Ambrotox and Limping Dick

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"Nor you, Alban, to hide it," she retorted, groping at the rug which
covered Amaryllis. "You gave her enough to keep her quiet another hour
or two, didn't you?"

"It's hard to tell with a new subject," he answered. "Morphine is tricky
in opiate doses."

Then Amaryllis knew she had been drugged, and to appear as when they
last saw her, she half-opened her eyes, showed her teeth between drawn
lips, and managed to keep her face rigid without even the quiver of an
eyelid.

The rug was lifted for a moment and a face peered at hers; and she knew
it for that of Sir Randal's late parlour-maid and lamented coffee-maker.

"She's just the same," said the woman. "Quite insensible, but not dead
yet. Blast her!"

Melchard laughed. "The green-eyed monster as per usual," he said. "You
ought to know me by this time, but you always mistake my universal
admiration of beauty for the tender passion."

"Don't be a fool," she answered. "What are you going to do with her?"

Melchard was silent, and the woman spoke again.

"Look here," she said, "I'm going to be right in this. I found the
stuff for you. I got the key. And if I hadn't been with you to-night
you'd have been lagged. I'm not so sure that you won't be, now, with
that ---- letter of yours from Paris."

"What's wrong with the letter?" asked Melchard.

"It would have done well enough if we hadn't had to bring this
red-haired wench of yours with us. Now that the girl's disappeared,
it'll only attract attention."

"My sweet child," retorted Melchard, "that letter is a masterpiece. I
did leave a notebook behind. Legarde and Morneaux, besides swearing to
it themselves, would bring a dozen others, all most respectable men, to
say that I did not leave Paris until the twenty-second, the day after
to-morrow."

"H'm!" said the woman. "M'yes, perhaps. And anyhow," she went on, with a
chuckle of relish, "by the time we've shipped the girl to Holland, she
won't remember her own name."

Then at last horror seized the soul of Amaryllis, and consciousness left
her.

CHAPTER IX.

THE POLITICAL COVES.

For the better part of their journey to town Caldegard and Randal
Bellamy ate their hearts in silence. The road was good, and they had it
almost to themselves.

As they were nearing London, Caldegard spoke.

"Bellamy," he said, "that brother of yours won't stop at killing if----"

"He'll begin with it," replied Randal, "if he gets a fair chance."

"It gives me unreasonable hope," said Caldegard.

"Men who've trusted Dick would call your hope reasonable."

"Yet he's sent us after Ambrotox," complained the father, "and my
heart's breaking for my little girl."

"His argument convinced you, anyhow," said Randal.

At New Scotland Yard Sir Randal's card gained them instant admission to
the presence of the Superintendent of the Criminal Investigation
Department.

He listened without a word to Randal's compact and lucid statement of
the facts.

"It's a good thing I was kept here so late to-night, gentlemen," he
said. "We shall act without losing a moment in the matter of your
daughter's disappearance, Dr. Caldegard. But the theft of your secret,
of which both Sir Charles Colombe and the Home Secretary have spoken to
me, is a matter of such tremendous importance, that I am obliged to
communicate immediately with both these gentlemen and the Commissioner.
And you will be doing me a great kindness if you will both remain here
until I hear from them."

An hour later a sombre group of six, after protracted discussion, seemed
almost to have exhausted the evidence, suggestion and counsel which
could be brought to bear upon a crime so sudden and so obscure.

Sir Charles Colombe looked anxiously round him as he spoke.

"That is the danger," he said, "which we have to face: that these foul
pests of society should escape with Professor Caldegard's discovery and
master his secret--a peril to which all the dangers mankind has run
since the world began from greed, bigotry, alcohol and opium are child's
play. The bill of which Sir Gregory has just spoken would give us powers
to lay hands on all these local branches of what Superintendent Finucane
has described as 'the Dope Gang.' We know already some twenty-five or
thirty of them. If we were as well advanced in our knowledge of their
central organisation, we might even now do something fairly vigorous
under the law of conspiracy. As it is, we can only proceed against
individuals trafficking in and supplying certain specified drugs. The
secret of this greatest drug of all must not, if human power can prevent
it, come into the hands of the inner ring before we have our grip on it.
Needles, before now, have been successfully hunted in haystacks, and
perhaps even you, Professor Caldegard, have no adequate conception of
how close the meshes are in the net Superintendent Finucane is
spreading. And I should like you to understand, sir," he said, drawing
nearer to the old man who sat staring with fixed eyes out of a ghastly
face, "that, though our duty makes us think of millions where you can
think only of one, every effort which the Criminal Investigation
Department makes, every trap it lays, every device it contrives to
recover your property is equally adapted to finding your daughter. In
your fear for her safety you have forgotten your drug; in our fear for
the drug we cannot let your daughter out of our minds."

