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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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THERE is little doubt that, had not Miss Kitty Glentworth quarrelled so furiously with young Mr. Belton and cast him off for ever, he would not have gone on from the 99 Club to the large and beautifully-furnished flat of Mr. Cyril Montgomery—so much more Cyril than Montgomery—and lost two hundred and fourteen pounds at baccarat. It was an action for which he can hardly be blamed severely, because, when a young man knows clearly that his heart is broken for good and all, it is unlikely that his conduct will be directed by that sweet reasonableness so highly lauded by the late Matthew Arnold.
But there it was; he awoke next morning to no mean hangover and to the bitter knowledge that a month of the quarter had still to run and only eleven pounds on which to lead the life remained to him. It was not till the evening, however, that he realized that this was not to be borne. There was only one thing to do; that was to go to his uncle and guardian, Professor Octavius Crowle, and procure an advance on his next quarter's allowance.
It was no use writing to the Professor. That worthy gentleman had fallen into a shocking, but apparently rooted, habit of never answering his nephew's letters. It was the more distressing in that those letters always treated of the same theme, an advance on his next quarter's allowance. On the two occasions on which Mr. Belton had pointed out, reproachfully, that it was a shocking bad habit, the Professor had made the disingenuous excuse that he was a busy man. This was, however, a fact; and it made it practically certain that if Mr. Belton went to see him and showed distinct symptoms of staying on. Professor Octavius Crowle would cough up the advance, as his nephew phrased it, to get rid of him.
Gloomily, therefore, by reason of his broken heart, but with a cheery little hope of a cheque for a hundred floating about on the top of the gloom, at eleven o'clock next morning Mr. Belton took his way to his uncle's solid house in Bedford Square.
The door was opened to him by Maria Ann, whom he believed to be the prettiest parlourmaid in London, and whom, had his heart not been broken, he would have made a probably successful attempt to kiss. She greeted him with an uncommonly attractive smile; then, at his request, led him straight to his uncle's study with a rather startled air. Was she, she asked herself, losing her charm?
His uncle was sitting at his desk, studying a paper. He looked a busy man and worried. Mr. Belton did not know exactly what his uncle did; he only knew that he was an eminent chemist and toxicologist and worked for the Government.
The Professor looked up, frowning, and said, inhospitably: "How are you, Richard? You always contrive to come when I'm at my busiest."
"Sorry, sir," said Richard. "It's only about a little matter of..."
"I know what it's about," snapped the Professor. "And one of these days you won't get it. Your father left his money to come to you through me in order that you should spend it at a reasonable rate."
"It was just an unfortunate accident..."
"The sixth in two years," said the Professor, coldly; but his eyes softened a little as he gazed at his well-set-up, beautifully-dressed, blue-eyed, and amiable nephew.
"I'll just put the case..."
"You won't. I know what it is, or what it's like; and you'll waste half my morning putting it. How much do you want?" said his uncle; and he began to hunt among the piles of papers on his desk for his cheque-book. "I don't know why we have a Public Trustee if people don't use him," he added, morosely.
"A hundred," said Mr. Belton, and a little of the gloom lifted from his spirit.
His uncle found his cheque-book and began to fill up a cheque. Mr. Belton smiled on him.
In the middle of his timely action his uncle stopped short, and said: "By the way, didn't you tell me once that you were making a study of ciphers?"
Mr. Belton blushed. He had two vices that prevented him from being the complete young gentleman about Town: he was addicted to chess and cryptography. The polite world did not know this.
With an air of shame he said: "Yes."
"Then what do you make of this?" said his uncle; and he thrust at him the paper he had been studying. To it was clipped a piece of parchment on which was drawn a square divided into hundreds of little squares, in each of which was a letter of the alphabet. They were in alphabetical order, alphabet after alphabet, with a Z in each corner square, so that they did not come exactly under one another.
Mr. Belton looked at it for about fifteen seconds; then he said: "Nothing. And nobody could without the key-word. It must be a chiffre carré."
"But if you had the key-word you could decipher it?"
"Rather," said Mr. Belton, confidently.
The Professor ran his long fingers through the disorderly shock of grey hair and gazed earnestly at his nephew; then he said: "Look here, Dick: would you like to earn some money?"
