VI
ONE POSSESSED
Lieutenant-General Neville Dysone, R.E., V.C., was the first reallyeminent person to consult the crime doctor by regular appointment in theproper hours. Quite apart from the feat of arms which had earned him themost coveted of all distinctions, the gigantic General, deep-chested anderect, virile in every silver-woven hair of his upright head, filled thetiny stage in Welbeck Street and dwarfed its antique properties, as nobeing had done before. And yet his voice was tender and even tremulouswith the pathetic presage of a heartbreak under all.
"Doctor Dollar," he began at once, "I have come to see you about themost tragic secret that a man can have. I would shoot myself for sayingwhat I have to say, did I not know that a patient's confidence issacred to any member of your profession--perhaps especially to analienist?"
"I hope we are all alike as to that," returned Dollar, gently. He wasused to these sad openings.
"I ought not to have said it; but it hardly is my secret, that's why Ifeel such a cur!" exclaimed the General, taking his handkerchief to afine forehead and remarkably fresh complexion, as if to wipe away itsnoble flush. "Your patient, I devoutly hope, will be my poor wife, whoreally seems to me to be almost losing her reason"--but with that thehusband quite lost his voice.
"Perhaps we can find it for her," said Dollar, despising the pertprofessional optimism that told almost like a shot "It is a thing moreoften mislaid than really lost."
And the last of the other's weakness was finally overcome. A few weightyquestions, lightly asked and simply answered, and he was master of arobust address, in which an occasional impediment only did furthercredit 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 inour twenty-odd years of India, nor yet in the first year after Iretired. All this--this trouble has come since I bought my house in thepine country. It's called Valsugana, as you see on my card; but itwasn't before we went there. We gave it the name because it struck us asextraordinarily like the Austrian Tyrol, where--well, of which we hadhappy memories, Doctor Dollar."
His blue eyes winced as they flew through the open French window, up thenext precipice of bricks and mortar, to the beetling sky-line of otherroofs, all a little softened in the faint haze of approaching heat. Itcost him a palpable effort to bring them back to the little darkconsulting-room, with its cool slabs of aged oak and the summer fernerythat hid the hearth.
"It's good of you to let me take my time, doctor, but yours is toovaluable to waste. All I meant was to give you an idea of oursurroundings, as I know they are held to count in such cases. We areembedded in pines and firs. Some people find trees depressing, but afterIndia they were just what we wanted, and even now my wife won't let mecut down one of them. Yet depression is no name for her state of mind;it's nearer melancholy madness, and latterly she has become subjectto--to delusions--which are influencing her whole character and actionsin the most alarming way. We are finding it difficult, for the firsttime in our lives, to keep servants; even her own nephew, who has cometo live with us, only stands it for my sake, poor boy! As for mynerves--well, thank God I used to think I hadn't got any when I was inthe service; but it's a little hard to be--to be as we are--at our timeof life!" His hot face flamed. "What am I saying? It's a thousand timesharder on _her_! She had been looking forward to these days for years."
Dollar wanted to wring one of the great brown, restless hands. Might heask 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 Generalmuttered. He raised his head and his voice together. "Well, for onething she's got herself a ferocious bulldog and a revolver."
Dollar did not move a doctor's muscle. "I suppose there must be a dogin the country, especially where there are no children. And if you musthave a dog, you can't do better than a bulldog. Is there any reason forthe 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 havetrouble with your servants," said Dollar, with as much sympathy as heliked to show.
"You mayn't see it when you come down, doctor, as I am going to entreatyou to do. She has her sleeves cut on purpose, and it is the smallestyou can buy. But I know it's always there--and always loaded."
Dollar played a while with a queer plain steel ruler, out of keepingwith his other possessions, though it too had its history. It stood onend before he let it alone and looked up.
"General Dysone, there must be some sort of reason or foundation forall this. Has anything alarming happened since you have beenat--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 mywife'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 achange--not for as much as a night in town!"
The interruption had come with another access of grim heat and furtheruse of the General's handkerchief. Dollar took up his steel tube of aruler and trained it like a spy-glass on the ink, with one eye ascarefully closed as if the truth lay at the bottom of the blue-blackwell.
