Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/66

62 "I merely say that you would have sent for a doctor, and that that doctor would have been Doctor van Heerden. I say further, that he would have come to you and been very sympathetic, and would have ordered you to remain in bed for four or five days. I think, too," he said, looking up at the ceiling and speaking slowly, as though he were working out the possible consequence in his mind, "that he would have given you some very palatable medicine."

"What are you insinuating?" she asked quietly.

He did not reply immediately.

"If you will get out of your mind the idea that I have any particular grievance against Doctor van Heerden, that I regard him as a rival, a business rival let us say, or that I have some secret grudge against him, and if in place of that suspicion you would believe that I am serving a much larger interest than is apparent to you, I think we might discuss"—he smiled—"even Doctor van Heerden without such a discussion giving offence to you."

She laughed.

"I am really not offended. I am rather distressed, if anything," she said, knitting her brows. "You see, Doctor van Heerden has always been most kind to me."

Beale nodded.

"He got you your rooms at the flats," he replied quietly; "he was also ready to give you employment the moment you were providentially discharged from Punsonby's. Does it not strike you, Miss Cresswell, that every kind act of Doctor van Heerden's has had a tendency to bring you together, into closer association, I mean? Does it not appear to you that the net result of all the things that might have happened to you in the past few days would have been to make you more and more dependent upon Doctor van Heerden? For example, if you had gone into his employ as he planned that you should?"

"Planned!" she gasped.

His face was grave now and the laughter had gone out of his eyes.

"Planned," he said quietly. "You were discharged from Punsonby's at Doctor van Heerden's instigation."

"I will not believe it!"