Mr. Belton's blue eyes opened wide in a certain consternation; he scented an effort to weaken his congenital disinclination to do work of any kind; he shuffled his feet uneasily; he said: "Oh, well, you know, I've got my little bit. It does me very well. And it doesn't seem quite fair to the fellows who like that kind of thing to go buttin' in."
"Yes, yes; a lily of the field," said Professor Crowle, unpleasantly and scowling. "But, after all, it's perhaps just as well. Though the Government will pay a big fee. It's a very dangerous job. The last man who had a shot at it came to a very painful end. But, of course, it was in the service of the country. It was only you being an expert in ciphers and a stout young fellow that put it into my head to suggest it. The Government will have no difficulty in finding someone else."
"Here; steady on, uncle," said Mr. Belton, with a sudden animation. "You say it's a dangerous job and for the good of the country and that sort of thing?"
"It is; and it's very dangerous."
Mr. Belton's ingenuous face darkened with a Byronic gloom; and he said: "Oh, well, I've got nothing to go on living for; I'll take it on."
A shadow of a grin of satisfaction wreathed the Professor's lips, then the gravity of his expression deepened; he said, gravely: "Wait a minute. Did you ever hear of the daboia?"
"No," said Mr. Belton.
"Well, the daboia, as the Hindus call it, is known to science as Russell's viper. It is a very pretty snake about six feet long; and its venom works about four times as quickly as that of the cobra. The odds are that in the course of this affair you'll get a dose of that venom injected into you. We are fairly sure that we can make you immune, but not quite sure. The anti-toxin is uncertain in its working."
"That's all right. I'll chance it," said Mr. Belton, quite cheerfully. "It looks like lively doin's."
A faint, reluctant admiration softened the hard face of the Professor; he said, thoughtfully: "Well, you ought to be able to hold your own. After all, you were a captain in what you called a stunting regiment at nineteen and got the D.S.O. But you'll be dealing with very clever people and you'll need all your wits."
Mr. Belton nodded. He was already looking very much more intelligent.
His uncle went on: "Of course, the Home Office has excellent cipher experts, but none at the moment to handle a dangerous business like this. Either they're not the type, or they have ties which make it unwilling to call on them to take the risk. And only a cipher expert can handle it. Several people are looking for one of the right type, and I'm one of them. I was just considering how to set about it; and your coming to see me seemed almost provid—one of those curious coincidences, I mean, in which foolish and superstitious people see all kinds of absurdities. Well, the Home Office has seized some documents which should be of the greatest importance. But they're in cipher, this chiffre carré, and it wants the key-word. It knows of only one person in London who knows the key-word—a lady who mixes in Bohemian circles and calls herself the Princess Obrenovski."
"Not Bohemian, uncle—not Bohemian," his nephew protested quickly, in pained accents. "Popsy would never be seen in a Bohemian circle, I give you my word. Only the high life for Popsy—always."
"Popsy! What the devil are you talking about?" said his uncle.
"We always call the Princess 'Popsy.' She looks like it, you know," Mr. Belton explained. "But fancy Popsy being a Bolshie! I knew she was hot stuff; but I never guessed that. Still, you don't mean to say she'll sell the key-word?" He added in a tone of rather grieved surprise: "I always thought she was a sportswoman, Popsy."
"She'd sell it every day in the week, if someone produced the money," said his uncle in unpleasant but assured accents. "She's sold it once already. But the man she sold it to never got the chance of bringing it to us. He got the key-word, but also he got a dose of daboia venom; and that was the end of him. "We know that it was daboia and not cobra—from the way his blood was clotted. And we know that he was helpless ten minutes after getting it and dead within the half-hour. Whether your friend injected it, or somebody else, we don't know. But his body was found in an empty bungalow at Thames Ditton four days after Princess Obrenovski received the money for selling the key-word to him."
Mr. Belton rubbed his hands together in a positively middle-class manner and said with genuine cheeriness: "Lively doin's! Lively doin's! But you don't mean to say that he parted with the money before he got away with the key-word?"
"He never had the money. You don't suppose he would carry a large sum of money with him into the surroundings in which a Bolshevist agent would sell a secret?" said the Professor with some impatience. "When he had received the key-word and tested it on a passage from one of these documents, he was to sign an order which would enable the Princess to draw the money. And it is practically certain that he was not poisoned, to prevent him getting away with the key-word, till after he had signed that order."
