A Rogue by Compulsion Part 11

"I'm afraid I am interrupting your work," he said, standing on the threshold and looking down at the sheets of foolscap which littered the table in front of me.

"Not a bit," I returned cheerfully. "I've just finished"; and I began to gather up the fruits of my two-days' toil into something like order.

He shut the door and came across to where I was sitting. "Do you mean you have made out the full list of what you want?" he asked, picking up one of the sheets and running his eye rapidly over the notes and calculations.

"I have done it all in the rough," I replied, "except the drawing of the shed. That will only take an hour or so."

"Excellent," he exclaimed. "I can see there won't be much time wasted when we once get to work." Then he laid down the paper. "Tomorrow morning I propose trying the first of our little operations. Savaroff has brought me the things I needed, and I think we can finish the whole business in a couple of days."

"What part of me are you going to start on?" I inquired with some interest.

"I think I shall alter the shape of your nose first," he said. "It's practically a painless operation--just one injection of hot paraffin wax under the skin. After that you have only to keep quiet for a couple of hours so that the wax can set in the right shape."

"What about the X-ray treatment?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. "That's perfectly simple too. Merely a matter of covering up everything except the part that we want exposed.

One uses a specially prepared sort of lead sheeting. There is absolutely no danger or difficulty about it."

I thought at first that he might be purposely minimizing both operations in order to put me at my ease, but as it turned out he was telling me nothing except the literal truth.

At half-past ten the next morning he came up to my room with Sonia in attendance, the latter carrying a Primus stove and a small black bag.

At his own suggestion I had stayed in bed, and from between the sheets I viewed their entrance not without a certain whimsical feeling of regret. When one has had a nose of a particular shape for the best part of thirty years it is rather a wrench to feel that one is abandoning it for a stranger. I pa.s.sed my fingers down it almost affectionately.

McMurtrie, who appeared to be in the best of spirits, wished me good-morning in that silkily polite manner of his which I was getting to dislike more and more. Sonia said nothing. She simply put the things down on the table by my bedside, and then stood there with the air of sullen hostility which she seemed generally to wear in McMurtrie's presence.

"I feel rather like a gladiator," I said. "Morituri te salutant!"

McMurtrie, who had taken a shallow blue saucepan out of the bag and was filling it with hot water, looked up with a smile.

"It will be all over in a minute," he said, rea.s.suringly. "The only trouble is keeping the wax liquid while one is actually injecting it.

One has to stand it in boiling water until the last second."

He put the saucepan on the stove, and then produced out of the bag a little china-clay cup, which he stood in the water. Into this he dropped a small lump of transparent wax.

We waited for a minute until the latter melted, McMurtrie filling up the time by carefully sponging the bridge of my nose with some liquid antiseptic. Then, picking up what seemed like an ordinary hypodermic syringe, he warmed it carefully by holding it close to the Primus.

"Now," he said; "all you have to do is to keep perfectly still. You will just feel the p.r.i.c.k of the needle and the smart of the hot wax, but it won't really hurt. If you move you will probably spoil the operation."

"Go ahead," I answered encouragingly.

He dipped the syringe in the cup, and then with a quick movement of his hand brought it across my face. I felt a sharp stab, followed instantly by a stinging sensation all along the bridge of the nose.

McMurtrie dropped the syringe at once, and taking the skin between his fingers began to pinch and mould it with swift, deft touches into the required shape. I lay as motionless as possible, hoping that things were prospering.

It seemed to me a long time before the job was finished, though I daresay it was in reality only a matter of forty-five seconds. I know I felt vastly relieved when, with a quick intake of his breath, McMurtrie suddenly sat back and began to contemplate his work.

"Well?" I inquired anxiously.

He nodded his head, with every appearance of satisfaction.

"I think we can call it a complete success," he said. Then he stepped back and looked at me critically from a couple of paces away. "What do you think, Sonia?" he asked.

