Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/78

74 "Who is he?" asked the girl, and her voice was shaking in spite of herself.

"He is a man I knew in his better days," said van Heerden, "and now I think you must go."

"I would rather wait to see if he recovers," she said with some obstinacy.

"I want you to go," he said earnestly; "you would please me very much if you would do as I ask."

"There's the waiter!" she interrupted, "he has the brandy. Won't you give it to him?"

It was the doctor who in the presence of the assembled visitors dissolved a white pellet in the brandy before he forced the clenched teeth apart and poured the liquor to the last drop down the man's throat.

Jackson or Prédeaux, to give him his real name, shuddered as he drank, shuddered again a few seconds later and then went suddenly limp.

The doctor bent down and lifted his eyelid.

"I am afraid—he is dead," he said in a low voice.

"Dead!" the girl stared at him. "Oh no! Not dead!"

Van Heerden nodded.

"Heart failure," he said.

"The same kind of heart failure that killed John Millinborn," said a voice behind him. "The cost of the Green Rust is totalling up, doctor."

The girl swung round. Mr. Beale was standing at her elbow, but His steady eyes were fixed upon van Heerden.

HAT do you mean?" asked Dr. van Heerden.

"I merely repeat the words of the dead man," answered Beale, "heart failure!"

He picked up from the table the leather case which