"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 mighthelp, General. Mrs. Dysone is evidently a woman of strong character, andanything----"
"She is, God knows!" cried the miserable man. "Everybody knows itnow--her servants especially--though nobody used to treat them better.Why, in India--but we'll let it go at that, if you don't mind. I haveprovided for the widow."
Dollar bowed over his bit of steel tubing, but this time put it down sohastily that it rolled off the table. General Dysone was towering overhim with shaking hand outstretched.
"I can't say any more," he croaked. "You must come down and see her foryourself; then you could do the talking--and I shouldn't feel such adamned cur! By God, sir, it's awful, talking about one's own wife likethis, even for her own good! It's worse than I thought it would be. Iknow it's different to a doctor--but--but you're an old soldierman aswell, aren't you? Didn't I hear you were in the war?"
"I was."
"Well, then," cried the General, and his blue eyes lit up with simplecunning, "that's where we met! We've run up against each other again,and I've asked you down for this next week-end! Can you manage it? Areyou free? I'll write you a check for your own fee this minute, if youlike--there must be nothing of that kind down there. You don't mindbeing Captain Dollar again, if that was it, to my wife?"
His pathetic eagerness, his sensitive loyalty--even his sudden andsolicitous zest in the pious fraud proposed--made between them anirresistible appeal. Dollar had to think; the rooms up-stairs were notempty; but none enshrined a more interesting case than this sounded. Onthe other hand, he had to be on his guard against a weakness for merehuman interest as apart from the esoteric principles of his practise.People might call him an empiric--empiric he was proud to be, but it wasand must remain empiricism in one definite direction only. Psychicalresearch was not for him--and the Dysone story had a psychic flavor.
In the end he said quite bluntly:
"I hope you don't suggest a ghost behind all this, General?"
&
nbsp; "I? Lord, no! I don't believe in 'em," cried the warrior, with a nervouslaugh.
"Does any member of your household?"
"Not--now."
"_Not_ now?"
"No. I think I am right in saying that." But something was worrying him."Perhaps it is also right," he continued, with the engaging candor of anoverthrown reserve, "and only fair--since I take it you are coming--totell you that there was a fellow with us who thought he saw things. Butit was all the most utter moonshine. He saw brown devils in flowingrobes, but what he'd taken before he saw them I can't tell you! Hedidn't stay with me long enough for us to get to know each other. But hewasn't just a servant, and it was before the poor gardener's affair.Like so many old soldiers on the shelf, Doctor Dollar, I am writing abook, and I run a secretary of sorts; now it's Jim Paley, a nephew ofours; and thank God he has more sense."
"Yet even he gets depressed?"
"He has had cause. If our own kith and kin behaved like onepossessed----" He stopped himself yet again; this time his hand foundDollar's with a vibrant grip. "You will come, won't you? I can meet anytrain on Saturday, or any other day that suits you better. I--for herown sake, doctor--I sometimes feel it might be better if she went awayfor a time. But you will come and see her for yourself?"
Before he left it was a promise; a harder heart than John Dollar's wouldhave ended by making it, and putting the new case before all others whenthe Saturday came. But it was not only his prospective patient whom thecrime doctor was now really anxious to see; he felt fascinated inadvance by the scene and every person of an indubitable drama, of whichat least one tragic act was already over.
There was no question of meeting him at any station; the wealthy motherof a still recent patient had insisted on presenting Doctor Dollar witha fifteen-horse-power Talboys, which he had eventually accepted, andeven chosen for himself (with certain expert assistance), as anincalculable contribution to the Cause. Already the car had vastlyenlarged his theater of work; and on every errand his heart waslightened and his faith fortified by the wonderful case of the youngchauffeur who sat so upright at the wheel beside him. In the beginninghe had slouched there like the worst of his kind; it was neither preceptnor reprimand which had straightened his back and his look and all abouthim. He was what John Dollar had always wanted--the unconscious patientwhose history none knew--who himself little dreamed that it was allknown to the man who treated him almost like a brother.
