The Green Rust | Page 2

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. Halfway 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