The Incredible Crime Read online

  “Yes, Mrs. Heale, but don’t hold that against me.”

  “No, no,” said Laura in perfect good faith, “I won’t. Why, we had a groom once who had done time for manslaughter, and he was the best man with horses I ever met, got their coats—” But here she was interrupted by a shout of laughter from the rest of the company.

  “You might have a lower opinion of them, Laura,” said her husband, “if you’d been with me outside the Big Wood. The fox went away, and then I am blessed if Skipwith, Maryon, and McDonald didn’t go away, at a very good pace too, and after them came the hounds!”

  “And great credit it did us,” said McDonald. “I am getting on for sixty, which you don’t seem to realize.”

  But even this crime could not lower them in the opinion of Laura Heale.

  “No,” she said, “they may be ignorant, but they are made of the right stuff.”

  “One for you, Skipwith,” said Maryon, chuckling.

  “I’ll tell you a curious and very interesting experience I once had,” said Dr. Heale. “I was sitting by the bed of an old fellow who was dying; he had already left this world, and was wandering in the space that seems to divide it from the next life; I’d my hand on his pulse, and every moment I was expecting him to go out. He had hunted all his life and he was over eighty. Then I heard the hounds hunting, the sound of them came through the open window; I had heard them a minute or two before I felt the old man’s pulse quicken; then the expression of his face changed, and he opened his eyes. ‘Gone away,’ he said, and believe me, though it was a physical impossibility, he sat up in bed; he’d always had an ugly seat on a horse, you remember, Laura? Rode with toes and elbows stuck out. Well, he stuck out his elbows, he gathered up the sheet as if it was reins, and with the sound of hounds in full cry coming in at the window, and looking ahead, that old warrior rode straight for the last and grimmest fence in life. Then he fell over stone dead.”

  There was a long pause, and then Thomas Skipwith spoke. “That was a grand way to die.”

  Laura Heale looked at him, her weatherbeaten face softened by her expression.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ve often wondered what that last fence looked like to him.”

  “I’ve seen a good many confronted with that last fence,” said the doctor, and turning to McDonald, “I expect you have too, and I’d be glad to feel sure I’d ride straight myself when my turn comes.”

  McDonald agreed in all sincerity; then he said, “What was he dying of?”

  “Old age, practically. He’d been unconscious for hours; I didn’t expect consciousness to return, though I wouldn’t have said it was impossible, but I would have said sitting up without assistance was an absolute impossibility.”

  “If you can’t die in the huntin’ field, it’s the next best way of doin’ it,” said Mrs. Heale. “I’ve often wondered what that last fence looked like.”

  “It was a curious coincidence that the hounds should have come at that moment,” said Skipwith.

  “It was no coincidence,” replied Mrs. Heale gravely. “Don’t you know that hounds always run to dyin’ men?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If a man who has hunted all his life is dyin’, and hounds are huntin’ anywhere in the neighbourhood, they’ll run that way; you may call it superstitious if you like, but I know, I know.”

  The three sportsmen turned up the following day, as arranged, for baths at the Old Hall. Prudence was sitting in the library when Thomas looked in and asked if she knew where Dr. Heale could be found.

  “I believe I heard him in the hall talking to Ben; you’ll probably find them both in the smoking-room. Why, what’s the matter?”

  He didn’t answer, but went off in pursuit of the doctor. After a bit Lord Wellende came into the room.

  “I hear Mr. McDonald has discovered a rash on himself and has sent for Heale; it is lucky he happened to be in the house.”

  “By Jove!” said Maryon. “I wonder how long he’s had it; he hasn’t had his clothes off for days; I noticed he’d a cold this morning.”

  When Dr. Heale came into the room again, followed by Skipwith, he was looking grave. “Mr. McDonald has a nasty rash, and I am sorry to say it looks like scarlet fever.”

  There were exclamations all round.

  “I feel I ought to apologize to everyone for having brought him,” said Maryon, “but you all know how innocent of intending evil I am.”

