Читать книгу Convict B 14 - R. K. Weekes - Страница 8

"Oh, I thought you might combine business with pleasure—see the place, and then recommend it to your patients. I should be charmed to receive them."

"You would, would you? Not half so pleased as they'd be to come."

"Why, who are your patients?" asked Gardiner, idly answering the significance of his tone.

"Criminals," said the little man. "I'm doctor at Westby Jail—where you'd be at this minute, if Mrs. Trent had had her way."

Denis would not look at his friend. "I can't say I envy you your job," remarked the young man.

"That just shows you don't know anything about it," was the instant retort. "Criminals have souls as well as you, haven't they? There are better men in prison than scores I've met outside, whom our ungodly laws can't or won't touch. I've known one man get eighteen months for stealing a pair of boots, and another let off with a fine and a caution for roasting a cat on the fire. Christians? Why, we haven't got up to the ten commandments yet! The Jews did put Thou shalt not kill and Thou shalt not commit Adultery before Thou shalt not steal; but impurity's nothing to us, and cruelty not much more. Christians! We reserve our jails for any one who dares to meddle with our sacred property. Upon my soul, I wonder any man can find the face to refuse the women a share in mending the laws of this land, considering the pretty mess we've made of them ourselves!"

He shot out of his chair and marched to the edge of the roof. Gardiner followed, laughing, and sat on the parapet. A rose and silver sunset was darkening the fells above Easedale Tarn, and the moon, a globe of pearl, made beautiful the cold gray eastern sky.

"I don't know what you want to leave your own country for," said Scott, still irascible, but simmering into calm. "Isn't this good enough for you?"

"Oh, I'm out for a land where they have more Christian laws," said Gardiner easily. "England's too civilized to be livable," he added.

Scott did not hear him. He was studying the house under their feet.

"That's Mrs. Trent's room below, I suppose? And your parlor below that, on the ground floor? Any one in that south wing opposite could see straight in. Lucky for you there was nobody watching on Thursday evening."

"Lucky? What the devil do you mean?"

Scott turned round and stared in the face.

"You didn't want any visitors in hysterics, did you? Enough people involved in it already, aren't there? What do you mean yourself?"

"I thought," said Gardiner, "I thought you were echoing Mrs. Trent's idea, and suggesting I'd done him in."

It was the best he could do, but it was not good. Scott stared at him with his bright eyes, shifted them to Denis, and brought them back to Gardiner again. Gardiner knew that in the first moment of surprise he had started violently, changed color, showed all the signs of guilt. Nothing could erase that impression.

"Your nerves must be in a bad way for you to jump like that at an innocent remark," said Scott dryly.

"They are, I told you so. You can give me something for them, if you like. I don't mind swallowing your beastlinesses."

"No," said Scott. He pulled out his watch. "I must go to my patient. Good-night to you both." He climbed down through the trap-door, and then poked his head up again to add: "Mind, I never meddle with what isn't my concern. Never."

He was seen no more, and they heard him descending the ladder.

"Damn," said Gardiner.

"He won't make any use of it," said Denis. "That's not a bad little chap, Harry."

"Not a bad little chap? He's a most confoundedly inquisitive little chap! He won't rest till he's ferreted out the whole thing. Oh, damn! I wouldn't have had this happen for anything. Why the devil couldn't I keep my countenance? I thought I might have trusted myself for that!"

He paced up and down in a fury.

"You've had a tryin' time."

"Trying? I've had a scarifying time! That inquest, when the foreman began pumping you—I'd have murdered you as well, Denis, if you hadn't been adroit. But if I'm going to lose my nerve over such trifles as this—what an ass! oh, what an ass!"

He threw himself back on the lounge. Denis could not help feeling that he took it rather weakly. He did not allow for the rift in his friend's armor, that demoralizing fear of confinement. In these last few days their positions seemed to have been reversed.

"Scott can't do anything," he said rather coolly. "It's no use his suspectin' if there's no one he can pump, and there isn't. I'm not going to give it away, and you aren't either, when you're yourself again. As to Mrs. Trent, she can't prove anything from the chisel—you might have left it there from openin' the case. Besides, Scott wouldn't discuss it with her. He's above that."

"I dare say you're right, but I wish I hadn't been such an ass, and I wish he weren't the doctor at Westby," said Gardiner, with a huge yawn, "it brings it so unpleasantly near. Oh, Lord! I am tired. Do you mind clearing out now? I expect I shall sleep like a log. Please the pigs, in another couple of weeks' time I'll be out of this over-civilized, over-populated country!"