Richard Gordon - A QUESTION OF GUILT

Both refused tea, sitting beside Nancy on the sofa. Ruston talked most, in a stockbroker's voice. Wince's was high-pitched, and he dropped his aitches. Both men stole glances at her.

'You couldn't have returned at a better moment,' Ruston told Eliot earnestly. 'You must have followed from the London papers the rough ride of Lloyd George's budget? He unveiled it last April, while the country shook in its shoes. From the outrage of the upper class over the new land tax, you'd imagine our fiery little Welshman about to plunder the land like Hengist and Horsa in one.'

'Got ter pay for the navy,' piped Wince mockingly. 'The floating bulwark o' the island, eh? A keel for a keel, one in the eye for the Kaiser.'

'But the House of Lords is set to reject the budget?' Eliot stood on the bearskin, hands in pockets, looking solemn.

'Exactly what Lloyd George wants,' Ruston told him. 'There'll be an election on the issue before the Christmas decorations are cleared away, mark my words.'

'Which'll do yer a bit o' good,' added Wince. 'The Liberals'll win, with the chance o' some Labour members bein' swept into Parliament by the tide.'

'You and I, Eliot, know the election's like a sham battle on the stage at Drury Lane. Our object is to burn down the theatre and roast the people in it,' remarked Ruston.

Nancy continued darning. Following the convolutions of British politics was wearying. She had met several lords in New York. They seemed kindly, perfectly mannered young men, who claimed an ignorance of politics as profound as of road-sweeping. Eliot had explained that the rejection of a Liberal budget by the House of Lords would be an event in British politics comparable with the inauguration of Jefferson Davis.

'It'll encourage the Holloway Labour Party, finding their Parliamentary candidate real flesh and blood. They've no more notion where Switzerland is than Swahililand,' Rushton said contemptuously. 'I've found a shop for your people's clinic.' Eliot's face brightened. 'An abandoned greengrocers, a bit rotten inside, but I expect a practical fellow like you can fix it. There's a quarter's rent due, five pounds. I couldn't advance it. You know how difficult things are.'

'For earning without spending, Switzerland's as useful as a polar expedition.'

Ruston nodded towards the manilla envelope. 'Need I emphasize those papers are for no eyes but your own?'

'Wot yer doin' in London, love?' Wince had been rudely staring at Nancy from hair to toe.

Eliot replied for her, 'Searching vainly for a Dr Crippen. Inventor of a remedy to cure her sick sister.'

'Dr Crippen?' Wince equally rudely lit without Nancy's permission the large curly pipe he had been filling steadily with dark tobacco from a rubber pouch. 'Oh, I know Dr Crippen. Lives up Camden Road, 'illdrop Crescent, I b'lieve. Leastways I knows Mrs Crippen better. She's a theatrical. Belle Elmore's 'er name on the boards.' He struck a vesta. 'Music 'all. Not that I've seen 'er on the posters. P'raps she tours the provinces? Short, flashy lady, bright fair 'air, peroxides it, I've no doubt. She ain't no spring chicken,' he meditated, puffing a cloud of smoke. 'But she's an 'andsome woman, I'll give 'er that. A proper Tartar in the shops along Brecknock Road, beating dahn the prices till yer'd think she'd a family ter feed on a fathing. Funny thing-' He nodded at Nancy. 'She's an American, just like you.'

To Eliot's eager questions he replied, 'Crippen? A little bloke, mild as milk. Got a practice at the Yale Tooth Specialists, Albion 'ouse in Oxford Street. I knows that, a'cause 'e gave me one of 'is cards last week in Lipton's the grocers. Said if I'd trouble with me teeth 'e'd fix me in no time.' Wince laughed. 'Got an eye for business, that doctor.'

The pair shortly left. Wince shook Nancy's hand heartily in a fog of tobacco smoke. Ruston's farewell was an intensely suspicious glance.

Eliot decided against ringing doorbells along Hilldrop Crescent that evening, when the householders would be settling to their suppers. He met Nancy at the Savoy Hotel the following morning. Their excitement was rekindled in the chase. It was tantalizing, fitting a face to the name exchanged the afternoon they met. They walked east along the Strand-the busiest street in London, connecting mercenary City to leisurely West End. At the foot of John Rennie's granite Waterloo Bridge, they turned north towards the crescent of the Aldwych and the new avenue of Kingsway, with the electric trams speeding tunnelled underneath.

Oxford Street that morning featured a regular entertainment upon the London pavements. They jumped to a crash of glass. A thin young woman in black, with a swirling feather boa and a fashionable hat as though a church bell had dropped on her, was vigorously breaking the window of a gentleman's hatter's with a small hammer. People shouted in alarm and rage. A red-faced workman in cap and spotted choker stood hands in pocket swearing hoarsely. Two shirtsleeved shop-assistants appeared horrified in the doorway. A small man in frock-coat and top hat tried to grab her, but jumped as she lunged with her hammer. Everyone shouted for the police.

An unhurried officer appeared through the traffic.

'Now then.' His voice was father to naughty daughter, who had broken the china.

'Arrest me.' Hers was Ellen Terry in the sleepwalking scene of Macbeth. _

'Right you are. None of that there!' the policeman added fearsomely to a middle-aged woman in a black bonnet, who tried to slap the saboteur. 'Come along 'o me to Bow Street.'

She thrust out her wrists. 'Handcuff me.'

'Don't be barmy,' said the policeman.

'A suffragette,' observed Eliot, with his usual calmness towards extravagancies in human behaviour. The pair disappeared, the policeman holding the hammer like some item of regalia. The shop-assistants hastened to shutter the window and sweep the glass. 'They use a toffee-hammer, you know, the sort that crack the slabs in sweet-shops. Does America breed such vigorous ladies?'

'Well, there was Susan B Anthony. She died about three years back.'

'Susan B Anthony.' Eliot quoted reflectively, ''Men, their rights and nothing more. Women, their rights and nothing less.' They only got started here because Mr Gladstone didn't believe in women. Neither did Mr Disraeli, but he didn't believe in admitting it. Queen Victoria found them particularly objectionable.'

'Surely, with Queen Victoria there was no room left in the country for a woman's movement?'

'Exactly. It must be most awkward, trying to be gooder than God in Heaven. But even a lost cause is worth believing in. Not that I've sympathy for martyrs. None at all. It's a form of political activity needing neither intelligence nor experience.'

'Poor Joan of Arc. She really should have known better.'

Eliot smiled. 'Here's Albion House-No 60.'

It was an impressive four-storey cream-painted building, its tall paired windows above narrow balconies flanked by Doric columns and plaster heads. Opposite was Mudie's Select Circulating Library, which diverted and edified a million housewives. They walked up brown-painted stairs covered with patterned red linoleum. A door on the third floor announced from its frosted glass panel-

_Dr Gilbert Mervyn Rylance_

_Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen_

_The Yale Tooth Specialists._

Eliot pressed the bell.

The door was opened instantly by a peaky man about forty, in a worn blue serge suit and celluloid collar. 'Dr Crippen?'

'No, his dental mechanic, sir. Are you a patient?'

'A professional colleague.'

The door opened with a deferential sweep.

The room overlooked Oxford Street. It had expensive green-striped paper, green plush curtains and a thick Turkey carpet. The walls presented a pair of scarlet-sealed framed diplomas, and an etching of Sir Edward Poynter's four delicious nudes-one with a poorly foot-consulting Aesculapius.