LITMIR.BIZ

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of that. They were the incurables; extermination was the only thing for them.

      "I would shut up my penitentiaries, but enlarge my lethal chamber," he sometimes said, and would be quite serious about it. Yet not for a moment could he have carried his ideas to their logical conclusion in the concrete case of Alfred Croucher and Lady Vera Moyle. He could have let a man of that stamp go technically innocent to the gallows – or he thought he could just then. But he could not have allowed the greatest monster to suffer for Lady Vera's sins – and that he felt in his bones. It was the personal equation as supplied by her that made the thing impossible. Such a load on such a soul! Better any punishment than that!

      At Kettering a right-hand turn led up-hill and down-dale into little Rutland, and Dollar ceased glaring at his own ghost in the wind-screen; a healthily immediate anxiety kept him peering at his watch instead. But now they were skirting one of the longest and stumpiest stone walls in feudal England, and all of a sudden it parted in twin turrets joined by triple gates. Over the central arch heraldic monsters pawed the stars; underneath an arc lamp hung resplendent; all three gates were open, and the drive beyond was a perspective of guiding lights. It was evidently a case of Christmas festivities on a suitable scale at Stockersham Hall.

      Miles up the drive, a semicircle of motor-cars fringed a country edition of the Horseguards Parade, dominated by an escaped hotel; and the car that really was from London had becoming palpitations in the zone of light. Before a comparatively simple portico a superlatively splendid menial looked askance at the doctor's borrowed furs, but was not unimpressed by a curt inquiry for Mr. Topham Vinson, and consented to inquire in his turn.

      "Be quick and quiet, and give him this card," said the doctor, slipping half-a-sovereign underneath it. "I want to see Mr. Vinson – no one else – on urgent business from the Home Office."

      Yet the next minute merely brought forth an imposing personage whom the dapper driver did not fail to salute; even Dollar was not positive whether it was the Duke or his butler until summoned indoors with the subtle condescension of the supreme servitor. He went as he was, in hirsute coat and goggles, the butler stalking at arm's length, with an air of personal repudiation happily not lost upon the little London lynx in charge of the car.

      That artist would have been an endless joy to eyes not turned within. His silent endurance and efficiency, his phlegmatic zest in an adventure which might have a professional interest for him, but obviously did not engage his curiosity, were qualities which even the tormented Dollar had appreciated at intervals on the road. But now he missed a treat. The little Cockney ran his engine till the first flunkey returned and said things through the noise. Then he looked under his bonnet, as a monkey into its offspring's head. But the climax arrived with sandwiches on a lordly tray, when a glass of beer was sent back, and one of champagne brought instead to this choice specimen of a contemporary type. It was scarcely down before the passenger reappeared, accompanied by another swollen figure in motoring disguise, as well as by my Lord Duke, who saw them off himself, and did look less ducal than the butler after all.

      The many lights of Stockersham dwindled and disappeared into the night and one long wave of incandescence flowed back as it had come, by finespun hedge and wirework thicket, through dead villages and sleeping towns, like phosphorescent foam before a vessel's bows. And in the torpedo body of the Invincible Talboys, where Dollar now sat behind his companion of the outward trip, and the Home Secretary of England behind a fat cigar, there was a strained silence through two entire counties, but something like an explosion on the confines of the third.

      "Do you still refuse to give her name?" demanded Topham Vinson, exactly as though they had been talking all the time. The stump of his second cigar was so short that angry light and angry mouth were one.

      "I must," said Dollar, in a muffled voice, and he pointed to the hunched shoulders within a yard of their noses.

      "In that case we have no secrets," replied the Home Secretary with a sneer. "But why must you, Dollar? She seems to have made no reservations with you, yet you would make this enormous one with me."

      "It's a secret of the consulting-room, Mr. Vinson; those of the confessional are not more sacred, as you know perfectly well."

      "And you expect me to eat my decision on the strength of a hearsay anonymous confession?"

      "I do – in the first instance," said Dollar decidedly. "An immediate respite would commit you to nothing, but I don't ask even for that on the unsupported strength of what I told you at Stockersham. You know what you've got in your overcoat pocket. Hand it over to your own analyst; have an exhumation, if you like, and see if the weapon doesn't actually fit the wound; if it doesn't, hang your man."

      "I'm much obliged for your valuable advice. But it's got to be one thing or the other, once for all; the poor devil has been on tenter-hooks quite long enough."

      "And have you forgotten how nearly you decided in his favor, Mr. Vinson, without all this to turn the scale?"

      It was perhaps an ominous feature of their mushroom intimacy that the younger man had not yet been invited to drop the formal prefix in addressing his senior by a short decade. But this would not have been the moment even for a familiarity encouraged in happier circumstances. And yet Dollar dared to pat the great man's arm as he spoke; and the gesture was as the button on the foil; it prevented a shrewd thrust from drawing blood, and if anything it improved Topham Vinson's temper.

      "It's no good, my dear fellow!" he exclaimed in friendly settlement of the general question. "I must have the lady's name, unless she's determined to defeat her own ends."

      "Do you mean to say that it's her name or Croucher's life?"

      Topham Vinson had not meant to say any such thing – in so many words – and it was annoying to have them put into his mouth. But he had decided not to be annoyed any more. It did not pay with this fellow Dollar; at least, it had not paid on that occasion; but anybody might be at a disadvantage after a heavy political strain, a lengthy journey, an excellent dinner, and a development as untimely as it was embarrassing. Mr. Vinson relapsed into silence and an attitude unconsciously modeled on that of the gallant little driver. His body sank deep into the rugs, his head as deep between his shoulders. It was almost Hertfordshire before he spoke again.

      "Vera Moyle was one of the Oxford Street division," he remarked at last. "I know all about her movements on the night of battle; otherwise I should want to know about them now. If I thought she was the woman – "

      "What's that?" said Dollar lethargically. "I was almost asleep."

      The remarks did not gain weight by repetition, but the broken sentence was finished with some effect: "I'd let her drain the cup."

      "I don't wonder," rejoined Dollar, sympathetically.

      "Yet you would have me risk my political existence for one of her kidney!"

      "I don't follow."

      "You would reprieve the apparent murderer, and let the real one continue militant here on earth?"

      "I believe she has had her fill of militancy."

      "Not she!"

      "I'll go bail for her if you like. It was an accident She is heart-broken about it – and you don't know her – I do! I'd back her not to run the risk of such another accident!"

      "And what if she rounded on me? However such a thing came out, it would be my ruin, Dollar."

      "It wouldn't come out through her!"

      A certain fervor crept into the doctor's voice. It was obviously unconscious, and Topham Vinson was far too astute a person to engender consciousness and caution by so much as a rallying syllable. But he did hazard a leading question, subtly introduced as nothing of the sort.

      "I'm not trying to get at what I want in a roundabout way," he had the nerve to state. "I've given up trying to pump you, Dollar; but – would it make a very great scandal if we had to fix this thing on this particular young lady?"

      "I can't answer about scandals," replied the still not unwary doctor. "It would break hearts – probably cause death – make her a double murderer in her own eyes, and God knows what else as a result! And it wouldn't do anybody the least bit of good, because you would

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