"Astucious," said young Mr. Belton in approving accents. "But I should never have guessed that Popsy had brain-storms like that. Still, she does seem a bit of a snake herself."
"A bit of a snake!" said the Professor with immense asperity. "A much worse snake than any daboia that ever lived!" He paused, scowling; then he went on: "Well, the Home Office wants that key-word quickly and it will pay you five hundred pounds for getting it—and your expenses. I take it from your paying me a visit that you are very short of money."
"Well, as a matter of fact, you're right, sir. At the moment my name is Beanless Ben," said Mr. Belton, frankly.
"Then I'll give you a cheque for thirty pounds; and you can let me know what your expenses are," said the Professor. "Can you get in touch with the Princess at once?"
"To-night," said Mr. Belton, confidently. "If she isn't at the 99, she'll be at the Forty Sinners."
"And you said that she didn't move in Bohemian circles?" said the Professor, scornfully.
He wrote out a cheque for thirty pounds and gave Mr. Belton the document in cipher with the square clipped on to it. Also he gave him the order, which, once he had signed it, would enable the Princess to draw the money.
Then he said: "The anti-toxin had better be injected at the latest possible moment. I'll send a doctor to your flat at seven sharp to inject it. It'll take you a couple of hours to get over the effects of it; but then you should be immune from daboia venom for a good twelve hours."
"It'll be done, or I shall be done inside eight," said Mr. Belton, cheerfully, as he put the cheque into his note-case. He paused and looked at his uncle and grinned, and added: "If it doesn't work and I don't see you again, I'll just wish you good luck, sir."
The Professor frowned at him in a sudden disquiet, hesitated, and said: "I wish—I wish—oh, it'll work all right. And after all it is of the greatest importance that these documents should be deciphered; and it's time that you did something to justify your existence."
"So it is. So it is," said his nephew, cheerfully, and held out his hand.
The Professor gripped it and wrung it, and then came to the front door with him and let him out and said good-bye. He stood on the step and watched, with eyes full of disquiet, Mr. Belton stride briskly along the pavement and turn the corner, and twice he plucked rather nervously at his chin.
Cheered by the prospect of action, Mr. Belton kept forgetting for as long as eleven minutes at a time that Miss Kitty Glentworth had cast him off for ever. He made an excellent lunch, and with a friend attended a matinée of the latest musical comedy. He did not think it right to take the risk of passing out of the world without having seen it.
At seven o'clock the doctor, a cheerful, but beavered man with an uncommonly clever face, arrived at his flat, injected the anti-toxin, and declared, with much more confidence than his uncle had shown, that Mr. Belton was now immune from the venom of Russell's viper for a good twelve hours. Feeling that he would like to know, if someone did contrive to inject a shot of the venom Into him, whether the anti-toxin was really working, Mr. Belton asked him how the venom acted. The doctor said that any not immune person who was bitten by the snake would first be afflicted with nausea and a splitting headache, presently become paralysed, and then fall into a coma from which he would not awake. He stayed on for nearly an hour watching the effects of the anti-toxin. It gave Mr. Belton considerable discomfort in the way of nausea, a headache, twitchings, and a temperature.
At a few minutes past eight, after assuring him that the effects of the anti-toxin had been everything that could be desired, the doctor departed. At nine o'clock, feeling better but still rather shaky, Mr. Belton walked up to the 99 Club. He found the Princess Obrenovski, who had come early in order to get some dancing before the room became crowded, dining with another young lady. They welcomed his suggestion that he should join them.
Mr. Belton was not talkative. The anti-toxin was still troubling him. The Princess talked for the three of them. Her chief theme was herself. He kept looking at her with wondering eyes, trying to discover evidence of the serpent in her. He could find none. She was the perfect type of Slav woman with a dash of the Tartar in her. Nature had moulded her with clumsy fingers. Her cheek-bones protruded slightly; her unfinished nose was rather thick, with a rounded, rather protruding tip; her lips were rather thick and shapeless; her black hair was lustreless; her brown eyes were for the most part dull, though they lit up sufficiently when she talked; her figure was clumsy; she was well-meaning but rather heavy in the dance. She had many feelings and always talked about them. She could not be more than twenty-two.
Bearing in mind that this might well be his last dinner, Mr. Belton did himself well and drank plenty of champagne. His young companions did themselves well and also drank plenty of champagne. It was half-past ten before he felt like dancing; then he embarked on a fox-trot with the Princess.
