Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/212

208 chair—and you look hungry, too. Have you breakfasted?"

Beale shook his head with a smile.

"Get him something, McNorton—ring that bell. Don't protest, my good fellow—I've had exactly the same kind of nights as you've had, and I know that it is grub that counts more than sleep."

He gave an order to an attendant and not until twenty minutes later, when Beale had finished a surprisingly good meal in the superintendent's room, did the commissioner allow the story to be told.

"Now I'm ready," he said.

"I'll begin at the beginning," said Stanford Beale. "I was a member of the United States Secret Service until after the war when, at the request of Mr. Kitson, who is known to you, I came to Europe to devote all my time to watching Miss Cresswell and Doctor van Heerden. All that you know.

"One day when searching the doctor's rooms in his absence, my object being to discover some evidence in relation to the Millinborn murder, I found this."

He took a newspaper cutting from his pocket-book and laid it on the table.

"It is from El Imparcial, a Spanish newspaper, and I will translate it for you.

"''Thanks to the discretion and eminent genius of Dr. Alphonso Romanos, the Chief Medical Officer of Vigo, the farmers of the district have been spared a catastrophe much lamentable' (I am translating literally). 'On Monday last, Señor Dot. Marin Fernardey, of La Linea, discovered one of his fields of corn had died in the night and was already in a condition of rot. In alarm, he notified the Chief of Medicines at Vigo, and Dr. Alphonso Romanos, with that zeal and alacrity which has marked his acts, was quickly on the spot, accompanied by a foreign scientist. Happily the learned and gentle doctor is a bacteriologist superb. An examination of the dead corn, which already emitted unpleasant odours,"