The Green Rust | Page 8

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 Discharges 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