The boy had been in prison for dishonesty; he was being sedulouslytrusted, and so taught to trust himself. He had come in March, a sulkyand suspicious clod; and now in June he could talk cricket and sixpennyeditions from the Hounslow tram-lines to the wide white gate openinginto a drive through a Berkshire wood, with a house lurking behind it ina mask of ivy, out of the sun.
But in the drive General Dysone stepped back into the doctor's life,and, on being directed to the stables, he who had filled it for the lasthour drove out of it for the next twenty-four.
"I wanted you to hear something at once from me," his host whisperedunder the whispering trees, "lest it should be mentioned and take youaback before the others. We've had another little tragedy--not a horrorlike the last--yet in one way almost worse. My wife shot her own dogdead last night!"
Dollar put a curb upon his parting lips.
"_In_ the night?" he stood still to ask.
"Well, between eleven and twelve."
"In her own room, or where?"
"Out-of-doors. Don't ask me how it happened; nobody seems to know, anddon't _you_ know anything if she speaks of it herself."
His fine face was streaming with perspiration; yet he seemed to havebeen waiting quietly under the trees, he was not short of breath, and hea big elderly man. Dollar asked no questions at all; they dropped thesubject there in the drive. Though the sun was up somewhere out ofsight, it was already late in the long June afternoon, and the guest wastaken straight to his room.
It was a corner room with one ivy-darkened casement overlooking ashadowy lawn, the other facing a forest of firs and chestnuts on whichit was harder to look without an instinctive qualm. But the Generalseemed to have forgot his tragedies, and for the moment his blue eyesalmost brightened the somber scene on which they dwelt with involuntarypride.
"Now don't you see where Tyrol comes in?" said he. "Put a mountainbehind those trees--and there _was_ one the very first time we saw thehouse! It was only a thunder-cloud, but for all the world it might havebeen the Dolomites. And it took us back ... we had no other cloudsthen!"
Dollar found himself alone; found his things laid out and his shirtstudded, and a cozy on the brass hot-water can, with as muchsatisfaction as though he had never stayed in a country house before.Could there be so very much amiss in a household where they knew justwhat to do for one, and just what to leave undone?
And it was the same with all the other creature comforts; they meantgood servants, however short their service; and good servants do notoften mean the mistress or the hostess whom Dollar had come prepared tomeet. He dressed in pleasurable doubt and enhanced excitement--and thosewere his happiest moments at Valsugana.
Mrs. Dysone was a middle-aged woman who looked almost old, whereas theGeneral was elderly with all the appearance of early middle age. Thecontrast was even more complete in more invidious particulars; butDollar took little heed of the poor lady's face, as a lady's face. Herskin and eyes were enough for him; both were brown, with that almostultra-Indian tinge of so many Anglo-Indians. He was sensible at once ofan Oriental impenetrability.
With her conversation he could not quarrel; what there was of it wascrisp, unstudied, understanding. And the little dinner did her the kindof credit for which he was now prepared; but she only once took chargeof the talk, and that was rather sharply to change a subject into whichshe had been the first to enter.
How it had cropped up, Dollar could never think, especially as hisformer profession and rank duly obtained throughout his visit. He hadeven warned his chauffeur that he was not the doctor there; it couldnot have been he himself who started it, but somebody did, as somebodyalways does when there is one topic to avoid. It was probably the niceyoung nephew who made the first well-meaning remark upon the generalwant of originality, with reference to something or other undercriticism at the moment; but it was neither he nor Dollar who laid itdown that monkeys were the most arrant imitators in nature--exceptcriminals; and it certainly was the General who said that nothing wouldsurprise him less than if another fellow went and hanged himself intheir wood. Then it was that Mrs. Dysone put her foot down--and Dollarnever forgot her look.
Almost for the first time it made him think of her revolver. It was outof sight; and full as her long sleeves were, it was difficult to believethat one of them could conceal the smallest firearm made; but a tinygold padlock did dangle when she raised her glass of water; and at theend of dinner there was a second little scene, this time without words,which went far to dispel any doubt arising in his mind.
