The Crime Doctor Part 8

"An' good 'olesome grub?" suggested Croucher with another slant of his goggle eyes.

"And plenty of square meals. Perhaps not so square as this morning's, because you won't have any exercise; but that sort of thing."

"A little drop of anythin' to drink, doctor?"

"With your meals, and in moderation, by all means; but don't ask me for nightcaps, and don't try to smuggle anything in."

"I wouldn't do such a thing!" exclaimed Croucher, with virtuous decision. "Doctor, I'm your man, and ready to turn in as soon as ever you like."

And a shabby waistcoat hung unb.u.t.toned at the swoop of a horned thumb.

"One moment," said the doctor. "If you are really coming to me, and coming to stay, I am to telephone to my tailor, who will take some little time getting here."

"Your tailor!" cried Croucher. "Where the dooce does _'e_ come in?"

"You may well ask!" replied Dollar with involuntary candor. "That friend in need, who was the first to a.s.sert your innocence, and to whom you owe more than you will ever know, is anxious to give you a fresh start in life, and an entire new outfit in which to make it."

"Well! I call that 'andsome," declared Alfred Croucher, for once without reserve. "I won't arst 'oo it is no more, but I shall live in 'opes o'

findin' out an' sayin' thanky like a man. Not but wot it's right," he added after all, "for them as is rich to 'old out an 'elpin' 'and to them as is pore and 'ave been tret like I've been, through no fault o'

their own. But it ain't everybody as sees it like that, an' it makes you think better o' the world when you strike them as does."

"I agree," said the doctor, in a tone entirely lost on his expansive patient.

"I'm griteful to 'im," that worthy went so far as to a.s.sert, "and to you too, sir, if it comes to that."

Doctor Dollar took the opportunity of being no less explicit in his turn.

"There's no reason why it should come to that, Croucher, I a.s.sure you. I can not too strongly impress on you that anything I do for you is by business arrangement with the friend who takes this extraordinary interest in your career."

In this statement, but especially in its relative clause, there was a note of sheer resentment which recalled other notes and other clauses to the retentive memory of Mr. Croucher. In a flash the lot had fused in his suspicious mind, and so visibly that Dollar was relieved to find himself the object of suspicion.

"You talk as if it went against your grain," said Croucher, with a growl and a show of growler's teeth. "I 'ope you don't think I went an' done it all the time, do yer?"

"I don't follow you, Croucher."

"I mean the big job--the first job--the one I very near swung for!"

muttered the fellow, hoa.r.s.e and hot with evident emotion.

"No; indeed I don't," responded the doctor, in an unexpected voice; and he sighed, as though to think that his sentiments toward his patient should have been so misunderstood.

Such at least was the patient's final interpretation of all that was unsatisfactory in the doctor's manner; and if a doubt still rankled in his mind, it was but the crumpled petal in what was almost literally a bed of roses. Bed and room alike were the most luxurious in which Alfred Croucher had ever lain; after prison they were as the seventh heaven after the most excruciating circle of Dante's Inferno. He stretched his great limbs in peace ineffable, fell asleep dreaming of the fine flash suits for which they had been duly measured, and was never decently awake until the evening.

A substantial tea, when he did wake up, was the least they could provide after neglecting to rouse a man for his midday meal; but a distinct grievance on that score was forgot in the appet.i.te that accrued for dinner, and the infinitely tactful choice of the eventful viands. Steak and onions was the strong act of a romantic drama after the very heart of this transpontine rough. If he had been shown a bill of fare, Alfred Croucher would have chosen steak and onions, with Welsh rarebit to follow; and Welsh rarebit did follow, as if by magic. There was rather less to be said for the drink; the patient could have done with a longer and a stronger draught. But it was a drop of good stuff, if Mr. Croucher was any judge; and he decided not to create a possibly prejudicial impression by complaints of quality or quant.i.ty.

"You done me top-'ole," he murmured, rolling his bulbs of eyes when the doctor stood over him once more. "Top-'ole, you 'ave, and no error. I never struck a nicer bit o' fillet. Saucy gla.s.s o' wine that, too. Not that I was ever much 'and at the liquor, but there are times w'en it seems to do yer good."

"You shall continue to take it, medicinally," returned Dollar, gravely; "but don't count on the type of fare you've had to-day. Three meals in future, but rather lighter ones. The first day was different, I tried to put myself in your place, and am glad I seem to have succeeded on the whole. But remember you are here to lie low, and that doesn't do on fighting food. Sufficient for the day, Croucher! Here are some flowers from the friend who works by stealth, and these are the weeds I promised you this morning. You might do worse than judge the givers by their gifts."

It was perhaps as well that Alfred Croucher did not pause to puzzle out that saying, for the rare blooms were as pearls before his kindred of the sty, but the box of Upmanns as a trough of offal. One was ignited without delay; yet it was hardly a matter of hours before the chartered sluggard was blissfully asleep once more, his door locked and bolted on principle, and a red fire dying in the grate.