The anti-toxin, or the champagne on top of it, had robbed Mr. Belton of any diplomatic tendency he may have possessed. He came straight to the matter in hand.
He said: "I've been told to push a little money at you, Popsy."
"Push money—at me!" cried the Princess in lively astonishment.
"Yes. It's a little business of a key-word to a cipher," said Mr. Belton in almost jocular accents.
He felt her stiffen against his arm; and she bent backwards to stare at him with incredulous eyes. He had a strange and uncommonly strong feeling that he was an intruder. He was. In the mind of the Princess his activities were confined wholly to her social life; he had suddenly intruded into the political.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said; but her tone did not carry conviction.
"Oh, it's quite all right," he said in a reassuring tone. "I'm not giving anything away."
He felt her relax. But again she declared that she did not know what he was talking about. They had gone right round the room before she had re-arranged her ideas about him and decided to treat with him. Then she made him give her his word of honour to tell no one anything about it.
Then, with a winning smile and in winning accents, she said: "Have you got the money, Dicky?"
"I have not—only an order to sign when I've got the key-word and tested it," said Mr. Belton.
She looked up at him with a languishing glance and said: "Then it will be all right if I tell you the key-word. You can sign the order at once."
"When I've tested the key-word," said Mr. Belton firmly.
"Don't you trust me, Dicky?" she said haughtily.
"Till all's blue. But instructions are instructions," said Mr. Belton rather more firmly.
She was silent; she appeared to be thinking hard. It was unfortunate that Miss Kitty Glentworth, who was not on in the third act of the play "Driver's Folly," in which she had a moderate part, entered the room just in time to catch the winning smile and then the languishing glance. She had cast Mr. Belton off for what she had been pleased to consider his perfidy in making himself uncommonly amiable to another lady. They had often quarrelled about his amiability to other ladies. She did not make sufficient allowance for his natural bent. He never could refrain from being amiable to a pretty girl. He was like that. Now he was being amiable to the Princess. She had for some time suspected the Princess of designs. That suspicion was now verified. Of course, it was no longer any business of hers. She told herself that it was not. Nevertheless her beautiful eyes flashed fiercely as she scowled on the unconscious couple; she walked to a table with her head high, trying to rid her face of the scowl.
The Princess came out of her reflections and said with a yet more languishing glance: "But you do think I would deceive you, Dicky."
"Never!" said Mr. Belton, in loud, loyal accents. "I tell you instructions are instructions, and I've got to stick to them."
Undaunted, the Princess spent the next twenty minutes trying to persuade him to disregard those instructions; and her smiles grew yet more winning, her glances more languishing.
Miss Kitty Glentworth observed this softening process with an anger that grew more and more intense. She had not expected Mr. Belton to accept his dismissal without further protest or entreaty, or to recover from it so quickly. She had broken off their engagement deliberately; but she felt that this behaviour of his was outrageous. She was of an uncommonly jealous disposition; she felt, unreasonably enough, that she was being shamelessly robbed; her anger was becoming fury.
It was at last borne in upon the Princess that the political Mr. Belton was a very different person from the social one. She ceased to languish at him. Indeed, she cut the patter, came to the 'osses, and asked in a business-like tone whether he had with him the means of testing the key-word. He said that he had, that she had only to give him the key-word and he would sit down and test it and sign the order inside of five minutes.
"But that is impossible!" she said, hastily. "I am watched—always." She paused, then added: "And you do not suppose that I know the key-word. I know only where it is. I can get it."
Mr. Belton had the strongest feeling that she was not telling him the truth. He looked round the room for those who watched her. He knew everyone in it. No one of them could be watching her. Few of them were capable of watching a child of five. But, of course, there were the waiters. Besides, she must have given the key-word to the man who had been poisoned, or he would not have signed the order; or had she merely put him in touch with the person who knew the key-word? That must be it. He could not see anything of the snake about her; he could not believe that she had had a hand in the actual poisoning.
"Well, let's go and get it," he said.
At the words a pleased light just flickered in the eyes of the Princess. She said: "Not together. My car is parked in Pardon Street. I will go and wait for you in it. Come in five minutes."
"Right-o!" said Mr. Belton.
