BRIDGERS BREAKS LOOSE
Dr. van Heerden sat by the side of the big four-poster bed, where the
girl lay, and his cold blue eyes held a spark of amusement.
"You look very foolish," he said.
Oliva Cresswell turned her head sharply so as to remove the man from her
line of vision.
More than this she could not do, for her hands and feet were strapped,
and on the pillow, near her head, was a big bath-towel saturated with
water which had been employed in stifling her healthy screams which
marked her return to understanding.
"You look very foolish," said the doctor, chewing at the end of his
cigar, "and you look no more foolish than you have been. Bridgers let
you out, eh? Nice man, Mr. Bridgers; what had he been telling you?"
She turned her head again and favoured him with a stare. Then she looked
at the angry red mark on her wrists where the straps chafed.
"How Hun-like!" she said; but this time he smiled.
"You will not make me lose my temper again, Little-wife-to-be," he
mocked her; "you may call me Hun or Heinz or Fritz or any of the
barbarous and vulgar names which the outside world employ to vilify my
countrymen, but nothing you say will distress or annoy me. To-morrow you
and I will be man and wife."
"This is not Germany," she said scornfully. "You cannot make a woman
marry you against her will, this is----"
"The land of the free," he interrupted suavely. "Yes--I know those
lands, on both sides of the Atlantic. But even there curious things
happen. And you're going to marry me--you will say 'Yes' to the sleek
English clergyman when he asks you whether you will take this man to be
your married husband, to love and cherish and all that sort of thing,
you'll say 'Yes.'"
"I shall say 'No!'" she said steadily.
"You will say 'Yes,'" he smiled. "I had hoped to be able to give
sufficient time to you so that I might persuade you to act sensibly. I
could have employed arguments which I think would have convinced you
that there are worse things than marriage with me."
"I cannot think of any," she replied coldly.
"Then you are singularly dense," said the doctor. "I have already told
you the conditions under which that marriage will take place. There
might be no marriage, you know, and a different end to this adventure,"
he said, significantly, and she shivered.
He said nothing more for five minutes, simply sitting biting at the
cigar between his teeth and looking at her blankly, as though his
thoughts were far away and she was the least of the problems which
confronted him.
"I know it is absurd to ask you," he said suddenly, "but I presume you
have not devoted any of your studies to the question of capital
punishment. I see you haven't; but there is one interesting fact about
the execution of criminals which is not generally known to the public,
and it is that in many countries, my own for example, before a man is
led to execution he is doped with a drug which I will call 'Bromocine.'
Does that interest you?"
She made no reply, and he laughed quietly.
"It should interest you very much," he said. "The effect of Bromocine,"
he went on, speaking with the quiet precision of one who was lecturing
on the subject to an interested audience, "is peculiar. It reduces the
subject to a condition of extreme lassitude, so that really nothing
matters or seems to matter. Whilst perfectly conscious the subject goes
obediently to his death, behaves normally and does just what he is
told--in fact, it destroys the will."
"Why do you tell me this?" she asked, a sudden fear gripping her heart.
He half-turned in his chair, reached out his hand and took a little
black case from the table near the window. This he laid on the bed and
opened, and she watched him, fascinated. He took a tiny bottle
containing a colourless liquid, and with great care laid it on the
coverlet. Then he extracted a small hypodermic syringe and a
needle-pointed nozzle. He uncorked the bottle, inserted the syringe and
filled it, then he screwed on the needle, pressed the plunger until a
fine jet leapt in the air, then he laid it carefully back in the case.
"You say you will not marry me and I presume that you would make a scene
when I bring in the good English parson to perform the ceremony. I had
hoped," he said apologetically, "to have given you a wedding with all
the pomp and circumstance which women, as I understand, love. Failing
that, I hoped for a quiet wedding in the little church out yonder." He
jerked his head toward the window. "But now I am afraid that I must ask
his reverence to carry out the ceremony in this house."
He rose, leant over her and deftly pulled back her sleeve.
"If you scream I shall smother you with the towel," he said. "This won't
hurt you very much. As I was going to say, you will be married here
because you are in a delicate state of health and you will say 'Yes.'"
She winced as the needle punctured the skin.
