Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 13, Mid-December 1992

I

The wide front steps and pillared entrance to St. Edmund’s hospital lay in darkness, seemingly deserted. The busy traffic that went up and down, to and fro, at all hours of the day — traffic made up of patients, relations of patients, nurses, auxiliaries, students, resident staff, visiting doctors, distinguished consultants, messengers, orderlies, porters, and all kinds of official and unofficial visitors — had ceased. For it was after midnight, and though the night porter on the main door was sitting in his box just inside the entrance, reading his newspaper and slowly stirring a large cup of tea, he did not expect to have any call upon his services for the next three or four hours. The casualty department, at the other end of the main building, was the active one at this hour.

All the same he was not absorbed in his paper. From time to time he would peer out the window of his box, directing his gaze at the big double doors, one of which stood partly open. After fixing his eyes for a few seconds on the dark crack between the doors he would purse his lips and shake his head gently before returning to his seat. After all, the staff dance was over; the distant blare of music and hum of voices had died down; the visitors had crowded out onto his steps and found their cars and driven away. And then this pair had come along and they must be outside somewhere because he was on duty and she ought certainly to be off home by now. The crack in the door was letting in a perishing draft. Time they broke it up. Lowering the place.

For the two standing close together in the pillared porch, time did not exist. Nor place. A streak of golden light lay on the top step, shining through the crack between the doors. The two pale figures were dim against the darkness beside it. He had already exchanged his dinner jacket for his white hospital coat. Her loose coat hung away from her full ice-blue chiffon dance dress. Standing together so quietly they might have been a single sculpture filling the corner of the porch.

They had danced nearly every dance together that night, they had talked through every interval, making up for the six weeks of separation since Clare had left the hospital. For the girl the evening had held sheer, untroubled joy. There had been no mistaking Dan’s feelings for her, and she had no longer tried to conceal her own deep love for him. But Dan, knowing he had won her, resented more than ever her desertion as he called it. Longing to declare his love and his firm intention of making her his wife, this resentment held back the true words. His arms tightened around her, but he said nothing.

At last Clare stirred and sighed, a lazy, contented sigh of pure happiness.

“I must go,” she said slowly, and the trite words struck at her heart, tearing it in two.

“I can’t go with you,” he answered, a bitter note in his voice.

“I know. I ought to have left with Meg.”

“You ought to be walking over the road. I could have gone that far.”

She looked towards the Nurses’ Home, where lights still shone in many of the windows.

“You didn’t have to go to your blasted agency or whatever they call it.”

“Nursing Association,” she said, and left it at that. She had told Dan so often why she had resigned from the hospital to take up private nursing. She needed the money to help with her young brother’s training. The grant was not enough; there were clothes and all sorts of extras, and her widowed mother had scraped and stinted herself for years.

Dan felt her draw away. He was sorry he had spoken like that. It was not at all how he had meant to leave things that evening.

“Come back,” he said, drawing her close again. “Say goodnight to me, if you must go.”

As he bent his head to kiss her, the words he had withheld came flooding back into his mind. He could not let her go without speaking them.

“Clare,” he murmured. “Darling, you know how I feel about—”

The golden crack of light beside them widened. The porter’s voice, grating, disapproving, spoke from behind the door.

“Your lights are up, sir. Ambulance in Casualty.”

“Damn Casualty,” said Dan softly and aloud. “All right. I’m coming.”

Clare drew his head down and kissed him gently.

“I’ll get a taxi at the Circus,” she said and ran quickly down the steps.

Dan waited until the sound of her heels died away on the road outside the hospital. Then he turned and went in. The porter was sitting in his box, his head bent over his newspaper. He did not look up as Dan passed him.

Clare walked on without looking back. She did not feel particularly uneasy over the problem of getting back to her association’s residential headquarters in the West End. This was partly because she knew from several years of experience that there were always a few taxis at the rank in the Circus at any hour of the day or night. But chiefly it was because her thoughts drifted in a golden mist of happiness that had enveloped her more and more closely as the evening went by and Dan’s intentions grew overwhelmingly clear.

The shortest way to the Circus, where five great highways met, lay through several quiet streets where old fashioned Victorian houses, formerly respectable and middle-class, were slowly sinking into decay, their stucco peeling, their railings bent and broken, their rooms occupied by the drifting host of the incapable, the dull, the unlucky, the merely unfortunate.

Not all the houses presented this depressing exterior. Here and there, where one of them had anticipated the future of the rest and had already been demolished, its place was taken by a small, sharp, square, many-windowed block of flats. In one of these Clare noticed lights burning behind drawn curtains and heard jazz softly playing. Most of the windows in the street were dark.

She turned the corner into Stone Street. Here the houses were of similar build but rather better kept, some of them being used for business purposes, offices, warehouses, and the like. She took no notice of them as she passed, nor of the brass plates on several of the railings. The scene was quite familiar to her, and her eyes were on the glow of lights in the distance where one of the big highways joined the Circus. She was still intent upon it when she suddenly tripped and nearly fell.

Recovering herself with a little spring that lost her one of her high-heeled shoes, she looked down at the obstacle. It was the arm of a man who lay at the edge of the pavement on his back, his right arm flung out, his left doubled up under his body.

With a little shocked exclamation, Clare stooped over him. It was difficult to see in the dim light, for the only street lamp on her side of the road was some distance away. But his total lack of response to her stumble was enough to tell her that the man was unconscious or dead. She picked up the limp arm over which she had nearly fallen and felt for the pulse. It was just there, weak, thready, irregular. Hemorrhage, she instantly thought. Where from?

Her responses were quite automatic, swift, trained, calm. Find the source, if possible, do something about it, again if possible.

She did not have to search far. The head, face, upper limbs, and trunk showed no obvious signs of damage. But a sticky patch at the hem of the jacket led her on. The man was lying in a pool of blood from a gaping stab wound in his left thigh. Hemorrhage indeed, and likely to be fatal if she could not stop it.

Bundling up the trouser leg to a point above the wound she snatched off her silk stole and bound it round the leg. Then, gripping the hard roll of trouser, she twisted it with one hand while with the other she searched the man’s pockets for something to make a tourniquet. He seemed to have no papers of any kind; no wallet. Her first thought, that this was a road accident casualty abandoned by the car that had struck him down, turned now to an even more chilling conclusion. He had been assaulted and robbed and left to die.

At last her searching fingers found a hard object, an oblong box that seemed to be made of metal, and in the same waistcoat pocket a fountain pen. Working fast but carefully, she laid the object in the folds of trouser over the great artery of the thigh, caught up the ends of her long stole, and fixed it there, tying the ends of the stole again and slipping the fountain pen below the knot, where she twisted it to increase the pressure still further.

She straightened herself, out of breath but still intent upon the job in hand. She hoped she had controlled the hemorrhage; it was too dark to see. She must now at once summon help.

Looking about her desperately, she felt a surge of anger. Were there no police anywhere? No copper patrolling these streets that had suddenly, for her, taken on a most evil appearance? She gazed at the lighted thoroughfare in the distance, where traffic moved even at this hour. Why did no car come down Stone Street? Or no single other person?

With a little gasp of satisfaction she suddenly realized there was a telephone call box standing in a recess behind the one lighted lamp farther along the street. That was the answer.

She stooped quickly and once again felt the man’s pulse. It was still there; no better, no worse. No worse. Her work must have done some good, at least.

In a second she had slipped off her second shoe and was running up the road. The call box was about a hundred yards off, and Clare had run so fast that she was quite out of breath when she reached it. She pulled open the door and leaned against the side of the box to recover. It would be useless to dial 999 until she was able to speak. Fortunately she knew the name of the street and gave it clearly with a brief description of where the wounded man lay.

“I’m a nurse,” she said crisply. “The case is very urgent indeed. He’s lost a great deal of blood.”

When she had put down the receiver, she began to walk back quickly, still rather out of breath. After the lighted box and the light of the street lamp, the darkness beyond rose up like a wall between her and the man she already thought of as her patient. But gradually her eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and she then saw on the pavement a greater bulk than she had left.

She began to hurry forward even faster. Had he come round and was he trying to sit up? If so, he might disturb her bandage and tourniquet and start bleeding again. Why were all patients so unpredictable?

She drew nearer and then saw that the wounded man still lay flat at the edge of the pavement, but that there was another figure, whether man or woman she could not see, bending over him.

Relieved beyond measure at finding another helper on the scene, she shouted cheerfully, “I’ve phoned the ambulance. It’ll be here any minute now.”

She saw the figure start and the pale disc of a face come up to stare at her. Then, in an instant, the form was upright and running away into the darkness with long strides and a clatter of shoes on the pavement.

“Come back!” Clare cried at the top of her voice. “Come back!”

She started to run herself, not in pursuit but in sudden fear for the wounded man. She reached his side, flung herself on her knees beside him, and felt for her bandage. The pen was gone, the knot was untied, the oblong box had disappeared, too. All her work was undone, and the victim, once more, was at the point of death.

There was nothing she could do now but twist her bandage again and dig her fingers into the groove between the thigh muscles, where she could no longer feel any pulsation. She held on desperately, hoping that she was compressing the artery but no longer sure of it.

She was furious with the meddler who had spoiled her work, but as she waited fear chilled her anger. What if the figure she had seen had acted, not in clumsy stupidity, but from deliberate evil purpose? Not through bungling but with intent to kill, to finish a job already begun?

As she thought of this her fear grew. She had called out twice. She had certainly declared her interest in saving the wounded man. This unseen, but now suspected, enemy had run off to avoid being identified later. But would he come back? She was sure now that it had been a man. Those long strides and heavy footfalls. What if he came back? What could she do? How defend herself?

The ambulance turned the corner of the street not more than five minutes after Clare’s call reached the depot, but to her, crouching above her patient, seeing furtive movement in every shadow, it seemed an eternity.

But there it was at last, with two St. John men in charge, drawing up at the pavement, pulling open the doors, rattling down the steps, drawing out the stretcher and blankets.

“This the casualty, miss?”

“Yes,” Clare answered with enormous relief. “I phoned from up the road. I’m afraid he’s pretty bad. A wound in his leg.”

The man looked about.

“They said there was a nurse in charge? She left?”

“No, of course not. I’m the nurse.”

Seeing unbelief in both faces Clare said sharply, “We don’t have to be in uniform day and night. I’ve been to a staff dance at St. Edmund’s. I found this man on my way to the Circus to get a taxi.”

One of the men was kneeling now beside the unconscious form on the pavement.

“And for goodness’ sake, get me a proper tourniquet,” Clare went on. “I put on an improvised one but someone undid it while I was up the road in the phone box.”

“Someone did what?” said the man who was standing, but the other said, “Tourniquet! Quick, George!” and he turned away instantly.

While the experienced men did their work skillfully and fast, Clare got slowly to her feet. Clearly they did not believe a word she had said. Probably they did not even take her word for it that she was a nurse. Well, she could soon settle that.

“You’ll take him to St. Edmund’s, won’t you?” she said.

“It’s the nearest,” said the senior of the two men. “Not that it’ll make much difference.”

“He’s not—”

“He’s just about had it, miss. You must have seen that for yourself.”

She nodded. She felt suddenly too exhausted to speak. By this time the tourniquet was on, held firmly by a broad bandage, with a proper first-aid dressing on the wound. The man was lifted carefully and swiftly onto the stretcher and carried to the ambulance.

“You’d better come along, miss,” the St. John man called. “You’ll be needed by the police.”

Clare was stooping over the pavement. When they lifted the man onto the stretcher, she felt that her part in the attempted rescue was over. Dazed and tired, she collected her shoes and slipped her feet into them. But as she did so, she saw a small object glint from the pavement in the light from the ambulance door. It was the little oblong box.

She picked it up, sticky with drying blood, and, finding a bunch of cotton wool left in the gutter by the ambulance men, wiped it and slipped it into the pocket of her coat.

“Coming,” she said, moving quickly to the steps.

The driver was already in his seat. The steps were folded, the doors closed, and they were away, Clare and the other man sitting opposite the stretcher, staring at the grey, still face above the blankets.

There was no delay on their arrival. The driver leaped down and ran inside. Within a very few minutes Dan appeared with a nurse, carrying between them the apparatus for a transfusion.

At sight of Clare, pale, bedraggled, smeared with blood, Dan checked.

“My God, Clare!” he began, but she stopped him, realizing at once what he must be thinking.

“No, Dan. I’m all right. It’s this man. A stab wound in his left thigh. I tried to help—”

Seeing the extreme urgency of the case, Dan asked no more but got to work immediately, though with little hope of success. When the transfusion was operating, he looked at the wound. It was not a long one but obviously went deep.

“Wonder where he got that,” he muttered, more to himself than the others. “I’d say he couldn’t walk after it or not more than a few steps. Must have been done pretty well on the spot.”

“He was lying about the middle of Stone Street,” Clare said.

“No one about?”

“Not then. No one. Actually, I didn’t see him till I tripped over him.”

The senior ambulance man interrupted.

“Can you give me any idea, sir, when you’ll be moving him inside?”

Dan looked at the still, grey face on the stretcher. The color had not changed, the breathing was a faint intermittent sigh.

He shook his head.

“I may not be admitting him at all,” he said.

The man beckoned to his mate, and the two of them went off to the night canteen to find a cup of tea and wait until they were called back.

Almost at once a police patrol car drove into the casualty bay. Two uniformed officers got out and went into the hospital. In a few seconds they came out again, moving to the ambulance.

