Free Elk 04 White Face by Edgar Wallace Page A

the arm and dropped it; it fell lifelessly.
    “When will she recover consciousness?”
    Marford shook his head.
    “I don’t know. At present she’s not in a state where I could recommend giving restoratives, but I’ll leave that to the infirmary people. The resident surgeon is a personal friend of Dr. Rudd’s and is therefore in all probability a man of genius.”
    The eyes of the two men met. Mr. Mason did not attempt to disguise his own amusement.
    “Fine,” he said. And then: “Have you ever been in a murder case before?”
    The doctor’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile.
    “Manslaughter—this evening,” he said. “No, I have not been called in professionally. Not one doctor in eight thousand ever attends a murder case in the whole course of his practice—not if he’s wise,” he added.
    Mason became suddenly interested in this shabby figure with the pained eyes and the thin, starved face.
    “You find living not particularly pleasant in this neighbourhood, Doctor? Couldn’t you work your clinic somewhere more salubrious?”
    Marford shrugged.
    “It’s all one to me,” he said. “My own wants are very few and they are satisfied. The clinic must be where it is wanted. For myself, I do not crave for the society of intellectual men, because intellectual men bore me.”
    “And you’ve no theory about this murder?”
    Mason’s good-humoured eyes were smiling again.
    The doctor did not answer immediately; he bit his lip and looked thoughtfully past the superintendent.
    “Yes,” he said quietly. “To my mind, this case is obviously a case of revenge. He was not murdered for profit, he was deliberately assassinated to right some wrong probably committed years before. And it was not in the larger sense premeditated: the murder was committed on the spur of the moment as opportunity offered.”
    Mason stared at him.
    “Why do you say that?”
    “Because I think it.” Marford was smiling. “Unless you believe that this man was definitely lured to this spot with the object of killing him, and that a most elaborate scheme was formed for enticing him into this neighbourhood, you must believe that it was unpremeditated.”
    Superintendent Mason, fists on hips, legs wide apart, peered at Marford.
    “You’re not one of these amateur detectives I’ve been reading about, Doctor?” he challenged. “The sort of man who’s going to make the police look foolish in chapter thirty-nine and take all the credit for the discovery?” Then unexpectedly he clapped his hand on Marford’s bony shoulder. “You talk sense, anyway, and every doctor doesn’t talk that. I could name you one, but you’d probably report me to the British Medical Association. You’re quite right—your theory is my theory.”
    And then, suddenly: “Do you exclude the possibility that Lamborn may have knifed him?”
    “Entirely,” said the other emphatically, and Mason nodded.
    “I might tell you”—he dropped his voice confidentially—“that that is the ground plan of Dr. Rudd’s theory.”
    “He has another,” said Marford. “I wonder he hasn’t told you.”
    CHAPTER VIII
    Mason looked down at the woman again. She had not moved, so far as the eye could see had not even breathed, since she came in.
    “She’s got it locked up there.” He touched the white forehead lightly. “No, it’s an ordinary police case, Doctor. Everything looks mysterious until somebody squeals, and then the case is so easy that even a poor old gentleman from Scotland Yard could work it out.”
    He frowned at the woman.
    “All right, shoot her into hospital,” he said brusquely, and returned to his room.
    It was Inspector Bray’s room really; a cupboard of a place, with a table and chair, a last year’s almanac on the wall, two volumes of the Police Code, a telephone list a foot long—and three reprints of popular fiction. They were decently hidden from view by the Police Code, and Mr. Mason took one down to the table and opened it.
    A