CHAPTER XXVIII
THE COMING OF DR. MILSOM
She rose to meet him, and he stood spellbound, still holding the handle of the door. It seemed that she had taken on new qualities, a new and an ethereal grace. At the very thought even of his technical possession of this smiling girl who came forward to greet him, his heart thumped so loudly that he felt she must hear it. She was pale, and there were dark shadows under her eyes, but the hand that gripped his was firm and warm and living.
"I have to thank you for much, Mr. Beale," she said. "Mr. Kitson has told me that I owe my rescue to you."
"Did he?" he asked awkwardly, and wondered what else Kitson had told her.
"I am trying to be very sensible, and I want you to help me, because you are the most sensible man I know."
She went back to the lounge-chair where she had been sitting, and pointed to another.
"It was horribly melodramatic, wasn't it? but I suppose the life of a detective is full of melodrama."
"Oh, brimming over," he said. "If you keep very quiet I will give you a résumé of my most interesting cases," he said, making a pathetic attempt to be flippant, and the girl detected something of his insincerity.
"You have had a trying day," she said, with quick sympathy, "have you arrested Doctor van Heerden?"
He shook his head.
"I am glad," she said.
"Glad?"
She nodded.
"Before he is arrested," she spoke with some hesitation, "I want one little matter cleared up. I asked Mr. Kitson, but he put me off and said you would tell me everything."
"What is it?" he asked steadily.
She got up and went to her bag which stood upon a side-table, opened it and took out something which she laid on the palm of her hand. She came back with hand extended, and Beale looked at the glittering object on her palm and was speechless.
"Do you see that?" she asked.
He nodded, having no words for the moment, for "that" was a thin gold ring.
"It is a wedding ring," she said, "and I found it on my finger when I recovered."
"Oh!" said Beale blankly.
"Was I married?" she asked.
He made two or three ineffectual attempts to speak and ended by nodding.
"I feared so," she said quietly, "you see I recollect nothing of what happened. The last thing I remembered was Doctor van Heerden sitting beside me and putting something into my arm. It hurt a little, but not very much, and I remember I spoke to him. I think it was about you," a little colour came to her face, "or perhaps he was speaking about you, I am not sure," she said hurriedly; "I know that you came into it somehow, and that is all I can recall."
"Nothing else?" he asked dismally.
"Nothing," she said.
"Try, try, try to remember," he urged her.
He realized he was being a pitiable coward and that he wanted to shift the responsibility for the revelation upon her. She smiled, and shook her head.
"I am sorry but I can't remember anything. Now you are going to tell me."
He discovered that he was sitting on the edge of the chair and that he was more nervous than he had ever been in his life.
"So I am going to tell you," he said, in a hollow voice, "of course I'll tell you. It is rather difficult, you understand."
She looked at him kindly.
"I know it must be difficult for a man like you to speak of your own achievements. But for once you are going to be immodest," she laughed.
"Well, you see," he began, "I knew van Heerden wanted to marry you. I knew that all along. I guessed he wanted to marry you for your money, because in the circumstances there was nothing else he could want to marry you for," he added. "I mean," he corrected himself hastily, "that money was the most attractive thing to him."
"This doesn't sound very flattering," she smiled.
"I know I am being crude, but you will forgive me when you learn what I have to say," he said huskily. "Van Heerden wanted to marry you–"
"And he married me," she said, "and I am going to break that marriage as soon as I possibly can."
"I know, I hope so," said Stanford Beale. "I believe it is difficult, but I will do all I possibly can. Believe me, Miss Cresswell–"
"I am not Miss Cresswell any longer," she said with a wry little face, "but please don't call me by my real name."
"I won't," he said fervently.
"You knew he wanted to marry me for my money and not for my beauty or my accomplishments," she said, "and so you followed me down to Deans Folly."
"Yes, yes, but I must explain. I know it will sound horrible to you and you may have the lowest opinion of me, but I have got to tell you."