He was holding the door open for Mrs. Dysone, and she stood a moment onthe threshold, peering into the far corners of the room. He saw what itwas she had forgot--saw it come back to her as she turned away, withanother look worth remembering.
Either the General missed that, or the anxieties of the husband were nowdeliberately sunk in the duties of the host. He had got up some Jubileeport in the doctor's honor; they sat over it together till it was nearlytime for bed. Dollar took little, but the other grew a shade morerubicund, and it was good to hear him chat without restraint or anapparent care. Yet it was strange as well; again he drifted intocriminology, and his own after-dinner defect of sensibility only madehis hearer the more uncomfortable.
Of course, he felt, it was partly out of compliment to himself as crimedoctor; but the ugly subject had evidently an unhealthy fascination ofits own for the fine full-blooded man. Not that it seemed an inveteratefoible; the expert observer thought it rather the reflex attraction ofthe strongest possible horror and repulsion, and took it the moreseriously on
that account. Of two evils it seemed to him the less toallow himself to be pumped on professional generalities. It wasdistinctly better than encouraging the General to ransack his longexperience for memories of decent people who had done dreadful deeds.Best of all to assure him that even those unfortunates might haveoutlived their infamy under the scientific treatment of a moreenlightened day.
If they must talk crime, let it be the Cure of Crime! So the doctor hadhis heart-felt say; and the General listened even more terribly than hehad talked; asking questions in whispers, and waiting breathless for theconsidered reply. It was the last of these that took most answering.
"And which, doctor, for God's sake, which would you have most hope ofcuring: a man or a woman?"
But Dollar would only say: "I shouldn't despair of _anybody_, who haddone _anything_, if there was still an intelligence to work upon; butthe more of that the better."
And the General said hardly another word, except "God bless you!"outside the spare-room door. His wife had been seen no more.
But Dollar saw her in every corner of his delightful quarters; and theacute contrast that might have unsettled an innocent mind had theopposite effect on his. There were electric lamps in all the rightplaces; there were books and biscuits, a glass of milk, even a miniaturedecanter and a bottle of Schweppes. He sighed as he wound his watch andplaced it in the little stand on the table beside the bed; but he wasonly wondering exactly what he was going to discover before he wound itup again.
Outside one open window the merry crickets were playing castanets inthose dreadful trees. It was the other blind that he drew up; and on thelawn the dying and reviving glow of a cigarette gave glimpses of a whiteshirt-front, a black satin tie, the drooping brim of a Panama hat. Itwas the nice young nephew, who had retreated before the Jubilee port.And Dollar was still wondering on what pretext he could go down and joinhim, when his knock came at the door.
"Only to see if you'd everything you want," explained young Paley,ingenuously disingenuous; and shut the door behind him before theinvitation to enter was out of the doctor's mouth. But he shut it verysoftly, trod like a burglar, and excused himself with bated breath: "Youare the first person who has stayed with us since I've been here,Captain Dollar!" And his wry young smile was as sad as anything in thesad house.
"You amaze me!" cried Dollar. Indeed, it was the flank attack of a newkind of amazement. "I should have thought--" and his glance made alightning tour of the luxurious room.
"I know," said Paley, nodding. "I think they must have laid themselvesout for visitors at the start. But none come now. I wish they did! It'sa house that wants them."
"You are rather a small party, aren't you?"
"We are rather a grim party! And yet my old uncle is absolutely thefinest man I ever struck."
"I don't wonder that you admire him."
"You don't know what he is, Captain Dollar. He got the V.C. when he wasmy age in Burmah, but he deserves one for almost every day of hisordinary home life."
Dollar made no remark; the young fellow offered him a cigarette, andwas encouraged to light another himself. He required no encouragement totalk.
"The funny thing is that he's not really my uncle. I'm _her_ nephew; andshe's a wonderful woman, too, in her way. She runs the whole place likea book; she's thrown away here. But--I can't help saying it--I shouldlike her better if I didn't love him!"
"Talking of books," said Dollar, "the General told me he was writingone, and that you were helping him?"