The nurse in attendance on Dan said, “It’s the police, sir.”

“Tell them to wait,” he answered crossly. “I’m busy.”

The girl said nothing. The officers were near enough to hear. In fact they had heard, and one of them, looking into the ambulance without climbing the steps, understood the doctor’s abruptness.

“Very good, sir,” he said. “I don’t want to interfere with your treatment, but if I might speak to this young lady — I’m Sergeant Phillips. Flying Squad. Scotland Yard.”

He indicated the nurse at Dan’s side.

“Why?” Dan asked coldly.

“I understand she found the, er, casualty and phoned us and the ambulance.”

“No,” said Dan. “She didn’t.”

Clare stared at him. She could not understand his manner, which was unhelpful if not definitely rude.

“Not this nurse?” said Sergeant Phillips mildly. He knew that doctors were often touchy, particularly in the middle of the night. Then, as Dan and the nurse moved, he saw Clare beyond them and thought he understood.

“You, miss,” he said in a changed voice. “Were you with this man when it happened?”

Clare was beginning, “I found him. Is that what you mean?”

“Of course she wasn’t with him, in whatever roughhouse he got himself mixed up with,” Dan said furiously. “Nurse Clare Marshall was here in this hospital up to about an hour ago. Less than an hour.”

“I’m Nurse Marshall,” said Clare. “I phoned you.”

Sergeant Phillips’ eyebrows went up, but he only said, “Then perhaps I could have a word with you, nurse, about the circumstances—”

“Not in here,” said Dan brusquely. “Sister in Casualty will show you a place to natter in.”

“Dan!” Clare was beginning to be angry herself. Sergeant Phillips looked from one young flushed face to the other. The nurse beside Dan also looked, her eyes sparkling. The rumors had been correct, then. There was something between them, and they must have had a row that evening; at the dance, most likely. She’d have a lovely tale to tell when she went off duty.

Clare dropped her eyes. She did not understand why Dan was behaving like this, and she felt both hurt and bewildered. But it had nothing to do with her duty, which was to tell the police what she knew and what she had done.

“I’ll come, of course,” she said quietly to Sergeant Phillips, moving towards the ambulance door. Dan’s back was towards her as she passed him, but she heard him murmur, very softly, “Don’t leave the place till I’ve seen you.”

She made no answer but climbed down the steps and turned towards the lighted door of the big casualty department, followed by the two police officers.

The wide waiting hall was, to lay eyes, surprisingly crowded, but to the staff it was just another working night. St. Edmund’s, in common with the other big London hospitals, served a wide industrial area, with factories and building sites where night shifts were a permanent feature. From these a steady stream of minor cuts, bruises, and ailments trooped up to St. Edmund’s for relief, together with a few more serious injuries such as fractures and burns. Besides all this, the usual quota of road accidents brought their toll of cracked skulls, broken limbs, and the inevitable shock.

Most of the waiting visitors, absorbed in their own condition, did not even notice Clare and her escort, though the former’s appearance was striking enough and unpleasantly so. Police at the hospital were a common enough sight, especially the mobile kind. They usually appeared on the tail of road accidents, eager to take statements before accurate memory faded. But a walking victim in a dance dress bespattered with blood, a character apparently in good health and escorted by two burly figures in dark blue, was not usual, and those less preoccupied with their own sufferings did turn their heads to stare at her. Two of them, immediately after catching sight of her, turned eagerly to one another, whispering together with bent heads as the group passed, led by Sister Meadows, who was in charge of the department.

“Door in the corner,” muttered one of the men. “Know where it goes?”

“Just come out of there,” the other replied. “Sort of an examination room, like. Cubicles and that.”

“Curtained?”

“Yeah. I bin ’ere before. They shoves yer into one o’ them and forgets all about yer.”

A smile widened the thin face of the other man.

“You’ve got to go in there and put yourself anywhere you can hear what that girl says. Name and address is what you want. Get that and slip out again. Play it quiet and pathetic, if anyone spots you. You feel that bad, or you don’t feel that bad. Right?”

“Right,” said the other. “It’d look a darned sight better if you was to come in with me. Tell the nurse I’ve got to lay down.”

“Me go in with those rozzers? Are you nuts?”

The smaller man muttered something uncomplimentary, and the thin face so near his own tightened while the eyes took on an evil gleam.

“You oughter be careful,” their owner warned, “very careful how you treat my feelings. I’m sensitive, see?”

“Okay, okay,” said the other. He got up quickly, only to be pulled back again by his menacing friend.

“You’re ill, you dump,” the fierce whisper came again. “Act like you was bad in your stomach. That’ll give you all the excuses you need. I’ll be in the car back of here. Stanley Crescent. The boss said thirty minutes at the outside. You got fifteen left. Get a move on.”

He sat back, watching his anxious and thoroughly unwilling colleague make his way slowly to the door in the corner and very quietly and unobtrusively pass through it. Then he rose himself, and also very quietly and unobtrusively, looking at no one and drawing no attention to himself, he left the hospital by the casualty entrance, crossed the courtyard, skirting the ambulance where Dan still worked, but without hope now, to save a life, and walked quietly away. When he reached the car, parked in Stanley Crescent, he went past it, then turning into a small side alley, stood still, waiting in darkness for his friend to rejoin him.

Sister Meadows took the two police officers and Clare into the last cubicle of the row, found some chairs and a small table for them, and, pulling the curtain across the end of the cubicle, remarked, “No one can see you in here. If you talk quietly, no one can hear you, either.”

Her expression was not cordial. She knew Clare and hitherto had liked her well enough. But like Dan, she resented the girl’s leaving the hospital for private nursing, though her feeling arose from a quite different cause. Clare had done well all through her training. She had won several prizes in the course of it and had been marked down early as the future Sister of a ward, if not for higher posts still. Too many girls left after qualifying for one reason or another, many to get married. That Clare should have done so simply to make more money appeared to Sister Meadows, a dedicated soul, to be quite disgraceful. Well, the girl was paying for it. If she had been living in the Nurses’ Home, she would not have got herself into this pickle. Sister Meadows knew none of the details, but she took a suspicious view of life in general, and many fantastic ideas passed through her mind as she left Clare to tell her story.

A small man, clutching his stomach, stood in her path at the other end of the room.

“What d’you want?” she said, sharply. “Why have you come in here?”

He gave her a cringing smile.

“Nurse said to go in ’ere and lie down,” he said apologetically. “They’d come and examine me, she said.”

“In here,” Sister answered, pulling back the curtain of the first cubicle. “Just take your jacket off and your shoes and loosen your other things. Then get up on the couch. What’s the trouble? Not an accident of any kind, was it?”

“No, Sister,” he said. “It’s my stummick. Bad pain. Come on all of a sudden. Ooh!”

He doubled up, overdoing it badly, for Sister at once helped him into the cubicle, took his jacket, got him on the couch, covered him with a blanket, and saying, “I’ll get the doctor at once,” hurried away. No time to lose, he thought, slipping off the couch the moment he heard the door close behind her. He took his shoes in his hand and his jacket over his arm and, crawling under the curtains of the cubicle, made his silent way along the row to where he heard the murmur of voices.

He was just in time, and his luck held. All the curtains of this last cubicle but one were closed; otherwise he would inevitably have been seen by a new arrival, who at that moment came across the room.

He felt cold sweat on his forehead. Was this the doctor, looking for him? No, it was worse in a way. But in a way it saved him.

“Inspector Stevens,” the newcomer introduced himself to Clare. “I come from divisional headquarters. That’s the local place, not Scotland Yard, like these two,” he explained, seeing her bewilderment and feeling sorry for her obvious distress. “I’ve come along because I think you can help us with a case we’ve been dealing with this evening. You are Miss—”

“Marshall,” said Clare, wondering how often this routine would be repeated. “Clare Marshall, and I’m living at the Nursing Association hostel at—”

She repeated the address she had already given and waited. In the cubicle next door the listener had already begun to crawl back the way he had come. He knew what he had been sent to find out. He knew something more besides. That the man outside in the ambulance had already been tied in with the police raid on the club in Quarry Place. This was serious. He’d got to get back quickly. The boss would know what to do, but he’d got to get back to him just as fast as he could make it.

Again he was lucky. Slipping out of his cubicle, not daring to leave by the door of the room, he crept down an open, narrow, dark passage at the side of one of the cubicles, which he guessed would lead to the lavatories.

He was right, and he found to his joy that the passage carried on into another room full of cubicles, identical with the one he had left. The lavatories served both rooms, and this second one was quite empty.

Very cautiously he opened the door at the side. As he had guessed, it led out into the waiting hall opposite the door of the other room. He straightened himself, went quietly through as unnoticed as his friend, and was soon walking steadily but not too fast into Stanley Crescent.

A shadow came from the alleyway. The two men met at the car, got in, and drove away.

“Get what I said?” the thin-faced man asked.

“Got a mouthful,” the other answered. “She don’t know it, but she knows a sight too much, that girl. A darned sight too much.”

Quite ignorant of the fact that they had been overheard, Inspector Stevens and Sergeant Phillips went carefully through every detail of Clare’s actions from the time she stumbled over the prostrate body to the moment she left the telephone box after phoning for help.

“You say you couldn’t see this new arrival on the scene?”

“No. I thought at first it was the wounded man sitting up.”

“Why did you think he was capable of that? You have told us you thought his pulse was very weak.”

Clare flushed. No one that evening had given her the least credit for her efforts to help.

“I knew my tourniquet had stopped the bleeding,” she said. “I thought he might be improving.”

“I see. And then?”

“This other person must have seen me coming back.”

“Heard, you mean?”

Clare shook her head.

“He wouldn’t have heard my footsteps. I slipped my shoes off to run up to the phone box more easily.”

She pushed forward her foot in its high-heeled evening slipper. For the first time the inspector gave her a friendly smile.

“So you were part of the way back when this other character noticed you. Wouldn’t he have seen those shoes of yours near the wounded man?”

“He might have. Yes. Anyway, it was just when I could see it was someone else crouching over the patient that he looked up and saw me. I still couldn’t see the face distinctly. It just looked a white blob.”

“And then?”

“He jumped up and ran away. I shouted, but he didn’t stop.”

“You say ‘he’ all the time. Are you sure it was a man?”

“No,” said Clare, slowly, “not absolutely sure. So many women wear trousers, and he had a longish overcoat on. But he took very long strides and the shoes looked big. I just thought it was a man.”

“Right. And then?”

Her voice rose indignantly as she answered.

“He’d undone my stole — my bandage. The tourniquet was useless. I tried to stop the bleeding again by manual pressure. Then the ambulance came and they had the proper things for a tourniquet and they got it fixed very quickly. Much better than I’d been able to do with—”

She broke off. She had been fumbling in the pocket of her coat for the little oblong box in order to show them that she had indeed done her best and might have been more successful if her work had not been ruined. But before she could get it out, the door of the room opened and Dan strode in. His face was white and exhausted and angry. He paid no attention to Clare but spoke to Inspector Stevens.

“He’s dead,” he said. “D’you want to see him, or shall I tell the ambulance to take him on to the mortuary?”

The three officers got to their feet.

“He hasn’t been identified, has he?” the inspector asked.

“Not by me,” Dan answered with an irritated note in his voice.

“Of course not. Too busy trying to save his life, doctor. I know that.”

“There was practically nothing in his pockets,” Clare said, breaking in. “I was looking for something to use as a tourniquet. There was nothing except a pen and—”

“The ambulance chaps may have something,” said Dan, interrupting her. Neither he nor the police paid any attention to what she had been trying to say.

“I’ll come right away,” the inspector said.

He walked off and Clare heard him say something about phoning the pathologist. And then Sister Meadows was beside her saying, “It’s all over, I’m afraid. Bad luck you got mixed up in it.”

“I did what I could,” Clare said. She was shaking now, from shock, tired and cold and profoundly unhappy. “I did try,” she repeated.

“Of course you did,” Sister assured her. “You’d better get home now.”

Clare nodded.

“I’ll get hold of a taxi for you,” Sister said, but as she moved with the girl to the door, Sergeant Phillips appeared again.

“We’ll run you back, nurse,” he said. “Can’t have you out on your own at this hour.”

Mechanically Clare looked at her watch. Half-past one. No wonder she felt dead on her feet.

With a brief goodnight to Sister she walked with the sergeant to the police car still parked in the casualty bay. The ambulance had gone. Dan was nowhere to be seen, nor the divisional inspector.

During the drive Clare said, “Don’t you know who he was or anything? Was it a fight?”

Sergeant Phillips was silent for a long time, then he said, “In the papers tomorrow you’ll see a paragraph on a row at a nightclub in Quarry Place. That’s about half a mile from Stone Street. There were several arrests but no casualties in the club itself.”

“Was this man there?”

“That’s one of the things we’ll have to find out,” said Sergeant Phillips. “He could’ve been. But not necessarily.”

Clare did not ask any more questions. She knew they would not be answered. Besides, her thoughts now were with Dan. He had been brusque and strange and had made no attempt to see her when his work on the wounded man had failed and he could do no more. Perhaps he had to see another urgent case. Yet he had asked her not to go until he had spoken to her. He could have sent her a message. What did he expect her to do? Anyway, these officers had told her to go with them.

The earlier happiness of that evening was now destroyed, she felt. Probably Dan was beginning to regret having been carried away. In her deeply depressed mood and profound emotional reaction, she was ready to believe that he did not really love her, had never really loved her. The future looked bleak.

