even darker than it had been as the crimedoctor saw it last.
"May I ask who you are and what you want?" he demanded--not at all inthe manner of Mr. Jingle--rather in the voice that most people wouldhave raised.
"My name's Dollar and I'm a doctor."
The self-announcement, pat as a polysyllable, had a foreseen effect onlyminimized by the precautionary confidence of Doctor Dollar's manner.
"Thanks very much. I've had about enough of doctors."
And the door was shutting when the intruder got in a word like a wedge.
"Exactly!"
Scarth frowned through a chink just wide enough to show both his eyes.It was the intruder's tone that held his hand.
"What does that mean?" he demanded with more control.
"That I want to see you about the other doctor--this German fellow,"returned Dollar, against the grain. But the studious phrase admittedhim.
"Well, don't raise your voice," said Scarth, lowering his own as heshut the door softly behind them. "I believe I saw you down-stairsoutside the bar. So I need only explain that I've just got my brightyoung man off to sleep, on the other side of those folding-doors."
Dollar could not help wondering whether the other room was as good asScarth's, which was much bigger and better appointed than his own. Buthe sat down at the oval table under the electrolier, and came abruptlyto his point.
"About that prescription," he began, and straightway produced it fromhis pocket.
"Well, what about it?" the other queried, but only keenly, as he satdown at the table, too.
"Doctor Alt is a very old friend of mine, Mr. Scarth."
Mostyn Scarth exhibited the slight but immediate change of front duefrom gentleman to gentleman on the strength of such a statement. Hisgrim eyes softened with a certain sympathy; but the accession left hisgravity the more pronounced.
"He is not only a friend," continued Dollar, "but the cleverest and bestman I know in my profession. I don't speak from mere loyalty; he was myown doctor before he was my friend. Mr. Scarth, he saved more than mylife when every head in Harley Street had been shaken over my case. Allthe baronets gave me up; but chance or fate brought me here, and thislittle unknown man performed the miracle they shirked, and made a newman of me off his own bat. I wanted him to come to London and make hisfortune; but his work was here, he wouldn't leave it; and here I findhim under a sorry cloud. Can you wonder at my wanting to step in andspeak up for him, Mr. Scarth?"
"On the contrary, I know exactly how you must feel, and am very glad youhave spoken," rejoined Mostyn Scarth, cordially enough in all thecircumstances of the case. "But the cloud is none of my making, DoctorDollar, though I naturally feel rather strongly about the matter. Butfor Schickel, the chemist, I might be seeing a coffin to England at thismoment! He's the man who found out the mistake, and has since made allthe mischief."
"Are you sure it was a mistake, Mr. Scarth?" asked Dollar quietly.
"What else?" cried the other, in blank astonishment. "Even Schickel hasnever suggested that Doctor Alt was trying to commit a murder!"
"Even Schickel!" repeated Dollar, with a sharp significance. "Are yousuggesting that there's no love lost between him and Alt?"
"I was not, indeed." Scarth seemed still astonished. "No. That neveroccurred to me for a moment."
"Yet it's a small place, and you know what small places are. Would oneman be likely to spread a thing like this against another if there wereno bad blood between them?"
Scarth could not say. The thing happened to be true, and it made such ajustifiable sensation. He was none the less frankly interested in thesuggestion. It was as though he had a tantalizing glimmer of the crimedoctor's meaning. Their heads were closer together across the end of thetable, their eyes joined in mutual probation.
"Can I trust you with my own idea, Mr. Scarth?"
"That's for you to decide, Doctor Dollar."
"I shall not breathe it to another soul--not even to Alt himself--till Iam sure."
"You may trust me, doctor. I don't know what's coming, but I shan't giveit away."
"Then I shall trust you even to the extent of contradicting what I justsaid. I _am_ sure--between ourselves--that the prescription now in myhands is a clever forgery!"
Scarth held out his hand for it. A less deliberate announce
ment mighthave given him a more satisfactory surprise; but he could not havelooked more incredulous than he did, or subjected Dollar to a coolerscrutiny.
"A forgery with what object, Doctor Dollar?"
"That I don't pretend to say. I merely state the fact--in confidence.You have your eyes upon a flagrant forgery."
