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THE GREEN RUST
BY
EDGAR WALLACE
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED LONDON AND MELBOURNE
MADE IN ENGLAND
Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London
THE GREEN RUST
_Novels by_
EDGAR WALLACE
_published by_
WARD, LOCK AND CO., LTD.
_The "Sanders" Stories_
SANDERS OF THE RIVER
BOSAMBO OF THE RIVER
BONES
LIEUTENANT BONES
SANDI, THE KING-MAKER
THE PEOPLE OF THE RIVER
THE KEEPERS OF THE KING'S PEACE
_Mystery Stories_
THE DAFFODIL MYSTERY
THE DARK EYES OF LONDON
BLUE HAND
MR. JUSTICE MAXELL
THE JUST MEN OF CORDOVA
THE GREEN RUST
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE FROG
THE SECRET HOUSE
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I THE PASSING OF JOHN MILLINBORN 7
II THE DRUNKEN MR. BEALE 14
III PUNSONBY'S DISCHARGE AN EMPLOYEE 24
IV THE LETTERS THAT WERE NOT THERE 35
V THE MAN WITH THE BIG HEAD 43
VI MR. SCOBBS OF RED HORSE VALLEY 50
VII PLAIN WORDS FROM MR. BEALE 58
VIII THE CRIME OF THE GRAND ALLIANCE 67
IX A CRIME AGAINST THE WORLD 74
X A FRUITLESS SEARCH 85
XI THE HOUSE NEAR STAINES 93
XII INTRODUCING PARSON HOMO 102
XIII AT DEANS FOLLY 109
XIV MR. BEALE SUGGESTS MARRIAGE 116
XV THE GOOD HERR STARDT 124
XVI THE PAWN TICKET 132
XVII THE JEW OF CRACOW 139
XVIII BRIDGERS BREAKS LOOSE 148
XIX OLIVA IS WILLING 156
XX THE MARRIAGE 163
XXI BEALE SEES WHITE 169
XXII HILDA GLAUM LEADS THE WAY 177
XXIII AT THE DOCTOR'S FLAT 185
XXIV THE GREEN RUST FACTORY 192
XXV THE LAST MAN AT THE BENCH 198
XXVI THE SECRET OF THE GREEN RUST 204
XXVII A SCHEME TO STARVE THE WORLD 212
XXVIII THE COMING OF DR. MILSOM 219
XXIX THE LOST CODE 227
XXX THE WATCH 233
XXXI A CORNCHANDLER'S BILL 240
XXXII THE END OF VAN HEERDEN 244
CHAPTER I
THE PASSING OF JOHN MILLINBORN
"I don't know whether there's a law that stops my doing this, Jim; but
if there is, you've got to get round it. You're a lawyer and you know
the game. You're my pal and the best pal I've had, Jim, and you'll do it
for me."
The dying man looked up into the old eyes that were watching him with
such compassion and read their acquiescence.
No greater difference could be imagined than existed between the man on
the bed and the slim neat figure who sat by his side. John Millinborn,
broad-shouldered, big-featured, a veritable giant in frame and even in
his last days suggesting the enormous strength which had been his in his
prime, had been an outdoor man, a man of large voice and large capable
hands; James Kitson had been a student from his youth up and had spent
his manhood in musty offices, stuffy courts, surrounded by crackling
briefs and calf-bound law-books.
Yet, between these two men, the millionaire ship-builder and the
successful solicitor, utterly different in their tastes and their modes
of life, was a friendship deep and true. Strange that death should take
the strong and leave the weak; so thought James Kitson as he watched his
friend.
"I'll do what can be done, John. You leave a great responsibility upon
the girl--a million and a half of money."
The sick man nodded.
"I get rid of a greater one, Jim. When my father died he left a hundred
thousand between us, my sister and I. I've turned my share into a
million, but that is by the way. Because she was a fairly rich girl and
a wilful girl, Jim, she broke her heart. Because they knew she had the
money the worst men were attracted to her--and she chose the worst of
the worst!"
He stopped speaking to get his breath.
"She married a plausible villain who ruined her--spent every sou and
left her with a mountain of debt and a month-old baby. Poor Grace died
and he married again. I tried to get the baby, but he held it as a
hostage. I could never trace the child after it was two years old. It
was only a month ago I learnt the reason. The man was an international
swindler and was wanted by the police. He was arrested in Paris and
charged in his true name--the name he had married in was false. When he
came out of prison he took his own name--and of course the child's name
changed, too."
The lawyer nodded.
"You want me to----?"
"Get the will proved and begin your search for Oliva Predeaux. There is
no such person. The girl's name you know, and I have told you where she
is living. You'll find nobody who knows Oliva Predeaux--her father
disappeared when she was six--he's probably dead, and her stepmother
brought her up without knowing her relationship to me--then she died and
the girl has been working ever since she was fifteen."
