Chapter Twenty-seven

Two hours after Michael Dorn had gone, Dr. Tappatt sat in his parlour, his elbows on his knees, his big face cupped in his hands. Beside him was a half-filled tumbler of whisky, and he was gazing into the fire, which was lit for him summer and winter since he had left India. There had been a time when his name had ranked high in the profession of medicine, but an unsavoury incident had driven him from Edinburgh, where, although he was young, he had established an excellent practice, and he found himself in India, with no other assets than his undoubted skill, the meagre remnants of his savings, and a taste for good wine. For a time he had been attached to the court of an Indian prince, and then, in an evil moment, he had conceived the idea of a mental home for wealthy Indians.

But for the growing craving for drink he might have retired after a few years, with sufficient to keep him for the rest of his life. But there was a kink somewhere in Dr. Tappatt’s nature and it showed itself only too clearly in his conduct of the home. He had to leave the North-West Provinces in a hurry and settle in Bengal, where there were queer stories about the home he founded there. There were applications at court by the relatives of patients who had been put away by interested people, and in the end his home was closed and he moved into the Punjab.

His brilliant brain had been sharpened by conflict with authority, and he had become something of a strategist, for strategy is the art of knowing your enemy’s mind.

Staring into the fire, he was studying the mentality of Captain Michael Dorn and he reached certain conclusions. The woman attendant had long since gone to bed, and was asleep when he shuffled down the passage and knocked at her door.

“Come out; I want to speak to you.”

He heard her grumbling, and went back to the study. Once in the period of waiting he looked at the telephone and reached out his hand half-way to take it. But he knew that the person he had in mind was not to be lightly disturbed again, and he had already made his report. No, his method was the best, he decided; and if he was mistaken in his estimate of Michael Dorn no harm would be done.

When the woman came blinking into the light, buttoning up her dress, he nodded to a chair and for half an hour they talked, the woman interpolating sour objections which he dismissed without ceremony.

“I haven’t had any sleep for two nights,” she complained, “and I don’t see why----”

“Are you expected to see anything?” he snarled. “You’re a listener--no more!”

She had served him for the greater part of twenty years and was afraid of no other person in the world. And from grumbling she came to whining, until he waved her out of the room.

At seven o’clock in the morning Dr. Tappatt, dressed in a thick woollen overcoat, for he felt the chill air of the morning, drew up the blinds and opened the windows of his parlour, having previously made a tour of inspection. Heaping two more logs on the fire, he gathered some scraps of meat and carried them out to the dogs, who greeted him with hoarse barks of welcome. He took his time, finding a malicious joy in his tardiness. Then, when he had toured the yard, he went round to the front of the house again, turned the key, unbolted the gate, and pulled it open. A man was standing squarely opposite the entrance, and the doctor started.

“Good morning, Dr. Tappatt,” said Michael Dorn. “I had an idea I should see you if I came early enough.”

“Good gracious!” said Tappatt, in feigned surprise. “This is an unexpected pleasure, Captain Dorn!”

“I am glad you think so. Did Miss Reddle sleep well?”

The doctor’s brows furrowed.

“Miss Reddle? I can’t remember--oh, yes, of course, it was that delightful young lady I met at the Countess of Moron’s house. What a queer question to ask me!”

There was a silence.

“You haven’t invited me in. You’ve lost your old Anglo-Indian sense of hospitality,” bantered Michael.

Tappatt stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, his inflamed face thrust forward.

“I don’t remember that we were especially good friends, Dorn,” he said. “I seem to remember certain unpleasant encounters----?”

“Nevertheless--you are going to invite me inside, or else----”

“Or else?” repeated the doctor.

“Or else I shall invite myself. I have a particular wish to look round your little place.”

Tappatt’s big mouth twisted in a smile.

“With or without a search warrant?” he asked politely.

“Without, for the moment. You and I are two old law-breakers, Tappatt; we have never been great sticklers for formality.”

By this time he had walked through the gate, and, curiously enough, he did not seem to expect the dogs. Tappatt noticed this and grew even more alert. He had matched his brain against this sometime chief of police, and so far the honours were with him, he felt.

“I can’t resist you, Dorn,” he said, and waved his hand to the open door of the house. “Step right in.”