"It won't hurt you for very long," he said calmly. "You will say 'Yes,'
I repeat, because I shall tell you to say 'Yes.'"
Suddenly the sharp pricking pain in her arm ceased. She was conscious
of a sensation as though her arm was being blown up like a bicycle tyre,
but it was not unpleasant. He withdrew the needle and kept his finger
pressed upon the little red wound where it had gone in.
"I shall do this to you again to-night," he said, "and you will not feel
it at all, and to-morrow morning, and you will not care very much what
happens. I hope it will not be necessary to give you a dose to-morrow
afternoon."
"I shall not always be under the influence of this drug," she said
between her teeth, "and there will be a time of reckoning for you, Dr.
van Heerden."
"By which time," he said calmly, "I shall have committed a crime so
wonderful and so enormous that the mere offence of 'administering a
noxious drug'--that is the terminology which describes the offence--will
be of no importance and hardly worth the consideration of the Crown
officers. Now I think I can unfasten you." He loosened and removed the
straps at her wrists and about her feet and put them in his pocket.
"You had better get up and walk about," he said, "or you will be stiff.
I am really being very kind to you if you only knew it. I am too big to
be vindictive. And, by the way, I had an interesting talk with your
friend, Mr. Beale, this afternoon, a persistent young man who has been
having me shadowed all day." He laughed quietly. "If I hadn't to go back
to the surgery for the Bromocine I should have missed our very
interesting conversation. That young man is very much in love with
you"--he looked amusedly at the growing red in her face. "He is very
much in love with you," he repeated. "What a pity! What a thousand
pities!"
"How soon will this drug begin to act?" she asked.
"Are you frightened?"
"No, but I should welcome anything which made me oblivious to your
presence--you are not exactly a pleasant companion," she said, with a
return to the old tone he knew so well.
"Content yourself, little person," he said with simulated affection.
"You will soon be rid of me."
"Why do you want to marry me?"
"I can tell you that now," he said: "Because you are a very rich woman
and I want your money, half of which comes to me on my marriage."
"Then the man spoke the truth!" She sat up suddenly, but the effort made
her head swim.
He caught her by the shoulders and laid her gently down.
"What man--not that babbling idiot, Bridgers?" He said something, but
instantly recovered his self-possession. "Keep quiet," he said with
professional sternness. "Yes, you are the heiress of an interesting
gentleman named John Millinborn."
"John Millinborn!" she gasped. "The man who was murdered!"
"The man who was killed," he corrected. "'Murder' is a stupid, vulgar
word. Yes, my dear, you are his heiress. He was your uncle, and he left
you something over six million dollars. That is to say he left us that
colossal sum."
"But I don't understand. What does it mean?"
"Your name is Predeaux. Your father was the ruffian----"
"I know, I know," she cried. "The man in the hotel. The man who died. My
father!"
"Interesting, isn't it?" he said calmly, "like something out of a book.
Yes, my dear, that was your parent, a dissolute ruffian whom you will do
well to forget. I heard John Millinborn tell his lawyer that your mother
died of a broken heart, penniless, as a result of your father's cruelty
and unscrupulousness, and I should imagine that that was the truth."
"My father!" she murmured.
She lay, her face as white as the pillow, her eyes closed.
"John Millinborn left a fortune for you--and I think that you might as
well know the truth now--the money was left in trust. You were not to
know that you were an heiress until you were married. He was afraid of
some fortune-hunter ruining your young life as Predeaux ruined your
mother's. That was thoughtful of him. Now I don't intend ruining your
life, I intend leaving you with half your uncle's fortune and the
capacity for enjoying all that life can hold for a high-spirited young
woman."
"I'll not do it, I'll not do it, I'll not do it," she muttered.
He rose from the chair and bent over her.
"My young friend, you are going to sleep," he said to himself, waited a
little longer and left the room, closing the door behind him.
He descended to the hall and passed into the big dining-hall beneath the
girl's bedroom. The room had two occupants, a stout, hairless man who
had neither hair, eyebrows, nor vestige of beard, and a younger man.
"Hello, Bridgers," said van Heerden addressing the latter, "you've been
talking."
"Well, who doesn't?" snarled the man.
He pulled the tortoiseshell box from his pocket, opened the lid and took
a pinch from its contents, snuffling the powder luxuriously.