"He didn't tell you what it was about?"
"No."
"Then I mustn't. I wish I could. It's to be the last word on a certainsubject, but he won't have it spoken about. That's one reason why it'sgetting on his nerves."
"_Is_ it his book?"
"It and everything. Doesn't he remind you of a man sitting on apowder-barrel? If he weren't what he is, there'd be an explosion everyday. And there never is one--no matter what happens!"
Dollar watched the pale youth swallowing his smoke.
"Do they often talk about crime?"
"Always! They can't keep off it. And Aunt Essie always changes thesubject as though she hadn't been every bit as bad as uncle. Of coursethey've had a good lot to make them morbid. I suppose you heard aboutpoor Dingle, the last gardener?"
"Only just"
"He was the last man you would ever have suspected of such a thing. Itwas in those trees just outside." The crickets made extra merry as hepaused. "They didn't find him for a day and a night!"
"Look here! I'm not going to let you talk about it," said Dollar. Butthe good-humored rebuff cost him an effort. He wanted to hear all aboutthe suicide, but not from this worn lad with an old man's smile. He knewand liked the type too well.
"I'm sorry, Captain Dollar." Jim Paley looked sorry. "Yet, it's all verywell! I don't suppose the General told you what happened last night?"
"Well, yes, he did, but without going into any particulars."
And now the doctor made no secret of his curiosity; this was a matter onwhich he could not afford to forego enlightenment. Nor was it likeraking up an old horror; it would do the boy more good than harm tospeak of this last affair.
"I can't tell you much about it myself," said he. "I was wondering if Icould, just now on the lawn. That's where it happened, you know."
"I didn't know."
"Well, it was, and the funny thing is that I was there at the time. Iused to go out with the dog for a cigarette when they turned in; lastnight I was foolish enough to fall asleep in a chair on the lawn. I hadbeen playing tennis all the afternoon, and had a long bike-ride bothways. Well, all I know is that I woke up thinking I'd been shot; andthere was my aunt with a revolver she insists on carrying--and poorMuggins as dead as a door-nail."
"Did she say it was an accident?"
"She behaved as if it had been; she was all over the poor dead brute."
"Rather a savage dog, wasn't it?"
"I never thought so. But the General had no use for him--and no wonder!Did he tell you he had bitten him in the shoulder?"
"No."
"Well, he did, only the other day. But that's the old General all over.He never told me till the dog was dead. I shouldn't be surprised if----"
"Yes?"
"----if my aunt hadn't been in it somehow. Poor old Muggins was such abone between them!"
"You don't suppose he'd ended by turning on her?"
"Hardly. He was like a kitten with her, poor brute!"
Another cigarette was lighted; more inhaling went on unchecked.
"Was Mrs. Dysone by herself out there--but for you?"
"Well--yes."
"Does that mean she wasn't?"
"Upon my word, I don't know!" said young Paley, frankly. "It sounds mostawful rot, but just for a moment I thought I saw somebody in a sort ofsurplice affair. But I can only swear to Aunt Essie, and she was in herdressing-gown, and it wasn't white."
Dollar did not go to bed at all. He sat first at one window, watchingthe black trees turn blue, and eventually a variety of sunny greens;then at the other, staring down at the pretty scene of a deed ugly initself, but uglier in the peculiar quality of its mystery.
A dog; only a dog, this time; but the woman's own dog! There were twonew sods on the place where he supposed it had lain withering....
But who or what was it that these young men had seen--the one theGeneral had told him about, and this obviously truthful lad whom hehimself had questioned? "Brown devils in flowing robes" was perhaps onlythe old soldier's picturesque phrase; they might have turned brown inhis Indian mind; but what of Jim Paley's "somebody in a sort of surpliceaffair"? Was that "body" brown as well?
In the wood of worse omen the gay little birds tuned up to deaf ears atthe open window. And a cynical soloist went so far as to start saying,"Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty!" in a liquid contralto. But a littlesharp shot, fired two nights and a day before, was the only sound to getacross the spare-room window-sill....
