The Green Rust | Page 2

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 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