  The others laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” said the doctor. “I am not yet sure what it is, and in any case we have found it before the really infectious time begins; and you’ve been out in the open so much, I don’t suppose for a moment you’ll take any harm.”

  “We’ve had a pretty good fug sometimes in the cabin,” said Skipwith.

  “Yes, but the peeling stage is the infectious one; I don’t think you need worry. Can I talk to you, Wellende, about arrangements?”

  Dr. Heale and Lord Wellende left the room together.

  “There’s no reason why we should wait; let’s go in to lunch,” said Prudence. They discussed Mr. McDonald’s misfortune, and the chances of anyone else coming out with it, till the others returned.

  “We’ve arranged it all very easily, and no one need worry,” said Lord Wellende to Maryon’s repeated apologies.

  “He’ll sleep here to-night, and we’ve sent for an ambulance from the Liverpool Fever Hospital in London, and they’ll take him off to-morrow morning first thing.”

  “None of you is in the least likely to catch it,” added Dr. Heale; “it’s too early for him to be very infectious. He’s got a cold in the head, and he’s very stiff after yesterday’s efforts, and he tells me he’s simply never had a day’s illness in his life, so it’s quite a new experience for him.”

  “He’s not the only one that’s stiff,” said Skipwith ruefully. “I could hardly get off my bunk this morning.”

  Heale laughed. “Poor McDonald will have another new experience to-morrow when the ambulance comes for him, for it’s not unlike a prison van; and he’ll have a driver and a warder, and he won’t be allowed out; very good for a policeman!”

  Chapter XXVI

  The combined effects of a cold in the head, universal stiffness, the sight of a nasty, puffy-looking rash all over him, and sublime ignorance of what it is to feel really ill, made McDonald distinctly sorry for himself. Dr. Heale, who was there at eight o’clock in the morning, was right about the ambulance. McDonald had the choice of sitting or lying inside; he chose the former. He was shown a cord he could pull if in want of anything, then the two men mounted the box and the ambulance set off, for all the world like a prison van.

  They made very good running, and by twelve o’clock were in the outskirts of London; an hour later, they stopped in front of some big iron gates; these were unlocked, the ambulance passed through, and McDonald heard them being slammed behind him.

  “Well,” he thought, “if it is like a prison, Heale says it will be a very comfortable one.”

  At the door of the Hospital itself, as McDonald stepped out of the car, he was met by the doctor in a white linen coat. “Scarlet fever?” said the doctor, looking at him keenly. “Yes”; and he was led off by a nurse up a staircase and a long passage to a room. There was no carpet, and the minimum of furniture, but a bright, cheerful fire burnt in the grate, and the bed looked comfortable.

  “I am hungry,” said McDonald, who had had an early breakfast, to the youthful-looking nurse.

  “Yes, but you must get to bed at once; I’ll take your things out of your box; and then after the doctor has seen you, you shall have your dinner.”

  “What about reversing it, and letting me have dinner first and the doctor afterwards, Nurse; don’t you think that would be better?”

  But this suggestion shocked the nurse very much; there were the rules of the Hospital, besi
des which the laws of the Medes and Persians were as nothing.

  “Besides,” she pointed out, “the doctor will say what you may have.”

  “Dear, dear,” said the detective, awed by his unaccustomed surroundings, and the starched uniform and manner of the nurse, into a most unusual meekness. “You see, Nurse, I have never been ill before, not in any way.”

  As soon as he was established in bed, the doctor came in to examine him.

  “Have you been in scarlet fever infection that you know of?”

  “No, as far as I know, I’ve been in no infection at all.”

  The doctor examined the rash with great care, then he grunted. “You’ve a bullet wound, I see,” he said.

  “Yes, and do you know what that is?” said the patient, turning over.

  “Lord, that’s a nasty-looking gash; you didn’t get that in the war, did you?”