Michael did not require a second invitation. He strolled carelessly into the house, and turned to the study as though he had been there before. Following him, the doctor closed the door.

“Now, what do you want?”

“I wish to search these premises--I am seeking a lady named Pinder and her daughter, Lois Margeritta Reddle, whom I believe are forcibly detained here.”

Tappatt shook his head.

“I’m afraid you’re on a wild goose chase. Neither of these ladies are inmates of my house. In fact, I have no patients just now----”

“Nor yet a licence to take patients,” added Michael. “I took the trouble to look up the records--they are available even in the middle of the night--fearing that short-memoried authority had overlooked your many grievous faults; I was happy that the official mind has showed commendable discretion.”

“I haven’t applied for a licence,” said Tappatt shortly. Any question regarding his profession touched him on the raw. “I don’t see why I should allow you to make a search,” he went on. “You have no more authority to act as a detective than I have to run a mental home. You can start here--look under the table or under the sofa,” he grew heavily sarcastic, “I may have some unfortunate person concealed there!”

Dorn walked from the room, along the passage, and stopped at the door at the foot of the stairs, turning the handle.

“My housekeeper’s room.”

“Where is she?” asked Michael.

“She’s in the kitchen.”

Michael passed into the room, pulled up the blinds and again looked round. Though he did not show by any sign his state of mind he was neither uneasy nor unalarmed at the readiness with which permission had been given to him to make the search. Rather were matters working out according to his expectations.

“There are two rooms upstairs; would you like to see them?”

Dorn nodded and followed on the man’s heels to the landing.

“This is a ward I should use if I had luck enough to get a patient.” He threw open the door of what had been Lois’ room. It was empty; the bed was stripped of all its clothes and the blankets were neatly folded at the foot. Michael walked into the room, inspected the little bathroom, tried the windows, and came out without a word. Most women use a distinctive perfume. He had noted that Lois was faintly fragrant of lavender--the room had that scent too.

The room opposite was even less completely furnished, and it was also tenantless. He knew that there was no space between the ceiling and the roof to conceal any but a willing fugitive, and satisfied himself with the briefest of scrutinies.

The other wing of the house was scarcely habitable; in some places the sky showed through the gaps in the roof, and all the upper floors were rotten with storm-water and would hardly bear the weight of a child.

“Where does that lead?” asked Michael when he came out from the inspection of the lower floor of the old wing. He pointed to a flight of steps that terminated in a door.

“It is a cellar of some kind; you can go in,” said the other carelessly.

Michael pushed the door open and stepped into a little apartment. A certain amount of light and air was admitted through a small grating that had been let into the wall, but there was little of either. Other light or ventilation there was none, except for the spy-hole in the door. He flashed his lamp around, saw an old bed in one corner and a washstand. He walked to the bed, turned over the folded blankets, and then came into the daylight.

“Quite an airy apartment,” he said drily. “Is this for a patient too?”

“There is many a poor fellow sleeping out at night who would be glad of that room,” said Dr. Tappatt virtuously, and Michael showed his teeth for a moment in an unpleasant smile.

“Ever been in prison, Tappatt? I don’t think you have, have you?” he asked, as he ascended the steps again.

Nobody knew better than Michael Dorn that the doctor had escaped conviction, but it was his way of giving a warning.

“I have not had that distinction.”

“Yet,” finished Dorn. “The cells of Dartmoor are much more wholesome than this black hole of yours--as you will find. Plenty of fresh air, immense quantities of light--and the food is good.”

Tappatt licked his lips but made no answer.

“What is in here?” He stopped before a locked shed.

“A motor-car belonging to a friend of mine. Do you want to see it?”

“A blue Buick, by any chance?”

“Yes, I think it is a Buick.”

“Left here the night before last, I think?”

Tappatt smiled and shook his head.

“It has been here a week. There are times when you are just a little too clever.”

“Let me see it,” said Michael.

The doctor went back to the house for keys, whilst Michael made a rapid inspection of the remaining buildings. The two dogs broke into a fury at his approach, straining at their chains until it seemed that they must choke or the leashes break. Then the doctor returned and found Dorn contemplating the back gate with absorbed interest; the ground was hard and showed no footmark--even the car had left no tracks.