Scarth raised them twinkling. "My dear Doctor Dollar, I saw him write itout myself!"
"Are you quite sure?"
"Absolutely, doctor! This lad, Jack Laverick, is a pretty handful;without a doctor to frighten him from time to time, I couldn't cope withhim at all. His people are in despair about him--but that's anothermatter. I was only going to say that I took him to Doctor Alt myself,and this is the prescription they refused to make up. Schickel may havea spite against Alt, as you suggest, but if he's a forger I can only sayhe doesn't look the part."
"The only looks I go by," said the crime doctor, "are those of thelittle document in your hand."
"It's on Alt's paper."
"Anybody could get hold of that."
"But you suggest that Alt and Schickel have been on bad terms?"
"That's a better point, Mr. Scarth, that's a much better point," saidDollar, smiling and then ceasing to smile as he produced amagnifying-lens. "Allow me to switch on the electric standard, and do methe favor of examining that handwriting with this loop; it's not verystrong, but the best I could get here at the photographer's shop."
"It's certainly not strong enough to show anything fishy, to myinexperience," said Scarth, on a sufficiently close inspection.
"Now look at this one."
Dollar had produced a second prescription from the same pocket asbefore. At first sight they seemed identical.
"Is this another forgery?" inquired Scarth, with a first faint trace ofirony.
"No. That's the correct prescription, rewritten by Alt at my request, ashe is positive he wrote it originally."
"I see now. There are two more noughts mixed up with the otherhieroglyphs."
"They happen to make all the difference between life and death," saidDollar gravely. "Yet they are not by any means the only differencehere."
"I can see no other, I must confess." And Scarth raised his eyes just asDollar's fell from his broad brown brow.
"The other difference is, Mr. Scarth, that the prescription with thestrychnine in deadly decigrams has been drawn backward instead of beingwritten forward."
Scarth's stare ended in a smile.
"Do you mind saying all that again, Doctor Dollar?"
"I'll elaborate it. The genuine prescription has been written in theordinary way--_currente calamo_. But forgeries are not written in theordinary way, much less with running pens; the best of them are writtenbackward, or rather they are _drawn upside down_. Try to copy writing aswriting, and your own will automatically creep in and spoil it; draw itupside down and wrong way on, as a mere meaningless scroll, and your ownformation of the letters doesn't influence you, because you are notforming letters at all. You are drawing from a copy, Mr. Scarth."
"You mean that I'm deriving valuable information from a handwritingexpert," cried Scarth, with another laugh.
"There are no such experts," returned Dollar, a little coldly. "It's alla mere matter of observation, open to everybody with eyes to see. Butthis happens to be an old forger's trick; try it for yourself, as Ihave, and you'll be surprised to see how much there is in it."
"I must," said Scarth. "But I can't conceive how you can tell that ithas been played in this case."
"No? Look at the start, 'Herr Laverick,' and at the finish, 'DoctorAlt.' You would expect to see plenty of ink in the 'Herr,' wouldn't you?Still plenty in the 'Laverick,' I think, but now less and less untilthe pen is filled again. In the correct prescription, written at myrequest to-day, you will find that this is so. In the forgery theprogression is precisely the reverse; the _t_ in 'Alt' is full of ink,but you will find less and less till the next dip in the middle of theword 'Mahlzeit' in the line above. The forger, of course, dips oftenerthan the man with the running pen."
Scarth bent in silence over the lens, his dark face screwed awry.Suddenly he pushed back his chair.
"It's wonderful!" he cried softly. "I see everything you say. DoctorDollar, you have converted me completely to your view. I should like youto allow me to convert the hotel."
"Not yet," said Dollar, rising, "if at all as to the actual facts of thecase. It's no use making bad worse, Mr. Scarth, or taking a dirty tricktoo seriously. It isn't as though the forgery had been committed with aview to murdering your young Laverick."
"I never dreamed of thinking that it was!"