Arrived at the Association hostel’s front door, Sergeant Phillips escorted Clare in and stood beside her as she spoke to the night receptionist at the desk, sitting ready to deal with all calls.

Sergeant Phillips appeared to be satisfied with the brief conversation between the two girls. He wanted to see if I was genuine, Clare thought. The sergeant asked the receptionist a few brief questions about the organization and then turned to Clare.

“We shall want to keep in touch with you, Miss Marshall,” he said.

“This is my permanent address,” she answered, “and I’m not on a case at present.”

“Fair enough,” Sergeant Phillips said. “You’ll be hearing from us.”

When he had gone, the receptionist turned to Clare.

“Sister Hood wants to see you,” she said. “She didn’t tell me what it was for, but there’ve been two emergency calls this evening.”

“Thank you, Molly.”

Clare went towards Sister’s office at the other side of the hall. As she did so she felt for her handkerchief. She had been on the verge of tears ever since she left the hospital. She did not want Sister to notice anything.

As she fumbled in the pocket of her coat, her fingers closed round the oblong box. She had not given it a thought since the moment Dan had interrupted her interview with the police to announce the unknown man’s death.

Well, it couldn’t be helped. There was always tomorrow. Tomorrow she would hand the thing over to Sergeant Phillips or the inspector, and perhaps then they would understand that she had done her best and not such a bad best at that.

II

Sister Hood was an elderly woman whose heavy build had increased with the years until now, at sixty-seven, she found it a labor to move about at all; to hurry was impossible. So she had given up active nursing and, since she had no objection to permanent night work, was filling a much needed and most useful place at the Nursing Association headquarters and hostel. Harassed G.P.’s and hysterical relatives found her quiet, professional manner and deep fruity voice very soothing in the middle of the night when a nurse was required immediately to bring order and comfort to a home suddenly stricken, where the victim would not or could not be admitted at once to a hospital or nursing home. Sister Hood knew exactly what was needed in each case. She had spent a lifetime nursing in the homes of the wealthy and unwise. She understood their peculiar, often arrogant attitude to disease; their utter indignant helplessness in the face of something unpleasant that could not immediately be removed by the use of money. By supplying a young, well-trained, efficient nurse, she could help to restore this lost sense of power. The Association’s fees were very high and all of the nurses highly competent. Moreover, Sister Hood was ready to satisfy, if she could, any individual wishes expressed by doctor or patient. Which was the reason for her demand to see Clare Marshall the minute she got back to the hostel.

“Molly said you wanted to speak to me,” Clare said wearily, after knocking on Sister Hood’s office door and receiving her deep-voiced permission to enter.

“Gracious heavens,” exclaimed Sister, looking at the wan apparition that came slowly into the room. “What on earth have you been doing to yourself?”

Clare explained in as few words as possible. Sister Hood pressed the bell on her desk. When Molly came in she said, “Coffee for Nurse Marshall, at once, in here.”

“Yes, Sister,” the girl said and disappeared.

“But I don’t want any coffee,” Clare protested. “Ovaltine would be more to the point. Actually I don’t want anything except a hot bath and my bed.”

“I wish I could let you have it,” said Sister, kindly. “The bed, I mean. You can have the bath. You look as if you need it. But there’s a case—”

“Not for me!” Clare cried indignantly. “Not straight on top of this!”

“I’m sorry,” Sister told her, “but it’s you or nobody. And you know our rules. Any preference as to which nurse must be met, if physically possible. You aren’t on another case. And you’re here now.”

Clare was young, with all the reserves of spirit and energy that belong to the young, strong, and healthy. Moreover, she was intensely interested in her chosen profession and avid for experience. At the same time, she was desperately tired and depressed, and her self-confidence had been sadly bruised.

“It’s medical,” said Sister Hood. “A country home for neurotics where—”

“Oh no,” Clare exclaimed.

“Wait a bit. One of their regulars went off tonight with an acute appendix, and they can’t manage without a full staff. They asked for you by name.”

“Why? I mean, how did they know my name?”

“Recommended by Clarendon House convalescent home.”

“That place! I was only there three weeks. I didn’t think I’d made any impression at all. It was deadly dull, but the food was marvelous. The patients were paying the earth, and there wasn’t much the matter with any of them.”

“That would be highly desirable at a convalescent home,” said Sister Hood with a faint smile.

“It sounds just like the place that wants me now. But I still don’t see who—”

“A Lady Ede mentioned you. She liked you very much.”

Clare laughed.

“Did she, indeed? She nearly bit my head off every time I answered her bell. It rang practically every five minutes.”

“But you did answer it?”

“I suppose so. If I was on her landing. They switched us round a good deal. To prevent us hitting the real terrors on the head, I expect.”

“Well, never mind. She liked you, and she must have a friend at this place that wants you now. Or else they’ve been asking round.”

“Asking round, most likely,” said Clare. “Lady Ede doesn’t have friends. Only acquaintances and enemies.”

The coffee was brought in, and Clare began to sip it gratefully. If she had to go out straight away on another case, she needed something to keep her awake, she decided. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing to go away at once. Might shake Dan up. Or finish the thing before it had really begun. She knew in her heart that it would not be so simple for herself. His image filled the whole background of her mind even as she argued the merits of the new assignment. She knew the image would remain for a long time; a fixed object of desire.

The telephone bell rang. Sister Hood picked up the receiver. Molly’s voice said, “They’ve called again from Granville House, Sister.”

“Put them through.”

Covering the mouthpiece with her hand, Sister Hood said, “Here they are again.”

She listened. Presently she said, “Yes, I have her here now.” She paused, looking across her desk at Clare. The girl did look quite exhausted, she thought. For a second she hesitated; not on Clare’s account — a nurse must go on till she drops — but for the reputation of the Association. Their nurses never broke down, never had, never would.

Apparently the voice at the other end grew sharp, insistent.

“Will you go?” Sister asked Clare, surprised at herself for her own uncertainty. The girl nodded. “Nurse Marshall will be able to come,” she said into the receiver. “Can you give us directions — railway station—”

There was a long spate of words at the other end. Finally the call ended, and Sister Hood put down the receiver.

“They are sending a car here for you,” she said. “Be ready in half an hour.”

“Yes, Sister,” Clare answered. She got to her feet stiffly and walked out of the room.

A hot bath and the developing effect of the coffee revived her to some extent, but she was still desperately tired and weighed down by a heavy sadness whenever her thoughts turned to Dan, which happened every few minutes. But her training helped her. There was no question of giving in to either her feelings or bodily discomfort. She put on her uniform with automatic speed and neatness and stuffed her night things, cosmetics, and sponge bag into the suitcase that always stood ready at her bedside, packed with essential medical equipment. Then she stood looking about her, trying to concentrate on the job in hand and decide if she had packed everything she needed.

Her soiled evening clothes lay on the bed. She looked at them with disgust and felt tears pricking her eyes. The dress might well be ruined. Not only was it bloodstained and dirty, but there was a ragged tear near the hem in one place. Perhaps she had caught it in the ambulance door or pulled it getting up from kneeling on the pavement. She had been much too intent upon the wounded man to notice anything else at the time.

She bundled up the dress and pushed it into the large paper bag that had held it when she took it from the shop where she had bought it only a week ago. Poor dress. It had been a brief extravagance, indulged in solely for the hospital dance and Dan. A waste of everything, she thought bitterly. But she found a pencil and a bit of paper and wrote, “For the cleaner, please,” on it. They would find it when they did her room. They were considerate over this sort of thing.

Having settled the fate of the dress, she put her evening shoes in the wall cupboard. They seemed to have suffered less than the dress. The stockings went into the wastepaper basket. The coat—

She plunged her hand into the pocket. The little oblong box was still there. Furious with herself now for having forgotten to give it to the police, she stared at it, wondering how to rectify her mistake.

It was made of silver, she saw, with a hinged lid that bore a coat of arms in relief. A snuffbox, obviously.

She pulled open the lid, but instead of the brownish substance she expected to find, the box was nearly empty, with a few grains of white powder clinging to the corners and inside the hinge.

Well, anyway, she decided, Sister Hood must give it to Sergeant Phillips. She would take it down to her straight away.

While she was getting out an envelope from her writing case in which to put the snuffbox, her room telephone bell began to ring. Sister Hood’s voice said, “Are you ready? The car has come for you. The chauffeur is here in the hall. He says he thinks it’s urgent.”

“Coming,” Clare answered briefly.

The envelope was in her hand. She pushed the snuffbox into it, snatched up her suitcase and handbag, and ran down to the hall.

A man in chauffeur’s uniform was waiting there. He came forward to take her bag.

“I must just see Sister,” she said breathlessly, meaning to go into the office. But at that moment Sister Hood came out.

The man, holding the suitcase, was waiting for her. Clare decided that it would hardly do to ask Sister to give her envelope to the police. The chauffeur would be sure to report such a startling request to his employers, and the Association might suffer. So she handed over the envelope, saying merely, “Could you keep this for me, Sister? I’ll be writing,” and, after exchanging goodbyes, followed the man out to the car.

She was shown to a large, very comfortable back seat and almost at once fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The noise of doors opening and shutting and voices speaking loudly and rapidly drew her up with some violence from the depths. She felt confused and numb. Her head ached, her mouth was dry. When she moved her head, trying to lift it from the cushion of the car, a searing pain shot down her neck, making her gasp. She realized that she had crumpled up in her sleep and her head had fallen sideways, and now she was stiff all over.

While she was still moving her head from side to side, trying to shake off both the stiffness and the woolliness in her brain, the door of the car was opened, a light came on over her head, and she found herself staring at the chauffeur, who was looking at her with a grin on his face.

“Time to wake up, miss,” he said. “Out like a light, wasn’t you?”

She tried to smile and, as he still held the door open, moved across to it and forced her unwilling body to leave the car. Once on her feet with the cold night air blowing into her face, she began to feel better.

The house before which the car had halted seemed to be large and set in trees. There was no sign of a road where she stood, so she concluded that they had come up a drive, though she could not see clearly how it lay. At any rate, the car stood in a cleared space among trees, and underfoot there seemed to be gravel.

She followed the chauffeur, who was now alone, to the open door of the house. Two steps led up to a pillared porch and, beyond, a fine broad door with a charming fanlight. Late eighteenth century, Clare thought as she walked through into a well proportioned hall.

The chauffeur put her suitcase down near a chair. Where was everyone, Clare wondered, remembering the voices that had awakened her. She looked about quickly. An empty hall, an empty, wide, and graceful staircase. Then suddenly a clatter of heels and from behind the staircase a woman came hurrying.

She was dressed in a white overall over a dark skirt of some thin material. Not a nurse, Clare decided, with those shoes, stiletto heels and very pointed toes. Her face had an anxious look as she rounded the corner, but when she saw Clare, she hurried forward with a very bright smile.

“So you’ve arrived, nurse. We’re so glad. Nurse — Marshall, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Clare. “And this is Granville House?”

The woman nodded. She did not seem to know what to do next. She must be one of the domestic staff, Clare thought, but all the same, she ought to know how to introduce a new nurse to the sister in charge of the patients, or at any rate show her to her room.

“Perhaps you will have my bag taken up to my room,” she suggested, “and then I had better see Sister or the staff nurse or whoever is on duty.”

The woman looked blank for a moment, and Clare had a queer feeling that she had not listened to a single word she had said to her but was occupied with some problem in her own mind. But she must have noticed the change in Clare’s expression, for she suddenly smiled at her again and said, “Dr. Freeman would like to see you straight away. Follow me, please.”

Leaving her suitcase but taking her handbag with her, Clare moved after the woman in the overall to a door at the back of the hall. She passed a handsome clock standing on a wide table, and looking at it as she went by, she saw to her astonishment that the time was half-past five. Quickly glancing at her own watch, she found this confirmed. So she had spent over three hours on the journey. She had slept for more than three hours.

The woman knocked at the door and waited. A man’s voice answered.

“Go in,” the woman said. “Dr. Freeman is waiting for you.”

Clare passed in and heard the door shut behind her.

The room was not large. It might originally have been a study, or perhaps a morning room for the lady of the house. The furniture was undistinguished but good, of a solid Victorian type. To Clare’s surprise it looked singularly uncared for, lacking polish of any kind, the brasses brown or green with damp and neglect, the wood dull and faded. The desk at which Dr. Freeman sat had an obvious film of dust wherever his papers were not lying.

She took all this in briefly with a little shock of surprise, wondering what sort of establishment this was where the domestic arrangements and competence were so lacking. But her attention was at once taken from her surroundings by the impact of Dr. Freeman himself, whose eyes had fixed upon her the moment she entered the room and remained there as she walked slowly forward to the desk.

He was a goodlooking, youngish man, she noticed, with very dark hair and pale skin, suggesting Celtish blood. But his eyes, which still held hers, were the most remarkable thing about him, for they were of a very light brown, almost amber color, she decided. When the light from his desk lamp caught them, they shone momentarily with a pale, blank, cold light. When he moved, she saw the intelligence, equally cold but sharply personal, fixed on her. Certainly for a doctor running a nursing home he was unusually and definitely disturbing.

He spoke before she had quite reached the broad table he was using as a desk, not getting up but stretching out a hand towards her. She moved up to take it, flushing a little at this unconventional welcome.

“It’s terribly good of you to fill the gap so promptly,” he said. It was a pleasant voice, and the smile that followed the words had considerable charm. Clare felt reassured.