He saw the look of alarm gather in her eyes and plunged into his story.
"I thought that if you were already married van Heerden would be satisfied and take no further steps against you."
"But I wasn't already married," she said, puzzled.
"Wait, wait, please," he begged, "keep that in your mind, that I was satisfied van Heerden wanted you for your money, and that if you were already married or even if you weren't and he thought you were I could save you from dangers, the extent of which even I do not know. And there was a man named Homo, a crook. He had been a parson and had all the manner and style of his profession. So I got a special licence in my own name."
"You?" she said breathlessly. "A marriage licence? To marry me?"
He nodded.
"And I took Homo with me in my search for you. I knew that I should have a very small margin of time, and I thought if Homo performed the ceremony and I could confront van Heerden with the accomplished deed–"
She sprang to her feet with a laugh.
"Oh, I see, I see," she said. "Oh, how splendid! And you went through this mock ceremony! Where was I?"
"You were at the window," he said miserably.
"But how lovely! And you were outside and your parson with the funny name—but that's delicious! So I wasn't married at all and this is your ring." She picked it up with a mocking light in her eyes, and held it out to him, but he shook his head.
"You were married," he said, in a voice which was hardly audible.
"Married? How?"
"Homo was not a fake! He was a real clergyman! And the marriage was legal!"
They looked at one another without speaking. On the girl's part there was nothing but pure amazement; but Stanford Beale read horror, loathing, consternation and unforgiving wrath, and waited, as the criminal waits for his sentence, upon her next words.
"So I am really married—to you," she said wonderingly.
"You will never forgive me, I know." He did not look at her now. "My own excuse is that I did what I did because I—wanted to save you. I might have sailed in with a gun and shot them up. I might have waited my chance and broken into the house. I might have taken a risk and surrounded the place with police, but that would have meant delay. I didn't do the normal things or take the normal view—I couldn't with you."
He did not see the momentary tenderness in her eyes, because he was not looking at her, and went on:
"That's the whole of the grisly story. Mr. Kitson will advise you as to what steps you may take to free yourself. It was a most horrible blunder, and it was all the more tragic because you were the victim, you of all the persons in the world!"
She had put the ring down, and now she took it up again and examined it curiously.
"It is rather—quaint, isn't it?" she asked.
"Oh, very."
He thought he heard a sob and looked up. She was laughing, at first silently, then, as the humour of the thing seized her, her laugh rang clear and he caught its infection.
"It's funny," she said at last, wiping her eyes, "there is a humorous side to it. Poor Mr. Beale!"
"I deserve a little pity," he said ruefully.
"Why?" she asked quickly. "Have you committed bigamy?"
"Not noticeably so," he answered, with a smile.
"Well, what are you going to do about it? It's rather serious when one thinks of it—seriously. So I am Mrs. Stanford Beale—poor Mr. Beale, and poor Mrs. Beale-to-be. I do hope," she said, and this time her seriousness was genuine, "that I have not upset any of your plans—too much. Oh," she sat down suddenly, staring at him, "it would be awful," she said in a hushed voice, "and I would never forgive myself. Is there—forgive my asking the question, but I suppose," with a flashing smile, "as your wife I am entitled to your confidence—is there somebody you are going to marry?"
"I have neither committed bigamy nor do I contemplate it," said Beale, who was gradually recovering his grip of the situation, "if you mean am I engaged to somebody—in fact, to a girl," he said recklessly, "the answer is in the negative. There will be no broken hearts on my side of the family. I have no desire to probe your wounded heart–"
"Don't be flippant," she stopped him sternly; "it is a very terrible situation, Mr. Beale, and I hardly dare to think of it."
"I realize how terrible it is," he said, suddenly bold, "and as I tell you, I will do everything I can to correct my blunder."
"Does Mr. Kitson know?" she asked.
He nodded.
"What did Mr. Kitson say? Surely he gave you some advice."
"He said–" began Stanford, and went red.