"You are quite right, Mr. Scarth. It doesn't bear thinking about. Ofcourse, any murderer ingenious enough to concoct such a thing wouldhave been far too clever to drop out _two_ noughts; he would have beencontent to change the milligrams into centigrams, and risk a recovery.No sane chemist would have dispensed the pills in decimals. But we aregetting off the facts, and I promised to meet Doctor Alt on his lastround. If I may tell him, in vague terms, that you at least think theremay have been some mistake, other than the culpable one that has beenlaid at his door, I shall go away less uneasy about my unwarrantableintrusion than I can assure you I was in making it."
It was strange how the balance of personality had shifted during aninterview which Scarth himself was now eager to extend. He had no longerthe mesmeric martinet who had tamed an unruly audience at sight; thelast of Mr. Jingle's snap had long been in abeyance. And yet there wasjust one more suggestion of that immortal, in the rather dilapidatedtrunk from which the swarthy exquisite now produced a bottle of whisky,very properly locked up out of Laverick's reach. And weakness of willcould not be imputed to the young man who induced John Dollar to cementtheir acquaintance with a thimbleful.
III
It was early morning in the same week; the crime doctor lay broodingover the most complicated case that had yet come his way. More preciselyit was two cases, but so closely related that it took a strong mind toconsider them apart, a stronger will to confine each to the solitarybrain-cell that it deserved. Yet the case of young Laverick was not onlymuch the simpler of the two, but infinitely the more congenial to JohnDollar, and not the one most on his nerves.
It was too simple altogether. A year ago the boy had been all right,wild only as a tobogganer, lucky to have got off with a few stitches inhis ear. Dollar heard all about that business from Doctor Alt, and onlytoo much about Jack Laverick's subsequent record from other informants.It was worthy of the Welbeck Street confessional. His career at Oxfordhad come to a sudden ignominious end. He had forfeited his motoringlicense for habitually driving to the public danger, and on the lastoccasion had barely escaped imprisonment for his condition at the wheel.He had caused his own mother to say advisedly that she would "soonersee him in his coffin than going on in this dreadful way"; in writingshe had said it, for Scarth had shown the letter addressed to him as her"last and only hope" for Jack; and yet even Scarth was powerless toprevent that son of Belial from getting "flown with insolence and wine"more nights than not. Even last night it had happened, at the maskedball, on the eve of this morning's races! Whose fault would it be if hekilled himself on the ice-run after all?
Dollar writhed as he thought upon this case; yet it was not the casethat had brought him out from England, not the reason of his staying outlonger than he had dreamed of doing when Alt's telegram arrived. It wasnot, indeed, about Jack Laverick that poor Alt had telegraphed at all.And yet between them what a job they could have made of the unfortunateyouth!
It was Dollar's own case over again--yet he had not been calledin--neither of them had!
Nevertheless, when all was said that could be said to himself, or evento Alt--who did not quite agree--Laverick's was much the less seriousmatter; and John Dollar had turned upon the other side, and wasgrappling afresh with the other case, when his door opened violentlywithout a knock, and an agitated voice spoke his name.
"It's me--Edenborough," it con
tinued in a hurried whisper. "I want youto get into some clothes and come up to the ice-run as quick aspossible!"
"Why? What has happened?" asked the doctor, jumping out of bed asEdenborough drew the curtains.
"Nothing yet. I hope nothing will----"
"But something has!" interrupted the doctor. "What's the matter withyour eye?"
"I'll tell you as you dress, only be as quick as you can. Did you forgetit was the toboggan races this morning? They're having them at eightinstead of nine, because of the sun, and it's ten to eight now. Couldn'tyou get into some knickerbockers and stick a sweater over all the rest?That's what I've done--wish I'd come to you first. They'll _want_ adoctor if we don't make haste!"
"I wish you'd tell me about your eye," said Dollar, already in hisstockings.
"My eye's all right," returned Edenborough, going to the glass. "No, byjove, it's blacker than I thought, and my head's still singing like akettle. I shouldn't have thought Laverick could hit so hard--drunk _or_sober."
"That madman?" cried Dollar, looking up from his laces. "I thought heturned in early for once in a way?"
"He was up early, anyhow," said Edenborough, grimly; "but I'll tell youthe whole thing as we go up to the run, and I don't much mind who hearsme. He's a worse hat even than we thought. I caught him tampering withthe toboggans at five o'clock this morning!"