  “No,” said McDonald, “I didn’t get either in the war exactly. I’m a detective from Scotland Yard.”

  “The deuce you are,” said the doctor with interest. “I expect you’ve been in some nasty scraps, then.”

  He took his temperature, asked him some more questions, wrote a lot of them down on a card that was hung above his bed, and told him he could have what he liked for dinner.

  “I am not satisfied,” he said as he went off, “that it is scarlet fever, but we’ll know to-morrow; meanwhile you’ll remain where you are.”

  McDonald made a hearty meal, off good plain fare, and then lit his pipe.

  “I don’t think you’re very ill,” said the nurse.

  “Nonsense, Nurse,” said McDonald comfortably; “I’m very ill, I’ve got scarlet fever.”

  “Well, we’ll see, but it doesn’t look like scarlet fever to me.”

  “When does the post go?”

  “The post! You can’t send letters from here except twice a week, then they are fumigated before leaving the Hospital.”

  “Not send letters! But how am I to communicate with my boss?”

  “You could send a telegram.”

  McDonald thought this over. “If I did, how many people would read it?”

  “The porter who takes it, and the Post Office clerk.”

  “Well done, Nurse; most people in answering that question would only have said the porter. I’ll think it over,” he said; “I suppose I could never have my boss in to see me?”

  “Yes,” said the nurse, “but he must conform to the Hospital rules.”

  So it came that McDonald sent a wire asking his “boss” to come and see him next morning. He slept well that night, and knew nothing till another nurse woke him.

  “Hallo,” said McDonald; “you’re another, but I just saw you last night.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m the night nurse, and now I am going to wash you, before the day nurse comes on, and you have your breakfast.”

  It was with a mixture of interest, amusement, and embarrassment, the latter largely predominating, that McDonald submitted to being washed in bed. After making a hearty breakfast which caused the nurse to lift her eyebrows, the doctor arrived. He examined the patient’s rash, which was certainly no better, then sat down and looked at him.

  “Slept well?”

  “Admirably.”

  “You are generally a good sleeper?”

  “I sleep,” said McDonald, “with the unfailing regularity of an idiot.”

  The doctor grinned. “You look healthy enough,” he said, “except for this rash. You don’t take drugs for any reason, do you?”

  “If you knew as much about drug-takers as I do, you wouldn’t ask me that.”

  “No,” said the doctor, and then he thought for a bit. “Go out of the room, Nurse, until I call you; I want to be left alone with the patient.”

  The nurse did as she was bid, though with evident surprise. The doctor turned to McDonald. “Now you tell me you are a detective; were you by any chance on a job when you got this rash?”

  McDonald was immensely surprised, but showed nothing at all of it in his face. He thought a moment, then he said “Yes.”

  “Would it have suited anyone, accustomed to the use of drugs, to have had you out of the way?”

  “By gum!” said the detective, “by gum—you don’t really mean it…the devils!” he added, with no anger, but in a tone of wondering admiration.

  “You’ve not answered my question,” pursued the doctor.

  “Yes,” said McDonald, “yes, I am sure they wanted me out of the way…but for two innocents like that to trip up an old bird like me—do you mean to say you think this isn’t scarlet fever?—only the result of a drug?”

  “That’s it,” said the doctor. “You’ve a cold in the head, a bit of luck for them, and the rash looks to me like some form of chloral poisoning.”

  “Hell! Who’d have thought it of them!”

  “Of course, I can’t speak positively till to-morrow, but I am fairly sure. You think you know who it was?” asked the doctor with a good deal of interest.

  “Yes, I know who it was all right.”

  “When could it have been given you?”

  McDonald thought.

  “Four days ago at lunch I had some thick soup that tasted rather bitter.”

  “Had the people who wanted to get rid of you access to that soup?”

  “Yes; and since then I might have had it each day, but I didn’t notice anything.”

  “Well,” said the doctor, “that’s what I think it is.” A pause followed, while each man was thinking. “The local doctor told you he thought it was scarlet fever?”