"She may be--dead," said Caldegard.

The Superintendent answered him.

"I don't believe it," he declared. "You see, sir, the thief's plan
worked smoothly, bar the one unexpected factor--the young lady in the
room. If he didn't kill her then, he don't mean to kill her."

"That's my brother's argument," said Randal, adding his word of comfort.

There was a tap at the door, and a constable entered.

"Sir Randal Bellamy's chauffeur, sir," he said to Finucane. "He has
brought this letter. Says it's from Mr. Richard Bellamy."

Randal glanced at the note and then read aloud:

"Melchard's the man we want. Get his address. 'Phone cut outside.
Wire me address P.D.Q."

"From my brother Richard," he said. "Dr. Caldegard knows this Melchard,
I believe."

When Caldegard had told them all he knew of the man, the Superintendent
looked at the Commissioner,

"I think, sir," he said, "we'd better inquire about Mr. Alban Melchard."

"Rather a wildgoose chase," grumbled the Home Secretary.

"I shouldn't wonder, sir," replied Finucane, "if Mr. Richard Bellamy
isn't a very wideawake young gentleman."

CHAPTER X.

THE GREEN FROCK.

Seven miles south of Millsborough, just before you come to the
cross-roads, whose eastern branch runs to the coast some thirty miles
away, there stands, the only house in sight, a little roadside inn
called "The Coach and Horses."

At half-past seven on the morning of Saturday, June the twenty-first,
there drew up before it a long, low two-seater car.

The landlord, a sharp-faced little man with kindly eyes and a shrewd
mouth, came to the door.

"Looks like you've been travelling all night, sir," he remarked
pleasantly.

"It looks right," said Dick Bellamy. "I want a house called The
Myrtles."

Turning to the north, the landlord waved his hand towards the right.

"Two mile, mebbe more, mebbe less. Lies in a bit of a hollow. But you
won't see no myrtles--less they've growed in the night--just a low stone
house with a bit of a copse back o't. Mr. Melchard you're seekin', like?
He's a girt man wi' the teeth," said the landlord, chuckling.

"Big eater?" asked Dick.

"Dentist's my meanin', sir. They do say he keeps seven shops in
Millsborough district, and never drew tooth in his life. Just drives
round so free, takin' t'money. But I reckon, if you're goin' to
t'Myrtles, you know the gentleman."

"I'm going to leave my car here. Don't know how long, but I'll pay you
five shillings a day. I want some food and I've only got five minutes.
Can you manage it?"

Waiting, he scribbled a note in pencil, tore the leaf from his notebook,
demanded an envelope, addressed it, and attacked the cold beef and beer
hurriedly set before him.

"Can you post this?" he asked.

"You passed t'box quarter mile back," said the landlord.

"Half-a-crown if you'll take it yourself."

"All right, sir. But there's no stamp in the house."

"Post it without," said Dick, well pleased.

He laid down his knife and fork.

"Walkin'?" inquired the landlord. "Then you'd better take path across
t'moor. I'll show'ee."

Alone on the heath, Dick felt he had at last a few minutes to consider
his position. Plans must come with events. Though besieged still by the
fear which had haunted him throughout the night, he found comfort,
however indefinite, in the daylight. Time was everything; but if he were
indeed in time, it was well to have the day before him.

The letter to his brother, which he had posted in York at three o'clock
in the morning, though it gave the address of the man he was hunting,
could not, any more than that which he had just entrusted to the
landlord of "The Coach and Horses," reach Scotland Yard in time to bring
help in the immediate danger which he foresaw--danger which he would
never have run the risk of bringing upon Amaryllis Caldegard but for his
conviction of that worse peril threatening her. He was, indeed, sure
that his course, rash as it would be accounted in the event of failure,
offered the best, and perhaps the only chance of taking home with him an
Amaryllis as happy and full of laughter as he had known on the road
between Oxford and Chesham.

