Part 17 (2/2)
”Yet it wasn't Mostyn Scarth who gave Doctor Alt away.”
”No?”
Edenborough shook his head as they left the lift together. ”No, doctor.
It was the chemist here, a chap called Schickel; but for him Jack Laverick would be a dead man; and but for him again, n.o.body need ever have heard of his narrow shave. He spotted the mistake, and then started all the gossip.”
”I know,” said the doctor, nodding.
”But it was a terrible mistake! Decigrams instead of milligrams, so I heard. Just a hundred times too much strychnine in each pill.”
”You are quite right,” said John Dollar quietly. ”I have the prescription in my pocket.”
”_You_ have, doctor?”
”Don't be angry with me, my dear fellow! I told you I had heard one version of the whole thing. It was Alt's. He's an old friend--but you wouldn't have said a word about him if I had told you that at first--and I still don't want it generally known.”
”You can trust me, doctor, after all you've done for me.”
”Well, Alt once did more for me. I want to do something for him, that's all.”
And his knuckles still ached from the young man's grip as they rapped smartly at the door of No. 144.
II
It was opened a few inches by Mostyn Scarth. His raiment was still at concert pitch, but his face even darker than it had been as the crime doctor saw it last.
”May I ask who you are and what you want?” he demanded--not at all in the manner of Mr. Jingle--rather in the voice that most people would have raised.
”My name's Dollar and I'm a doctor.”
The self-announcement, pat as a polysyllable, had a foreseen effect only minimized by the precautionary confidence of Doctor Dollar's manner.
”Thanks very much. I've had about enough of doctors.”
And the door was shutting when the intruder got in a word like a wedge.
”Exactly!”
Scarth frowned through a c.h.i.n.k just wide enough to show both his eyes.
It was the intruder's tone that held his hand.
”What does that mean?” he demanded with more control.
”That I want to see you about the other doctor--this German fellow,”
returned Dollar, against the grain. But the studious phrase admitted him.
”Well, don't raise your voice,” said Scarth, lowering his own as he shut the door softly behind them. ”I believe I saw you down-stairs outside the bar. So I need only explain that I've just got my bright young man off to sleep, on the other side of those folding-doors.”
<script>