The bathroom was next door;
in that physically admirable house there wasboiling hot water at six o'clock in the morning; the servants made teawhen they heard it running; and the garden before breakfast was almost adelight. It might have been an Eden ... it _was_ ... with the serpentstill in the grass!
Blinds went up like eyelids under bushy brows of ivy. The grass remainedgray with dew; there was not enough sun anywhere, though the whole skybeamed. Dollar wandered indoors the way the General had taken him theday before. It was the way through his library. Libraries are alwaysinteresting; a man's bookcase is sometimes more interesting than the manhimself, sometimes the one existing portrait of his mind. Dollar spentthe best part of an absorbing hour without taking a single volume fromits place. But this was partly because those he would have dipped intowere under glass and lock and key. And partly it was due to moreaccessible distractions crowning that very piece of ostensible antiquitywhich contained the books, and of which the top drawer drew out into theGeneral's desk.
The distractions were a peculiarly repulsive gilded idol, squatting withits tongue out, as if at the amateur author, and a heathen sword on thewall behind it. Nothing more; but Dollar also had served in India in hisday, and his natural interest was whetted by a certain smattering oflore. He was still standing on a newspaper and a chair when a voicehailed him in no hospitable tone.
"Really, Captain Dollar! I should have asked the servants for a ladderwhile I was about it!"
Of course it was Mrs. Dysone, and she was not even pretending to lookpleased. He jumped down with an apology which softened not a line of hersallow face and bony figure.
"It was an outrage," he owned. "But I did stand on a paper to save thechair. I say, though, I never noticed it was this week's _Field_."
Really horrified at his own behavior, he did his best to smooth and wipeaway his footmarks on the wrapper of the paper. But those subtle eyes,like blots of ink on old parchment, were no longer trained on theoffender, who missed yet another look that might have helped him.
"My husband's study is rather holy ground," was the lady's last word. "Ionly came in myself because I thought he was here."
Mercifully, days do not always go on as badly as they begin; morestrangely, this one developed into the dullest and most conventional ofcountry-house Sundays.
General Dysone was himself not only dull, but even a little stiff, asbecame a good Briton who had said too much to too great a strangerovernight. His natural courtesy had become conspicuous; he playedpunctilious host all day; and Dollar was allowed to feel that, if he hadcome down as a doctor, he was staying on as an ordinary guest, and in ahouse where guests were expected to observe the Sabbath. So they allmarched off together to the village church, where the General trumpetedthe tune in his own octave, read the lessons, and kept waking up duringthe sermon. There were the regulation amenities with other devout gentryof the neighborhood; there was the national Sunday sirloin at themidday meal, and no more untoward topics to make the host's foreheadglisten or the hostess gleam and lower. In the afternoon the whole partyinspected every animal and vegetable on the premises; and after tea thevisitor's car came round.
Originally there had been much talk of his staying till the Monday; theGeneral went through the form of pressing him once more, but was notbacked up by his wife, who had shadowed them suspiciously all day. Nordid he comment on this by so much as a sidelong glance at Dollar, orcontrive to get another word with him alone. And the crime doctor,instead of making any excuse to remain and penetrate these newmysteries, showed a sensitive alacrity to leave.
Of the nephew, who looked terribly depressed at his departure, he hadseen something more, and had even asked two private favors. One, that hewould keep out of that haunted garden for the next few nights, and trygoing to bed earlier; the other an odd request for an almost middle-agedman about town, but rather flattering to the young fellow. It was forthe loan of his Panama, so that Dollar's hatter might see if he couldnot get him as good a one. Paley's was the kind that might be carried upa sleeve, like the modern handkerchief; he explained that the oldGeneral had given it him.
Dollar tried it on almost as soon as the car was out of sight ofValsugana--while his young chauffeur was still wondering what he haddone to make the governor sit behind. It was funny of him, just when achap might have been telling him a thing or two that he had heard downthere at the coachman's place. But it was all the more interesting whenthey got back to town at seven in the evening, and he was ordered tofill up with petrol and be back at nine, to make the same trip overagain.
"I needn't ask you," the doctor added, "to hold your tongue aboutanything you may have heard at General Dysone's. I know you will,Albert."