Twenty minutes' walking led him up a sharp rise to the level of the
road, from which he looked down into the corresponding hollow on the
other side. And there he saw what the little man of "The Coach and
Horses" had described: a long, low stone house of two stories, facing
south-west; windows neatly curtained, and fitted--an exotic touch--with
_persiennes_; gravelled walks and smooth grass plots, a tree or two,
shrubs and a few garden saplings; a garage big enough for one car which
would look bigger than its envelope as it came out; and a pretentious
gate--suburban villa half-heartedly aping country house--guarding the
drive.

He stood in the road, boldly looking down at the blinded windows,
thinking how common these houses were; in many parts of England he had
seen them, grinning, sulking, boasting, counterfeiting, smirking at a
world that would not look twice.

But this house seemed to leer at you through a filthy parade of modesty.

On a bench in the shade of a large tree not more than thirty yards from
the road was a patch of colour: a woman's garden hat, bound with an
orange scarf. Since it was not hers, it seemed the best thing in sight.

Fearing observation, he turned from the house, walking eastward.

The copse of which he had been told lay not only behind the building to
the north-east, but encroached on its eastern side so as to intervene
with the tops of its younger trees between him and the back of the
building.

He followed the highway until he came to a field of ragged oats running
from the road northward behind the little wood. Vaulting the stone fence
at the roadside, he scrambled down the steep bank. Soon he was among the
trees, making his way to the left towards the rear of "The Myrtles."
Bushes and tree-trunks gave him cover until he was within five yards of
the low wall of unmortared stone which made an irregular and dilapidated
fence about the back of the house.

From the wood's edge to the wall he crawled with the speed and silence
of a Houssa scout, and, once in shelter of the stones, was not long in
finding a crevice roughly funnel-shaped, which gave him, with small
eyepiece, a wide outlook.

Wretched grass-plots trodden into patches of bare earth, ashes, bones,
potato-parings, a one-legged wheelbarrow; a brick dustbin overfilled
till its rickety wooden lid gaped to show the mouthful it could not
swallow; a coal-shed from whose door, hanging by one hinge, a blackened
track led across the dying grass to a door standing open outwards from
the structural excrescence which must be kitchen or scullery: these made
the sordid complement of the hypocrisy which exuded from the front.

That open door tempted him.

If only he could find some indication of her room! For that Amaryllis
was in that house he had less doubt than proof.

From the front the windows looked out at no great distance on the high
road. Signals were possible. They would lodge--imprison her at the back,
and surely on the upper floor. But even that, on this side, had six
windows, and he searched their flat glitter in vain for a peg to hang a
guess upon.

He had almost made up his mind to creep to that open scullery door and
try his luck when, from the third window from the right, behind the
glass there shone something white.

Now the first window in this row was next the end of the house; the
second, over the roof of the scullery; and the third had beneath it a
straight drop--some seventeen feet of unbroken wall--to the ground.

There was, indeed, three feet below the window-sill a rough
string-course, which might give to a fugitive a moment's finger-hold
before dropping to earth. But the fall between shoes and ground would be
some two and a half yards--a serious matter even for an acrobat so
placed that he could not watch his feet.

And how should man or woman escaping get even the moment's grasp of that
two-inch projection of stone?

It was, then, a safe room for a prison.

Bad glass refracted grotesquely the white shape behind it, but could not
make its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raised
until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their
fingers under the frame straining to force it higher, Dick's heart leapt
to the belief that they were those pretty, expressive hands he had
watched so often in lazy pleasure.

He was upon the point of making a signal above the edge of his cover
when a footfall checked him.

A woman, dressed in a blue overall and carrying an empty japanned
bucket, was hurrying from the scullery along the grimy track to the
coal-shed.

This out-house was so near to the watcher, that he could hear the
pretty, eager, flaxen-haired, savage-faced little woman muttering to
herself as she scraped and shovelled. He could, after a fashion, speak
the Taal, and knew her more distinct phrases for European Dutch.

"Not used to the job," reasoned Dick. "And no skivvy in the house _this_
week." And he remembered the garden hat with the orange band.

Half-way back she set down her load, straightened her back, and glanced
at the upper part of the house.

The sight of the partly-opened window and the white figure now drawn
back a little into the room seemed to fill her with rage. She ran
forward and, standing a few yards from the house, shook her fists
furiously, pouring out a stream of abuse and threats of which hardly an
articulate word reached Dick's ears. Having come to a climax with a
shriek, hoarsely suppressed, she ran back to the bucket and with it
stumbled quickly into the house.

