Alfred Croucher had the refreshing attribute of looking almost as great
a ruffian as he really was. His eyes swelled with a vulgar cunning, his
mouth was coarse and pitiless; no pedestal of fine raiment could have
corrected so low a cast of countenance, or enabled its possessor to pass
for a moment as a gentleman or a decent liver. But he had often looked a
worse imitation than on the morning of his triumphant exit from the
jail, his bullet head diminished in a borrowed cap, his formidable
physique tempered by a Burberry all too sober for his taste.
Nor was that all the change in Mr. Croucher at this agreeable crisis of
his career. The bulging eyes were glazed with a wonder which quite
eclipsed the light of triumph; and they were fixed, in unwilling
fascination, upon the tall figure to which the borrowed plumes belonged,
whom he had never beheld before that hour, but at whose heels he trotted
from the bowels of the prison to the motor-car flashing in the sun
beyond the precincts.
"'Alf a mo'!" cried Croucher, making a belated stand instead of jumping
in as he was bid. "I didn't rightly catch your name inside, let alone
wot you got to do with me an' my affairs. If you come from my s'lic'tor,
I should like to know why; if you're on the religious lay, 'ere's your
'at an' coat, and I won't trouble you for a lift."
"My name is Dollar," replied the motorist. "My business is neither legal
nor religious, and it need not necessarily be medical, though I do
happen to be a doctor. I came at the request of a friend of yours, in
that friend's car, to see if there's nothing we can do to make up to you
for all you've been through."
"A friend of mine!" ejaculated Croucher, with engaging incredulity.
The doctor smiled, but dryly, as he had spoken. "It's one of the many
unknown friends you have gained lately, Mr. Croucher. And I should like
to make one more, if only to the extent of a little spin and some
breakfast at my house. There is more sympathy for you than you seem to
realize, and one or two of us are ready to show it in any way you will
permit. But I wouldn't stand here, unless you want a public
demonstration first."
Mr. Croucher decided to disregard the suspicions that a kindness always
excited in his mind, and took his place in the car without further
argument or a second look at the handful of the curious already
collecting on the pavement. In a moment he was wondering why he had been
such a fool as to hesitate at all. The car slid out of the shadow of the
prison into the sunlight of a bright spring morning, over a sparkling
Thames, and through the early traffic without let or hitch. And the
gentleman in the car knew how to hold his tongue, and to submit himself
to sidelong inspection as a gentleman should. But little had Croucher
made of him by Welbeck Street, except that he looked too knowing to be a
crank, and not half soft enough for his notion of the good Samaritan.
Breakfast removed any lingering misgivings, but might have created them
in a more sophisticated mind. It was an English breakfast fit for a
foreign potentate; there were soles, kidneys, eggs and bacon, hot rolls,
and lashings of such coffee as made Mr. Croucher forget a previous
craving for alcohol. He thought it funny that so generous a repast
should be served on a black old table without a cloth, and he did not
fancy the leathern chairs with the great big nails, more fit for a
museum than a private gentleman's house. But a subsequent cigar, in
which the private gentleman did not join him, was up to the visitor's
highest standard, and the subject of a more articulate appreciation than
all that had gone before.
"You shall smoke the box if you care to stay with me," said Doctor
Dollar, with a warmer smile.
"Stay with you!" exclaimed Croucher, suffering a return of his worst
suspicions. "Why should I stay with you?"
"Because there are worse places, Croucher, and one of them has left you
a bit of a wreck."
"A bit of one!" cried the other, in a sudden snarling whine. "They've
just about done me in, doctor, if you want to know. Two munfs' 'ard,
that I was never ordered, on top of one in the condemned cell for what
I never done! That's 'ow they've tret me--somefink crool--wuss than wot
you'd treat a dawg wot give you 'ydrophobia. And wot _'ad_ I done?
'Elped meself when the stuff was under my nose, an' me starvin', an' the
jooler's winder ready broke for a cove by them as never 'ad his
temptitions. I don't say it was right, mind you; but that much I did do,
and not what they said I 'ad an' couldn't prove. They couldn't prove it,
because I never done it; they couldn't 'ang me, because they didn't
dare; but they made me sweat an' shiver just the same. They took ten
years off of me life; they give me such a time as I shan't forget till
my dying day. And as if that wasn't thick enough, they give me two
munfs' 'ard on their own--no judge or jury for that little lot--an' turn
me out wot _you_ calls a bit of a wreck, but _I_ calls a creepin'
corpse!"
And the animated remains wiped a forehead wet already with the throes of
deglutition, and eyes that were not wet at all, before applying a
flickering light to his neglected Upmann.
"What you say is perfectly fair," observed the doctor, in a sadly
unimpassioned tone; "but it is also fair to remember that others have
been saying it for you for some time past, and that you are free this
morning as the result. I confess I feared they might keep you longer;
but I evidently had not your grasp of the niceties of your actual
offense. As to your mental and bodily sufferings, I can see some of the
effects for myself, and those at least I could undo. That was the idea
in meeting you, and perhaps I ought to say at once that it was not my
idea. It was that of the unknown friend of whom I have already spoken;
but I am prepared to carry it out. I run a kind of nursing home, here in
my house, and there's a bed ready for you if you care to occupy it."
"A nursing 'ome!" said Croucher, shrinking from a vision of lint and
ligatures. "There's nuffunk so much the matter with me that I want to go
into an 'ome."
"Nothing that rest could not cure--rest and diet--I agree," said the
doctor, with an eye on the empty dishes.
"But won't it cost a lot?" inquired Croucher, thinking of the kidneys
especially. "I'm stony-broke, you see," he explained with increased
bitterness.
"Our friend insists on paying the bill," said the doctor, grimly.
"And who is our wonderful friend, doctor, when 'e or she's at 'ome?"
Doctor Dollar laughed as he pushed back his chair. "That's the one thing
you mustn't ask me; but come up and see the room before you make up your
mind against it."
It was at the top and back of the house, less lofty than those into
which the Home Secretary had peeped on a previous occasion, but
similarly appointed, and more attractive in the morning light and that
of a fire already crackling in the grate. By the fireside stood a white
wicker chair and a glass table strewn with the newest and lightest of
monthly and weekly literature; ash-trays and match-boxes were in
comfortable evidence; a bed of vestal purity was turned down in
readiness, and a suit of gay pajamas airing with a bathgown on a set of
bright brass pipes.
"The bathroom is next door," explained the doctor; "you would have it
practically to yourself, but your room would be your castle."
And he pointed out an efficient bolt upon the door.
"You wouldn't lock me in on the other side?" suggested Croucher
suspiciously.
"Certainly not; you may have the key; but I should expect you to keep to
your own floor, and, of course, to the house. You would not be a
prisoner in any sense; but if you went out, Croucher, I'm afraid you
would have to stay out. Otherwise my treatment would not have a fair
chance; what you require, in the first instance, is absolute rest and no
more truck with the outside world than you had where you have been."
"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 unbuttoned 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 assert 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 assert, "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 assure 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, hoarse 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 appetite 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 quantity.
"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 glass 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.