“We really are in a bit of a jam,” he continued, still watching her closely. “That was Miss Hunter, my housekeeper, who met you in the hall. At the moment her domestic staff is cut by half and my nursing staff is down to one. Devastating.”

He spread his hands in a gesture that reminded Clare of her last brief Mediterranean holiday. She felt it was time she said something herself.

“How many patients have you?” she asked.

It seemed to her a very reasonable question, but she saw a shade of annoyance flash across Dr. Freeman’s handsome face, instantly replaced by another charming smile.

“When we’re full, we can manage fourteen,” he said, “but I’m happy to say we have sent out several cases cured in the last few weeks and our numbers are down to eight.”

It was on the tip of Clare’s tongue to say, “Then why do you need more than one nurse?” Dr. Freeman evidently read her mind, for he went on, “We need you as a special — for one particularly bad case. She has been with me a fortnight. She was very disturbed when she came in, and I have her under fairly deep sedation.”

“I see,” Clare said. “You want me to take over straight away?”

Dr. Freeman jumped to his feet. “If you’re not too tired,” he said, adding after a noticeable pause, “from your journey.”

“No, I’m not tired now,” Clare assured him. She did not think it necessary to add that she had slept all the way from London.

Dr. Freeman walked out of the room ahead of her, leaving her to deal with the door. When she had closed it, she saw he had already reached the foot of the stairs. Her suitcase was still standing beside the chair in the hall.

“Some of my things are in my case,” she said. “I thought they — Miss Hunter, that is — would have had it sent up to my room.”

Dr. Freeman paused, looking down at her over the banisters.

“You’ll find everything you need in your patient’s room,” he said. “But I’ll see that Miss Hunter deals with your case.”

Clare wanted to insist upon having her own things with her and was quite prepared to take up the case herself, but something about Dr. Freeman subdued argument or even mild protest and she turned meekly up the stairs, leaving the suitcase where it was.

The patient’s room was on the first floor, a large, beautiful room as well cared for as the doctor’s office had been neglected and scruffy.

On the bed lay a woman with a thin, lined face. Her grey curls, tangled and unbrushed, framed the worn features in an untidy bush. Her face was very pale, the lips blue. Her breathing was slow and shallow.

Clare moved quickly to the bedside, lifting the limp hand and feeling for the pulse. The woman did not move at all. She was deeply unconscious.

For the second time that night Clare was shocked by the feeble flutter under her fingers. She lifted an eyelid. The pupil was barely visible; a mere dot in the grey-blue iris. This was another shock. They had been piling it on, all right. Dangerously so, she thought.

She looked up. Dr. Freeman was standing on the other side of the bed with his strange light brown eyes again fixed upon her.

“She seems to be very deeply under,” Clare said. The words sounded ridiculous. Why didn’t she say at once that she thought the patient was dangerously drugged?

Dr. Freeman calmly felt the pulse himself.

“Nice and quiet,” he said. “She was uncontrollable — this morning. You won’t have any trouble with her for the next few hours.”

While he was speaking, Clare was staring down at the woman on the bed. She had realized that the face was vaguely familiar, but try as she would, she could not place her.

“I... I seem to have seen her before,” she said, “only I can’t think where.”

She was still looking at the patient and so did not see the sudden flash of anger that again swept over Dr. Freeman’s face, nor the sudden movement of his hand towards his hip.

“I wonder if she ever came to visit Lady Ede while I was looking after her,” Clare went on. “I don’t remember all her visitors. People look so different when they’re ill and in bed. But it was Lady Ede who gave my name, wasn’t it?”

Dr. Freeman’s tense pose relaxed, and he met Clare’s uplifted eyes with his very attractive smile.

“That must be it,” he said. “Lady Ede, of course.”

He continued to look at her. Clare tried to keep her professional manner quietly undisturbed, but she could not help her color’s changing under this frankly admiring gaze.

“What’s your name?” he asked at length, in a soft voice quite different from anything she had heard before.

The question was so surprising in view of all the telephone messages that Clare laughed. This was not the expected response and Dr. Freeman frowned suddenly, which helped her still more.

“Didn’t they tell you?” she said. “Marshall. I thought that was how Lady Ede—”

“Of course. Of course,” he said, seeing his mistake and instantly correcting it. “Naturally I meant your first name. This is a friendly establishment. It helps the patients if we are not too formal.”

“Oh, that. Clare,” she answered indifferently.

“Mine is Charles,” he answered, and he turned on his heel and went out of the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Clare moved to the bed. There was a good deal she did not understand and did not like about this curious nursing home, but she felt sure that Charles Freeman was a genuine, if possibly cranky, doctor, and there was no doubt at all about the condition of her patient. Turning back the bedclothes, she examined her gently and thoroughly. Then she pulled up the sheet and blankets again and stood looking down.

Perhaps this was a mental case of some sort, a woman who had been in a maniacal frenzy. There were bruises in plenty on her body, which might have been self-inflicted or caused by the handling necessary to restrain her. Her hair was matted and tangled, her skin far from clean. But the hypodermic needlemarks on her left arm and both thighs? Could so many and such clearly old scars have all been treatments? Clare was sure they were not. She had had quite a lot of experience with dope addicts in the course of her private nursing, and she was certain in her own mind that this woman was one, and had been addicted for some considerable time, possibly years.

Having nothing better to do, she set about cleaning up her patient. It could do her no harm if she handled her gently and avoided too much movement, and it might make her feel much more comfortable when she came round from the injection.

The room she was in had a bathroom attached. Clare was pleased to find there was hot water in the tap, though the towels were not very fresh and the bath had a marked soap rim showing it had not been cleaned out for some time. The domestic crisis must be quite as bad as Dr. Freeman had suggested, she thought.

But she was able to carry out her plan for making the patient more comfortable and was pleased to notice when she had finished that her pulse had improved and her color with it. Evidently the effects of the drug were passing off. Perhaps in another hour or two she would be able to give some account of herself.

Again Clare went round the room, this time to see if there were any provision for feeding her patient. There was nothing on either the bedside table or another table under one of the two windows. But in a cupboard that formed part of a large old fashioned wardrobe she found a bottle of milk, a packet of biscuits, a piece of old, hard cheese, and a tin of drinking chocolate. On the hearth there were an electric fire, an electric kettle, and a hot plate. A small saucepan stood beside the latter. The fire was on, but the plug that served it had a three-way switch that could take the other apparatus. Clare spent some time making these investigations and deciding that she need not go down for more stores at present. The milk seemed to be fresh, and the biscuits would obviously not be needed.

When she had finished, she looked at her watch and was surprised to find the time was already nearly eight in the morning. The night had gone by very quickly. She went to the windows to draw back the heavy curtains. Outside, the cold November dawn laid a grey hand on the gold and bronze of late autumn leaves, but there was no mist and the rolling hills, their hollows filled with clumps of trees, marched away into the distance.

But not to the horizon. In a gap Clare saw, to her immense surprise, a straight grey line, a flat grey surface below. It was quite unmistakable. She was looking at the sea, and that sea could not be more than five or six miles from where she stood.

She left the window and sat down near the fire, holding out her hands to it to warm the sudden chill that had struck through her whole body. For the address she had left at the hostel — the address where everyone expected her to be, where the police were to keep their contact with her, where Dan, if he still wanted her, would find her — was in Berkshire, and that county was not, any part of it, within six miles or so of the open sea.

She jumped up again and went to the window once more. The light was increasing; a faint blue showed directly above, and away to the left the grey was turning to white. That was where the sun lay still hidden, so straight ahead she must be looking south. Could that line, that flat grey-blue surface, be a lake, or the river Thames? Her geography was sketchy, but she felt doubtful of this. And then she saw a faint smoke line above a small black smudge and her first conclusion was proved. There was a ship out there, far away. It was no lake, no river that she was looking at.

She went back to the fire once more, determined to think the thing out calmly. She had arrived at this place, this Granville House, at half-past five, having left London a little after two. Why had she not worked this out before? The car had spent over three hours on the journey, so she must have come at least a hundred miles. She could not therefore be in Berkshire, but a great deal farther from London. Where was she? Why had she slept too soon, before she had noticed how they left town? Was she on the east coast or the south? Not the east, for she had already seen that the water lay straight ahead of her view from the window, and that the sun would rise to the left of it. On the east coast the sun would have been ahead or to the right. A hundred miles from London. Anywhere from Kent to — where? Where was she? Why had they said Berkshire and brought her to this unknown place?

A murmur began to fill the room, a babble that grew in intensity. Clare hurried to the bedside, discarding her personal bewilderment and fear in her concern for her patient.

The woman stopped trying to speak and gazed up at her, at first with terror in her eyes.

“I’m Nurse Marshall,” the girl said gently and slowly. “I’m to look after you until you are better.”

The frightened look faded slowly. A trembling hand came out to take Clare’s.

“I’ll get you a hot drink,” Clare said. “Then you’ll feel better.”

She was surprised that the woman had recovered so much after being so deeply unconscious, but it confirmed her view that she was an addict. The immediate effect of what must have been a very heavy dose was severe, but her body’s acquired tolerance had dealt with it swiftly.

Clare set about heating some milk and added the powdered chocolate. There was no cup in the room, but a plastic beaker in the bathroom served well enough.

The woman in the bed was too weak and still too dazed to sit up, but with Clare supporting her, she first sipped and later drank avidly until the cup was empty. Clare settled her back on her pillows and tucked her up. Then she took the beaker and saucepan away to wash them up in the bathroom. When she went back to the bedside, the patient was asleep, her breathing steady and normal, a faint pink flush on her wasted cheeks, her dry lips no longer looking quite so cracked and rough as when Clare had first seen her.

A few minutes later the door opened and a youngish woman in a nurse’s uniform came in. She was carrying a small tray covered with a cloth. Clare guessed that it held another injection and was about to speak when the other said, “Good morning. You are the relief nurse — Marshall — aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Clare said. “I got here early this morning. How is — where is—”

She was going to ask how the nurse with the emergency appendix was getting on, but at once she decided to ask, first, where this house was and why she had been given a wrong address. But she did not have a chance to finish either of her questions properly.

“My name is Wilcox,” the other nurse said. “Kay Wilcox. You must be whacked. I’ll take you along to your room. They’ve put your things up there.”

She walked up to the bed and looked down at the patient.

“Quiet enough at the moment,” she said.

“She’s asleep,” Clare answered. She would have added that she had washed and tended and fed her, but Nurse Wilcox had already turned away and was showing her out to the landing.

Her room was up another flight of stairs and was small compared I with the one she had just left. She was relieved to see her suitcase lying on a chair.

“You must be famished,” Nurse Wilcox said. “I must get back to that woman. But if you go downstairs you’ll find Daisy — Miss Hunter — and she’ll have a meal for you. Breakfast, I expect. I’ve just had mine. You ought to have something before you turn in.”

“Of course,” said Clare coldly. Nurse Wilcox did not speak at all in the way she should. Calling her patient “that woman”!

“What is her name?” she asked.

“Hunter. Miss Hunter.”

“I don’t mean the housekeeper. I mean the patient.”

“Oh, her?” said Nurse Wilcox. She did not answer the question, but moved about the room vaguely. “I think you’ve got everything you want,” she said. “We’re a bit disorganized on the domestic side, so you’ll have to scrounge round for yourself. See you at eight tonight when you take over.”

She was gone. Clare picked up her handbag and hurried after her, but there was no one in sight on the landing outside and no steps sounded anywhere. Either she had run quickly and quietly down the stairs, or she had gone into another room on the same landing.

Clare walked slowly downstairs. There was one thing she must do at once. Find a telephone and tell them at the hostel that her address was wrong. Perhaps that would not be much help, but she decided not to try to find out the correct address before phoning. She wanted no one in this strange place to know why she was ringing up before she made this basic fact clear to them at the Association. Afterwards, the fact that they knew this would be a lever to get the right address out of them.

When she reached the hall, she was still determined to follow this course. But there was no telephone there as she had hoped, and she realized that she must ask where she could find one. Perhaps Miss Hunter could tell her? Or would it be better to go straight to Dr. Freeman in his office and demand an explanation?

She decided on this latter course, but she was not halfway across the hall when Miss Hunter appeared, saying at once, “Oh, there you are, nurse! I’ve got your meal ready on the stove. Will you have it in the kitchen where it’s warm, or shall I bring it up?”

“I’ll come to the kitchen,” Glare said. She realized suddenly how cold and hungry she was and decided that Miss Hunter, though still looking less like a housekeeper than a third-rate variety artist, might be coaxed or surprised into revealing the whereabouts, first, of a telephone and, second, of the house itself.

The meal turned out to be a generous helping of cereal followed by bacon and egg, synthetic coffee, toast and marmalade. Apart from the coffee Clare enjoyed it all and felt much better when she had finished it. She was sleepy now but still determined to follow her plan.

“Where can I find a telephone?” she asked. “I want to ring up my Association. It’s a rule we have,” she added, to give force to her request.

Miss Hunter looked confused.

“The phone’s in Dr. Freeman’s room,” she said. “He’s out this morning.”

“Can’t you take me there?” Clare asked. “Even if he is out.”

“No,” said Miss Hunter, seeming to gain courage. “No, I can’t.”

Clare left the kitchen, still more mystified. She wanted to sleep more than anything in the world, but she was bent on getting in touch with the hostel before she did so.