  “Yes,” replied McDonald hastily, immediately on his guard, for he did not intend the Hospital authorities to learn any details. “He did, but said he wasn’t sure, it was some time since he had seen it; they don’t get infectious diseases in his part of the country.”

  “No,” replied the doctor, “unless a man is in charge of a school, and always seeing rashes, it’s often very hard for him to be sure,” but he took the hint, and if he had been going to ask any more questions he abstained.

  “I suppose now,” said McDonald conversationally, “a general practitioner would find it hard to say a rash like mine was nothing infectious.”

  “That’s it; he would have to treat it as infectious, and if he wasn’t in the way of constantly seeing rashes, it wouldn’t occur to him that it could be chloral poisoning. Well, in the state you are, you must keep in bed for a few days; any chill you got now might turn to pneumonia, and you can’t do better than remain where you are.”

  “That’s all very well, but nurse tells me you’ve smallpox, diphtheria, and measles in the Hospital; I don’t want to catch any of them.”

  “Lord love you, man!” said the doctor, “you won’t catch anything here! Or at least you’re a great deal less likely to do so than in any other house!”

  “You really know so well how to deal with your infection?” asked McDonald.

  “I should just think so; you’re a lot safer here for smallpox than you are in the road outside,” and with that the doctor went off.

  A short time after, Admiral Sir Boris Buckthorne, dressed in a white linen coat, and a silly little white linen cap covering his head, was let into the room by the nurse.

  “Thank you, Nurse,” he said, “and I promise you I won’t touch the patient, nor eat anything he may offer me…We won’t keep you,” and Sir Boris, with his charming manner, held the door open, and the nurse, who had not intended going quite so quickly, found herself walking out.

  Sir Boris shut the door, and listened a moment to her steps going down the stone passage.

  “For a man of your age, and a detective of your standing, to go down with scarlet fever while on a job—I’m ashamed of you!” Sir Boris’s face broke into the adorable smile that took the sting out of anything he
might say.

  “When you’ve heard what I’ve got to tell you, you’ll be a lot more ashamed of me. Why, I’ve been plucked!—ME, and it never even occurred to me as possible till the doctor here told me!”

  “What do you mean? Speak low, this bare place echoes so much.”

  “I haven’t got scarlet fever at all! The chap here says it’s the result of chloral poisoning; and if it is, it was given me by Lord Wellende and the local doctor down there. Two men twenty-four hours ago I would have said were as innocent as lambs!”

  Sir Boris looked grave.

  “It isn’t that I bear them any resentment for poisoning me, but I am angry at being so done, at my age and with my experience! But hang it all, I don’t know what it is to be really ill, and it took me in completely!”

  “This makes it look bad for them,” said Sir Boris.

  “Yes, it does,” replied McDonald, “they’ve just done for themselves. I had come to the conclusion that the drug could not possibly be being handled by them, and now this happens. They’ve overreached themselves. I suppose the doctor banked on the chance they wouldn’t spot it here; the chap here has been smarter than they expected, and so the show has been given away.”

  Sir Boris got up and walked slowly to the window.

  “What else did you find out there? What are your impressions?”

  “I found out just nothing at all, and as for my impressions…do you remember how Gaston Bossut of the Prefecture used to accuse me of jumping to conclusions, like a woman, about people?”

  “Yes.”

  “And I say it’s not jumping, it’s instinct and a lifetime’s study of human nature…Well, on these grounds twenty-four hours ago I would have said Lord Wellende was as innocent as you are.”

  Sir Boris grunted. “He’s a charming fellow, what you call the perfect type of English country gentleman. Lives for sport and his own place, but no fool; and the local doctor, who must be hand and glove with him, is just such another.”

  “And yet he’s poisoned you, to get you out of his way?”

  “Yes, that’s his black mark,” said McDonald gravely, “and a chap in his position doesn’t do that without serious reason; there must be something wrong.”