And almost by lighting-up time they were shoulder to shoulder on theroad once more.
But at Valsugana it was another dark night, and none too easy to findone's way about the place on the strength of a midsummer day'sacquaintance. And for the first time Dollar was glad the dog of thehouse was dead, as he finished a circuitous approach by stealingthrough the farther wood, toward the jagged lumps of light in theivy-strangled bedroom windows; already everything was dark down-stairs.
Here were the pale new sods; they could just be seen, though his feetfirst felt their inequalities. His cigarette was the one pin-prick oflight in all the garden, though each draw brought the buff brim of JimPaley's Panama within an inch of his eyes, its fine texture like coarsematting at the range. And the chair in which Jim Paley had sat smokingthis time last night, and dozing the night before when the shotdisturbed him, was just where he expected his shins to find it; thewickers squeaked as John Dollar took his place.
Less need now not to make a sound; but he made no more than he couldhelp, for the night was still and sultry, without any of the gardennoises of a night ago. It was as though nature had stopped her orchestrain disgust at the plot and counterplot brewing on her darkened stage.The cigarette-end was thrown away; it might have been a stone that fellupon the grass, and Dollar could almost hear it sizzling in the dew. Hisaural nerves were tuned to the last pitch of sensitive acknowledgment;a fly on the drooping Panama-brim would not have failed to "scratch thebrain's coat of curd." ... How much less the swift and furtive footfallthat came kissing the wet lawn at last!
It was more than a footfall; there was a following swish of some longgarment trailing through the wet. It all came near; it all stopped dead.Dollar had nodded heavily as if in sleep; had jerked his head up higher;seemed to be dropping off again in greater comfort.
The footfalls and the swish came on like thunder now. But now hiseyelids were only drooping like the brim above them; in the broad lightof their abnormal perceptivity, it was as if his own eyes threw adreadful halo round the figure they beheld. It was a swaddled figure,creeping into monstrosity, crouching early for its spring. It had drapedarms extended, with some cloth or band that looped and tightened at eachstride: on the rounded shoulders bobbed the craning head and darkenedface of General Dysone.
In his last stride he swerved, as if to get as much behind the chair asits position under the tree permitted. The cloth clapped as it cametaut over Dollar's head, but was not actually round his neck when heducked and turned, and hit out and up with all his might. He felt therasp of a fifteen-hours' beard, heard the click of teeth; the lawnquaked, and white robes settled upon a senseless heap, as the plumage ona murdered pigeon.
Dollar knelt over him and felt his pulse, held an electric lamp to eyesthat opened, and quickly something else to the dilated nostrils.
"O Jim!" shuddered a voice close at hand. It was shrill yet broken, acry of horror, but like no voice he knew.
He jumped up to face the General's wife.
"It's not Jim, Mrs. Dysone. It's I--Dollar. He'll soon be all right!"
"Captain--Dollar?"
"No--doctor, nowadays--he called me down as one himself. And now I'vecome back on my own responsibility, and--put him under chloroform; but Ihaven't given him much; for God's sake let us speak plainly while wecan!"
She was on her knees
, proving his words without uttering one. Stillkneeling speechless, she leaned back while he continued: "You know whathe is as well as I do, Mrs. Dysone; you may thank God a doctor has foundhim out before the police! Monomania is not their business--but neitherare you the one to cope with it. You have shielded your husband as onlya woman will shield a man; now you must let him come to me."
His confidence was taking some effect; but she ignored the hands thatwould have helped her to her feet; and her own were locked in front ofher, but not in supplication.
"And what can any of you do for him," she cried fiercely--"except takehim away from me?"
"I will only answer for myself. I would control him as you can not, andI would teach him to control himself if man under God can do it. I am acriminal alienist, Mrs. Dysone, as your husband knew before he came toconsult me on elaborate pretenses into which we needn't go. He trustedme enough to ask me down here; in my opinion, he was feeling his way togreater trust, in the teeth of his terrible obsession, but last night hesaid more than he meant to say, so to-day he wouldn't say a word. I onlyguessed his secret this morning--when you guessed I had! It would besafe with me against the world. But how can I take the responsibility ofkeeping it if he remains at large as he is now?"