The hall was still quite deserted. Deliberately Clare went to the door she remembered from the night before, knocked, and receiving no answer, turned the handle. The door was locked.

This was a minor shock. Miss Hunter must have spoken the truth about his being out. It was not very strange that he should lock his office. He might have important papers there, besides money and drugs. But if the only telephone in the house was in his room and the door was locked, what happened if someone rang up Granville House? Miss Hunter could not be right. There must be an extension. Probably more than one.

Clare went slowly upstairs. It seemed weeks since she had last slept, months since the hospital dance and its horrible sequel. There was much in this curious new job to disturb, even frighten, her, but at the moment she knew she must rest, if only to be fit for duty that evening. Before she lay down in bed, she wound up her watch. When she looked at the watch on waking from her deep sleep she saw that it was half-past six, and the sky outside the window was quite dark.

She found a bathroom on her own landing, bathed, and dressed quickly. The sleep had done her good. She felt alert, clear-headed, and more than ever determined to get in touch with her Association.

When she was ready, she wrote a brief letter to Sister Hood, telling her to give the police the envelope she had left with her. She explained briefly how and where she had found the box and the use she had made of it. She stressed the urgency of getting in touch with the police at once and ended her letter with the words, “I am going to ring you up now, if I can, because I saw the sea from my patient’s window this morning. You must have got the wrong county. Where am I, I wonder. Love, Clare.”

She sealed up her letter in an envelope, stamped it, and took it downstairs. Again Miss Hunter met her in the hall. This time the housekeeper seemed to be waiting for her.

“I’ve got your dinner waiting,” she said. “Nearly came up to see if you’d overslept. He’s getting impatient.”

Clare stared at her.

“What d’you mean?”

“The doctor. Wants his dinner.”

“We all dine together?”

“Last two days it’s been him and Kay, Nurse Wilcox. He said not to wait for her after you were down. It’s after seven.”

The impatient doctor must have heard their voices in the hall, for a door, not that of his office, opened and he stood framed in the doorway.

“There you are, Nurse Marshall,” he said evenly. “Come along in. Dinner, Miss Hunter. I’m starving.”

Clare followed him into a dining room where two men and three women were standing near a blazing fire.

“My convalescents,” he said in a low voice to Clare before leading her forward and introducing her all round. Evidently these people were dining, too.

There was nothing remarkable about any of them. They were all middle-aged, thin for the most part, with the vague eyes and languid manners of people recovering from an illness. Conversation was intermittent, rather forced, and very dull.

At the beginning Dr. Freeman and one of the men took the dishes from Miss Hunter through a hatch in the wall evidently connecting the room with the kitchen. Clare insisted upon helping, and Dr. Freeman was persuaded to sit down. The staff problem, Clare thought, is worse than they make out. There isn’t anyone except our Daisy, she decided.

At the end of the meal the convalescents trooped out of the room, and Clare and Dr. Freeman put the dishes through the hatch.

“I want to ring up my Association,” she said firmly when they had finished.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he answered. “The phone packed up this morning. That was why I was away when you came down to see me.”

So Miss Hunter had told him about that, Clare thought.

“Then where is the nearest telephone?” she asked, moving across the hall to the front door.

“In the village. About a mile.”

She found the door was locked; not with an ordinary Yale, but something similar that did not open. Dr. Freeman’s pleasant voice came again.

“We have to keep it shut. For the patients, you know. And the main gates at the lodge. One of the rules to satisfy the local inhabitants.”

Clare was indignant.

“But that doesn’t apply to me. I want to post a letter as well.”

He held out his hand.

“Miss Hunter will put it in the box on her way home.”

“But she lives in, doesn’t she? I mean, she was here this morning — up, too — when I arrived.”

“She very kindly stayed on. It was a crisis.”

His voice and manner were compelling. Clare put her letter into his hand.

“We’re all at sixes and sevens, Clare,” he said. “Don’t make it more difficult for me. I hate to refuse you — anything.”

Her defeat prodded her.

“Then tell me where I am. I saw the sea from the window upstairs. This isn’t Berkshire. Where is it?”

Perhaps he expected the question. His face did not change. He was still smiling gently into her eyes.

“You’re due on duty,” he said. “It’s after eight. Nurse Wilcox won’t be pleased.”

“Where is this house?” she repeated obstinately.

He took her hand and led her to the foot of the stairs.

“They must have made a stupid mistake at your headquarters, to call it Berkshire,” he said, laying his other hand over hers and stroking it slowly.

Clare let her hand rest for a few seconds. She felt her determination slipping from her. What did it matter after all?

She sighed and pulled her hand away. He dropped both of his instantly.

“I must go up,” she said, slowly. “I only wondered—”

“Poor little Clare,” he mocked softly, then added in his more serious voice, “Dorset, of course, my dear.”

III

Three days had passed since the hospital dance at St. Edmund’s, and Dan Jackson was feeling acutely miserable, for no letter had arrived from Clare and it looked very much as if she were really fed up with him.

This did not surprise him because he knew it was all his own fault. The knowledge gave him no comfort, however. Quite the reverse. Why had he behaved like a lout, a clown, a sulky kid — anything but a man profoundly in love, as he knew his true self to be?

But no letter had come from her. He had written his, full of abject apology and pleading for forgiveness, on the evening of the very day she had gone to her new case. He had rung up the hostel first, hoping to speak to her, but had had to be content with getting her address instead. There could be no reason for her silence except continuing anger and affront.

On the third day he swallowed his pride and rang up the hostel again. It was possible they had given him a wrong address. They had been unwilling to give it at all until he had explained who he was and where he was calling from.

This time they refused flatly to repeat the address, advised him instead to send his letter to the hostel from where it would be forwarded, and rang off before he had even begun his vigorous protest.

That evening he was not on duty at St. Edmund’s, so he went along to the hostel to sort the matter out with them there.

Molly, the receptionist, listened to his guarded explanation with sympathy, feeling romance in the air. Also there had been quite a schemozzle about Nurse Marshall earlier in the day. All the telephone calls over her new case had been checked and rechecked. Her own notes of them had been taken away to Sister Hood’s office.

“Perhaps you’d like to speak to Sister Hood?” Molly said hopefully.

“Anyone who’s been in touch with Miss Marshall since she went on this case.”

Molly took him to the night sister’s office, where he repeated his request.

“I’m afraid that’s just the trouble here,” said Sister Hood, turning her worried face to him. “We have a strict rule that our nurses ring us up as soon as possible after they arrive at a new case, to make a report of the conditions, any complaints, any difficulties, and so on. Nurse Marshall did not do so.”

“Then you don’t even know—”

Sister Hood checked him with an uplifted hand.

“Let me finish, doctor. Clare went to this case very early in the morning, straight after she got back from that distressing episode she was mixed up in after your dance. I did not expect to hear from her until the evening at the earliest. Besides, she had said on leaving that she would write to me, so I thought she might be doing that.”

“But she didn’t? She hasn’t written to me, either, and—”

Again Sister Hood interrupted his agitated speech.

“She did not. Nor was there any letter from her this morning, nor by the second post. When I came on duty this evening, I asked about this. It puzzled me very much. It was not like Clare Marshall at all. So I rang up the telephone number we had been given.”

She paused; her worried frown had deepened, and Dan saw that her lips were trembling.

“What’s happened to her?” he cried. “Don’t stop. Tell me what’s happened.”

“The telephone number we were given does not exist,” said Sister. “Nor does the address.”

“Oh my God.”

Dan stared. It couldn’t be true. Not this sort of cheap melodrama. The white slave trade was a joke. Or wasn’t it? Even in these days could — surely such an elaborate setup, a nursing hostel—

“Please tell me what you’ve done so far,” he said in a low, tense voice that moved Sister Hood far more than his former insistent manner. “What have you done and what do you propose to do?”

She laid her clasped hands on the desk in front of her.

“Well, naturally, the first thing was to check the address. A telephone number can be mistaken. Granville House is the name—”

“Supposed name.”

“Perhaps. Anyway, Granville House. It is not in any of our lists, but of course there are a number of private nursing homes not listed anywhere, as I expect you know.”

Dan did not, and he seized on this.

“D’you mean to say you sent Clare off to a place you’d never heard of?”

“We were given a reference. This Granville House had been in touch, so they said, with Clarendon House convalescent home. Also a Lady Ede whom Clare had looked after there had mentioned her by name. It seemed perfectly aboveboard.”

“You didn’t check with this Lady Ede? Or the convalescent place?”

“At two in the morning? They asked for Clare by name. There was no reason to suppose there was anything wrong.”

“By name? But the place doesn’t exist!”

“They have not traced any nursing or convalescent home in Berkshire that has Clare on the staff.”

“They?”

“The police,” said Sister Hood. “Naturally, I informed them the minute I found it was impossible to contact Clare. I’m waiting to hear from them now. It’s particularly worrying because she told me they wanted to keep in touch with her. I suppose she’ll be wanted to give evidence at the inquest on that man.”

“Of course,” Dan answered. That had been another source of disappointment. He had hoped to see Clare within two days of the man’s death. But as they had not yet identified him, the inquest had been postponed.

“They’ll find her pretty quickly, won’t they?” he asked.

He looked so young and so miserable that Sister Hood was touched.

“Are you — I mean, have you any right to be so specially concerned about Miss Marshall?”

She spoke so gently and sympathetically that Dan felt he could confide in her.

“We were practically engaged,” he said. “My fault we weren’t actually. I didn’t like her being here. Wanted her to stay at St. Edmund’s. But that’s got nothing to do with this.” A disagreeable thought struck him. “Even if she couldn’t phone for some reason, she could write, whatever her address was. It wouldn’t stop letters arriving, would it? Unless—”

“Exactly,” said Sister Hood. “Inspector Stevens said the same thing.”

“That chap! You’ve seen him then?”

“No. I only started this a couple of hours ago. I’m expecting him to ring me back or call any time now.”

Dan began to feel they had taken the whole thing in hand between them and there was no place for him in it. So he would have to step back and watch as if he were not concerned, not torn with anxiety and dread, not longing to dash out and search—

“Didn’t she leave any messages — or anything?” he mumbled. This wall dropped in his path, this blank space without Clare, was unbearable. He remembered her pale, exhausted, unhappy face at the hospital when he had marched away from her with the inspector to show him the dead man. He remembered looking for her later and not finding her.

“Didn’t she say anything?” he pleaded.

Sister Hood remembered the envelope. It had lain in her desk waiting for Clare’s letter with instructions. She got it out now.

“She gave me this and told me she would write about it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. I shall give it to the police.”

Without saying a word, Dan snatched it up and tore open the envelope. “You had no right—” Sister began, but seeing the expression on her young visitor’s face, she stopped and stared instead at the object he held in his hands.

Dan was remembering what Clare had told him about her efforts to fix a tourniquet on the man’s leg. An oblong box, she had said. So this was it? Why hadn’t she given it to the police? It was a most valuable clue to the dead man’s identity.

“Can you let me have a sheet of paper?” he said. “Fairly stiff. And a soft pencil? Thanks.”

“What are you doing?” Sister asked. The poor boy seemed to be taking leave of his senses.

“I’m making an impression of the very interesting coat of arms on this silver snuffbox,” he answered. “Ever heard of brass rubbings? Of church monuments and that sort of thing? Well, this is a silver rubbing.”

He folded his piece of paper and put it away in his wallet.

“You can tell Inspector Stevens that Clare found that in the dead man’s pocket and used it to try to stop the hemorrhage. I don’t know why she kept it instead of handing it over. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you about it. She mentioned it to me. I hadn’t given it a thought till you produced it.”

He opened the box and held it towards Sister. “Not snuff of the usual kind,” he said. “But snuff of a sort, perhaps. Don’t lose those white grains, Sister. I think Inspector Stevens will be very, very interested.”

He got up.

“If he comes along tonight, tell him I’ll be at St. Edmund’s until—” He paused. Tomorrow was his half day off. He meant to use it to advantage. “I’ll be at St. Edmund’s in the morning,” he said, thanked her, and went away.

It was too late that evening to take any further action, but early the next morning, before he was completely bogged down in work, Dan made a telephone call and, during the time he was supposed to be at lunch, made his way north across the Thames to the Royal College of Arms, taking with him his rubbing of the lid of the snuffbox.

The research did not take long. The man who did it was courteous, interested, and gave Dan the impression that his true existence was in the Middle Ages or, if not quite so far back, at least in the seventeenth century.

“An old landed family, the Hethertons,” his informer told him. “Property in the Isle of Purbeck. They were never ennobled; they never seem to have taken an active part in any but local affairs. Cromwell suspected them of royalist leanings and imposed a heavy fine, disguised as a tax, but he took no drastic action, except, of course, the general one of destroying Corfe Castle. So they managed to hang onto their lands all through the Civil War and the Restoration and later the revolution that sent James II packing. In the eighteenth century there was a Hetherton who wrote minor verse and another who married into the aristocracy.”

He pointed out certain changes that had taken place in the coat of arms following this important event. Dan smiled and nodded, waiting for more. But nothing happened.

“What about now?” he asked. “Who owns it now? Where exactly is it?”

“Ah, now.” The other seemed to have lost interest. “Run down, like so many other old families. They didn’t make any changes in the last century, not after the new house was built. The original one was burned down in George Ill’s time and a new one, larger than the old, built. Far too big for modern times. Besides, the family is almost extinct, I believe. The sons went into the army a good deal after Waterloo, where one of them gained some distinction. The wars in the Crimea and South Africa and then in this century played havoc with them, I think. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything exact about their history after 1900. Are you a descendant?”