"Which toboggans?"
"One of the lot they keep in a shed just under our window, at the backof the hotel. I was lying awake and I heard something. It was like asort of filing, as if somebody was breaking in somewhere. I got up andlooked out, and thought I saw a light. Lucy was fast asleep; she isstill, by the way, and doesn't know a thing."
"I'm ready," said Dollar. "Go on when we get outside."
It was a very pale blue morning, not a scintilla of sunlight in thevalley, neither shine nor shadow upon clambering forest or overhangingrocks. Somewhere behind their jagged peaks the sun must have risen, butas yet no snowy facet winked the news to Winterwald, and the softersummits lost all character against a sky only less white thanthemselves.
The village street presented no difficulties to Edenborough's goutiesand the doctor's nails; but there were other people in it, and voicestravel in a frost over silent snow. On the frozen path between thesnow-fields, beyond the village, nails were not enough, and the novicedepending upon them stumbled and slid as the elaborated climax ofEdenborough's experience induced even more speed.
"It was him all right--try the edge, doctor, it's less slippy. It wasthat young brute in his domino, as if he'd never been to bed at all, andme in my dressing-gown not properly awake. We should have looked a funnypair in--have my arm, doctor."
"Thanks, George."
"But his electric lamp was the only light. He didn't attempt to put itout. 'Just tuning up my toboggan,' he whispered. 'Come and have alook.' I didn't and don't believe it was his own toboggan; it wasprobably that Captain Strong's, he's his most dangerous rival; but, as Itell you, I was just going to look when the young brute hit me full inthe face without a moment's warning. I went over like an ox, but I thinkthe back of my head must have hit something. There was daylight in theplace when I opened the only eye I could."
"Had he locked you in?"
"No; he was too fly for that; but I simply couldn't move till I heardvoices coming, and then I only crawled behind a stack of garden chairsand things. It was Strong and another fellow--they did curse to find thewhole place open! I nearly showed up and told my tale, only I wanted totell you first."
"I'm glad you have, George."
"I knew your interest in the fellow--besides, I thought it was a casefor you," said George Edenborough simply. "But it kept me prisoner tillthe last of the toboggans had been taken out--I only hope it hasn't madeus too late!"
His next breath was a devout thanksgiving, as a fold in the glisteningslopes showed the top of the ice-run, and a group of men in sweatersstanding out against the fir-trees on the crest. They seemed to bestanding very still. Some had their padded elbows lifted as though theywere shading their eyes. But there was no sign of a toboggan starting,no sound of one in the invisible crevice of the run. And now man afterman detached himself from the group, and came leaping down thesubsidiary snow-track meant only for ascent.
But John Dollar and George Edenborough did not see all of this. A yetmore ominous figure had appeared in their own path, had grown intoMostyn Scarth, and stood wildly beckoning to them both.
"It's Jack!" he shouted across the snow. "He's had a smash--self andtoboggan--flaw in a runner. I'm afraid he's broken his leg."
"Only his leg!" cried Dollar, but not with the least accent of relief.The tone made Edenborough wince behind him, and Scarth in front lookround. It was as though even the crime doctor thought Jack Laverickbetter dead.
He lay on a litter of overcoats, the hub of a wheel of men that broke ofitself before the first doctor on the scene. He was not eveninsensible, neither was he uttering moan or groan; but his white lipswere drawn away from his set teeth, and his left leg had an odd look ofbeing no more a part of him than its envelope of knickerbocker andstocking.
"It's a bu'st, doctor, I'm afraid," the boy ground out as Dollar kneltin the snow. "Hurting? A bit--but I can stick it."
Courage was the one quality he had not lost during the last year; nobodycould have shown more during the slow and excruciating progress to thevillage, on a bobsleigh carried by four stumbling men; everybody waswhispering about it. Everybody but the crime doctor, who headed thelittle procession with a face in keeping with the tone which had madeEdenborough wince and Scarth look round.
