Part 9 (1/2)
I should think three weeks would be quite enough for our purposes here--and I daresay it will take us a month to fix up a satisfactory place for you to work in.” Then he paused. ”Of course if you go to town,” he added, ”you will have to stay at some address we shall arrange for, and you will have to be ready to start work directly we tell you to.”
”Naturally,” I said; ”I only want--”
I was saved from finis.h.i.+ng my falsehood by a sudden sound from outside--the sound of a swing gate banging against its post. For a moment I had a horrible feeling that it might be the police.
Savaroff jumped up and looked out of the window. Then with a little guttural exclamation he turned back to McMurtrie.
”Hoffman!” he muttered, apparently in some surprise.
Who Mr. Hoffman might be I had not the faintest notion, but the mention of the name brought the doctor to his feet at once. I think he was rather annoyed with Savaroff for being unnecessarily communicative. When he spoke, however, it was with his usual perfect composure.
”Well, we will leave you at peace now, Mr. Lyndon. I should try to go to sleep again for a little while if I were you. I will come up later and see whether you would like some supper.” He stopped and looked round the room. ”Is there anything else you want that you haven't got?”
”If you could advance me a box of cigarettes,” I said, ”it shall be the first charge on the new explosive.”
He nodded, smiling. ”I will send Sonia up with it,” he answered. Then, following Savaroff, he went out into the pa.s.sage, carefully closing the door after him.
Left alone, I lay back on the pillow in a frame of mind which I believe novelists describe as ”chaotic.” I had expected something rather unusual from my interview with McMurtrie, but these proposals of his could hardly be cla.s.sed under such a mild heading as that. For sheer unexpectedness they about took the biscuit.
I had read in books of a man's appearance being altered so completely that even his best friends failed to recognize him, but it had never occurred to me that such a thing could be done in real life--let alone in the simple fas.h.i.+on outlined by the doctor. Of course, if he was speaking the truth, there seemed no reason why his plan, fantastic as it might sound, should not turn out perfectly successful. A private hut on the Thames marshes was about the last place in which you would look for an escaped Dartmoor convict, especially when he had vanished into thin air within a few miles of Devonport.
What worried me most in the matter was my apparent good luck in having fallen on my feet in this amazing fas.h.i.+on. There is a limit to one's belief in coincidences, and the extraordinary combination of chances suggested by McMurtrie's smooth explanations was just a little too stiff for me to swallow. I felt sure that he was lying in some important particulars--but precisely which they were I was unable to guess for certain.
That he wanted the secret of the new explosive, and wanted it badly, there could be no doubt, but neither he nor Savaroff in the least suggested to me a successful manufacturer of cordite or anything else. They seemed to me to belong to a much more interesting if less conventional type, and I couldn't help wondering what on earth such a curious trio as they and Sonia could be doing tucked away in an ill-furnished, deserted-looking country house in a corner of South Devon.
However it was no good worrying, for as far as I was concerned it was painfully clear that there was no alternative. If I declined their offer and refused to let McMurtrie carve my face about, they had only to turn me out, and in a few hours I should probably be back in my cell with the cheerful prospect of chains, a flogging, and six months'
semi-starvation in front of me.
Anything was better than that--even the wildest of plunges in the dark. Indeed I am not at all sure that the mystery that surrounded McMurtrie's offer did not lend it a certain charm in my eyes. My life had been so infernally dull for the last three years that the prospect of a little excitement, even of an unpleasant kind, was by no means wholly disagreeable.
At least I had my week's ”fun” in London to look forward to, and the thought of that alone would have been quite enough to make me go through with anything. I had lied to McMurtrie about my object, but the falsehood, such as it was, did not sit very heavily on my conscience. The precise meaning of ”fun” is purely a matter of opinion, and I was as much ent.i.tled to my definition as he was to his.
After all, if a convicted murderer can't be a little careless about the exact truth, who the devil can?
CHAPTER VI
THE FACE OF A STRANGER
McMurtrie had left me under the impression that he meant to start work on my face the next day, but as it turned out the impression was a mistaken one. Both the paraffin wax and the X-ray outfit had to be procured from London, and according to Sonia it was to see about these that her father went off to town early the following morning. She told me this when she brought me up my breakfast, just after I had heard the car drive away from the house.
”Well, I suppose I had better get up too,” I said. ”I can't stop in bed and be waited on by you.”
”You've got to,” she replied curtly, ”unless you would rather I sent up Mrs. Weston.”
”Who's Mrs. Weston?” I inquired.
Sonia placed the tray on my bed. ”She's our housekeeper. She's deaf and dumb.”
”There are worse things,” I observed, ”in a housekeeper.” Then I sat up and pulled my breakfast towards me. ”Of course I would much rather you looked after me. I was only thinking of the trouble I'm giving you.”