"She is not to be found?"
"Until she is married. Watch her, Jim, spend all the money you
wish--don't influence her unless you see she is getting the wrong kind
of man...."
His voice, which had grown to something of the old strength, suddenly
dropped and the great head rolled sideways on the pillow.
Kitson rose and crossed to the door. It opened upon a spacious
sitting-room, through the big open windows of which could be seen the
broad acres of the Sussex Weald.
A man was sitting in the window-seat, chin in hand, looking across to
the chequered fields on the slope of the downs. He was a man of thirty,
with a pointed beard, and he rose as the lawyer stepped quickly into the
room.
"Anything wrong?" he asked.
"I think he has fainted--will you go to him, doctor?"
The young man passed swiftly and noiselessly to the bedside and made a
brief examination. From a shelf near the head of the bed he took a
hypodermic syringe and filled it from a small bottle. Baring the
patient's side he slowly injected the drug. He stood for a moment
looking down at the unconscious man, then came back to the big hall
where James Kitson was waiting.
"Well?"
The doctor shook his head.
"It is difficult to form a judgment," he said quietly, "his heart is all
gone to pieces. Has he a family doctor?"
"Not so far as I know--he hated doctors, and has never been ill in his
life. I wonder he tolerated you."
Dr. van Heerden smiled.
"He couldn't help himself. He was taken ill in the train on the way to
this place and I happened to be a fellow-passenger. He asked me to bring
him here and I have been here ever since. It is strange," he added,
"that so rich a man as Mr. Millinborn had no servant travelling with him
and should live practically alone in this--well, it is little better
than a cottage."
Despite his anxiety, James Kitson smiled.
"He is the type of man who hates ostentation. I doubt if he has ever
spent a thousand a year on himself all his life--do you think it is wise
to leave him?"
The doctor spread out his hands.
"I can do nothing. He refused to allow me to send for a specialist and I
think he was right. Nothing can be done for him. Still----"
He walked back to the bedside, and the lawyer came behind him. John
Millinborn seemed to be in an uneasy sleep, and after an examination by
the doctor the two men walked back to the sitting-room.
"The excitement has been rather much for him. I suppose he has been
making his will?"
"Yes," said Kitson shortly.
"I gathered as much when I saw you bring the gardener and the cook in to
witness a document," said Dr. van Heerden.
He tapped his teeth with the tip of his fingers--a nervous trick of his.
"I wish I had some strychnine," he said suddenly. "I ought to have some
by me--in case."
"Can't you send a servant--or I'll go," said Kitson. "Is it procurable
in the village?"
The doctor nodded.
"I don't want you to go," he demurred. "I have sent the car to
Eastbourne to get a few things I cannot buy here. It's a stiff walk to
the village and yet I doubt whether the chemist would supply the
quantity I require to a servant, even with my prescription--you see," he
smiled, "I am a stranger here."
"I'll go with pleasure--the walk will do me good," said the lawyer
energetically. "If there is anything we can do to prolong my poor
friend's life----"
The doctor sat at the table and wrote his prescription and handed it to
the other with an apology.
Hill Lodge, John Millinborn's big cottage, stood on the crest of a hill,
and the way to the village was steep and long, for Alfronston lay nearly
a mile away. Half-way down the slope the path ran through a plantation
of young ash. Here John Millinborn had preserved a few pheasants in the
early days of his occupancy of the Lodge on the hill. As Kitson entered
one side of the plantation he heard a rustling noise, as though somebody
were moving through the undergrowth. It was too heavy a noise for a
bolting rabbit or a startled bird to make, and he peered into the thick
foliage. He was a little nearsighted, and at first he did not see the
cause of the commotion. Then:
"I suppose I'm trespassing," said a husky voice, and a man stepped out
toward him.
The stranger carried himself with a certain jauntiness, and he had need
of what assistance artifice could lend him, for he was singularly
unprepossessing. He was a man who might as well have been sixty as
fifty. His clothes soiled, torn and greasy, were of good cut. The shirt
was filthy, but it was attached to a frayed collar, and the crumpled
cravat was ornamented with a cameo pin.
But it was the face which attracted Kitson's attention. There was
something inherently evil in that puffed face, in the dull eyes that
blinked under the thick black eyebrows. The lips, full and loose, parted
in a smile as the lawyer stepped back to avoid contact with the
unsavoury visitor.
"I suppose I'm trespassing--good gad! Me trespassing--funny, very
funny!" He indulged in a hoarse wheezy laugh and broke suddenly into a
torrent of the foulest language that this hardened lawyer had ever
heard.