Dick was over the wall almost before she was out of sight; but
clattering of coal-shovel and fire-grate told him she had not yet
started on her way upstairs, and he followed with extreme caution.

The door which stuck out into the yard soon hid him from the open
doorway, and enabled him to bring his eyes above the sill of the window,
which must be passed to reach the house, without fear of attack from
behind.

In the scullery, at the end further from the main building, was a small
hobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals,
and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and the
wood began already to crackle.

In this commonplace task she seemed so unnaturally absorbed that Dick
watched her with intense curiosity, his head held horizontally, so that
one eye only topped the lower edge of the window-sill, thus making the
least possible exposure of his head above it.

Every now and then she would turn and pick out with her fingers little
lumps of coal and drop them in the hottest crevices among the sticks;
and each time he saw a face of cruelty more determined.

He thought of Amaryllis, and knew that it was of Amaryllis that this
little Dutch devil also was thinking.

"Melchard's!" he thought; and knew that for him, Dick Bellamy, she must
be, in what was coming, not a woman but a tiger or a bad man.

The fire now glowed under its blaze. She took a shovel and strewed a
thin layer of small coal over all. Next she spread a doubled sheet of
newspaper on the stone floor, and laid on it small sticks and again
small coal.

Several times during this fire-lighting Dick had seen her glance, as she
turned, at a small mound of stuff which lay on the further side of the
hearth. She now lifted it, holding high, with a finger and thumb
pinching each shoulder-strap, a woman's frock--a light, slender slip, of
these latter days, to add the last exquisite grace.

The fire flared, and shed its changing light on the green silk, so that
by its iridescence of interwoven colours, chasing each other as the
garment wavered in the draught, he knew it. Amaryllis had worn it at
dinner last night.

Under the light of the big lamp in the hall it had made her figure turn
colour like an opal. And again, as she ran with that letter to her
bedroom, crimson, purple, peacock blue and a green never the same, had
chased each other down the swaying folds of her skirt.

The little Dutchwoman eyed the frock, hating while she admired; then
suddenly she pushed a fold of the silk into her mouth, and pulled with
hands and tore with teeth until long streamers of silk flickered their
reds and greens towards the fire.

At last, with a sound between purring and growling, she bunched the
stuff together and pushed it down on the coals, lifted the paper tray of
fuel from the floor, laid it in the grate over the silk, turned away,
threw off her overall and ran cat-footed into the house and out of his
sight.

And with her vanished Dick's last shadow of hesitation.

He crept from behind the door, faced its outer edge, laid a hand from
each side on its top, set his right foot on the inside knob of the
handle, raised his left to the outer, and thence with a quick movement
sprang astride of the top.

CHAPTER XI.

THE WINDOW.

When Amaryllis awoke from a sleep in which the remains of the drug
Melchard had given her had happily combated the restlessness of fear,
she had no memory of how she came to the room in which she found
herself.

Under the shock of the strange surroundings she sprang from the bed, and
as her feet touched the floor, last night came back to her.

She tried the door--locked!

She went to the window, and had already raised the lower part until it
jammed, when there came running beneath an angry woman, threatening with
gesture and unintelligible words.

It was Fridji, who was once Sir Randal's parlour-maid, and last night
Melchard's companion in the car.

Amaryllis drew back and looked round the room for her gown--the green
silk she had worn at dinner last night. It had been taken from her body
before she was laid on the bed. The rest of her clothes she still wore,
even to the evening shoes which were hurting her feet. But the green
frock was gone--an added precaution, no doubt, against her escape.

Fear thrilled in her heart, and grew so terrible that, if the window had
given her any prospect but that foul yard and the dark pine trees behind
it, she would have broken its glass and screamed for help.

Almost in despair, she sat trembling on the bed, and thought of her
father and of the two Bellamys, and of what they would do, when they
caught them, to the men who had stolen Ambrotox and the woman they
loved.

All the three? Well, two at least. Yet somehow she felt that it would
not be surprising if the worst vengeance should be Limping Dick's.

And inside her she smiled, and the shaking of her body began to subside.

But before her courage was firm in the saddle there came footsteps in
the passage--a foot that she knew. The key grated, the door opened, and
Melchard entered the room, dressed in a soft, new-looking suit of
purplish grey; the jacket too long in the body and too close in the
waist, the wide, unstarched cuffs of the mauve shirt turned back--an
embryo fashion--over the coat-sleeves.

