Читать книгу The British Mysteries Edition: 14 Novels & 70+ Short Stories - Sapper - Страница 41

Hugh Drummond folded up the piece of paper he was studying and rose to his feet as the doctor came into the room. He then pushed a silver box of cigarettes across the table and waited.

"Your friend," said the doctor, "is in a very peculiar condition, Captain Drummond—very peculiar." He sat down and, putting the tips of his fingers together, gazed at Drummond in his most professional manner. He paused for a moment, as if expecting an awed agreement with this profound utterance, but the soldier was calmly lighting a cigarette. "Can you," resumed the doctor, "enlighten me at all as to what he has been doing during the last few days?"

Drummond shook his head. "Haven't an earthly, doctor."

"There is, for instance, that very unpleasant wound in his thumb," pursued the other. "The top joint is crushed to a pulp."

"I noticed that last night," answered Hugh non-committally. "Looks as if it had been mixed up between a hammer and an anvil, don't it?"

"But you have no idea how it occurred?"

"I'm full of ideas," said the soldier. "In fact, if it's any help to you in your diagnosis, that wound was caused by the application of an unpleasant mediaeval instrument known as a thumbscrew."

The worthy doctor looked at him in amazement. "A thumbscrew! You must be joking, Captain Drummond."

"Very far from it," answered Hugh briefly. "If you want to know, it was touch and go whether the other thumb didn't share the same fate." He blew out a cloud of smoke, and smiled inwardly as he noticed the look of scandalised horror on his companion's face. "It isn't his thumb that concerns me," he continued; "it's his general condition. What's the matter with him?"

The doctor pursed his lips and looked wise, while Drummond wondered that no one had ever passed a law allowing men of his type to be murdered on sight.

"His heart seems sound," he answered after a weighty pause, "and I found nothing wrong with him constitutionally. In fact, I may say, Captain Drummond, he is in every respect a most healthy man. Except—er—except for this peculiar condition."

Drummond exploded. "Damnation take it, man, what on earth do you suppose I asked you to come round for? It's of no interest to me to hear that his liver is working properly." Then he controlled himself. "I beg your pardon, doctor: I had rather a trying evening last night. Can you give me any idea as to what has caused this peculiar condition?"

His companion accepted the apology with an acid bow. "Some form of drug," he answered.

Drummond heaved a sigh of relief. "Now we're getting on," he cried. "Have you any idea what drug?"

"It is, at the moment, hard to say," returned the other. "It seems to have produced a dazed condition mentally, without having affected him physically. In a day or two, perhaps, I might be able to—er—arrive at some conclusion...."

"Which, at present, you have not. Right; now we know where we are." A pained expression flitted over the doctor's face: this young man was very direct. "To continue," Hugh went on, "as you don't know what the drug is, presumably you don't know either how long it will take for the effect to wear off."

"That—er—is, within limits, correct," conceded the doctor.

"Right; once again we know where we are. What about diet?"

"Oh! light.... Not too much meat.... No alcohol..." He rose to his feet as Hugh opened the door; really the war seemed to have produced a distressing effect on people's manners. Diet was the one question on which he always let himself go....

"Not much meat—no alcohol. Right. Good morning, doctor. Down the stairs and straight on. Good morning." The door closed behind him, and he descended to his waiting car with cold disapproval on his face. The whole affair struck him as most suspicious—thumbscrews, strange drugs.... Possibly it was his duty to communicate with the police....

"Excuse me, sir." The doctor paused and eyed a well-dressed man who had spoken to him uncompromisingly.

"What can I do for you, sir?" he said.

"Am I right in assuming that you are a doctor?"

"You are perfectly correct, sir, in your assumption."

The man smiled: obviously a gentleman, thought the practitioner, with his hand on the door of his car.

"It's about a great pal of mine, Captain Drummond, who lives in here," went on the other. "I hope you won't think it unprofessional, but I thought I'd ask you privately, how you find him."

The doctor looked surprised. "I wasn't aware that he was ill," he answered.

"But I heard he'd had a bad accident," said the man, amazed.

The doctor smiled. "Reassure yourself, my dear sir," he murmured in his best professional manner. "Captain Drummond, so far as I am aware, has never been better. I—er—cannot say the same of his friend." He stepped into his car. "Why not go up and see for yourself?"