"I suppose it's what you wanted," she said, in a rather grudging, ungracious sort of fas.h.i.+on.

"If you won't think me vain," I observed, "I should like to have a look at myself in the gla.s.s."

McMurtrie walked to the fireplace and unhooked the small mirror which hung above the mantelpiece.

"I would rather you waited for a couple of days if you don't mind," he said. "You know what you used to look like better than any one else, and it will be a good test if you see yourself quite suddenly when the whole thing is finished. I will borrow this--and keep you out of temptation."

"Just as you like," I returned. "It will at least give me time to train myself for the shock."

Quick and easy as the first operation had been, the second proved equally simple. The only apparatus it involved was an ordinary X-ray machine, with a large gla.s.s globe attached to it, which McMurtrie brought up the next morning and arranged carefully by my bedside. On his pressing down a switch, which he did for my benefit, the whole interior of this globe became flooded with those curious lambent violet rays, which have altered so many of our previous notions on the subject of light and its power.

McMurtrie placed me in position, and then producing a large sheet of finely-beaten-out lead, proceeded to bend and twist it into a sort of weird-looking helmet. When I put this on it covered my head and face almost completely, leaving only an inch of hair along the forehead and perhaps a little more over each temple exposed to the light.

Thus equipped, I sat for perhaps an hour in the full glare of the machine. It was dull work, and as McMurtrie made no attempt to enliven it by conversation I was not sorry when he eventually flicked off the switch, and relieved me of my headgear.

I had expected my hair to tumble out in a lump, but as a matter of fact it was over two days in accomplis.h.i.+ng the task. There was no discomfort about the process: it just came off gradually all along my forehead, leaving a smooth bare line which I could feel with my fingers. As soon as it was all gone, McMurtrie proceeded to decorate me with some kind of stain that he had specially prepared for my face and neck--a composition which according to him would remain practically unaffected either by was.h.i.+ng or exposure. It smelt d.a.m.nably in the pot, but directly it was rubbed in this slight drawback disappeared.

I was naturally anxious to see what result all these attentions had had upon my personal appearance, but McMurtrie insisted on my waiting until my hair and beard had grown to something like a tolerable length. I can well remember the little thrill of excitement that ran through me when, on the fourth day after my first operation, he brought me back the looking-gla.s.s.

"I think we might introduce you to yourself today," he said, smiling.

"Of course another fortnight will make a considerable difference still, but even now you will be able to get a good idea of what you will look like. I am curious to hear your opinion."

He handed me the gla.s.s, and the next moment, with an involuntary cry of amazement, I was staring at my reflection.

Instead of my usual features I saw a rough-looking, bearded man of about forty-five, with an aquiline nose, a high forehead, and a dark sunburned skin. It was the face of a complete stranger: at the best that of a hard-bitten war correspondent or explorer; at the worst--well, I don't know what it mightn't have been at the worst.

I stared and stared in a kind of incredulous fascination, until McMurtrie's voice abruptly recalled me to my surroundings.

"Well, Mr. Neil Lyndon," he said, "do you recognize yourself?"

I laid down the gla.s.s.

"Don't call me that," I replied quietly. "Neil Lyndon is dead."

CHAPTER VII

A KISS AND A CONFESSION

One would hardly expect an escaped murderer to complain of being dull--especially when the whole country is still ringing with the story of his disappearance. Yet I must confess that, when I had once got used to the strangeness of my position, the next two weeks dragged intolerably.

I was accustomed to confinement, but in the prison at all events I had had plenty of hard work and exercise, while here, cooped up entirely in one room, I was able to do nothing but pace restlessly up and down most of the day like a caged bear. I had finished my lists and drawings for McMurtrie, and my only resources were two or three sensational novels which Sonia brought me back one day after a visit to Plymouth. I cannot say I found them very entertaining. I had been rather too deeply into life in that line myself to have much use for the second-hand imaginings of other people.