The Complete Works of H. C. McNeile "Sapper". Sapper
whirled back to London through the cool night air his heart was singing with the joy of action. And it was perhaps as well for his peace of mind that he did not witness the scene in the room at The Elms.
Lakington still lay motionless on the floor; Peterson's cigar still glowed steadily in the darkness. It was hard to believe that he had ever moved from the table; only the bullet imbedded in a tree proved that somebody must have got busy. Of course, it might have been the girl, who was just lighting another cigarette from the stump of the old one.
At length Peterson spoke. "A young man of dash and temperament," he said genially. "It will be a pity to lose him."
"Why not keep him and lose the girl?" yawned Irma. "I think he might amuse me——"
"We have always our dear Henry to consider," answered Peterson. "Apparently the girl appeals to him. I'm afraid, Irma, he'll have to go ... and at once...."
The speaker was tapping his left knee softly with his hand; save for that slight movement he sat as if nothing had happened. And yet ten minutes before a carefully planned coup had failed at the instant of success. Even his most fearless accomplices had been known to confess that Peterson's inhuman calmness sent cold shivers down their backs.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH THINGS HAPPEN IN HALF MOON STREET
I
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-