The girl did not pursue the subject.
"Come, let us talk about the matter like rational beings," she said cheerfully. "I have got over my first inclination to swoon. You must curb your very natural desire to be haughty."
"I cannot tell you what we can do yet. I don't want to discuss the unpleasant details of a divorce," he said, "and perhaps you will let me have a few days before we decide on any line of action. Van Heerden is still at large, and until he is under lock and key and this immense danger which threatens the world is removed, I can hardly think straight."
"Mr. Kitson has told me about van Heerden," she said quietly. "Isn't it rather a matter for the English police to deal with? As I have reason to know," she shivered slightly, "Doctor van Heerden is a man without any fear or scruple."
"My scruples hardly keep me awake at night," he said, "and I guess I'm not going to let up on van Heerden. I look upon it as my particular job."
"Isn't it"—she hesitated—"isn't it rather dangerous?"
"For me?" he laughed, "no, I don't think so. And even if it were in the most tragic sense of the word dangerous, why, that would save you a great deal of unpleasantness."
"I think you are being horrid," she said.
"I am sorry," he responded quickly, "I was fishing for a little pity, and it was rather cheap and theatrical. No, I do not think there is very much danger. Van Heerden is going to keep under cover, and he is after something bigger than my young life."
"Is Milsom with him?"
"He is the weak link in van Heerden's scheme," Beale said. "Somehow van Heerden doesn't strike me as a good team leader, and what little I have seen of Milsom leads me to the belief that he is hardly the man to follow the doctor's lead blindly. Besides, it is always easier to catch two men than one," he laughed. "That is an old detective's axiom and it works out."
She put out her hand.
"It's a tangled business, isn't it?" she said. "I mean us. Don't let it add to your other worries. Forget our unfortunate relationship until we can smooth things out."
He shook her hand in silence.
"And now I am coming out to hear all that you clever people suggest," she said. "Please don't look alarmed. I have been talking all the afternoon and have been narrating my sad experience—such as I remember—to the most important people. Cabinet Ministers and police commissioners and doctors and things."
"One moment," he said.
He took from his pocket a stout book.
"I was wondering what that was," she laughed. "You haven't been buying me reading-matter?"
He nodded, and held the volume so that she could read the title.
"'A Friend in Need,' by S. Beale. I didn't know you wrote!" she said in surprise.
"I am literary and even worse," he said flippantly. "I see you have a shelf of books here. If you will allow me I will put it with the others."
"But mayn't I see it?"
He shook his head.
"I just want to tell you all you have said about van Heerden is true. He is a most dangerous man. He may yet be dangerous to you. I don't want you to touch that little book unless you are in really serious trouble. Will you promise me?"
She opened her eyes wide.
"But, Mr. Beale–?"
"Will you promise me?" he said again.
"Of course I'll promise you, but I don't quite understand."
"You will understand," he said.
He opened the door for her and she passed out ahead of him. Kitson came to meet them.
"I suppose there is no news?" asked Stanford.
"None," said the other, "except high political news. There has been an exchange of notes between the Triple Alliance and the German Government. All communication with the Ukraine is cut off, and three ships have been sunk in the Bosphorus so cleverly that our grain ships in the Black Sea are isolated."
"That's bad," said Beale.
He walked to the table. It was littered with maps and charts and printed tabulations. McNorton got up and joined them.
"I have just had a 'phone message through from the Yard," he said. "Carter, my assistant, says that he's certain van Heerden has not left London."
"Has the girl spoken?"
"Glaum? No, she's as dumb as an oyster. I doubt if you would get her to speak even if you put her through the third degree, and we don't allow that."
"So I am told," said Beale dryly.
There was a knock at the door.
"Unlock it somebody," said Kitson. "I turned the key."
The nearest person was the member of the Corn Exchange Committee, and he clicked back the lock and the door opened to admit a waiter.
