He had closed everything up before he left, but one of the French windows had never locked securely since Bobby de Vet, an enormous South African footbalier who had doggedly trailed after Susan during a tour live years earlier, had collapsed against it after a party.
Blessing de Vet for his foresight, Maitland bent down and slowly levered the bottom end of the window off its broken hinge, then swung the whole frame out sufficiently to withdraw the catch from its socket.
Opening the window, he stepped through into the lounge.
Before he had moved three paces, someone seized him tightly by the collar and pulled him backward off balance. He dropped to his knees, and at the same time the lights went on, revealing Susan with her hand on the wall switch by the door.
He tried to pull himself away from the figure behind him, craned up to see a broadly built young man in a dinner jacket, with a wide grin on his face, squeezing his collar for all he was worth.
Grunting painfully, Maitland sat down on the carpet. Susan came over to him, her black off-the-shoulder dress rustling as she moved.
"Boo," she said loudly, her mouth forming a vivid red bud.
Annoyed for appearing so foolish, Maitland knocked away the hand still on his collar and climbed to his feet.
"Why, if it isn't the prof!" the young man exclaimed. Maitland recognized him as Peter Sylvester, a would-be racing driver. "Hope I didn't hurt you, Don."
Maitland straightened his jacket and tried to loosen his tie. The knot had shrunk immovably to the size of a pea.
"Sorry to break my way in, Susan," he said. "Must have startled you. Lost my keys, I'm afraid."
Susan smiled, then reached over to the phonograph and picked up the envelope that Maitland had dropped through the mail slot.
"Oh, we found them for you, darling. When you started rattling the window we wondered who it was, and you looked so huge and dangerous that Peter thought we'd better take no chances."
Sylvester sauntered past them and lay down in an armchair, chuckling to himself. Maitland noticed a half-full decanter on the bar, half a dozen dirty glasses distributed around the room. It looked as if Susan had been here only that day, at the most.
He had last seen her three weeks ago, when she had left her car to be cleaned in the basement garage and had come up to the apartment to use the phone. As always she looked bright and happy, undeterred by the monotony of the life she had chosen for herself. The only child of the closing years of a wealthy shipping magnate, she had remained a schoolgirl until her middle twenties.
Maitland had met her in the zone of transit between then and her present phase. At least, he always complimented himself, he had lasted longer than any other of her beaux. Most of them were tossed aside after a few weeks. For two or three years they had been reasonably happy, Susan doing her best to understand something of Maitland's work. But gradually she discovered that the trust fund provided by her father supplied her with a more interesting alternative, an unending succession of parties, and Riviera week ends. Gradually he had seen less and less of her, and by the time she went down to Worthing the rift had been complete.
Now she was thirty-two, and he had recently noticed a less pleasant note intruding into her personality. Dark-haired and petite, her skin was still as clear and white as it had been ten years earlier, but the angles of her face had begun to show, her eyes were now more sombre. She was less confident, a little sharper, the boy friend of the moment was kept more on his toes, thrown out just those few days sooner. What Maitland really feared was that she might suddenly decide to return to him and set up again the ghastly ménage of the months before she had finally left him-a period of endless bickering and pain.
"Good to see you again, Susan," he said, kissing her on the cheek. "I thought you were staying down at Worthing."
"We were," Susan said, "but it's getting so windy. The sea's coming in right over the beach and it's a bore listening to that din all the time." She wandered around the lounge, looking at the bookshelves. Uneasily, Maitland realized that she might notice the gaps in the shelves where he had pulled down his reference books and packed them away. The phonograph was Susan's and he had left that, but most of his own records he had sent on by sea. Luckily, these she never played.
"Tremendous seas along the front," Sylvester chimed in. "All the big hotels are shut. Sandbags in the windows. Reminds me of the Dieppe raid."
Maitland nodded, thinking to himself: I bet you were never at Dieppe. Then again, maybe you were. I suppose it takes nerve of some sort even to be a bad racing driver.
He was wondering how to make his exit when Susan turned around, a sheet of typewritten paper in her hand. He had just identified the familiar red-printed heading when she said:
"What about you, Donald? Where have you been?"
Maitland gestured lightly with one hand. "Nothing very interesting. Short conference I read a paper to."
Susan nodded. "In Canada?" she asked quietly.
Sylvester stood up and ambled over to the door, picking the decanter off the bar on his way. "I'll leave you two to get to know each other better." He winked broadly at Maitland.
Susan waited until he had gone. "I found this in the kitchen. It appears to be from Canadian Pacific. Seven pieces of unaccompanied baggage en route to Vancouver." She glanced at Maitland. "Followed, presumably, by an unaccompanied husband?"
She sat down on an arm of the sofa. "I gather this is a one-way trip, Donald."
"Do you really mind?" Maitland asked.
"No, I'm just curious. I suppose all this was planned with a great deal of care? You didn't just resign from the Middlesex and go and buy yourself a ticket. There's a job for you in Vancouver?"
Maitland nodded. "At the State Hospital. I've transferred my fellowship. Believe me, Susan, I've thought it over pretty carefully. Anyway, forgive my saying so, but the decision doesn't affect you very much, does it?"
"Not an iota. Don't worry, I'm not trying to stop you. I couldn't give a damn, frankly. It's you I'm thinking about, Donald, not me. I feel responsible for you, crazy as that sounds. I'm wondering whether I should let you go. You see, Donald, you're letting me get in the way of your work, aren't you?"
Maitland shrugged. "In a sense, yes. What of it, though?"
Suddenly there was a slam of smashing glass and the French window burst open. A violent gust of wind ballooned the curtains back to the ceiling, knocking over a standard lamp and throwing a brilliant whirl of light along the walls. The force drove Maitland across the carpet. Outside there was the clatter and rattle of a score of dustbins, the banging of windows and doors. Maitland stepped forward, pushed back the curtains, and wrested the window shut. The wind leaned on it heavily, apparently coming from due east with almost gale force, bending the lower half of the frame clear of the hinges. He moved the sideboard across the doors, then set the standard lamp back on its base.
Susan was standing near the alcove by the bookcase, her face tense, anxiously fingering one of the empty glasses.
"It was like this at Worthing," she said quietly. "Some of the panes in the sun deck over the beach blew in and the wind just exploded. What do you think it means?"
"Nothing. It's the sort 0f freak weather you find in mid-Atlantic six months of the year." He remembered the sun lounge over the beach, a bubble of glass panes that formed one end of the large twin-leveled room that was virtually the entire villa. "You're lucky you weren't hit by flying glass. What did you do about the broken panes?"
Susan shrugged. "We didn't do anything. That was the trouble. Two blew out, and then suddenly about ten more. Before we could move the wind was blowing straight through like a tornado."
"What about Sylvester?" Maitland asked sardonically. "Couldn't he pump up his broad shoulders and shield you from the tempest?"