The car rolled smoothly into Piccadilly, but the man showed no signs of availing himself of the doctor's suggestion. He turned and walked rapidly away, and a few moments later—in an exclusive West End club—a trunk call was put through to Godalming—a call which caused the recipient to nod his head in satisfaction and order the Rolls-Royce.

Meanwhile, unconscious of this sudden solicitude for his health, Hugh Drummond was once more occupied with the piece of paper he had been studying on the doctor's entrance. Every now and then he ran his fingers through his crisp brown hair and shook his head in perplexity. Beyond establishing the fact that the man in the peculiar condition was Hiram C. Potts, the American multi-millionaire, he could make nothing out of it.

"If only I'd managed to get the whole of it," he muttered to himself for the twentieth time. "That dam' fellah Peterson was too quick." The scrap he had torn off was typewritten, save for the American's scrawled signature, and Hugh knew the words by heart.

plete paralysis

ade of Britain

months I do

the holder of

of five million

do desire and

earl necklace and the

are at present

chess of Lamp-

k no questions

btained.

AM C. POTTS.

At length he replaced the scrap in his pocket-book and rang the bell.

"James," he remarked as his servant came in, "will you whisper 'very little meat and no alcohol' in your wife's ear, so far as the bird next door is concerned? Fancy paying a doctor to come round and tell one that!"

"Did he say nothing more, sir?"

"Oh! a lot. But that was the only thing of the slightest practical use, and I knew that already." He stared thoughtfully out of the window. "You'd better know," he continued at length, "that as far as I can see we're up against a remarkably tough proposition."

"Indeed, sir," murmured his servant. "Then perhaps I had better stop any further insertion of that advertisement. It works out at six shillings a time."

Drummond burst out laughing. "What would I do without you, oh! my James," he cried. "But you may as well stop it. Our hands will be quite full for some time to come, and I hate disappointing hopeful applicants for my services."

"The gentleman is asking for you, sir." Mrs. Denny's voice from the door made them look round, and Hugh rose.

"Is he talking sensibly, Mrs. Denny?" he asked eagerly, but she shook her head.

"Just the same, sir," she announced. "Looking round the room all dazed like. And he keeps on saying 'Danger.'"

Hugh walked quickly along the passage to the room where the millionaire lay in bed.

"How are you feeling?" said Drummond cheerfully.

The man stared at him uncomprehendingly, and shook his head.

"Do you remember last night?" Hugh continued, speaking very slowly and distinctly. Then a sudden idea struck him and he pulled the scrap of paper out of his case. "Do you remember signing that?" he asked, holding it out to him.

For a while the man looked at it; then with a sudden cry of fear he shrank away. "No, no," he muttered, "not again."

Hugh hurriedly replaced the paper. "Bad break on my part, old bean; you evidently remember rather too well. It's quite all right," he continued reassuringly; "no one will hurt you." Then after a pause—"Is your name Hiram C. Potts?"

The man nodded his head doubtfully and muttered "Hiram Potts" once or twice, as if the words sounded familiar.

"Do you remember driving in a motor-car last night?" persisted Hugh.

But what little flash of remembrance had pierced the drug-clouded brain seemed to have passed; the man only stared dazedly at the speaker. Drummond tried him with a few more questions, but it was no use, and after a while he got up and moved towards the door.

"Don't you worry, old son," he said with a smile. "We'll have you jumping about like a two-year-old in a couple of days."

Then he paused: the man was evidently trying to say something. "What is it you want?" Hugh leant over the bed.

"Danger, danger." Faintly the words came, and then, with a sigh, he lay back exhausted.

With a grim smile Drummond watched the motionless figure.

"I'm afraid," he said half aloud, "that you're rather like your medical attendant. Your only contribution to the sphere of pure knowledge is something I know already."

He went out and quietly closed the door. And as he re-entered his sitting-room he found his servant standing motionless behind one of the curtains watching the street below.

"There's a man, sir," he remarked without turning round, "watching the house."

For a moment Hugh stood still, frowning. Then he gave a short laugh. "The devil there is!" he remarked. "The game has begun in earnest, my worthy warrior, with the first nine points to us. For possession, even of a semi-dazed lunatic, is nine points of the law, is it not, James?"

His servant retreated cautiously from the curtain and came back into the room. "Of the law—yes, sir," he repeated enigmatically. "It is time, sir, for your morning glass of beer."