She emptied her glass and rose and went. Mr. Belton looked at his watch. Agog for action, he kept looking at it. The five minutes passed slowly. Kitty, relieved by the going of the Princess, saw that he kept looking at it. He rose with an uncommonly alert air.
Of a sudden another suspicion seized her: he was going to the Princess! She gave him about two minutes. As she came out of the door of the dancing-room he was leaving the club. She followed him, furious. She wished to make sure, then demonstrate to him triumphantly that he had the shallow and perfidious nature of which she had complained.
"When the Princess came out of the 99, a big, respectably-dressed man, in a bowler hat and No. 11 shoes, who was standing on the opposite pavement, moved down the street, keeping level with her. At the top of Pardon Street he stood still to light a cigarette. A motor-cyclist thirty yards down the street stopped tinkering with his engine and lit a cigarette.
The driver of a big car, sixty yards down the street, turned and said to its occupants, Detective-Inspectors Halliday, Gedge, and Tomkins, and the doctor who had injected the anti-toxin into Mr. Belton: "Here they come!"
The Princess sat down in the driver's seat of her two-seater and fiddled with the gadgets. The motor-cyclist tinkered again with his engine. For five minutes nothing happened. Then Mr. Belton came briskly down the street. As he was stepping into the car of the Princess, Miss Kitty Glentworth came round the corner. The Princess, getting her car out of the line, did not see her; Mr. Belton, talking to the Princess, did not see her. She broke into a little run, sprang into her own two-seater, and came out of the line just ahead of the big car containing the detectives.
It was just before the theatre traffic, and the going was good. In this order the four motor vehicles moved up Regent Street, the motor-cyclist twenty yards behind the Princess, Kitty Glentworth ten yards behind the motor-cyclist, the big car thirty yards behind Kitty. The Princess had not enough of the cunning of the serpent to guess that she was being followed; she had not been followed on that earlier journey to Thames Ditton. At Oxford Circus she turned to the left. The motor-cyclist and Kitty turned after her. Then came the hitch. After Kitty turned, the policeman on point-duty held up the traffic; the big car was held up behind a bus and a taxi. By the time one of the detectives had run to the policeman and way was made for it nearly two minutes had been lost. The motor-cyclist, on the look-out, saw what had happened. When the Princess turned up Orchard Street he pulled up and said a few words to the policeman at the bottom of it. Kitty Glentworth passed him. He bucketed up Orchard Street and passed Kitty.
At the bottom of Upper Baker Street and again at the top of the St. John's Wood Road he stopped to speak to the policeman on duty. The Princess turned into the Grove End Road. There was no policeman at the corner of it. She ran along the Grove End Road and turned into that little cul-de-sac, Melina Place.
She had slowed down to turn into it; Kitty slowed down also, so that when she turned to follow and saw that it was a cul-de-sac, she was able to switch out of it and come to a stop just beyond the opposite corner, slip out of her car, and peep round. The Princess had stopped nearly at the bottom; she was standing on the pavement talking to Mr. Belton. She went through a door in the wall, leaving him there. He lit a cigarette and stepped back into the car.
The motor-cyclist ran slowly past the top of Melina Place. He saw the car of the Princess; he saw Kitty peeping round the corner. He turned, went back along the Grove End Road about forty yards, dismounted, and began to blow his horn—one long honk and two short ones—again and again and again. When the big car came to the policeman at the bottom of the St. John's Wood Road and learnt that he had not seen him, it would come back.
The Princess came through the door in the wall, hurried up the path of the little garden, went through the front door of the little house at the end of it and into a room on her right. It was panelled; an old oak gate-leg table stood in the middle of it, an older oak armchair, high-backed, with a very thin cushion on its seat, stood on the right of the fireplace, four old oak chairs stood against the walls, a cushioned oak settle in the recess on the left of the fireplace. She crossed the room to the armchair, pulled it to the top of the table, and took the cushion from the seat of it. Then she pressed a button in the back of the chair. Three inches from the edge of the seat, on the left, there shot up the needle of a hypodermic syringe. She pressed another button and the needle sank back into the seat of the chair. Smiling an uncommonly ugly smile, she went to the oak corner-cupboard, in the corner on the left of the fireplace above the settle, took from it a pen, an inkpot, blotting paper, notepaper, envelopes, and a small bottle. She set the writing materials on the table in front of the armchair. Then she knelt down beside the armchair, took from under its seat a hypodermic syringe, filled it carefully from a small bottle, and put it back. She rose, a yet uglier smile wreathing her thick lips, and put the bottle back in the cupboard. Then she sat down in the armchair, wrote on a sheet of paper "Paris," and enclosed it in an envelope. With brightly shining eyes she hurried back to Mr. Belton.
