The Green Rust

Then she remembered the doctor, he lived in No. 8. Usually when he was at home there was a light in his hall which showed through the fanlight. Now, however, the place was in darkness. She saw a card on the door and walking closer she read it in the dim light.

Back at 12.     Wait.

He was out and was evidently expecting a caller. So there was nothing for it but to risk meeting the exuberant Mr. Beale. She flew down the stairs and gained the street with a feeling of relief.

The obliging tobacconist, who was loquacious on the subject of Germans and Germany, detained her until her stock of patience was exhausted; but at last she made her escape. Half-way across the street she saw the figure of a man standing in the dark hallway of the chambers, and her heart sank.

"Matilda, you're a fool," she said to herself.

Her name was not Matilda, but in moments of self-depreciation she was wont to address herself as such.

She walked boldly up to the entrance and passed through. The man she saw out of the corner of her eye but did not recognize. He seemed as little desirous of attracting attention as she. She thought he was rather stout and short, but as to this she was not sure. She raced up the stairs and turned on the landing to her room. The door of No. 4 was still ajar—but what was much more important, so was her door. There was no doubt about it, between the edge of the door and the jamb there was a good two inches of space, and she distinctly remembered not only closing it, but also pushing it to make sure that it was fast. What should she do? To her annoyance she felt a cold little feeling inside her and her hands were trembling.

"If the lights were only on I'd take the risk," she thought; but the lights were not on and it was necessary to pass into the dark interior and into a darker bath-room—a room which is notoriously adaptable for murder—before she could reach the meter.

"Rubbish, Matilda!" she scoffed quaveringly, "go in, you frightened little rabbit—you forgot to shut the door, that's all."

She pushed the door open and with a shiver stepped inside.

Then a sound made her stop dead. It was a shuffle and a creak such as a dog might make if he brushed against the chair.

"Who's there?" she demanded.

There was no reply.

"Who's there?"

She took one step forward and then something reached out at her. A big hand gripped her by the sleeve of her blouse and she heard a deep breathing.

She bit her lips to stop the scream that arose, and with a wrench tore herself free, leaving a portion of a sleeve in the hands of the unknown.

She darted backward, slamming the door behind her. In two flying strides she was at the door of No. 4, hammering with both her fists.

"Drunk or sober he is a man! Drunk or sober he is a man!" she muttered incoherently.

Only twice she beat upon the door when it opened suddenly and Mr. Beale stood in the doorway.

"What is it?"

She hardly noticed his tone.

"A man—a man, in my flat," she gasped, and showed her torn sleeve, "a man…!"

He pushed her aside and made for the door.

"The key?" he said quickly.

With trembling fingers she extracted it from her pocket.

"One moment."

He disappeared into his own flat and presently came out holding an electric torch. He snapped back the lock, put the key in his pocket and then, to her amazement, he slipped a short-barrelled revolver from his hip-pocket.

With his foot he pushed open the door and she watched him vanish into the gloomy interior.

Presently came his voice, sharp and menacing:

"Hands up!"

A voice jabbered something excitedly and then she heard Mr. Beale speak.

"Is your light working?—you can come in, I have him in the dining-room."

She stepped into the bath-room, the shilling dropped through the aperture, the screw grated as she turned it and the lights sprang to life.

In one corner of the room was a man, a white-faced, sickly looking man with a head too big for his body. His hands were above his head, his lower lip trembled in terror.

Mr. Beale was searching him with thoroughness and rapidity.

"No gun, all right, put your hands down. Now turn out your pockets."

The man said something in a language which the girl could not understand, and Mr. Beale replied in the same tongue. He put the contents, first of one pocket then of the other, upon the table, and the girl watched the proceedings with open eyes.

"Hello, what's this?"

Beale picked up a card. Thereon was scribbled a figure which might have been 6 or 4.

"I see," said Beale, "now the other pocket—you understand English, my friend?"

Stupidly the man obeyed. A leather pocket-case came from an inside pocket and this Beale opened.