The complex case of the night--this urgent one--both were forgot inDollar's own case of years ago. He was back again in another Winterwald,another world. It was no longer a land of Christmas-trees growing out ofmountains of Christmas cake; the snow melted before his mind's eye; hewas hugging the shadows in a street of toy-houses yielding resin to anAugust sun, between green slopes combed with dark pines, under a sky ofintolerable blue. And he was in despair; all Harley Street could orwould do nothing for him. And then--and then--some forgotten ache orpain had taken him to the little man--the great man--down this veryturning to the left, in the little wooden house tucked away behind theshops.
How he remembered every landmark--the handrail down the slope--thelittle porch--the bare stairs, his own ladder between death andlife--the stark surgery with its uncompromising appliances in full view!And now at last he was there with such another case as his own--theminor case that he had yet burned to bring there--and there was Alt toreceive them in the same white jacket and with the same simplecountenance as of old!
They might have taken him on to the hotel, as Scarth indeed urgedstrongly; but the boy himself was against another yard, though otherwisea hero to the end.
"Chloroform?" he cried faintly. "Can't I have my beastly leg set withoutchloroform? You're not going to have it off, are you? I can stickanything short of that."
The two doctors retired for the further consideration of a point onwhich they themselves were not of one mind.
"It's the chance of our lives, and the one chance for him," urged Dollarvehemently. "It isn't as if it were such a dangerous operation, and I'lltake sole responsibility."
"But I am not sure you have been right," demurred the other. "He has noteven had concussion, a year ago. It has been only the ear."
"There's a lump behind it still. Everything dates from when it happened;there's some pressure somewhere that has made another being of him. It'sa much simpler case than mine, and you cured me. Alt, if you had seenhow his own mother wrote about him, you would be the very last man tohesitate!"
"It is better to have her consent."
"No--nobody's--the boy himself need never know. There's a young bridehere who'll nurse him like an angel and hold her tongue till doomsday.She and her husband may be in the secret, but not another soul!"
And when Jack Laverick came out of chloroform, to feel a frostytickling under the tabernacle of bedclothes
in which his broken bone wasas the Ark, the sensation was less uncomfortable than he expected. Butthat of a dull deep pain in the head drew his first complaint, as anitem not in the estimate.
"What's my head all bandaged up for?" he demanded, fingering the turbanon the pillow.
"Didn't you know it was broken, too?" said Lucy Edenborough gravely. "Iexpect your leg hurt so much more that you never noticed it!"
IV
Ten days later Mostyn Scarth called at Doctor Alt's, to ask if hemightn't see Jack at last. He had behaved extremely well about the wholeaffair; others in his position might easily have made trouble. But therehad been no concealment of the fact that injuries were not confined tothe broken leg, and the mere seat of the additional mischief was enoughfor a man of sense. It is not the really strong who love to displaytheir power. Scarth not only accepted the situation, but voluntarilyconducted the correspondence which kept poor Mrs. Laverick at halfEurope's length over the critical period. He had merely stipulated to bethe first to see the convalescent, and he took it as well as ever whenDollar shook his head once more.
"It's not our fault this time, Mr. Scarth. You must blame the sex thatis privileged to change its mind. Mrs. Laverick has arrived without aword of warning. She is with her son at this moment, and you'll be gladto hear that she thinks she finds him an absolutely changedcharacter--or, rather, what he was before he ever saw Winterwald a yearago. I may say that this seems more or less the patient's own impressionabout himself."
"Glad!" cried Scarth, who for the moment had seemed rather staggered."I'm more than glad; I'm profoundly relieved! It doesn't matter nowwhether I see Jack or not. Do you mind giving him these magazines andpapers, with my love? I am thankful that my responsibility's at an end."
"The same with me," returned the crime doctor. "I shall go back to mywork in London with a better conscience than I had when I left it--withsomething accomplished--something undone that wanted undoing."
He smiled at Scarth across the flap of an unpretentious table, on whichlay the literary offering in all its glory of green and yellow wrappers;and Scarth looked up without a trace of pique, but with an answeringtwinkle in his own dark eyes.
"Alt exalted--restored to favor--Jack reformed character--bornagain--forger forgot--forging ahead, eh?"
It was his best Mr. Jingle manner; indeed, a wonderfully ready andruthless travesty of his own performance on the night of Dollar'sarrival. And that kindred critic enjoyed it none the less for a secondstrain of irony, which he could not but take to himself.