"There is no one in the house. I have found the key-word!" she cried in excited accents, waving the envelope at him. "Come along."
Mr. Belton sprang from the car and followed her through the door in the wall.
Another wave of jealous fury surged through Kitty Glentworth. She stood undecided for about twenty seconds, then went briskly down the street. To her surprise she saw the gleam of the key in the lock of the garden door. The unmethodical Slavonic mind of the Princess had caused her, in her excitement, to leave it there. Kitty opened the door a few inches and looked at the dark house. Then, resolved to have all the evidence of Mr. Belton's perfidy before demonstrating it to him, she stepped into the garden and shut the door. The motor-cyclist came quickly to the top of Melina Place, dismounted, and again began to honk a long honk and two short ones. In that quiet neighbourhood the sound would carry half a mile.
The policeman at the bottom of Orchard Street sent the big car up Baker Street; the policeman at the bottom of Upper Baker Street sent it up Park Road; the policeman at the end of Park Road sent it down the St. John's Wood Road. It ran past Grove End Road to Maida Vale. The policeman at the bottom of St. John's Wood Road had not seen a two-seater car, driven by a lady and followed by a motor-cyclist. The big car turned and went back up the St. John's Wood Road slowly. It stopped at the corner of Hanover Terrace and then moved slowly on. Midway between Hamilton Terrace and the Grove End Road the driver heard a motor-horn honking a long honk and then two short ones again and again, away on the left. He drove quickly up the Grove End Road and came to the motor-cyclist.
The three detectives and the doctor stepped out of the tonneau. The motor-cyclist told them quickly that Mr. Belton and the Princess had driven down Melina Place, that a second lady had come in the car standing at the opposite corner, watched them, and gone down Melina Place after them.
"How long can we give them?" said Inspector Halliday to the doctor.
"Anything up to a quarter of an hour," said the doctor; and he looked at his watch.
"That will give the Princess a chance to make her getaway," said Inspector Halliday.
"Just stick the car across the road and block it, Hawkins. It will save a lot of trouble if we collar her on the spot."
THE Princess ushered Mr. Belton into the room furnished with old oak and pushed him into the armchair. She tore open the envelope, looked at the sheet of paper, and said in excited accents: "The word is 'Paris'!"
"Right-o," said Mr. Belton, cheerfully, and took from his breast pocket the document with the square clipped to it and set about decoding it. He worked at it for perhaps four minutes. At the end of the second minute he was frowning. The frown deepened.
Then he looked up and said: "A lemon. My name is not Walter the Human Boo. Cough up the right word, Popsy darling."
"But it is the right word; It is! You humbug me!" cried the Princess.
"Oh, cough it up!" he said impatiently. The Princess stormed and protested for a good two minutes. Mr. Belton, unmoved, preserved an amiable air. The Princess ground her teeth. Then of a sudden she was calm.
"You're too clever, Dicky—much too clever," she said, with a queer laugh that bared her teeth a little. "But you promise that you'll sign the order whatever happens?"
"I've promised once," said Mr. Belton, impatiently. "The word is 'Popsy'," she said.
"Of course. It would be!" said Mr. Belton; and he took up the pen and got to work again.
The Princess stepped behind the chair and leant over the back, watching him. He could not see that she was scowling, that her nostrils were dilated, that she was breathing quickly. The middle finger of her right hand rested, ever so lightly, on the button which worked the spring.
At the end of the second minute a pleased smile illumined Mr. Belton's face. At the end of the third minute he said, triumphantly: "This time you're right. And now for the reward of—vice."
He took the order from his pocket and signed it. As his pen rose from the completed "n," the Princess pressed the button. The needle ran into his thigh. He sprang up with a sharp howl.
The Princess snatched up the order and was through the door like a knife. She snapped it to, turned the key in the lock, ran out of the house and across the garden to her car. She sprang into it, started it, turned, and came up the street, to find a clumsy chauffeur with his big car, half-jammed, right across the road, trying to back out of it. She shouted to him to clear out of the way and brought her car to a stop ten feet from his. Then, before she knew what was happening. Inspector Halliday had both her wrists in a vice-like grip and was hauling her out of the car.