Therein was a small packet which resembled the familiar wrapper of a seidlitz powder. Beale spoke sharply in a language which the girl realized was German, and the man shook his head. He said something which sounded like "No good," several times.

"I'm going to leave you here alone for awhile," said Beale, "my friend and I are going downstairs together—I shall not be long."

They went out of the flat together, the little man with the big head protesting, and she heard their footsteps descending the stairs. Presently Beale came up alone and walked into the sitting-room. And then the strange unaccountable fact dawned on her—he was perfectly sober.

His eyes were clear, his lips firm, and the fair hair whose tendencies to bedragglement had emphasized his disgrace was brushed back over his head. He looked at her so earnestly that she grew embarrassed.

"Miss Cresswell," he said quietly. "I am going to ask you to do me a great favour."

"If it is one that I can grant, you may be sure that I will," she smiled, and he nodded.

"I shall not ask you to do anything that is impossible in spite of the humorist's view of women," he said. "I merely want you to tell nobody about what has happened to-night."

"Nobody?" she looked at him in astonishment. "But the doctor–"

"Not even the doctor," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "I ask you this as a special favour—word of honour?"

She thought a moment.

"I promise," she said. "I'm to tell nobody about that horrid man from whom you so kindly saved me–"

He lifted his head.

"Understand this, Miss Cresswell, please," he said: "I don't want you to be under any misapprehension about that 'horrid man'—he was just as scared as you, and he would not have harmed you. I have been waiting for him all the evening."

"Waiting for him?"

He nodded again.

"Where?"

"In the doctor's flat," he said calmly, "you see, the doctor and I are deadly rivals. We are rival scientists, and I was waiting for the hairy man to steal a march on him."

"But, but—how did you get in."

"I had this key," he said holding up a small key, "remember, word of honour! The man whom I have just left came up and wasn't certain whether he had to go in No. 8, that's the doctor's, or No. 6—and the one key fits both doors!"

He inserted the key which was in the lock of her door and it turned easily.

"And this is what I was waiting for—it was the best the poor devil could do."

He lifted the paper package and broke the seals. Unfolding the paper carefully he laid it on the table, revealing a teaspoonful of what looked like fine green sawdust.

"What is it?" she whispered fearfully.

Somehow she knew that she was in the presence of a big elementary danger—something gross and terrible in its primitive force.

"That," said Mr. Beale, choosing his words nicely, "that is a passable imitation of the Green Rust, or, as it is to me, the Green Terror."

"The Green Rust? What is the Green Rust—what can it do?" she asked in bewilderment.

"I hope we shall never know," he said, and in his clear eyes was a hint of terror.

CHAPTER III

PUNSONBY'S DISCHARGE AN EMPLOYEE

Oliva Cresswell rose with the final despairing buzz of her alarm clock and conquered the almost irresistible temptation to close her eyes, just to see what it felt like. Her first impression was that she had had no sleep all night. She remembered going to bed at one and turning from side to side until three. She remembered deciding that the best thing to do was to get up, make some tea and watch the sun rise, and that whilst she was deciding whether such a step was romantic or just silly, she must have gone to sleep.

Still, four hours of slumber is practically no slumber to a healthy girl and she swung her pyjama-ed legs over the side of the bed and spent quite five minutes in a fatuous admiration of her little white feet. With an effort she dragged herself to the bath-room and let the tap run. Then she put on the kettle. Half an hour later she was feeling well but unenthusiastic.

When she became fully conscious, which was on her way to business, she realized she was worried. She had been made a party to a secret without her wish—and the drunken Mr. Beale, that youthful profligate, had really forced this confidence upon her. Only, and this she recalled with a start which sent her chin jerking upward (she was in the bus at the time and the conductor, thinking she was signalling him to stop, pulled the bell), only Mr. Beale was surprisingly sober and masterful for one so weak of character.

Ought she to tell the doctor—Dr. van Heerden, who had been so good a friend of hers? It seemed disloyal, it was disloyal, horribly disloyal to him, to hide the fact that Mr. Beale had actually been in the doctor's room at night.

But was it a coincidence that the same key opened her door and the doctor's? If it were so, it was an embarrassing coincidence. She must change the locks without delay.