“Here is a key.”

“I don’t think I want to see the car,” said Dorn slowly. “I know it rather well and the owner more than a little.” He looked round. “I don’t see your housekeeper anywhere.”

“I expect she’s gone into the village to do her marketing,” said the other.

Slowly Michael took a gold case from his pocket, selected a cigarette and lit it, throwing the match towards the dogs, an act which angered them to madness.

“You want to be careful of those dogs,” warned the doctor. “They’re not the kind to monkey with. I don’t know what they would do to you, even if I were with you.”

“They want to be careful of me,” said Dorn. “I had the death of more pariahs on my soul than any other police official in India during the term I was serving.”

“They would get you before you got them,” said the doctor angrily.

Michael Dorn smiled, and stretched out his hand stiffly before him.

“Do you see that?” he asked. “Watch!”

Where it came from, how it got there, Tappatt could not for the life of him tell; but though the hand apparently had not moved it was holding a short-barrelled Browning of heavy calibre.

“Where on earth did that come from?” he gasped. “You had it there all the time----”

“No, it came out of my pocket,” laughed Michael. Again he was engaged in one of his subtle acts of intimidation.

“I’ll swear that it didn’t.”

“Watch!”

Again the hand was held stiffly. An imperceptible movement, whether up or down or backward Tappatt could not say, and the hand was empty.

“It is a trick,” said Dorn carelessly. “And if you speak dog language you might explain to these hounds of yours that I am a man to leave severely alone. By-the-way, dog patrols have always been a specialty of yours? Wasn’t the trouble in Bengal over a patient who had been worried to death? Refresh my memory.”

The doctor swallowed something, and then Dorn asked:

“Why are these dogs chained up?”

“I keep them chained.”

“They weren’t chained last night. You knew I was in the neighbourhood, and that doesn’t seem to be the time to put them on the leash. Yet at four o’clock this morning they were fast. Why did you tie them up, doctor?”

Their eyes met.

“Shall I tell you why?”

Tappatt was silent; the detective had returned at four o’clock in the morning; he had just missed the little procession that had crossed the fields!

“Shall I tell you why?” Dorn asked again.

“You’re in an informative mood,” sneered Tappatt.

“Very. You tied them up because you took those two women out of the house last night, out through this yard, and you could only do that when you had put the dogs on the chain. Correct me if I’m wrong. They went out this way and they will come back this way.”

Dr. Tappatt’s jaw dropped; this was a turn to his disadvantage with a vengeance. He had expected Dorn to be satisfied with his search and to leave some time during the day. His plan was not working as he had expected.

“You can invite me to breakfast; I shall stay until they return.”

“I swear to you that I know nothing whatever about any women,” protested Tappatt violently. “You’re making a mistake, Dorn! Anyway, you’ve no right here--you know that!”

Michael shook his head.

“I never make mistakes,” he said arrogantly, “and I have every right to be here. It is the first duty of a citizen to frustrate any wrong-doing, and the first duty of a host to ask his guest if he is hungry. Now you can invite me to breakfast. And over that pleasant meal I will tell you something which will interest and amuse you.”

The baffled man looked first one way and then the other. He was trapped; his ruse had not only failed, but had rebounded against himself. Dorn, out of the corner of his eye, saw the quick rise and fall of his chest, and knew something of the panic in him.

“You can’t stay here. I don’t want you!” exploded Tappatt angrily. “That story about women being in my house is all moonshine and you know it. I’ll give you one minute to clear out! You can’t bluff me!”

Michael Dorn laughed softly.

“What will happen if I don’t clear out? Will you send for the police? There is the opportunity to get back on the cruel police commissioner who shut down your little home in the Provinces and might have got you five long weary years in Delhi prison if the official mind had only moved a little quicker. Send for the police, my good man; it will be a grand advertisement for you.”

Dr. Tappatt had no intention of sending for the police; the force was not a popular constituent of public life with him. From the height of his intellect he looked down upon all other professions and callings than his own.

“All right,” he growled, “come in. And as for the women, you’ll find you were mistaken.”

“Don’t let us discuss them,” said Michael with an airy gesture of his hand.