II

It might have been a falling coal that woke him up. Such was the innocent Croucher's first impression. But in that case it was nothing less than a shower of coals, a gentle but continuous downpour, and they fell with a curiously crisp and metallic tinkle. Moreover, the sound was not from the fire after all, but apparently from the window on the opposite side of the room.

Croucher lay listening until his quickened senses could no longer be deceived. Somebody was at his window, the dormer window that anybody could get at over the leads, that ought to have been securely barred but wasn't, as he suddenly remembered with aggrieved dismay. He had himself considered that unprotected window and those conducive leads, in one of his last waking moments, as a not impossible solution of the whisky problem.

But this was different; this was awful; this was a case for alarming the house without scruple or delay. It should have been a great moment for a bit of an expert, who had once served the humane equivalent of seven years for an ambitious burglary of his own; but the defect of character which had spelled failure on that occasion, when an elderly householder had held him up with an unloaded revolver, rendered Mr. Croucher incapable of appreciating the present situation as it deserved. He was far too shaken to think of the former affair, or to feel for a moment like a 'busman on his proverbial holiday or an actor at the front of the house. He did feel bitterly indignant that a patient in a nursing home should be exposed to such terrors by night; and he had got as far as his elbow toward a display of spirit (and incipient virtue) when the catch flew back with as much noise as he might have made himself. Before more could happen, Mr. Croucher had relapsed upon his pillow with a stentorian snore.

Then a sash went up too slowly, limbs crossed the sill and felt the floor with excessive caution, and for a little lifetime Alfred Croucher suffered more exquisitely than toward the end in the condemned cell. The monster was leaning over him, breathing hotly in his face, all but touching his frozen skin.

"Alfie!" said a blessed voice, as a tiny light struck through the compressed eyelids. "Alfie, it's me!"

And once more Alfred Croucher was a man and a liar. "Shoddy!" he croaked with a sepulchral sob. "An' me asleep an' dreamin' like a bloomin'

babby! Why, wot the 'ell you doin' 'ere, Shod?"

"Come to see you, old son," said Shoddy. "But it's more like me arskin'

what _you're_ up to in a 'ouse like this?"

"'Avin the time o' me life!" whispered the excited patient. "Livin' like a fightin' c.o.c.k, on the fat o' the teemin' land, at some ruddy old josser's expense!"

And he poured into the still adjacent ear the true fairy tale of his first day's freedom, from his introduction to Doctor Dollar in the precincts of that very jail which was to have been his place of execution and obscene sepulcher.

"I know. I seen you come out with him," said Shoddy, "an' drive off in yer car like a hairy lord. I was there with a taxi meself----"

"There to meet me, Shod?"

"That's it. That's 'ow I tracked you to this 'ere 'ouse. The room took more findin'; but there's an old pal o' mine a shover in the mews. 'E showed me the back o' the 'ouse, an' blowed if I didn't spot yer at yer winder first go off!"

"That must've been early on, old man? I bin in bed all day. Oh, such a bed, Shoddy! I'm goin' to sleep me 'ead into a pulp afore I leave it."

"You ain't," said Shoddy firmly. "You're comin' along o' me, Alfie.

That's why I'm 'ere."

"Not me," replied Alfie, with equal firmness. "I know w'en I'm well off--and it's time I was."

"I'm wiv yer there!" Shoddy nodded in adroit sympathy; he had kept his electric lamp burning all the time; and an extra prominence of eye and cheek-bone, a looseness of lip and a flickering glance, were not inarticulate in the chastened countenance of his friend. "It must've been 'ell, Alfie, real, old red-'ot 'ell!"

"And all for wot I never done," he was reminded with some stiffness.

"That's it," the other agreed, with perfunctory prompt.i.tude. "But that's exactly why I'm 'ere, Alfie. You didn't think I done a job like this for the sake o' tikin' 'old o' yer 'and, didger? It's just because it seems you didn't commit yerself, Alfie, that I'd got to see yer by 'ook or crook before the day was out."

"Where's the fire?" inquired Alfie, idiomatically; but his professional friend, like other artists in narration, and all givers of real news, was not going to surrender the bone of the situation until his audience sat up and begged for it.

Mr. Croucher literally did sit up, while the exasperating Shoddy interrupted himself to make a stealthy tour of the room, in the course of which his electric torch illumined the comfortably bolted door, and the delectable box of Upmanns. To one of these he helped himself without permission, but a brace were in blast before he resumed his position on the bed.

"The fire?" said he, as though seconds and not minutes had elapsed since the cryptic question. "There's no fire anywhere as I know of--not to-night--but there soon may be, that's why I want you out o' this. If you didn't commit yourself, Alfie, don't you see as somebody else must 'ave done?"