The bus set her down at the corner of Punsonby's great block. Punsonby's is one of the most successful and at the same time one of the most exclusive dress-houses in London, and Oliva had indeed been fortunate in securing her present position, for employment at Punsonby's was almost equal to Government employment in its permanency, as it was certainly more lucrative in its pay.

As she stepped on to the pavement she glanced up at the big ornate clock. She was in good time, she said to herself, and was pushing open the big glass door through which employees pass to the various departments when a hand touched her gently on the arm.

She turned in surprise to face Mr. Beale, looking particularly smart in a well-fitting grey suit, a grey felt hat and a large bunch of violets in his buttonhole.

"Excuse me, Miss Cresswell," he said pleasantly, "may I have one word with you?"

She looked at him doubtfully.

"I rather wish you had chosen another time and another place, Mr. Beale," she said frankly.

He nodded.

"I realize it is rather embarrassing," he said, "but unfortunately my business cannot wait. I am a business man, you know," he smiled, "in spite of my dissolute habits."

She looked at him closely, for she thought she detected a gentle mockery behind his words, but he was not smiling now.

"I won't keep you more than two minutes," he went on, "but in that two minutes I have a great deal to tell you. I won't bore you with the story of my life."

This time she saw the amusement in his eyes and smiled against her will, because she was not feeling particularly amused.

"I have a business in the city of London," he said, "and again I would ask you to respect my confidence. I am a wheat expert."

"A wheat expert?" she repeated with a puzzled frown.

"It's a queer job, isn't it? but that's what I am. I have a vacancy in my office for a confidential secretary. It is a nice office, the pay is good, the hours are few and the work is light. I want to know whether you will accept the position."

She shook her head, regarding him with a new interest, from which suspicion was not altogether absent.

"It is awfully kind of you, Mr. Beale, and adds another to the debts I owe you," she said, "but I have no desire to leave Punsonby's. It is work I like, and although I am sure you are not interested in my private business"—he could have told her that he was very much interested in her private business, but he refrained—"I do not mind telling you that I am earning a very good salary and I have no intention or desire to change my situation."

His eyes twinkled.

"Ah well, that's my misfortune," he said, "there are only two things I can say. The first is that if you work for me you will neither be distressed nor annoyed by any habits of mine which you may have observed and which may perhaps have prejudiced you against me. In the second place, I want you to promise me that if you ever leave Punsonby's you will give me the first offer of your services."

She laughed.

"I think you are very funny, Mr. Beale, but I feel sure that you mean what you say, and that you would confine your—er—little eccentricities to times outside of business hours. As far as leaving Punsonby's is concerned I promise you that I will give you the first offer of my invaluable services if ever I leave. And now I am afraid I must run away. I am awfully obliged to you for what you did for me last night."

He looked at her steadily in the eye.

"I have no recollection of anything that happened last night," he said, "and I should be glad if your memory would suffer the same lapse."

He shook hands with her, lifted his hat and turned abruptly away, and she looked after him till the boom of the clock recalled her to the fact that the head of the firm of Punsonby was a stickler for punctuality.

She went into the great cloak-room and hung up her coat and hat. As she turned to the mirror to straighten her hair she came face to face with a tall, dark girl who had been eyeing her thoughtfully.

"Good morning," said Oliva, and there was in her tone more of politeness than friendship, for although these two girls had occupied the same office for more than a year, there was between them an incompatibility which no length of acquaintance could remove.

Hilda Glaum was of Swiss extraction, and something of a mystery. She was good looking in a sulky, saturnine way, but her known virtues stopped short at her appearance. She neither invited nor gave confidence, and in this respect suited Oliva, but unlike Oliva, she made no friends, entered into none of the periodical movements amongst the girls, was impervious to the attractions of the river in summer and of the Proms in winter, neither visited nor received.

"'Morning," replied the girl shortly; then: "Have you been upstairs?"

"No—why?"

"Oh, nothing."

Oliva mounted to the floor where her little office was. She and Hilda dealt with the registered mail, extracted and checked the money that came from the post-shoppers and sent on the orders to the various departments.