"Pardon, pardon," he said, stopping as suddenly. "Man of the world, eh?
You'll understand that when a gentleman has grievances...." He fumbled
in his waistcoat-pocket and found a black-rimmed monocle and inserted it
in his eye. There was an obscenity in the appearance of this foul wreck
of a man which made the lawyer feel physically sick.
"Trespassing, by gad!" He went back to his first conceit and his voice
rasped with malignity. "Gad! If I had my way with people! I'd slit their
throats, I would, sir. I'd stick pins in their eyes--red-hot pins. I'd
boil them alive----"
Hitherto the lawyer had not spoken, but now his repulsion got the better
of his usually equable temper.
"What are you doing here?" he asked sternly. "You're on private
property--take your beastliness elsewhere."
The man glared at him and laughed.
"Trespassing!" he sneered. "Trespassing! Very good--your servant, sir!"
He swept his derby hat from his head (the lawyer saw that he was bald),
and turning, strutted back through the plantation the way he had come.
It was not the way out and Kitson was half-inclined to follow and see
the man off the estate. Then he remembered the urgency of his errand
and continued his journey to the village. On his way back he looked
about, but there was no trace of the unpleasant intruder. Who was he? he
wondered. Some broken derelict with nothing but the memory of former
vain splendours and the rags of old fineries, nursing a dear hatred for
some more fortunate fellow.
Nearly an hour had passed before he again panted up to the levelled
shelf on which the cottage stood.
The doctor was sitting at the window as Kitson passed.
"How is he?"
"About the same. He had one paroxysm. Is that the strychnine? I can't
tell you how much obliged I am to you."
He took the small packet and placed it on the window-ledge and Mr.
Kitson passed into the house.
"Honestly, doctor, what do you think of his chance?" he asked.
Dr. van Heerden shrugged his shoulders.
"Honestly, I do not think he will recover consciousness."
"Heavens!"
The lawyer was shocked. The tragic suddenness of it all stunned him. He
had thought vaguely that days, even weeks, might pass before the end
came.
"Not recover consciousness?" he repeated in a whisper.
Instinctively he was drawn to the room where his friend lay and the
doctor followed him.
John Millinborn lay on his back, his eyes closed, his face a ghastly
grey. His big hands were clutching at his throat, his shirt was torn
open at the breast. The two windows, one at each end of the room, were
wide, and a gentle breeze blew the casement curtains. The lawyer
stooped, his eyes moist, and laid his hand upon the burning forehead.
"John, John," he murmured, and turned away, blinded with tears.
He wiped his face with a pocket-handkerchief and walked to the window,
staring out at the serene loveliness of the scene. Over the weald a
great aeroplane droned to the sea. The green downs were dappled white
with grazing flocks, and beneath the windows the ordered beds blazed
and flamed with flowers, crimson and gold and white.
As he stood there the man he had met in the plantation came to his mind
and he was half-inclined to speak to the doctor of the incident. But he
was in no mood for the description and the speculation which would
follow. Restlessly he paced into the bedroom. The sick man had not moved
and again the lawyer returned. He thought of the girl, that girl whose
name and relationship with John Millinborn he alone knew. What use would
she make of the millions which, all unknown to her, she would soon
inherit? What----
"Jim, Jim!"
He turned swiftly.
It was John Millinborn's voice.
"Quick--come...."
The doctor had leapt into the room and made his way to the bed.
Millinborn was sitting up, and as the lawyer moved swiftly in the
doctor's tracks he saw his wide eyes staring.
"Jim, he has...."
His head dropped forward on his breast and the doctor lowered him slowly
to the pillow.
"What is it, John? Speak to me, old man...."
"I'm afraid there is nothing to be done," said the doctor as he drew up
the bedclothes.
"Is he dead?" whispered the lawyer fearfully.
"No--but----"
He beckoned the other into the big room and, after a glance at the
motionless figure, Kitson followed.
"There's something very strange--who is that?"
He pointed through the open window at the clumsy figure of a man who was
blundering wildly down the slope which led to the plantation.
Kitson recognized the man immediately. It was the uninvited visitor whom
he had met in the plantation. But there was something in the haste of
the shabby man, a hint of terror in the wide-thrown arms, that made the
lawyer forget his tragic environment.
"Where has he been?" he asked.
"Who is he?"
The doctor's face was white and drawn as though he, too, sensed some
horror in that frantic flight.
Kitson walked back to the room where the dying man lay, but was frozen
stiff upon the threshold.
"Doctor--doctor!"
The doctor followed the eyes of the other. Something was dripping from
the bed to the floor--something red and horrible. Kitson set his teeth
and, stepping to the bedside, pulled down the covers.
He stepped back with a cry, for from the side of John Millinborn
protruded the ivory handle of a knife.