LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I

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      I

      "YOU say you're going up to town, Bob, as soon as you've left here. Anywhere near Pont Street? Good. Then do you mind wheeling that nearer to me?" The sick man waved a thin, but still brown hand, to where a little writing cabinet, shaped like a miniature roll-top desk, stood on a swing table.

      "Thanks," he went on. "Just wait a minute, will you, while I write a note. If you'll drop it in Houghton's letter-box, or hand it in yourself, I shall be much obliged." He hesitated. "Yourself," he repeated. "It's most important, and I don't want to wait for the post."

      "You write it and I'll deliver it within the hour." Dr. Lindrum, after swinging the table up and across the bed as requested, went to one of the windows.

      "Without fail?" persisted the man in bed, unlocking the cabinet.

      "Let's see. I must look in for a moment at home...within an hour and a half without fail. You can count on that as the outside time limit unless some accident happens to me or the car," Lindrum assured him.

      His good figure, crisply curly hair and fresh coloring gave the doctor an air of vitality and strength which made him a pleasant enough young man to look at, though his features summed up to a rather indeterminate whole. He spoke without turning around, his attention riveted by something outside. That something was a girl walking along the path below. Very slender, she was dressed in green with white muslin at the open throat. On her feet were sandals. Her slim, well-shaped legs, like her arms, were bare and brown as a Neapolitan baby's. They suggested sunshine and summer, just as her buoyant walk suggested youth.

      Behind him a pen could have been heard traveling swiftly over a sheet of paper, but he did not hear it. He only heard the crunch of gravel under light, small feet, the feet of Countess Alexandra Ivanoff, the Russian girl to whom the sick man behind him was engaged to be married.

      Ronald Craig wrote for nearly five minutes, and not once did Lindrum take his eyes off the figure in the green frock that swayed and swung about her like the calyx of a tossing flower as she strolled on, moving with a rhythm that suggested that she was humming as she walked.

      Finally the pen stopped. Craig read over what he had written. It ran:

      Dear Guy,

      I am being slowly poisoned. I found part of a letter this morning which proves it, though who the confederate is, and how it is being put into my food, are beyond my present brain capacity to unravel. I will go into that when I am better. Be here tomorrow morning at nine, in a car, and take me away. I shall never leave this room alive unless you get me out of it. If I were to try and go by myself they would prevent me, on the plea that I am too ill to get up. Lindrum, of course, is all right, only he is a silly ass and would make a fearful fuss if I told him why none of his medicine is helping me. And there must not be a fuss. Not here. I am getting him to wait while I write this, and drop it, himself, into your box. Telephone me that it has reached you. Be careful what you say, as I shall be. Until you come, I shall touch nothing that is not opened before me. If by any chance you are delayed, I shall arrange with Match. He, too, can be trusted. I can write no more. I feel very tired.

      Your affectionate cousin,

      Ronald Craig.

      He addressed this staggering note to Guy Houghton, Esq., Pont Street, London, S.W.I.; sealed it, and then held it out with evident effort.

      "I suppose I can rely on you, Bob?" His eyes seemed to search the young doctor's very soul.

      Bob Lindrum was the son of a former rector of Woodthorp, and this was Woodthorp Manor. He and Ronald Craig, though the latter was fifteen years the elder, had known each other, off and on, since the days when Bob toddled about in pinafores, though they met rarely of late years, for the Craigs had left the place some time ago, and only kept on the manor, shorn of land and rights, as their dower house.

      "You certainly can, Craig," the other assured him, as he tried to put the big, square envelope into an inner pocket. It was too big and he held it in his hand.

      The door of the sick room opened and the nurse came in. She was a woman in early middle age, with a firm chin and firmer eyes. Something in the way Craig looked at her suggested dislike, or possibly—to anyone who knew what he had just written—suspicion. She carried a tray with a bottle of Vichy on it.

      "Where's Match?" Craig asked in a weak voice. He was a man of a little over forty, with a rather rugged face, the face of a man of the people, which he was not. Just now he was blanched to a pallor that seemed to extend to his eyes, but he had evidently been an out-of-door man, big of frame and powerfully built.

      "The butler is away at the moment." The nurse had a lady's voice, but not one that suggested great tenderness for her patient. "He is expected back in time to serve lunch," she added.

      Craig nodded. Then he glanced down at the tray. "I asked for an unopened bottle of Vichy," he said, with a twitch of his white lips.

      "I have just this moment opened it," the nurse assured him with smiling urbanity.

      "By God!" Craig raised himself on an elbow and actually clenched his fingers. "By God, nurse, you'll bring me an unopened bottle when I ask for it, or you'll leave the house!"

      His eyes might be faded by illness, but they could still flash with fire. He looked

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