“No,” said Dan. “Just interested in — snuffboxes.”

“I see.” The man gave him a shrewd look, obviously summing up his youth and ignorance in the light of this assertion.

“Well, in this particular snuffbox,” Dan amended, deciding to be more explicit. “Where did you say the Hethertons’ place is?”

“Dorset. The Isle of Purbeck. Near a village called Hetherton Parva. I don’t know if it still exists — the house, I mean. I rather think the owner lives abroad.”

“And it’s a large house? Then he may have let it for use as a nursing home or something of that sort? Would it be called Granville House, by any chance?”

“Oh no,” the other said with a look of sheer repugnance. “Certainly not. Hetherton Hall.”

“Near Hetherton Parva. I’ll ask the A.A. how I get there. Thank you very much indeed, sir.”

“Not at all. A pleasure.”

It was Dan’s half day, his free afternoon and evening. He went straight back to the hospital, got out his very old but carefully tended Austin car, and drove away to the west.

The Isle of Purbeck. That strange piece of land lying between Weymouth and Swanage and Poole, with its feet in the sea, the trunks of its prehistoric forest showing in stripes on the rocks that dip into Weymouth Bay near Lulworth Cove. He knew this coast well but not the hinterland. He would find Hetherton easily, the A.A. told him, if he made for Wimborne and then skirted Poole Harbour and drove on southwest. There was a list of place names beside him on the passenger seat of the car, together with an ordnance survey map of Dorset, borrowed from a fellow resident at St. Edmund’s. It should not take him too long to get there, and the old bus was running very sweetly. Of course it was a shot in the dark. He ought really to leave it to the police. He’d look pretty silly if they’d already found Clare and brought her back. As they very well might have done. They’d have got all the dope on the snuffbox themselves by now. It was so easy for them. They didn’t have to drive all this way to find out if Clare was at the end of the Hetherton trail.

Inspector Stevens was a very worried man. The utter stupidity of that Sister Hood at the nursing hostel infuriated him until he remembered that Sergeant Phillips had been less than thorough in the work that he had done there. He had confirmed that the place was genuinely a nursing hostel, but had he warned the woman in charge that Nurse Marshall must be looked after carefully and at all times held available for questioning? No, he had not even seen the woman. So all this and a rocket on its way for him — or Phillips — probably both. If they didn’t find the girl in a matter of hours.

Dorset constabulary, very early the next morning, understood the urgency of the case and sensed the irritation behind the Yard’s request for local knowledge.

“The Hethertons are an almost extinct species,” the chief constable reported. “A sister and brother, both middle-aged. She’s hardly ever down here, and he’s abroad. Canada, to the best of my knowledge.”

“Canada! Thanks very much indeed.”

Explanations and suggestions followed, at the end of which the chief constable arranged that the local force would make inquiries. As a result of this, Constable Dunnet in Hetherton Magna set out on his bicycle at nine o’clock to ride the five miles to Hetherton Parva to start the ball rolling.

As he toiled up the last hill to the small hamlet, he was passed by a van that had the name of a London multiple store on its side. He found it halted outside the single shop in the village, which was where he intended to begin his own inquiries. As he was leaning his bicycle against the shop window, a man came out, climbed into the van, and drove off.

Dunnet was greeted by the owner of the shop as an old friend.

“Well, I was only saying to George last night it’s been a month gone since you was out here last.”

Mrs. Goodge leaned forward with both plump hands planted on the counter.

“How are you, and how’s Bee?”

“Fine,” he answered. “What they sent me up for is about the Hall.”

Mrs. Goodge’s smiling face changed and hardened.

“Bad to worse,” she said, cryptically.

“What way?”

“Well, now.” Mrs. Goodge leaned closer, and a spate of words began to flow from her wide mouth. Constable Dunnet, knowing he was quite unable to stop the flow or even slow it down, waited patiently, picking up a fact here and there, making an occasional inference.

At last Mrs. Goodge’s words faltered, slowed, trickled to a stop. She did not seem to be in the least out of breath. Constable Dunnet got out his notebook.

“The Hall has not been occupied to your knowledge for several months?”

“That’s right. Gone to wrack and ruin. Jim did the best he could with the garden and that till the wages stopped. Not been up since.”

“But there’s someone there now?”

“She come back couple of days since. Must be her. Tom says two cars went up the road three nights back. Then there’s this van just gone up.”

“Van that was outside when I got here?”

“That’s right. Young fellow wanted to know the way. Like her to get everything down from London. Not like in her father’s time. We supplied daily then. Granddad did, I mean.”

“How d’you know it’s her?”

“Young Jean goes on her bike past the Hall every morning. She works at Colter’s. Says she saw Miss Ellen’s bedroom window open. Curtains drawn, but window up top and bottom. In November, mind you.”

“Airing the room,” said Constable Dunnet. “This Miss Ellen — that’s Miss Hetherton?”

“That’s right. Called after her mother.”

“E double L—”

“H-E-L-E-N,” said Mrs. Goodge, severely.

“Right.”

Constable Dunnet put away his notebook.

“I’ll go up to the Hall,” he said.

“They keep it locked,” Mrs. Goodge told him. “You won’t get in past the gates. I know because Jim tried. He was upset when she turned him off the garden. Wanted to keep it going, wages or no wages. He managed to tidy the rose garden, he said; after that the gates was locked, and what with that and no wages, he give up.”

“They’ll have opened up for that van,” said Dunnet reasonably and rode off.

He was pleased to find this surmise correct. The gates stood open, there were fresh tiremarks on the drive. There were several sets of tiremarks, he noticed. Getting off his bicycle, he looked at them for a few minutes. Then he walked round the empty lodge, peering in at the windows. It had not been occupied for years, and the constable found no suggestion that it had been used in any way recently. Some of the windows were cracked. One was boarded up. When he had walked all round it, he took hold of his bicycle again and walked with it up the drive to the front door.

The van was parked to one side of it. Constable Dunnet was not surprised. The drive had a turning halfway along, clearly marked “Tradesmen,” but this had been ignored. Times had changed — on the whole for the better, he decided. Anyway, it made his work easier. If the van had gone round to the back of the house, he would not have known it really had called there.

He went up to the front door and rang the bell. He had to ring three times before he got an answer.

“Yes?” said the grey-haired woman who stood at last upon the doorstep.

Friend of the family, decided Dunnet. Or the lady herself, perhaps? He did not remember ever seeing Miss Hetherton. He had been in Hetherton Magna only the last six years.

“Is Miss Helen Hetherton in residence?” he asked, stumbling a little over the double aspirate.

The woman stared at him for a few seconds before replying. “Why d’you want to know?” she asked.

Why did he? Constable Dunnet had not the least idea. His orders were to check on Hetherton Hall. Who was there, if anyone. What they were doing.

“The Hall is usually unoccupied,” he began. “I... I understood Miss Hetherton had had trouble with trespassers in the grounds,” he invented, in a sudden spate of words.

“She hasn’t said so to me,” rejoined the woman.

This brought the conversation to another dead stop.

“Then Miss Hetherton is in residence? Could I speak to her for a few minutes?”

“No, you couldn’t!” The woman’s voice rose indignantly, and at that moment another figure appeared in the hall behind her, a greyhaired man also dressed in tweeds, also tall, thin, middle-aged.

“What’s all this about?” he asked mildly.

Constable Dunnet turned to him with relief.

“I just wanted a word with Miss Hetherton, sir, about an inquiry I’ve been asked to make.”

“What inquiry?”

Dunnet mentioned trespassers again; the man shook his head.

“I’m afraid you can’t see her,” he said. “She’s ill in bed.”

As the constable neither spoke nor moved, he went on, more irritably, “My wife — and I — are looking after her. We came down with her as guests—”

“Two — three nights ago?” said Dunnet, consulting his notebook.

The pair exchanged a quick glance before he looked up again.

“Yes,” said the woman. “Late at night. Helen was not feeling well then. We persuaded her to stay in bed the next morning. She is not up yet.”

“Had the doctor in?” asked the constable.

The man flashed an angry look at him but did not answer the question, clearly indicating that he would not admit such impertinence. Constable Dunnet decided he could go no further and had got what he had been sent to find.

“Well, thank you, sir,” he said. “I’ll contact Miss Hetherton in a day or two.”

In silence the pair watched him take up his bicycle again. This time he mounted and rode off down the drive, without looking back at all. From the dining room window Dr. Freeman watched him go. As the other two came into the room he said, without turning round, “Well done. It wasn’t as bad as you expected, was it?”

“No,” two voices agreed behind him.

“Trust Charles,” he said, keeping his light brown eyes still fixed on the retreating back of Constable Dunnet.

At Scotland Yard the most important part of Dunnet’s report was the presence of the London trade van at Hetherton Hall. Dunnet had memorized its number before he rang the bell at the hall, and though it did not correspond with any of the vans reported stolen, that meant very little. Number plates were easily changed. Checking and crosschecking produced some interesting and illuminating results.

“The van may be useful. We’ll get Dorset to trail it if it hasn’t left.”

So an innocent looking disguised police car drove past the Hall a little later that day and hid itself in a narrow side-turning. One of the men in it got out to reconnoiter the entrance. He found the main gates locked.

“So either the van’s gone and we wait here for keeps, or it’ll have to unlock when it comes out, which will give us a good start.”

They settled down to wait.

Early in the afternoon in London, Inspector Stevens had another interview with Sister Hood. Clare’s disappearance was getting her down. She had been unable to sleep and had got up very early, for her. The inspector called in answer to her frantic request for news.

“We’re doing all we can,” he said. “After all, we didn’t get any sort of lead on Miss Marshall till last night.”

“I know. It was my fault. I’ll never forgive myself. Why? Why should anyone want to kidnap Clare? Why?”

“Material witness,” said the inspector. “The man who was murdered has been identified now, thanks to Miss Marshall and young Dr. Jackson. Who seems to have disappeared himself, by the way.”

“Oh no!” cried Sister Hood.

“It’s his half day,” the inspector told her. “But no one knows where he thought of going, and he’s taken his car. Now, so far the other side don’t know we have the dead man’s name. At least we hope they don’t. Yet. But they don’t want Miss Marshall to give her evidence. Not till after the inquest. Probably not till the chief characters involved have made a getaway. The small fry we’ve pulled in don’t know much. We’re still ignorant of how they got Miss Marshall’s name and address. They worked fast, arranging that job for her.”

“I never thought — Lady Ede—”

“Of course, Sister, why should you? Actually they never contacted Lady Ede at all. They rang up the Clarendon House place and asked whom she had nursed there.”

“How did they know she was at Clarendon House?”

“You told them yourself. Remember? The first time they asked for her. They said was she free and you said yes, she’d left Clarendon House five days ago.”

“The devils.” Sister Hood stared at him with horrified eyes. The inspector nodded.

“We’re doing all we can,” he repeated. “If you get any sort of message of any kind, let us have it at once. And don’t worry too much. I don’t think they mean to harm her, only keep her out of the way.”

In his own mind he doubted the truth of his words. They were a coldblooded lot, devils as Sister had said. They’d stop at nothing if they thought it suited their book.

Meanwhile, at Granville House, Clare continued her rather curious and limited duties, taking the night shift in looking after the patient whose name she still did not know. She had not yet been able to ring up the Association herself, but Dr. Freeman, after telling her the line was not restored, said he had himself done so, reporting that she was well and happy. Had he done right?

He gave her such a boyish, amused smile as he said this that Clare found she could not be angry with him. For a second she thought of demanding to ring up Dan but recoiled from the idea. He still had not written to her, though it was now the third evening since she left London. Then there would be the usual difficulty of finding him in the hospital. No, let him make the first move if he wanted to see her again, ever. Probably he did not.

“Did you speak to Sister Hood?” she asked instead.

“She didn’t give her name. I phoned just after midday.”

“She wouldn’t be up then.”

Anyway, Sister would have got her letter, and she had no intention of discussing her horrible adventure with Dr. Freeman. He would be only too sympathetic. He could make himself very attractive when he wished. As now.

“You haven’t been out much since you came here, have you?” he said.

They were standing near the closed french windows of the drawing room, which looked out on to the neglected garden. Clare had not slept well that day and had got up at half-past three, determined to find some way of stilling her persistent heartache.

“No.”

She did not remind him of the locked door. She had not particularly wanted to go out for the last two days. It had rained a good deal, with a cold, blustering wind; not at all inviting. But this afternoon the pale sun already sinking in the west shone on the straggling Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums, almost choked with weeds in the borders.

“Can’t you find any gardeners?” she asked. “It seems a pity to let it go; it could be a lovely garden.”

Dr. Freeman was not at all put out.

“We use the garden for therapy,” he said. “In the summer we had it in perfect order. Three of my patients were quite enthusiastic. Come out and I’ll show you.”

He took her out through the front door, which, she saw to her surprise, was unlocked. In the drive a trade van was drawn up at the side of the gravel. The London name on the side pleased her. It seemed to be a link with her home.

They walked round the house and across a roughly mown lawn. Beyond, behind a yew hedge, lay a rose garden. This at least showed signs of fairly recent care.

“I told you,” said Dr. Freeman. “I hope to persuade more of them to take up gardening as a therapeutic exercise.”

“There aren’t many of them left,” said Clare, and was startled at the implications of what she had just said.

For it was true. Of the five convalescents she had met at her first dinner there, three seemed to have gone. Only the two Frosts had appeared at dinner the night before.