As the door snapped to, Mr. Belton swore. Then he dashed to it. The house might be old, but the lock on that door was new. He rushed to the window and threw up the sash. It was shuttered with heavy shutters, barred on the outside. He hammered on them and yelled. Someone in the neighbouring houses might hear him. He paused to listen for twenty seconds, then hammered and yelled again.
Kitty heard him hammering and yelling. It increased the astonishment aroused in her by the inexplicable flight of the Princess. She recognized the urgent note in his clamour; but she had no desire to help him. If in the course of the nefarious exercise of perfidy he had got himself into trouble, let him get himself out of it. At any rate, she was not going to help him at once. She was on the opposite side of the house to that at which he was hammering and clamouring; she walked round it and found that the unmethodical Princess had left the front door ajar. She stood hesitating what to do. Of a sudden Mr. Belton's clamouring and shouting stopped.
A sudden wave of nausea had swept through him. The anti-toxin had not worked!
He came away from the window, drew a chair from the wall to the table, sat down on it, and stared in front of him with the dazed air of one who faces the worst, and that worst inevitable. There was no chance of getting to a hospital in time. These devils had only needed to make a prison to hold a man a few minutes and the poison would keep him in it.
The thought that he was going to die, painfully, inside of half an hour gave him a sinking feeling that increased the nausea. He had faced death often enough in the old days; but this was different. Then, at the very worst, there had always been a chance. This was hopeless. He stared at the wall in front of him without seeing it. He saw a hundred things, a hundred scenes. The dancing room of the 99 Club he had just left, the crowded theatre in which he had spent the afternoon came first, then scene after scene.
In nearly every one of them the chief figure was Kitty—Kitty happy, Kitty sad, Kitty angry, Kitty in ballrooms, on the stage, in restaurants, on the river, in the country. He had lost Kitty. He had not really believed that he had lost her when she cast him off. Now he had lost her. He had lost everything. It was not even slipping away; it had gone, absolutely gone. He almost sobbed.
Then he pulled himself together and ground his teeth. A raging desire to balk the devils who had robbed him of Kitty and the bright world surged through him. He would get the key-word to his uncle. But how, with a few minutes of failing powers left, could he? Yet he must. He cudgelled his brains, rejecting device after device. Then the idea came. He took a sheet of notepaper, tore a small square out of it, wrote on it, in big letters and deep, ''The key-word is Popsy," let them dry, rolled it into a ball and swallowed it.
There would certainly be an autopsy.
Another wave of nausea swept through him. He took another sheet of paper and began to write a farewell letter to Kitty. He wrote:
My Dear Kitty,
You were absolutely wrong about Mabel Carruthers. I never did care a scrap for anyone but you, and you....
Someone tried the handle of the door. He turned towards It sharply. The key turned in the lock; the door opened; in came Kitty herself, her eyes still blazing, her face still pale. He stared at her with his mouth open.
"So I was quite right about you," she said in terrible accents. "The Princess now. The very moment you got rid of me! I should like to hear what you have to say for yourself."
"I am Walter the Human Boo," said Mr. Belton in a tone half exasperated, half dismal. "That's what I've got to say for myself. But get to my uncle at once—straight—and tell him that the key-word is 'Popsy.' Don't forget—'Popsy'."
Kitty stared at him in a blank bewilderment. "What do you mean?" she said. "Are you mad or drunk?"
"Neither, worse luck," said Mr. Belton. In merely dismal accents. "I let that little devil inject a shot of daboia poison into me—Russell's viper, you know. I came to buy the key-word of a cipher off her. She's a Bolshie agent. The key-word's 'Popsy'—the damned little snake's own name!"
Kitty stared at him with her eyes opened their widest; her mouth went suddenly dry; the anger in her died in panic.
"What d-d-do you mean—d-d-daboia p-p-poison—Russell's viper?" she stammered.
"She fired a shot of it into my thigh. There's a needle in that cushion." He pointed to the armchair. "I'm a goner, old girl," said Mr. Belton quietly; and he rose and took her gently in his arms and kissed her.
His eyes seemed to be devouring her. They would not see her long.
"But there must be something to be done! Can't I—can't I suck the poison out of the wound?" she cried in desperate accents.