"You can not," said Mrs. Dysone. "I am the only one."
Her tone was dreamy and yet hard and fatalistic; the arms in the widedressing-gown sleeves were still tightly locked. Something broughtDollar down again beside the senseless man, bending over him in keenalarm.
"He'll be himself again directly--quite himself, I shouldn't wonder! Hemay have forgot what has happened; he mustn't find me here to remindhim. Something he will have to know, and you are the one to break it tohim, and then to persuade him to come to me. But you won't find that soeasy, Mrs. Dysone, if he sees how I tricked him. He had much betterthink it _was_ your nephew. My motor's in the lane behind these trees;let him think I never went away at all, that we connived and I amholding myself there at your disposal. It would be true--wouldn'tit--after this? I'll wait night and day until I know!"
"Doctor Dollar," said Mrs. Dysone, when she had risen without aid andset him to the trees, "you may or may not know the worst about my poorhusband, but you shall know it now about me. I wish you to takethis--and keep it! You have had two escapes to-night."
She bared the wrist from which the smallest of revolvers dangled; hefelt it in the darkness--and left it dangling.
"I heard you had one. He told me. And I thought you carried it for yourown protection!" cried Dollar, seeing into the woman at last.
"No. It was not for that"--and he knew that she was smiling through hertears. "I did save his life--when my poor dog saved Jim's--but I carriedthis to save the secret I am going to trust to you!"
Dollar would only take her hand. "You wouldn't have shot me, or anyman," he assured her. "But," he added to himself among the trees, "whata fool I was to forget that _they_ never killed women!"
It turned almost cold beside the motor in the lane; the doctor gave hisboy a little brandy, and together they tramped up and down, talkingsport and fiction by the small hour together. The stars slipped out ofthe sky, the birds began, and the same cynic shouted "Pretty, pretty,pretty!" at the top of its strong contralto. At long last there camethat other sound for which Dollar had never ceased listening. And heturned back into the haunted wood with Jim Paley.
The poor nephew--still stunned calm--was as painfully articulate as ayoung bereaved husband. He spoke of General Dysone as of a man alreadydead, in the gentlest of past tenses. He was dead enough to the boy.There had been an appalling confession--made as coolly, it appeared, asPaley repeated it.
"He thought _I_ knocked him down, and I had to let him think so! AuntEssie insisted; she _is_ a wonder, after all! It made him tell me thingsI simply can't believe.... Yet he showed me a rope just like it--meantfor me!"
"Do you mean just like the one that--hanged the gardener?"
"Yes. _He_ did it, so he swears ... _afterward_. He'll tell youhimself--he wants to tell you. He says he first ... I can't put mytongue to it!" The lapse into the present tense had made him human.
"Like the Thugs?"
"Yes--like that sect of fiendish fanatics who went about stranglingeverybody they met! _They_ were what his book was about. How did youknow?"
"That's Bhowanee, their goddess, on top of his bureau, and he hasSleeman and all the other awful literature locked up underneath. As astudy for a life of sudden idleness, in the depths of the country, itwas enough to bring on temporary insanity. And the strong man gone wronggoes and does what the rest of us only get on our nerves!"
Dollar felt his biceps clutched and clawed, and the two stood stillunder more irony in a gay contralto.
"Temporary, did you say? Only _temporary_?" the boy was faltering.
"I hope so, honestly. You see, it was just on that one point ... andeven there ... I believe he _did_ want his wife out of the way, and forher own sake, too!" said Dollar, with a sympathetic tremor of his own.
"But do you know what he's saying? He means to tell the whole world now,and let them hang him, and serve him right--he says! And he's as saneas we are now--only he might have been through a Turkish bath!"
"More signs!" cried Dollar, looking up at the brightening sky. "But wewon't allow that. It would undo nothing and he has made all thereparation.
" ... Come, Paley! I want to take him back with me in the car. It's broaddaylight."
The Crime Doctor Page 6