"That stuff will kill you one of these days," said van Heerden.
"It will make him better-tempered," growled the hairless man. "I don't
mind people who take cocaine as long as they are taking it. It's between
dopes that they get on my nerves."
"Dr. Milsom speaks like a Christian and an artist," said Bridgers, with
sudden cheerfulness. "If I didn't dope, van Heerden, I should not be
working in your beastly factory, but would probably be one of the
leading analytical chemists in America. But I'll go back to do my
chore," he said rising. "I suppose I get a little commission for
restoring your palpitating bride? Milsom tells me that it is she. I
thought it was the other dame--the Dutch girl. I guess I was a bit
dopey."
Van Heerden frowned.
"You take too keen an interest in my affairs," he said.
"Aw! You're getting touchy. If I didn't get interested in something I'd
go mad," chuckled Bridgers.
He had reached that stage of cocaine intoxication when the world was a
very pleasant place indeed and full of subject for jocularity.
"This place is getting right on my nerves," he went on, "couldn't I go
to London? I'm stagnating here. Why, some of the stuff I cultivated the
other day wouldn't react. Isn't that so, Milsom? I get so dull in this
hole that all bugs look alike to me."
Van Heerden glanced at the man who was addressed as Dr. Milsom and the
latter nodded.
"Let him go back," he said, "I'll look after him. How's the lady?" asked
Milsom when they were alone.
The other made a gesture and Dr. Milsom nodded.
"It's good stuff," he said. "I used to give it to lunatics in the days
of long ago."
Van Heerden did not ask him what those days were. He never pryed too
closely into the early lives of his associates, but Milsom's history was
public property. Four years before he had completed a "life sentence" of
fifteen years for a crime which had startled the world in '99.
"How are things generally?" he asked.
Van Heerden shrugged his shoulders.
"For the first time I am getting nervous," he said. "It isn't so much
the fear of Beale that rattles me, but the sordid question of money. The
expenses are colossal and continuous."
"Hasn't your--Government"--Milsom balked at the word--"haven't your
friends abroad moved in the matter yet?"
Van Heerden shook his head.
"I am very hopeful there," he said. "I have been watching the papers
very closely, especially the Agrarian papers, and, unless I am mistaken,
there is a decided movement in the direction of support. But I can't
depend on that. The marriage must go through to-morrow."
"White is getting nervous, too," he went on. "He is pestering me about
the money I owe him, or rather the syndicate owes him. He's on the verge
of ruin."
Milsom made a little grimace.
"Then he'll squeal," he said, "those kind of people always do. You'll
have to keep him quiet. You say the marriage is coming off to-morrow?"
"I have notified the parson," said van Heerden. "I told him my fiancee
is too ill to attend the church and the ceremony must be performed
here."
Milsom nodded. He had risen from the table and was looking out upon the
pleasant garden at the rear of the house.
"A man could do worse than put in three or four weeks here," he said.
"Look at that spread of green."
He pointed to an expanse of waving grasses, starred with the
vari-coloured blossoms of wild flowers.
"I was never a lover of nature," said van Heerden, carelessly.
Milsom grunted.
"You have never been in prison," he said cryptically. "Is it time to
give your lady another dose?"
"Not for two hours," said van Heerden. "I will play you at piquet."
The cards were shuffled and the hands dealt when there was a scamper of
feet in the hall, the door burst open and a man ran in. He was wearing a
soiled white smock and his face was distorted with terror.
"M'sieur, m'sieur," he cried, "that imbecile Bridgers!"
"What's wrong?" Van Heerden sprang to his feet.
"I think he is mad. He is dancing about the grounds, singing, and he has
with him the preparation!"
Van Heerden rapped out an oath and leapt through the door, the doctor at
his heels. They took the short cut and ran up the steps leading from the
well courtyard, and bursting through the bushes came within sight of the
offender.
But he was not dancing now. He was standing with open mouth, staring
stupidly about him.
"I dropped it, I dropped it!" he stammered.
There was no need for van Heerden to ask what he had dropped, for the
green lawn which had excited Milsom's admiration was no longer to be
seen. In its place was a black irregular patch of earth which looked as
though it had been blasted in the furnaces of hell, and the air was
filled with the pungent mustiness of decay.