"You can't. The damned needle went too far in."
There came a banging on the garden door.
"Here they are! Get out! Lock the door! It's no good bothering about me," cried Mr. Belton. "The key-word—'Popsy'—is the important thing! Get off! Hide in the garden! Slip out when they come into the house! Get to my uncle with the key-word! And—and—yes—tell—him that you're to have the five hundred quid for bringing it."
"I won't! I won't! I won't leave you!" she cried; and she threw her arms round his neck, and, kissing him, burst into a storm of sobs.
The garden door went with a crash.
"I'm afraid you can't get away now. The devils will get you, too! Oh, why didn't I think to bring a gun!" cried Mr. Belton; and he faced the door with his right arm round her waist. It flew open, and in came Inspector Halliday, followed by the doctor.
"Did they get a jab at you?" cried the doctor anxiously.
"They got it—at least that little devil, the Princess, did. The needle is in the cushion of that armchair. The key-word is 'Popsy'. Don't forget, 'Popsy'," said Mr. Belton.
"Good man!" said the doctor. "How are you feeling?"
"As sick as a cat," said Mr. Belton.
"Then you must have had a devil of a dose! Off with your coat! Quick!" said the doctor; and he opened his bag.
Mr. Belton was quick getting his coat off and opening his shirt; the doctor was quick injecting another shot of anti-toxin. Then he pulled out a flask of whisky, with very little water in it, and made him drink all of it.
"Don't you worry. That'll set you right," he said, cheerfully, and made him lie down on the cushioned settle.
Kitty sat down beside him and took his hand and stared at his pale face with eyes full of anguish.
The other two detectives came in with the Princess. She was sniveling. Inspector Halliday took the cushion from the armchair and gingerly he examined it. Then he ripped the cover off it and spread the stuffing on the table and searched it thoroughly.
"But there isn't any needle," he said, in puzzled accents. "It must have been your imagination, Mr. Belton."
"Imagination be damned!" said Mr. Belton with extraordinary tartness. "My thigh is stinging like the devil. Take a look at the chair—perhaps it's in the chair. I heard a click—two clicks."
The Inspector examined the seat of the chair and found the hole up which the needle shot.
"Try the back. The little devil was leaning against the back," said Mr. Belton, who was still taking notice.
"I was never near the chair! I did nothing! I did not know about the chair!" cried the Princess.
No one took any notice of her. The Inspector found the right button and pressed it. Up shot the needle. He laid the chair on its side, and found, screwed to the bottom of it, a little box that evidently contained the mechanism which raised the syringe and thrust in the plunger and forced the poison out.
"That's fine!" cried the detective. "All the evidence of attempted murder will be in this box—a long stretch for the lady."
The Princess protested shrilly and snivelled louder.
For the next five minutes they were busy taking down Mr. Belton's exact account of what had happened. He signed it. Whether it was the whisky, or whether it was the second shot of anti-toxin, he was feeling no more sick than he had felt. If anything, he was feeling less sick. Kitty sat, still holding his hand and gazing at him with eyes which held a world of passion and despair.
At intervals the doctor felt his pulse and made cheering remarks. The Princess snivelled on. Inspectors Halliday and Tomkins went away to search the house. The minutes passed. A little colour came into Mr. Belton's cheeks; his eyes grew brighter.
Of a sudden he sat up on the couch and said in a tone of satisfaction: "I'm feeling better. That anti-toxin must have caught on."
In her relief Kitty buried her face in her hands and cried in the most unaffected fashion.
Mr. Belton patted her back and said: "Steady on, old girl. There's nothing to worry about now," slipped off the couch, stood up, and shook himself.
"You're right. You'll be all right now," said the doctor cheerfully. "But take it easy for a day or two. And you'd better get home and get to bed. We've got the lady and the chair."
Mr. Belton wasted no time. He thanked the doctor, slipped his arm through Kitty's and marched her out of the house. On the steps she took a tight hold of his arm and supported him carefully all the way to her car. He did not need support, but he appeared thoughtful. She took the driver's seat and started.
Then he said, thoughtfully: "Seeing how you've been—what you've been saying and doing, I don't believe you meant all you said the night before last."
"I was a little beast!" said Kitty, remorsefully. "I didn't mean any of it."
Mr. Belton's method of expressing his relief interfered with her driving.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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