"Would you recognize him again?"
"No. I never even saw him. Please! Don't make a row! Take me home."
She was trembling badly now.
Holding her arm in his, he took her along the lane for some three hundred yards, to where faint white street-lamps glimmered in the Old Bath Road.
"I shall he all right now," she assured him. "No, don't come any farther. I don't want my father or mother to see you; and I don't want them to see me either; or heaven knows what they'd think. Good night. And thanks."
She was gone, running lightly and holding up the shoulder of her torn frock, before he had time to protest. He saw her turn in at a gate near by, with a quick look up and down the road. Then, more violently disturbed than ever before in his life, Phil Courtney retraced his steps.
Psychic fits, it seemed, had their uses after all. The episode had been so brief and rapid that he wondered whether he might have dreamed it. Stopping again at the place where he had found Ann, which he had' marked by a wooden back gate with a white enameled sign reading, "No hawkers or circulars," he struck matches to see whether any traces might have been left."
No footprints. No convenient cuff-link dropped, or similar clue. Only the trampled grass, the evil lane, the close-pressing elms.
"I'll be a—'' he began aloud.
His last match burnt his fingers, and he dropped it. He returned to the Fanes' house and opened the gate, where a shadow rose up in front of him.
But it was only Frank Sharpless.
"Who's there?" demanded Sharpless's voice out of the gloom. "Me."
"Oh. What time is it?"
"I don't know. Must be past eleven. Frank, have you seen anybody hanging about here?"
It took some little while to make Sharpless understand this question. He seemed dazed, and so completely in anguish that Courtney's concern for Ann was almost lost in pity. He remembered that Vicky Fane was dying of lockjaw up there in an airless room.
"Attacked Ann?" Sharpless kept repeating stupidly. "Where? When? Why" Though he was trying to focus on this, he could not do so. "Was she hurt?"
"No. Only a bruise and a torn dress."
"But was the fellow trying to…?"
"I don't know. Trying to kill her too, more probably."
"What do you mean, trying to 'kill her too?’" asked Sharpless, after a pause as though for confused thought.
"Nothing. Just a slip of speech."
Sharpless's powerful fingers fastened on his arm. "You don't think anybody tried to kill Vicky? Not deliberately?"
"No, no, no!"
"I hear you've fallen for Ann." "Yes. I have."
"Good luck, old boy. I'd be more congratulatory, only at a time like this…" In the dimness he swept his arm towards the house. He stiffened. His tone altered, and his voice deepened. All his heart was in it. "Don't let her die," he said. "Dear God, don't let her die!"
"Steady."
"But what are they doing up there, anyway? Something's up. I know it. More people came from the hospital or somewhere. But they won't even let me in. Wait! I forgot to ask you. What time is it?" "You did ask me. I said—"
Distantly, the church clock answered them by beginning to strike.
"Only twelve?" demanded Sharpless in an incredulous voice. He had whirled round after counting the first three. "Only midnight? Cripes, it can't be. There's something wrong with that clock. It's two o'clock in the morning, or more. It must be."
"Frank, you've got to get hold of yourself."
"I tell you, there's something wrong with that clock!"
But there was nothing wrong with the clock.
They discovered this long before its clang had struck the quarter, the half-hour, the three-quarter, and the hour again.
In Sharpless's present frame of mind, Courtney thought it best to keep him away from the house, in case he made a scene. He sat Sharpless down on a stone bench under the trees. He got him to smoking cigarettes. The lights of the house burned more brightly as those of the town died; and still no word came from the sick-room upstairs.
The clang of the church clock got into their thoughts. They heard it when it did not strike, and were startled by it when it did.
While the hours dragged on, Sharpless talked. He talked monotonously, quickly, in a low voice which rarely varied in key. He talked of himself and Vicky Fane. Of what they were going to do when she was well. Of what he was going to do at Staff College. He said he might be sent out to India, and gave a long description of life in India. He quoted his father and his uncles and his grandfather for this.
Dawn, Courtney thought, could not be far off. It would come white and ghostly among the fruit trees.
The church clock struck two-thirty.
Ten minutes later, while Sharpless was recalling an interminable childhood and a game called Little Wars, the back door of the house opened.
"Captain Sharpless!" called Mrs. Propper's voice. It poured with acid. "Captain Sharpless!"
With Courtney following him, Sharpless ran.
"They think you'd better go in," said Mrs. Propper gravely.
"Steady, Frank!"
"I can't face it," said Sharpless. "I can't!"
"You've got to. Damn it, don't turn into a weak sister now! Go on."
Sharpless walked slowly through the kitchen, past a blubbering Daisy. He stumbled over a chair in the dining room, and only found his way out when Courtney switched on the lights.
In the downstairs hall, a little group was stumping down the stairs: with many pauses, as though nobody could drag himself away from the room above. First came little Dr. Nithsdale, then Sir Henry Merrivale, and then a man in a white coat. But what struck Courtney like a blow across the skull was the expressions on their faces.
The man in the white coat, though his forehead looked damp with perspiration, was smiling. H.M. had a heavy, sour glare of relief. Even Dr. Nithsdale, though a fierce-looking little man with a bedside manner which would have alarmed Methuselah, appeared less assertive than usual.
His voice was low but penetrating and shrill.
"Mind," he said, "I'll no' say it wasna a bonny guess! Ye've Sco'ish blood in ye're veins, I hae nae doot. Hoots, dinna trouble tae deny it! But I'll no' say, either, mind you, that the leddy's oot o' danger or owt like it, until—"
He paused. His eye fell on Sharpless, who was standing by the newel-post.
"Hoots!" said Dr. Nithsdale, stopping short. "Here's. a lad could du wi' a dose o' physic! Losh, mon, hauld tight! Ye're-"
"Is she dead?"
"Hoots!" said Dr. Nithsdale, with rich scorn.
It was H.M. who answered. He steadied Sharpless as the latter put both hands on the rail of the staircase.
"It's all right, son," H.M. said gently. "Take it easy. She'll live."
Thirteen
Friday passed, and Saturday. It was Sunday afternoon before Chief Inspector Masters, who had been very busy in the meantime, again called for a conference with Sir Henry Merrivale.
Philip Courtney had also been busy.
He had now taken down about ninety thousand words of the memoirs. Of these, after matter libelous, scandalous, or in bad taste had been removed, he estimated that roughly a fifth would be publishable. He was well satisfied. This would keep the book in proportion; and he was in no hurry to get it done.
Some anecdotes it cut him to the heart to strike out. One was a vivid and realistic account of H.M.'s first serious love-affair, at the age of sixteen. But as the lady concerned was now the wife of a Cabinet Minister, noted throughout England for her pious works, he judged it best omitted.
The other was a particularly fiendish trick — H.M.'s technique seemed to improve with his advancing years — devised for the discomfiture of Uncle George. But, since it concerned a certain use to which not even Satan himself would think to put a lavatory, Courtney regretfully omitted it as well.