Three sealed bags lay on her desk, and a youth from the postal department waited to receive a receipt for them. This she scribbled, after comparing the numbers attached to the seals with those inscribed on the boy's receipt-book.

For some reason Hilda had not followed her, and she was alone and had tumbled the contents of the first bag on to her desk when the managing director of Punsonby's made a surprising appearance at the glass-panelled door of her office.

He was a large, stout and important-looking man, bald and bearded. He enjoyed an episcopal manner, and had a trick of pulling back his head when he asked questions, as though he desired to evade the full force of the answer.

He stood in the doorway and beckoned her out, and she went without any premonition of what was in store for her.

"Ah, Miss Cresswell," he said. "I—ah—am sorry I did not see you before you had taken off your coat and hat. Will you come to my office?"

"Certainly, Mr. White," said the girl, wondering what had happened.

He led the way with his majestic stride, dangling a pair of pince-nez by their cord, as a fastidious person might carry a mouse by its tail, and ushered her into his rosewood-panelled office.

"Sit down, sit down, Miss Cresswell," he said, and seating himself at his desk he put the tips of his fingers together and looked up to the ceiling for inspiration. "I am afraid, Miss Cresswell," he said, "that I have—ah—an unpleasant task."

"An unpleasant task, Mr. White?" she said, with a sinking feeling inside her.

He nodded.

"I have to tell you that Punsonby's no longer require your services."

She rose to her feet, looking down at him open-mouthed with wonder and consternation.

"Not require my services?" she said slowly. "Do you mean that I am discharged?"

He nodded again.

"In lieu of a month's notice I will give you a cheque for a month's salary, plus the unexpired portion of this week's salary."

"But why am I being discharged? Why? Why?"

Mr. White, who had opened his eyes for a moment to watch the effect of his lightning stroke, closed them again.

"It is not the practice of Punsonby's to give any reason for dispensing with the services of its employees," he said oracularly, "it is sufficient that I should tell you that hitherto you have given every satisfaction, but for reasons which I am not prepared to discuss we must dispense with your services."

Her head was in a whirl. She could not grasp what had happened. For five years she had worked in the happiest circumstances in this great store, where everybody had been kind to her and where her tasks had been congenial. She had never thought of going elsewhere. She regarded herself, as did all the better-class employees, as a fixture.

"Do I understand," she asked, "that I am to leave—at once?"

Mr. White nodded. He pushed the cheque across the table and she took it up and folded it mechanically.

"And you are not going to tell me why?"

Mr. White shook his head.

"Punsonby's do nothing without a good reason," he said solemnly, feeling that whatever happened he must make a good case for Punsonby's, and that whoever was to blame for this unhappy incident it was not an august firm which paid its fourteen per cent. with monotonous regularity. "We lack—ah—definite knowledge to proceed any further in this matter than—in fact, than we have proceeded. Definite knowledge" (the girl was all the more bewildered by his cumbersome diplomacy) "definite knowledge was promised but has not—in fact, has not come to hand. It is all very unpleasant—very unpleasant," and he shook his head.

She bowed and turning, walked quickly from the room, passed to the lobby where her coat was hung, put on her hat and left Punsonby's for ever.

It was when she had reached the street that, with a shock, she remembered Beale's words and she stood stock-still, pinching her lip thoughtfully. Had he known? Why had he come that morning, hours before he was ordinarily visible—if the common gossip of Krooman Mansions be worthy of credence?—and then as though to cap the amazing events of the morning she saw him. He was standing on the corner of the street, leaning on his cane, smoking a long cigarette through a much longer holder, and he seemed wholly absorbed in watching a linesman, perched high above the street, repairing a telegraph wire.

She made a step toward him, but stopped. He was so evidently engrossed in the acrobatics of the honest workman in mid-air that he could not have seen her and she turned swiftly and walked the other way.

She had not reached the end of the block before he was at her side.

"You are going home early, Miss Cresswell," he smiled.

She turned to him.

"Do you know why?" she asked.

