I should think three weeks would be quite enough for our purposes here--and I daresay it will take us a month to fix up a satisfactory place for you to work in." Then he paused. "Of course if you go to town," he added, "you will have to stay at some address we shall arrange for, and you will have to be ready to start work directly we tell you to."

"Naturally," I said; "I only want--"

I was saved from finishing my falsehood by a sudden sound from outside--the sound of a swing gate banging against its post. For a moment I had a horrible feeling that it might be the police.

Savaroff jumped up and looked out of the window. Then with a little guttural exclamation he turned back to McMurtrie.

"Hoffman!" he muttered, apparently in some surprise.

Who Mr. Hoffman might be I had not the faintest notion, but the mention of the name brought the doctor to his feet at once. I think he was rather annoyed with Savaroff for being unnecessarily communicative. When he spoke, however, it was with his usual perfect composure.

"Well, we will leave you at peace now, Mr. Lyndon. I should try to go to sleep again for a little while if I were you. I will come up later and see whether you would like some supper." He stopped and looked round the room. "Is there anything else you want that you haven't got?"

"If you could advance me a box of cigarettes," I said, "it shall be the first charge on the new explosive."

He nodded, smiling. "I will send Sonia up with it," he answered. Then, following Savaroff, he went out into the pa.s.sage, carefully closing the door after him.

Left alone, I lay back on the pillow in a frame of mind which I believe novelists describe as "chaotic." I had expected something rather unusual from my interview with McMurtrie, but these proposals of his could hardly be cla.s.sed under such a mild heading as that. For sheer unexpectedness they about took the biscuit.

I had read in books of a man's appearance being altered so completely that even his best friends failed to recognize him, but it had never occurred to me that such a thing could be done in real life--let alone in the simple fashion outlined by the doctor. Of course, if he was speaking the truth, there seemed no reason why his plan, fantastic as it might sound, should not turn out perfectly successful. A private hut on the Thames marshes was about the last place in which you would look for an escaped Dartmoor convict, especially when he had vanished into thin air within a few miles of Devonport.

What worried me most in the matter was my apparent good luck in having fallen on my feet in this amazing fashion. There is a limit to one's belief in coincidences, and the extraordinary combination of chances suggested by McMurtrie's smooth explanations was just a little too stiff for me to swallow. I felt sure that he was lying in some important particulars--but precisely which they were I was unable to guess for certain.

That he wanted the secret of the new explosive, and wanted it badly, there could be no doubt, but neither he nor Savaroff in the least suggested to me a successful manufacturer of cordite or anything else. They seemed to me to belong to a much more interesting if less conventional type, and I couldn't help wondering what on earth such a curious trio as they and Sonia could be doing tucked away in an ill-furnished, deserted-looking country house in a corner of South Devon.

However it was no good worrying, for as far as I was concerned it was painfully clear that there was no alternative. If I declined their offer and refused to let McMurtrie carve my face about, they had only to turn me out, and in a few hours I should probably be back in my cell with the cheerful prospect of chains, a flogging, and six months'

semi-starvation in front of me.

Anything was better than that--even the wildest of plunges in the dark. Indeed I am not at all sure that the mystery that surrounded McMurtrie's offer did not lend it a certain charm in my eyes. My life had been so infernally dull for the last three years that the prospect of a little excitement, even of an unpleasant kind, was by no means wholly disagreeable.

At least I had my week's "fun" in London to look forward to, and the thought of that alone would have been quite enough to make me go through with anything. I had lied to McMurtrie about my object, but the falsehood, such as it was, did not sit very heavily on my conscience. The precise meaning of "fun" is purely a matter of opinion, and I was as much ent.i.tled to my definition as he was to his.

After all, if a convicted murderer can't be a little careless about the exact truth, who the devil can?

CHAPTER VI

THE FACE OF A STRANGER

McMurtrie had left me under the impression that he meant to start work on my face the next day, but as it turned out the impression was a mistaken one. Both the paraffin wax and the X-ray outfit had to be procured from London, and according to Sonia it was to see about these that her father went off to town early the following morning. She told me this when she brought me up my breakfast, just after I had heard the car drive away from the house.

"Well, I suppose I had better get up too," I said. "I can't stop in bed and be waited on by you."

"You've got to," she replied curtly, "unless you would rather I sent up Mrs. Weston."

"Who's Mrs. Weston?" I inquired.

Sonia placed the tray on my bed. "She's our housekeeper. She's deaf and dumb."

"There are worse things," I observed, "in a housekeeper." Then I sat up and pulled my breakfast towards me. "Of course I would much rather you looked after me. I was only thinking of the trouble I'm giving you."

"Oh, it's not much trouble," she said; then after a little pause she added, in a rather curious voice: "Anyway I shouldn't mind if it was."

"But I am feeling perfectly fit this morning," I persisted. "I might just as well get up if your father would lend me some kit. I don't think I could squeeze into McMurtrie's."

She shook her head. "The doctor says you are to stop where you are.

He is coming up to see you." Then she hesitated. "One of the prison warders called here last night to warn us that you were probably hiding in the neighbourhood."

"That was kind," I said, "if a little belated. Had they found the bicycle?"

"No," she answered, "and they are not likely to. My father went out and brought it in the night you arrived. It's buried in the back garden."

There was another short silence, and then she seated herself on the foot of the bed. "Tell me," she said, "this girl--Joyce Aylmer--do you love her?"

The question came out so unexpectedly that it took me by utter surprise. I stopped in the middle of conveying a piece of bacon to my mouth and laid it down again on the plate.

"Why, Joyce is only a child," I said; "at least she was when I went to prison. We were all in love with her in a sort of way. Her father had been an artist in Chelsea before he died, and we looked on her as a kind of general trust. She used to run in and out of the various studios just as she pleased. That was the reason I was so furious with Marks. It was impossible to believe that a man who wasn't an absolute fiend could--" I pulled up short in some slight embarra.s.sment.

"But she is not a child now," remarked Sonia calmly. "According to the paper she must be nineteen."

"Yes," I said, "I suppose people grow older even when I'm in prison."

"And she loves you--she must love you. Do you think any woman could help loving a man who had done what you did for her?"

"Oh, I expect she has forgotten all about me long ago," I said with a sudden bitterness. "People who go to prison can't expect to be remembered--except by the police."

I had spoken recklessly, and even while the words were on my tongue a vision of Joyce's honest blue eyes rose reproachfully in my mind. I remembered the terrible heartbroken little note which she had sent me after the trial, and then her other letter which I had received in Dartmoor--almost more pitiful in its brave attempt to keep hope and interest alive in my heart.

Sonia leaned forward, her hands clasped in her lap.

"I thought," she said slowly, "I thought that perhaps you wanted to go to London in order to meet her."

I shook my head. "I am not quite so selfish as that. I have brought her enough trouble and unhappiness already."

"Then it is your cousin that you mean to see," she said softly--"this man, Marwood, who sent you to the prison."

For a second I was silent. It had suddenly occurred to me that in asking these questions Sonia might be acting under the instructions of McMurtrie or her father.

She saw my hesitation and evidently guessed the cause.

"Oh, you needn't think I shall repeat what you tell me," she broke out almost scornfully. "The doctor and my father are quite capable of taking care of themselves. They don't want me to act as their spy."

There was a genuine ring of dislike in her voice as she mentioned their names which made me believe that she was speaking the truth.

"Well," I said frankly, "I was thinking of looking up George just to see how he has been getting on in my absence. But apart from that I have every intention of playing straight with McMurtrie. It seems to me to be my only chance."

A bell tinkled faintly somewhere away in the house, and Sonia got up off the bed.