"There's a man here–" he said; but before he could say more he was pushed aside and a dusty, dishevelled figure stepped into the room and glanced round.
"My name is Milsom," he said. "I have come to give King's Evidence!"
CHAPTER XXIX
THE LOST CODE
"I'm Milsom," said the man in the doorway again.
His clothes were grimed and dusty, his collar limp and soiled. There were two days' growth of red-grey stubble on his big jaw, and he bore himself like a man who was faint from lack of sleep.
He walked unsteadily to the table and fell into a chair.
"Where is van Heerden?" asked Beale, but Milsom shook his head.
"I left him two hours ago, after a long and unprofitable talk on patriotism," he said, and laughed shortly. "At that time he was making his way back to his house in Southwark."
"Then he is in London—here in London!"
Milsom nodded.
"You won't find him," he said brusquely. "I tell you I've left him after a talk about certain patriotic misgivings on my part—look!"
He lifted his right hand, which hitherto he had kept concealed by his side, and Oliva shut her eyes and felt deathly sick.
"Right index digit and part of the phalanges shot away," said Milsom philosophically. "That was my trigger-finger—but he shot first. Give me a drink!"
They brought him a bottle of wine, and he drank it from a long tumbler in two great breathless gulps.
"You've closed the coast to him," he said, "you shut down your wires and cables, you're watching the roads, but he'll get his message through, if–"
"Then he hasn't cabled?" said Beale eagerly. "Milsom, this means liberty for you—liberty and comfort. Tell us the truth, man, help us hold off this horror that van Heerden is loosing on the world and there's no reward too great for you."
Milsom's eyes narrowed.
"It wasn't the hope of reward or hope of pardon that made me break with van Heerden," he said in his slow way. "You'd laugh yourself sick if I told you. It was—it was the knowledge that this country would be down and out; that the people who spoke my tongue and thought more or less as I thought should be under the foot of the Beast—fevered sentimentality! You don't believe that?"
"I believe it."
It was Oliva who spoke, and it appeared that this was the first time that Milsom had noticed her presence, for his eyes opened wider.
"You—oh, you believe it, do you?" and he nodded.
"But why is van Heerden waiting?" asked McNorton. "What is he waiting for?"
The big man rolled his head helplessly from side to side, and the hard cackle of his laughter was very trying to men whose nerves were raw and on edge.
"That's the fatal lunacy of it! I think it must be a national characteristic. You saw it in the war again and again—a wonderful plan brought to naught by some piece of over-cleverness on the part of the super-man."
A wild hope leapt to Beale's heart.
"Then it has failed! The rust has not answered–?"
But Milsom shook his head wearily.
"The rust is all that he thinks—and then some," he said. "No, it isn't that. It is in the work of organization where the hitch has occurred. You know something of the story. Van Heerden has agents in every country in the world. He has spent nearly a hundred thousand pounds in perfecting his working plans, and I'm willing to admit that they are wellnigh perfect. Such slight mistakes as sending men to South Africa and Australia where the crops are six months later than the European and American harvests may be forgiven, because the German thinks longitudinally, and north and south are the two points of the compass which he never bothers his head about. If the Germans had been a seafaring people they'd have discovered America before Columbus, but they would never have found the North Pole or rounded the Cape in a million years."
He paused, and they saw the flicker of a smile in his weary eyes.
"The whole scheme is under van Heerden's hand. At the word 'Go' thousands of his agents begin their work of destruction—but the word must come from him. He has so centralized his scheme that if he died suddenly without that word being uttered, the work of years would come to naught. I guess he is suspicious of everybody, including his new Government. For the best part of a year he has been arranging and planning. With the assistance of a girl, a compatriot of his, he has reduced all things to order. In every country is a principal agent who possesses a copy of a simple code. At the proper moment van Heerden would cable a word which meant 'Get busy' or 'Hold off until you hear from me,' or 'Abandon scheme for this year and collect cultures.' I happen to be word-perfect in the meanings of the code words because van Heerden has so often drummed them into me."