And with him came the miasma of that nauseating perfume.

The mercy of God sent her anger, and she forgot that she rose before
this intruder covered only in white princess petticoat, green silk
stockings and high-heeled bronze shoes.

The petticoat was cut low on neck and shoulders, and the white of the
lace shoulder-straps showed bluish between the warm cream-colour of neck
and of arms. The face, a moment before pale and worn almost to
haggardness, was now flushed with the indignation which gave point and
edge to the words which overwhelmed for a moment even the shameless and
commercialized criminal.

Of what he was, she knew little, but what she thought of him he could
not escape hearing.

Yet, when she paused in, rather than concluded her invective, he had
already recovered his effrontery.

"My dear Miss Caldegard," he said, "we were compelled last night, for
your own good, to exhibit a mild opiate. Your health required it. It has
impaired, I fear, your memory of the circumstances which have brought
you under my care. When you have had a few weeks in which to benefit by
the devoted care and scientific attention which we shall bring to bear
on your case, you will learn to look on me as what I am--your medical
attendant, and to forget--or--or----" and here he ogled her horribly
with his fine eyes--"or remember in a new fashion your old lover."

And with this disgusting phrase he came close up to her.

"Lover still," he said, "though discarded and trampled upon."

Amaryllis could not know that her very truculence was a fan to his
flame.

"Go out of my room," she cried, and struck him on his mouth and cheek.

The blow was delivered with the action of a slap, but the fingers were
clenched, and the arm was swung from the shoulder.

Melchard seized her by the elbows, cruelty and joy making in his
countenance a horrible mixture of emotion.

With his face close to hers, he said:

"Oh, yes, I'll go--soon! That tawny hair of yours, Amaryllis, is
splendidly voluptuous against your skin of live, creamy satin. I long to
run my fingers into its meshes."

And actually he would have touched it--her hair!--but for a voice which
spoke sharply through the partly-open door:

"You're wanted, Alban. Come!"

And Amaryllis, in spite of fear and disgust, almost laughed at the
disgust and fear in his face as he released her.

"My men downstairs," he said. "Soon--soon I shall see you again."

Then, at the door, he turned to add: "There are four of them, prompt,
even rash fellows--all armed but faithful and devoted to me. I beg you
to wait until your breakfast is sent up. Attempts to escape are
dangerous."

Again the key was turned, and Amaryllis flung herself on the bed,
shaking with rage and horror.

But her attention was distracted from herself by the absence of
departing footsteps.

The man must be still at the door--listening, spying through some
crevice, perhaps.

No--he was talking--listening--replying, in a voice too low for the
words to reach her.

And then an answering voice, which rose by swift crescendo, until it
drove the man with hasty steps down the passage, followed by a screaming
final curse.

Fridji the parlour-maid was jealous, was angry, and was making her
Melchard a scene! Oh, but how funny things would be if they weren't so
beastly!

But Dutch Fridji, having no humour, entered the room in the worst temper
of a depraved woman.

"You want breakfast?" she said, locking the door and taking out the key.

Amaryllis looked up with disdainful laziness.

"Of course," she said, "please be quick."

"If you cannot wait," replied Fridji, "you must go without."

"You must not speak to me like that. You know very well that
parlour-maids say 'ma'am' and are expected to be respectful."

"Parlour-maids! I am no parlour-maid."

"Indeed?" said Amaryllis.

"Here--I am mistress!"

"Oh!" said Amaryllis.

"And you are prisoner--I tell you."

"Yes?" said Amaryllis. "I'm afraid you've let yourself be dragged into a
very wicked crime for which you will be severely punished."

"Punish! To punish _me_! Drag in! But me? Me? Me? I am not dragged. I
lead."

"Really?" said Amaryllis.

"The head is mine. I plan. And, because you will never leave this place
I do not mind to tell you that it is I have done it. All this. We have
the New Drug. I hold the man that shall make it and sell it. I am the
leader. I get the key. I catch you by the throat, there in The Manor
House, my pretty, red-haired mistress! I catch you while my Melchard,
who is clever, prick your arm with the needle. I--I--I!"

"Oh, yes," said Amaryllis. "But I do not think you are wise to tell all
this to me."

"Because you tell again? Oh, no, ma'am! I squeeze harder next time--and
there are other things. This is good old establish firm, no risk taken."

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