Dr. Freeman said nothing, but turned to walk back towards the house, taking her by a shortcut across the wilderness of a kitchen garden and in by the back door of the house to the kitchen, where Miss Hunter was making up several small trays for tea.

Clare regretted her last remark. Dr. Freeman had been offended. In fact, he had not said a word to her since she had made it. Now, seeing the trays, she wanted to make amends.

“Shall I take some of them up?” she asked. “Nurse Wilcox—”

“Can manage very well,” said Dr. Freeman, “with Miss Hunter to help her. The eight patients in bed are all doing very nicely.”

“I’m sorry,” said Clare humbly. Later she tried to work out whether this figure was correct. But she gave it up. She simply did not know where their rooms were, nor how many patients the place could take. Nurse Wilcox had said something about it when they first met, but now she could not remember.

Dr. Freeman did not acknowledge Clare’s apology, and she began to resent his attitude. There was something she wanted badly to discuss with him, but in his present mood—

When they reached the hall, he turned towards the door of his office. “May I speak to you about my case?” said Clare firmly. “It’s about the injections.”

Dr. Freeman’s back, which was towards her, stiffened. But he turned round a moment later and said, “Come in here.” She followed him into the room.

“It’s about the night dose,” she said. “Nurse Wilcox always gives it before I come on duty. And she brings the morning dose with her when I go off. I’m accustomed to giving night medicines myself when I’m on night duty. Usually it’s left to my discretion—”

“It’s the doctor’s job to prescribe,” said Dr. Freeman, “and to order how and when drugs are given.”

“I know. But it seems so queer. Don’t you trust me to carry out your orders?”

“Of course I do.” His voice changed. “Clare, I wish you’d settle down. You seem so nervy and restless. Is there anything that worries you?”

With that compellingly soothing voice in her ears and his hand on her arm Clare gave in.

“I had a nasty experience the night I came down here,” she said. “I can’t tell you about it. Don’t ask me.”

“Of course not. Now tell me, what would you like me to do?”

This was so different from his former manner that Clare looked up in surprise. His eyes were fixed on the door behind her. She swung round, but there was no one there.

“I should like you to issue the dose to me and let me give it,” she said.

He looked at her as if he did not take in what she was saying.

“The dose,” repeated Clare. “The ampoule. I have my own syringe and everything.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Freeman. “Wait here and I’ll fetch it for you.”

He was gone in a moment, shutting the door behind him. So he doesn’t keep his drugs in his office, Clare thought, very puzzled. She moved idly to the bookshelves. No medical stuff here, mostly history and biography. She took down a book at random and opened it. On the flyleaf there was a bookplate. It bore the name Brian Hetherton with, above, a coat of arms. A distinctive coat of arms. She recognized it without difficulty. The coat of arms on the silver snuffbox she had taken from the dying man’s pocket.

The book dropped out of her hands, and the noise of its fall shocked her into total awareness. She still understood very little, but one thing was plain beyond question. This was not a nursing home, and these people were in some sinister fashion linked with the man who had died.

She moved quickly to the desk. Scruples meant nothing in the face of her need to discover where exactly she was, and who these people could be. She was tempted to lift the phone and dial 999, but that would be too drastic and much too dangerous. She was back in the mood of that night in Stone Street, seeing a threat on every side.

Very softly she tried the drawers of the desk. Some were locked, but two were open. In the second of these she saw envelopes she recognized and, picking them up, knew that they were her letter to Sister Hood, her letter to her mother. They had not been posted: Dr. Freeman had lied to her. This place was a fraud, proved beyond doubt, all lies and make-believe. Except the woman upstairs. She was real: genuinely and seriously ill and kept so, she decided, suddenly realizing the truth of the injections.

A moment ago she had made up her mind to escape at once from this place, leaving her belongings, leaving everything. She saw that she could not do this. The woman upstairs needed her; she could not be abandoned. But there was one thing she must do. Get these letters posted.

She had no idea how she could manage that, but as Dr. Freeman had not come back, she left the office and walked quite slowly and naturally across the hall. The front door had been open a short while ago; it might be open still. It was.

The van had not yet left the drive. With the front door quietly closed behind her, Clare stood in the shadow of the porch, looking about. The light was fading, but it was clear enough for her to be seen going down the long straight part of the drive by anyone who might be watching at a window. She edged away from the porch, slipped behind the van, and squeezed in among the overgrown bushes behind it. From there she worked her way slowly towards the main gates, moving parallel with the drive but keeping hidden.

To her surprise she saw that the gates were open. Dr. Freeman had told her they were always kept locked. Then she remembered the van. They must have been opened to let it in and perhaps had now been opened again to let it out. They would be shut after it had gone away. From the front door she had not been able to see the gates, hidden round the curving last part of the drive. So no one could see her in the drive now except perhaps from an upper window.

She peered out from the edge of the bushes. The house was altogether hidden, she was pleased to observe. Growing bolder, she stepped onto the drive and moved towards the gates. She would slip out and find a pillar-box. It was hours yet before she was due on duty. If they asked her, she would say she had gone for a walk. Why shouldn’t she go for a walk when the door and the gates were open? Though it would look queer to have gone without a coat. She shivered a little, feeling suddenly very cold.

She had the letters in her hand as she reached the gates and was about to turn into the road when a black spaniel ambled round the gatepost, lifted a leg to it, looked at her, and then stood still, wagging his tail.

An idea came to Clare with a sudden feeling of pleasure and relief. This dog was no stray; he was on a routine evening walk. His master must be near, just out of sight in the road. She would give the dog the letters to take to him, then step out and ask if the spaniel might be allowed to carry them to the post. It would save time, and perhaps her absence from the house would not be noticed.

She stopped, patted the dog, who was still waiting, looking at her, and offered him the letters. He accepted them calmly, the tail wagging a bit faster.

“Take them to master,” Clare said, turning him to face the gates.

But before either of them had time to move she heard the sound of a car behind her in the drive. Straightening herself with a jerk, she saw the van coming fast round the last corner.

She leaped for the cover of the bushes, but the dog stayed motionless, the letters in his mouth, puzzled by her behavior. The van did not stop, did not even slow down until after the inevitable impact, when with a loud screech of brakes it came to a jolting halt between the gates.

She had shut her eyes when the dog was struck. She opened them when she heard the man’s feet on the gravel. She shrank silently still farther among the bushes, but dared not make any movement that might disclose her hiding place.

The driver, however, was not looking for her. With a muttered curse he dragged the dog from under the front bumper of the van and snatched up the letters. He looked at them, still muttering, and then looked quickly about him. But only for a second. Kicking the spaniel’s limp body farther from the van, he jumped back into the driving seat, restarted the engine, which had stalled at his sudden halt, and without even sounding his horn drove into the road and away, nearly knocking down a man with a walking stick who at that moment was turning in towards the gates.

As soon as the driver got back into the van, Clare had gone, pushing her way back to the house, not heeding the scratches on her hands and face where bent twigs snapped back at her as she passed. The man’s behavior was only too terribly illuminating, but even now she thought less of her own safety than of her patient, the helpless woman whose name she now guessed to be Hetherton, who seemed to be the pivot of all these extraordinary events, who undoubtedly needed her, without the thought of whom she would have been by now on the way to the nearest house to ask for help.

So she did not see the dog’s owner exclaim in grief and fury and dash back into the road just in time to take the number of the van before it turned the next corner. She did not see him stoop to gather up the body of his black spaniel and walk slowly away towards the village.

Certainly she could not have seen the police car in the small side-turning. Nor did the driver of the van, preoccupied with the letters and the death of the spaniel. He had guessed who the man must be whom he had so nearly run down at the gates. He’d have to ring up and let them know about the letters. Cunning little bitch! How’d she got down there by the gates? Giving them to the tyke. Serve her right what it got. Good thing they’d opened up for him earlier. Wouldn’t’ve done to be held up after what happened. But perhaps the dog wouldn’t have come in if the gates had been shut. Oh, what the hell!

“Here we go,” said the driver of the police car, turning out of his hiding place in pursuit. “Let them know we’re off, Ted.”

The message shot round Dorset and neighboring counties. Keep a lookout, but don’t interfere. Put the Q cars on the job; don’t let him know he’s followed. Let the van lead them to the crooks’ headquarters.

IV

Clare did not leave the shelter of the bushes until she arrived at the circular sweep of the drive in front of the house. She then summoned up what courage she had left after the shock of the dog’s death and walked with outward calm, not too fast, the short distance to the front door.

The hall was empty, all the doors surrounding it closed. Clare went upstairs, thankful indeed to reach her own room unobserved. Her dress was stained, her apron muddied, her nurse’s cap crumpled and soiled. She was quite horrified by her appearance when she looked at herself in the glass. Twice in the course of a few days, she thought, except that now there were no bloodstains.

She changed into a clean uniform and hid the scratches on her face as well as she could under careful makeup. Then she sat down to think.

It was dark outside now, but with the curtains drawn and the electric fire on and the shaded reading lamp beside her bed taking the place of the cold ceiling light with its plain white shade, the room looked cheerful and comforting. She had missed tea, but she did not mind that. If she had not slept so badly and had not got up as early as half-past three in the afternoon she would hardly have been about yet. Six o’clock was her usual rising time when she was on night duty. She was quite glad now that she had been wakeful. She had learned so much.

This thought brought her to a more disturbing idea. Dr. Freeman might already have discovered that the letters had gone from the drawer in his desk. In which case he would obviously suspect that she and only she could have taken them. Surely he must have made this discovery, even if the van driver had not rung him up to tell him of it? In which case, she decided, she would be in very real trouble. Perhaps, instead of sheltering in her room, she had better go down and find Dr. Freeman and have it out with him. In any case, it was now after six. And she still had to secure the drug for her patient. Without that, her plan for the night would not succeed.

So, reluctantly, she turned out the electric fire, put on a clean crisp apron, and went down to the hall. As she reached it she heard voices, raised angry voices, coming from the dining room. She paused, wondering what to do. Should she creep forward to listen, or would that be dangerous? What would happen if one of them came out and found her, ear to keyhole? Would it be better to go boldly in, asking if it was dinnertime, saying her watch had stopped?

Or just go quietly upstairs again for another half hour and appear at her usual time?

Her problem was resolved for her suddenly. The dining room door opened, and Nurse Wilcox’s voice came out of it, quite clearly, quite explicitly.

“If you think I’m going to stop on while all of you — I’m not buying it — not at any price — repeat price, Charley!”

Nurse Wilcox, her head turned over her shoulder to shout at those in the room behind her, moved out into the hall.

“Good evening, nurse,” Clare said in a firm voice.

“Christ!”

Nurse Wilcox’s head came round, eyes staring. She saw Clare, clapped her hand to her mouth, and leaned against the doorpost. Dr. Freeman appeared a second later.

“Is Nurse Wilcox ill?” Clare asked stonily.

The woman’s confusion had given her courage. If they were the crooks she now thought them, they were rattled. That was plain.

Dr. Freeman’s face of astonishment and relief at seeing her nearly made her laugh.

“Did you think I’d walked out on you?” she said. “You didn’t come back to the office, so I had another little breath of air in the garden.”

He stared at her and she stared back, determined to give nothing away. When she saw his relief grow into pleasure, she dared to hope. So far, then, he had not been told about the dog and the letters. He could not look as he did if he knew what she had done.

“I see,” he said. Behind him Nurse Wilcox straightened herself. Her face was white and her hands trembled, but her hard features had not softened. She put up a hand to her cap and then smoothed her apron.

“I’ll go up to her, then,” she said, addressing Dr. Freeman. “Nurse Marshall will come on duty at the usual time, I take it. I’ll just trouble you for the evening dose, doctor.”

Clare found her voice again.

“No, nurse. Dr. Freeman wants me to give it after I go on duty. I arranged it with him earlier in the afternoon. Didn’t I?” she asked, turning to Freeman. She could not find it in her heart to call him “doctor.” If what she believed about him was true — she knew no details — then he did not deserve the name. Medical training of some sort he must have had. Perhaps he had even practiced for a time. But he had betrayed his profession; in how many ways she did not yet know. In essentials, she was certain.

He was looking from one to the other of the two women, with the attractive boyish smile on his lips.

“Clare is right, Kay,” he said. “I did promise her. So there’s nothing to stop you going off duty now—”

“At eight,” interrupted Clare.

“At eight,” repeated Dr. Freeman. “Hand over, as usual, to Clare at eight, Kay.” The older woman nodded sulkily, then turned on her heel and moved towards the stairs.

“Excitable,” said Dr. Freeman, following her movements with his eyes until she passed out of sight at the bend of the staircase. He put out a hand and took Clare’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re back. I was a little anxious.”

“Why? You didn’t think I’d break a contract, or leave a case unfinished, did you?”

He drew her into his office and stood looking at her with admiration, his hand still on her arm.

“You’re a great girl, aren’t you?” he said.

“That ampoule,” Clare suggested. She acknowledged the strength of his technique, but it no longer affected her.

He frowned at her brusque insistence and made no move.

“You said you’d—”

Clare stopped, watching him, and was glad she had not finished her sentence. For a couple of hours ago Dr. Freeman had left the room, telling her he would fetch the stuff, and here he was unlocking the middle drawer of his desk to take out a whole carton of ampoules.

“I said I’d let you give it — yes,” he answered her spoken words.

