“But when,” asked Angela, “did Dr. Roberts inject the hyoscine?”
“I think soon after the patient was put on the table. The screen over the chest would hide his hands.”
“I see.”
“After the reconstruction Roberts wouldn’t leave us alone. He hung about in the theatre, intent, of course, on keeping me away from the cruet. Fox, bless his heart, rumbled this ruse and staged a bogus telephone call. He saw I wanted to be rid of Roberts. As soon as we were alone I fell on the cruet, and, after a nerve-racking fumble, unearthed the syringe. Eureka! Denouement! Fox nearly had a fit of the vapours.”
“So you arrested him there and then!” cried Angela.
“No. No, I didn’t. For one thing I hadn’t a warrant and for another — oh, well— ”
Alleyn rested his nose on his clasped hands.
“Now what’s coming?” asked Angela.
“I rather liked the little creature. It would have been an unpleasant business pulling him in there. Anyway, I went off and got a warrant, and Fox and Boys accompanied him home. They watched him carefully in case he tried to give himself the coup de grâce, but he didn’t. When I arrested him he had, I believe, a sudden and an appalling shock, a kind of dreadful moment of lucidity. He fought us so violently that he seemed like a sane man gone mad, but I believe he was a madman gone sane. It only lasted a few minutes. Now I don’t think he cares at all. He has made a complete confession. He’s batty. He’ll have to stand his trial, but I think they’ll find that the nut in the cruet-stand is not the only one loose. It may even be that Roberts, recognizing the taint of madness in himself, felt the eugenic urge the more strongly and the need for eliminating the unfit. In that point of view there is precisely the kind of mad logic one would expect to find in such a case.”
“If it hadn’t been for the matron’s trip, would you never have got him?” asked Nigel.
“I think we should — in the end. We should have got his history from Canada and Australasia. It’s coming through now. When it’s complete I am pretty certain we shall find a series of deaths after anæsthetics given by Roberts. They will all prove to be cases where there were signs of hereditary insanity. I shouldn’t mind betting they correspond with the notches on the stethoscope — minus one.”
“Minus one?” asked Nigel.
“He added a fresh notch, no doubt, on Thursday, the eleventh. The last one does look more recent, although he’d rubbed a bit of dirt into it. You may think, as judges say when they mean you ought to think, that it was an extremely rum thing for him to leave the syringe in the cruet after the job was done. Not so rum. It was really the safest place imaginable. Away from there it would have been a suspicious-looking object, with a nut, instead of the ordinary top, to the piston. I believe that extraordinary little man filled it up with hyoscine whenever he was called out to give an anæsthetic to someone he did not know, just on the off-chance the patient should turn out to be what I understand sheep-farmers call a ‘cull.’ It’s a striking example of the logic of the lunatic.”
“Oh,” cried Angela, “I do hope they find him insane.”
“Do you?”
“Don’t you?”
“I hardly know. That means a criminal lunatic asylum. It’s a pity we are not allowed to hand him one of his own hypodermics.”
There was a short silence.
“Have some port?” said Nigel.
“Thank you,” said Alleyn. He did not pour it out, however, but sat looking abstractedly into the fire.
“You see,” he murmured at last, “he’s done his job. From his point of view it’s all a howling success. He does nothing but tell us how clever he’s been. His one anxiety is lest he may not be appreciated. He’s busy writing a monograph for which all your gods of Fleet Street, Bathgate, will offer fabulous prices. At least he is assured of competent defense.”
“What about Sir John Phillips and Jane Harden?” ‘ asked Angela.
“What about them, Miss Angela?”
“Is she going to marry him now?”
“How should I know?”
“She’ll be a fool if she doesn’t,” said Angela emphatically.
“I’m afraid you’ve got the movie-mind. You want a final close-up. ‘John — I want you to know that— that— ’ Ecstatic glare at short distance into each other’s faces. Sir John utters an amorous growclass="underline" ‘You damned little fool,’ and snatches her to his bosom. Slow fade-out.”
“That’s the stuff,” said Angela. “I like a happy ending.”
“We don’t often see it in the Force,” said Alleyn.
“Have some port?”
“Thank you.”
The End