"What are the code words?"
"I'm coming to that," nodded Milsom. "Van Heerden is the type of scientist that never trusts his memory. You find that kind in all the school—they usually spend their time making the most complete and detailed notes, and their studies are packed with memoranda. Yet he had a wonderful memory for the commonplace things—for example, in the plain English of his three messages he was word perfect. He could tell you off-hand the names and addresses of all his agents. But when it came to scientific data his mind was a blank until he consulted his authorities. It seemed that once he made a note his mind was incapable of retaining the information he had committed to paper. That, as I say, is a phenomenon which is not infrequently met with amongst men of science."
"And he had committed the code to paper?" asked Kitson.
"I am coming to that. After the fire at the Paddington works, van Heerden said the time had come to make a get away. He was going to the Continent, I was to sail for Canada. 'Before you go,' he said, 'I will give you the code—but I am afraid that I cannot do that until after ten o'clock.'"
McNorton was scribbling notes in shorthand and carefully circled the hour.
"We went back to his flat and had breakfast together—it was then about five o'clock. He packed a few things and I particularly noticed that he looked very carefully at the interior of a little grip which he had brought the previous night from Staines. He was so furtive, carrying the bag to the light of the window, that I supposed he was consulting his code, and I wondered why he should defer giving me the information until ten o'clock. Anyway, I could swear he took something from the bag and slipped it into his pocket. We left the flat soon after and drove to a railway station where the baggage was left. Van Heerden had given me bank-notes for a thousand pounds in case we should be separated, and I went on to the house in South London. You needn't ask me where it is because van Heerden is not there."
He gulped again at the wine.
"At eleven o'clock van Heerden came back," resumed Milsom, "and if ever a man was panic-stricken it was he—the long and the short of it is that the code was mislaid."
"Mislaid!" Beale was staggered.
Here was farce interpolated into tragedy—the most grotesque, the most unbelievable farce.
"Mislaid," said Milsom. "He did not say as much, but I gathered from the few disjointed words he flung at me that the code was not irredeemably lost; in fact, I have reason to believe that he knows where it is. It was after that that van Heerden started in to do some tall cursing of me, my country, my decadent race and the like. Things have been strained all the afternoon. To-night they reached a climax. He wanted me to help him in a burglary—and burglary is not my forte."
"What did he want to burgle?" asked McNorton, with professional interest.
"Ah! There you have me! It was the question I asked and he refused to answer. I was to put myself in his hands and there was to be some shooting if, as he thought likely, a caretaker was left on the premises to be entered. I told him flat—we were sitting on Wandsworth Common at the time—that he could leave me out, and that is where we became mutually offensive."
He looked at his maimed hand.
"I dressed it roughly at a chemist's. The iodine open dressing isn't beautiful, but it is antiseptic. He shot to kill, too, there's no doubt about that. A very perfect little gentleman!"
"He's in London?" said McNorton. "That simplifies matters."
"To my mind it complicates rather than simplifies," said Beale. "London is a vast proposition. Can you give us any idea as to the hour the burglary was planned for?"
"Eleven," said Milsom promptly, "that is to say, in a little over an hour's time."
"And you have no idea of the locality?"
"Somewhere in the East of London. We were to have met at Aldgate."
"I don't understand it," said McNorton. "Do you suggest that the code is in the hands of somebody who is not willing to part with it? And now that he no longer needs it for you, is there any reason why he should wait?"
"Every reason," replied Milsom, and Stanford Beale nodded in agreement. "It was not only for me he wanted it. He as good as told me that unless he recovered it he would be unable to communicate with his men."
"What do you think he'll do?"
"He'll get Bridgers to assist him. Bridgers is a pretty sore man, and the doctor knows just where he can find him."
As Oliva listened an idea slowly dawned in her mind that she might supply a solution to the mystery of the missing code. It was a wildly improbable theory she held, but even so slender a possibility was not