"I don't know why—unless–"

"Unless what?"

"Unless you have been discharged," he said coolly.

Her brows knit.

"What do you know about my discharge?" she asked.

"Such things are possible," said Mr. Beale.

"Did you know I was going to be discharged?" she asked again.

He nodded.

"I didn't exactly know you would be discharged this morning, but I had an idea you would be discharged at some time or other. That is why I came with my offer."

"Which, of course, I won't accept," she snapped.

"Which, of course, you have accepted," he said quietly. "Believe me, I know nothing more than that Punsonby's have been prevailed upon to discharge you. What reason induced them to take that step, honestly I don't know."

"But why did you think so?"

He was grave of a sudden.

"I just thought so," he said. "I am not going to be mysterious with you and I can only tell you that I had reasons to believe that some such step would be taken."

She shrugged her shoulders wearily.

"It is quite mysterious enough," she said. "Do you seriously want me to work for you?"

He nodded.

"You didn't tell me your city address."

"That is why I came back," he said.

"Then you knew I was coming out?"

"I knew you would come out some time in the day."

She stared at him.

"Do you mean to tell me that you would have waited all day to give me your address?"

He laughed.

"I only mean this," he replied, "that I should have waited all day."

It was a helpless laugh which echoed his.

"My address is 342 Lothbury," he went on, "342. You may begin work this afternoon and–" He hesitated.

"And?" she repeated.

"And I think it would be wise if you didn't tell your friend, the doctor, that I am employing you."

He was examining his finger-nails attentively as he spoke, and he did not meet her eye.

"There are many reasons," he went on. "In the first place, I have blotted my copy-book, as they say, in Krooman Mansions, and it might not rebound to your credit."

"You should have thought of that before you asked me to come to you," she said.

"I thought of it a great deal," he replied calmly.

There was much in what he said, as the girl recognized. She blamed herself for her hasty promise, but somehow the events of the previous night had placed him on a different footing, had given him a certain indefinable position to which the inebriate Mr. Beale had not aspired.

"I am afraid I am rather bewildered by all the mystery of it," she said, "and I don't think I will come to the office to-day. To-morrow morning, at what hour?"

"Ten o'clock," he said, "I will be there to explain your duties. Your salary will be £5 a week. You will be in charge of the office, to which I very seldom go, by the way, and your work will be preparing statistical returns of the wheat-crops in all the wheat-fields of the world for the last fifty years."

"It sounds thrilling," she said, and a quick smile flashed across his face.

"It is much more thrilling than you imagine," were his parting words.

She reached Krooman Mansions just as the doctor was coming out, and he looked at her in surprise.

"You are back early!"

Should she tell him? There was no reason why she shouldn't. He had been a good friend of hers and she felt sure of his sympathy. It occurred to her at that moment that Mr. Beale had been most unsympathetic, and had not expressed one word of regret.

"Yes, I've been discharged," she exclaimed.

"Discharged? Impossible!"

She nodded.

"To prove that it is possible it has happened," she said cheerfully.

"My dear girl, this is monstrous! What excuse did they give?"

"None." This was said with a lightness of tone which did not reflect the indignation she felt at heart.

"Did they give you no reason?"

"They gave me none. They gave me my month's cheque and just told me to go off, and off I came like the well-disciplined wage-earner I am."

"But it is monstrous," he said indignantly. "I will go and see them. I know one of the heads of the firm—at least, he is a patient of mine."

"You will do nothing of the kind," she replied firmly. "It really doesn't matter."

"What are you going to do? By Jove!" he said suddenly, "what a splendid idea! I want a clinical secretary."

The humour of it got the better of her, and she laughed in his face.

"What is the joke?" he asked.

"Oh, I am so sorry, doctor, but you mustn't think I am ungrateful, but I am beginning to regard myself as one of the plums in the labour market."

"Have you another position?" he asked quickly.

"I have just accepted one," she said, and he did not disguise his disappointment, which might even have been interpreted, were Oliva more conceited, into absolute chagrin.

"You are very quick," said he, and his voice had lost some of its enthusiasm. "What position have you taken?"