"I have not forgot anybody, Mr. Scarth."
"But have you discovered who did the forgery?"
"I always knew."
"Have you tackled him?"
"Days ago!"
Scarth looked astounded. "And what's to happen to him, doctor?"
"I don't know." The doctor gave a characteristic shrug. "It's not myjob; as it was, I'd done all the detective business, which I loathe."
"I remember," cried Scarth. "I shall never forget the way you wentthrough that prescription, as though you had been looking over theblighter's shoulder! Not an expert--modest fellow--pride that apes!"
And again Dollar had to laugh at the way Mr. Jingle wagged his head, inspite of the same slightly caustic undercurrent as before.
"That was the easiest part of it," he answered, "although you make meblush to say so. The hard part was what reviewers of novels call the'motivation.'"
"But you had that in Schickel's spite against Alt."
"It was never quite strong enough to please me."
"Then what was the motive, doctor?"
"Young Laverick's death."
"Nonsense!"
"I wish it were, Mr. Scarth."
"But who is there in Winterwald who could wish to compass such a thing?"
"There were more than two thousand visitors over Christmas, Iunderstand," was the only reply.
It would not do for Mostyn Scarth. He looked less than politelyincredulous, if not less shocked and rather more indignant than he needhave looked. But the whole idea was a reflection upon his care of theunhappy youth. And he said so in other words, which resembled those ofMr. Jingle only in their stiff staccato brevity.
"Talk about 'motivation'!--I thank you, doctor, for that word--but Ishould thank you even more to show me the thing itself in your theory.And what a way to kill a fellow! What a roundabout, risky way!"
"It was such a good forgery," observed the doctor, "that even Althimself could hardly swear that it was one."
"Is _he_ your man?" asked Scarth, in a sudden whisper, leaning forwardwith lighted eyes.
The crime doctor smiled enigmatically. "It's perhaps just as lucky forhim, Scarth, that at least he could have had nothing to do with thesecond attempt upon his patient's life."
"What second attempt?"
"The hand that forged the prescription, Scarth, with intent to poisonyoung Laverick, was the one that also filed the flaw in his toboggan, inthe hope of breaking his neck."
"My dear doctor," exclaimed Mostyn Scarth, with a pained shake of thehead, "this is stark, staring madness!"
"I only hope it was--in the would-be murderer," rejoined Dollar gravely."But he had a lot of method; he even did his bit of filing--a burglarcouldn't have done it better--in the domino Jack Laverick had just takenoff!"
"How do you know he had taken it off? How do you know the whole jobwasn't one of Jack's drunken tricks?"
"What whole job?"
"The one you're talking about--the alleged tampering with his toboggan,"replied Scarth, impatiently.
"Oh! I only thought you meant something more." Dollar made a pause."Don't you feel it rather hot in here, Scarth?"
"Do you know, I do!" confessed the visitor, as though it were Dollar'shouse and breeding had forbidden him to volunteer the remark. "It's theheat of this stove, with the window shut. Thanks so much, doctor!"
And he wiped his strong, brown, beautifully shaven face; it was one ofthose that require shaving more than once a day, yet it was alwaysglossy from the razor; and he burnished it afresh with a silkhandkerchief that would have passed through a packing-needle's eye.
"And what are you really doing about this--monster?" he resumed, as whoshould accept the monster's existence for the sake of argument.
"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 alsorisen. "I wonder if he's sane enough for that?"
Their four eyes met in a protracted scrutiny, without a flicker oneither side.
"What I am wondering," said Scarth deliberately, "is whether thisFrankenstein effort of yours exists outside your own imagination, DoctorDollar."
"Oh! he exists all right," declared the doctor. "But I am charitableenough 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 hisinfluence--to an extraordinary degree. He had even left him a wicked sumin a will made since he came of age. I needn't tell you that he has nowmade another, revoking----"
"No, you need not!" cried Mostyn Scarth, turning livid at the lastmoment. "I've heard about enough of your mares' nests and mythicalmonsters. I wish you good morning, and a more credulous audience nexttime."
"That I can count upon," returned the doctor at the door. "There's nosaying what they won't believe--at Scotland Yard!"
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