Page:Edgar Wallace - The Green Rust.djvu/83

 Beale nodded.

"Yes, I know pretty well," he said, "and in course of time you will know, too."

The detective was glancing over the newspaper account.

"I see the jury returned a verdict of 'Suicide whilst of unsound mind!'" he said. "This case ought to injure van Heerden, anyway."

"That is where you are wrong," said Beale, stopping in his stride, "van Heerden has so manœuvred the Pressmen that he comes out with an enhanced reputation. You will probably find articles in the weekly papers written and signed by him, giving his views on the indiscriminate sale of poisons. He will move in a glamour of romance, and his consulting-rooms will be thronged by new admirers."

"It's a rum case," said the superintendent, rising, "and if you don't mind my saying so, Mr. Beale, you're one of the rummiest men that figure in it. I can't quite make you out. You are not a policeman and yet we have orders from the Foreign Office to give you every assistance. What's the game?"

"The biggest game in the world," said Beale promptly, "a game which, if it succeeds, will bring misery and suffering to thousands, and will bring great businesses tumbling, and set you and your children and your children's children working for hundreds of years to pay off a new national debt."

"Man alive!" said the other, "are you serious?"

Beale nodded.

"I was never more serious in my life," he said, "that is why I don't want the police to be too inquisitive in regard to this murder of Jackson, whose real name, as I say, is Prédeaux. I can tell you this, chief, that you are seeing the development of the most damnable plot that has ever been hatched in the brain of the worst miscreant that history knows. Sit down again. Do you know what happened last year?" he asked.

"Last year?" said the superintendent. "Why, the war ended last year."

"The war ended, Germany was beaten, and had to accept terms humiliating for a proud nation, but fortunately