Clare took the ampoule and put it in the pocket of her uniform dress. She was not going to be parted from it now until she could safely destroy it. So long as the Wilcox woman had spoken the truth.

So long as they were not doublecrossing her.

She thanked Dr. Freeman and turned to go. But he stopped her.

“Don’t run away, Clare,” he said. “No point in going up to your room again. We’re due for our dinner in a few minutes.”

“But it’s only half-past six.”

“I know. The Frosts are leaving. I thought they ought to have a good meal before they start.”

“Leaving? You didn’t say we were going to dine so early.”

“I didn’t want to disturb you. Night duty is bad enough as it is for someone your age.”

“But I’ve been up for hours. You knew I was up when you took me round the garden—”

Again his hand came out to her. This time his arm lay across her shoulders as he went with her to the door.

“Such a serious child,” he murmured and drew her suddenly close and kissed her.

Clare dragged herself free and shot into the hall. She would have smacked his face if she had dared, but she knew that at all costs she must avoid open warfare. This behavior of his might well be deliberate provocation. To make her lose her head. To make her speak. He was clever, and he must know that her training had made her observant. He would want to know now how much she had seen or heard or guessed of the strange goings-on at Hetherton Hall.

She went quickly across to the dining room door, from behind which voices still murmured, opened it, and went in. Six people were already seated at the table, the two Frosts and four persons she had not seen before, one woman and three men. The woman had straw-colored hair and a listless expression. The three men were distinctly ugly: the sort of people you saw in the out-patient department on Saturday night, Clare thought, after the pubs closed and there had been rows and fighting.

Quite clearly they were not ill. Also quite clearly they had not expected to see her there. In fact, as she opened the door she had distinctly heard one of them say, “Here’s Charley boy back. What’s been keeping you, Char—”

Then he had seen Clare and bitten back the rest of his remark.

From behind her Dr. Freeman said, “Some more of my patients are down for dinner tonight for the first time. Let me introduce Nurse Marshall. You know Mr. and Mrs. Frost. This is—”

The dreary farce went on. Miss Hunter drew back the hatch door. Mr. Frost and Clare took round the helpings. There was desultory conversation during the actual eating and afterwards while they were clearing away. Clare was persuaded to follow them into the drawing room “because we’re so early,” Dr. Freeman reminded her. Coffee arrived. The Frosts said they must get their coats. Miss Hunter was summoned by bell and told to bring down their luggage.

Still Dr. Freeman would not let her go.

“Finish your coffee, Clare. Don’t hurry,” he said, leaving the room himself.

The talk flagged. The new convalescents did not seem to have a word between them. In the middle of the silence that began to be unbearable the listless woman pulled a box from her pocket and took snuff. The others regarded her with mixed expressions of astonishment, fear, rage, envy, and, in one case, amusement.

This was a small, rat-faced man who looked at Clare, gave a hoarse laugh, and said, “She’s a proper caution, nurse, isn’t she?”

“Is she?” said Clare coldly.

Finally, since neither Dr. Freeman nor the Frosts reappeared, she got up and left the room. No one spoke as she did this, but looking back from the door, she saw four pairs of hostile eyes fixed upon her. She shut it behind her and hurried up to her room.

When she got there, she locked the door and set about the plan she had already worked out. First of all, she got out her own dish, hypodermic syringe, surgical spirit, and cotton wool. Next, she cleaned the syringe by drawing spirit into it and pushing it out again several times. She then filed and broke off the head of the ampoule, which was, she saw, a stiff dose of a strong narcotic, and emptied the contents into her washhand basin. She then took a small corked bottle of boiled water which she had prepared in the patient’s room that morning before she went off duty and filled her syringe with an amount of water equal to that she had poured out of the ampoule. She arranged her filled syringe, the broken ampoule, the spirit, and the cotton wool on her dish, covered it all with a small towel, and set it on her dressing table. Five minutes before she was due to go on duty she took up the dish, still covered, went steadily down the flight of stairs from her room, knocked at the patient’s door, and walked in.

To her surprise there was no one there except the sick woman in the bed, who looked thinner and more haggard than ever, Clare thought.

She set down her dish on the table at the bedside and looked about for the temperature chart and notes. Nurse Wilcox, whoever she might really be, had some of the basic ideas of nursing. She had kept the chart properly, though her notes had been uniformly trivial, merely stating each time that the patient had been “quiet.” No details of her true condition. No account of food given or any other particulars.

Clare took the temperature, pulse, and rate of breathing. Then, moving one arm outside the bedclothes, she prepared to give the injection. As she did so, she heard a footstep in the room but did not look up, thinking it was Nurse Wilcox. She gave the injection and then looked round. Dr. Freeman was standing behind her.

Controlling herself carefully, Clare pulled down the sleeve of the patient’s nightdress, returned the arm beneath the covers, and picked up her dish from the table beside the bed. Dr. Freeman held out his hand for it. Trembling inwardly, Clare passed it over.

“Yes,” he said, stirring the fragments of the ampoule with one finger. “You have given her the whole dose, haven’t you?”

“Wasn’t that right?” Clare asked. “I thought you intended her to have the whole. There is nothing prescribed in her notes.”

“No,” said Dr. Freeman. “My patients must be protected carefully from knowing what treatment I give. In case they get to like it too much,” he added, looking Clare full in the eyes.

She kept her own steady. The man was a devil; an inhuman devil. Whatever else he had done, he had certainly kept this poor woman doped for days, deliberately, she now guessed, so she could not answer questions about herself or those around her. And he dared to speak like that of the dangers of addiction! She struggled to keep her eyes blank, to outstare him, to stand quietly, a well-trained nurse before a physician.

“Very well, nurse,” he said gravely. “I’ll examine, please.”

For fifteen minutes he examined the unconscious patient, carefully, slowly, thoroughly. Clare went through the routine mechanically, moving the bedclothes, turning the limp body this way and that, until at last Dr. Freeman folded up his stethoscope, tucked it away in the pocket of his jacket, and turned from the bed.

“Satisfactory, as far as it goes,” he said. “I’ll consider reducing the sedation tomorrow.” He moved towards the door.

“Dr. Freeman,” said Clare.

“Yes.”

“Who is she? What’s the matter with her, really? Where does she come from?”

Dr. Freeman looked back, smiling.

“Her name is Hetherton,” he said. “Helen Hetherton. Did no one tell you? She is a cocaine addict. I’m sure you’ve realized that by now. One of my most intractable chronic cases.”

He gave a little dreadful leer, so different from his usual smile that Clare recoiled in something like horror.

“One of my most lucrative,” he said with a laugh.

When he had gone, Clare sat down, feeling weak and shaky. What luck over the injection! She had made her elaborate preparations to deceive Kay Wilcox. If she had known Freeman himself would come, she might not have dared. Never mind, in a few hours this Miss Hetherton, whose name she had already guessed from the book downstairs in the doctor’s office, would begin to wake up, and then perhaps she herself would be able to understand what was going on in this dreadful place. Only a few hours.

In less than two hours the patient began to mutter and turn from side to side. Clare hurried to the cupboard where the usual provisions for the night were kept. It was empty.

She went to the door and out onto the landing. Something in the complete, utter silence of the house struck alarm into her mind. Very quickly, leaving the room door open, she ran down to the kitchen. Miss Hunter was not there.

No one was there. In all that large house, whose every room now was unlocked, where in some of them shrouded furniture stood under the dust of years, in others there were signs of recent occupation, no person moved, no voice answered hers.

So this was why Dr. Freeman had come to the sickroom. This was why he had made his slow and careful examination, taking her attention off everything but himself and what he was doing. He was covering up the exodus. They had all crept away, to waiting cars, probably, and he had joined them at last and was probably laughing his head off now at her expense.

She went quickly from landing to landing, then down again to the hall. The crooks had vanished. Had they been frightened away? Had the man in the van brought bad news earlier that day? Had someone telephoned a warning?

The telephone. She ran into Dr. Freeman’s empty office, noticing as she did so that all the papers on the desk had been cleared away and the surface of it was clean, even polished. She picked up the receiver. It was quite dead.

Of course, she thought dully. They would never leave her such an easy way of deliverance. Had they left her any way at all, or was she locked in with the sick woman upstairs?

A moment’s panic left her as quickly as it came. Alone in the house she had only to open a window to get out. They knew that, of course. She went to the front door to test her conclusion and found it justified. The door was not locked. She opened it to look into the drive. Darkness. Utter darkness. She could not even see the trees on the other side of the sweep before the house. It would be madness to go down to the gates now. Even supposing they were open and she could find them in this blackness, the road outside would be just as dark and she would only lose herself. What good would that do to anyone? To herself or Miss Hetherton. Miss Hetherton!

She shut the door, ran back to the kitchen, collected the materials for a light supper onto a tray, and carried it upstairs. As she reached the door of the room, she saw her patient leaning on an elbow staring from haggard eyes towards the door.

“Who are you?” the woman croaked. “What are you doing in my house?”

Dan found his way without much difficulty to Hetherton Magna, where he arrived a little after four o’clock. But he took a wrong turning on the road to Hetherton Parva, and not discovering his mistake until he saw the sea in front of him from rising ground, he had to go back and start again. This time he found the small hamlet without any difficulty. It was growing dark now, so he stopped at the general store.

Mrs. Goodge was holding an animated conversation or, rather, delivering one of her animated lectures to two women of the village. When she saw Dan, however, she broke off at once to serve him. Her disappointment at finding he was not a customer was canceled by her interest in his inquiry.

“Well now!” she exclaimed. “That’s the second time today a stranger has come in here asking the self-same question. Had a young fellow in this morning, not to mention Constable Dunnet on his way up there, too.”

“Indeed,” said Dan. So the police were onto it. He hoped he was not too late. It would be bitter indeed to find Clare gone. He urged Mrs. Goodge to tell him how to get to the Hall and left with a brief word of thanks as soon as the route had been made clear to him.

“There now!” Mrs. Goodge said, gathering back her former audience. “What’s going on up there, I’d like to know? That young gentleman was in a hurry, if you like. Did you notice ’e changed color when I remarked on Fred Dunnet going along this morning? Might be that brother of hers back from overseas in trouble. Shouldn’t wonder. He’s been gone years and never a word out of him, good or bad.”

Dan drove off, found the narrow road that led past the Hall, and was soon rewarded by the sight of a continuous substantial wall, with parkland inside and in the distance the roof of a large house. He slowed down, expecting to see the entrance before long.

He was right. There were the gates, and walking slowly toward him in the gathering dusk was a man in a tweed coat and baggy grey flannel trousers carrying in his arms the limp form of a black spaniel.

Dan stopped the car. The man looked profoundly upset; his face was very pale under his country tan, and his lips were bluish-grey. He was not young.

Dan wound down the window of the car and leaned out.

“Can I help in any way?” he said. “I mean — the dog—”

The man stopped, grief and anger deepening in his shocked face.

“Brute in a van. Came tearing out of the Hall drive. No horn or anything. He’s killed him. Nearly got me, too.”

“Didn’t stop?”

“Accelerated. I got his number, though. Trade van, too — London.”

“How long ago?”

“Couple of minutes.”

Dan got out of the car. A van. The woman in the shop said a van had asked the way to the Hall.

“Look, sir,” he said. “You hop in. Put the dog on the back seat. No, that’s all right. We’ll chase the lout.”

The man’s face flushed. Ex-army, Dan thought. Action meant something to him. Without argument or delay he got into the car, and they were off.

“We don’t know where he was going,” he said as they started, “but he shot away up the road. Straight ahead,” he added as they passed the side-turning where the police car had lain hidden.

“Probably back to London,” Dan suggested. “Wonder what sort of speed he can make?”

“Much the same as you, I should think,” his companion said with a faint smile. “I think we’d better conclude he’s making for London and take a shortcut ourselves to the London road. He won’t know it. We’ll make up five minutes on him with luck. If we don’t find him by the time we reach Wareham, we’ll give up.” He turned to look at Dan. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.

Dan told him. As he drove on guided entirely by his companion, he told him about his own profession, about Clare’s adventure, about her apparent kidnapping, about his own researches.

“I used to know Brian Hetherton,” the man beside him said. “My name’s Arkwright.”

“General Arkwright?” asked Dan.

“Brigadier. Retired. Why did you say that?”

“Strategic grasp,” said Dan.

Brigadier Arkwright laughed again: he had recovered from his shock, Dan decided, and was now enjoying the hunt.

They came out on an empty London road and after ten minutes were beginning to decide that they had failed, when a van passed them traveling at moderate speed.

“That’s it,” said the brigadier. “You beat him to it. Good show!”

Dan settled down to the pursuit, keeping well on the tail of the van. A car behind him made one or two attempts to pass and then drew back.

“Better not let him think I’m following,” Dan said, allowing the gap to increase between him and the van. The police car behind came out, passed both Dan and the van, and disappeared into the darkness ahead to warn the next relay car to pick up chase.

In Wareham the van left the London through-road to wind in and out of several side streets before coming to a stop near a telephone booth. Dan drew up twenty yards away.

“If he goes in to phone, we’ve got him,” he said.

“Have you a spanner or crank handle available?” asked the brigadier politely.

Dan hesitated. He did not want to get into a scrap. He merely wanted to know if Clare was at the Hall.

“Why not get a policeman?” he said. “I’ll keep tabs on him.”

Arkwright got out of the car. The man was already in the booth. He had his back to them, beginning to make his call, when the brigadier pulled open the door of the booth and brought his hand down in a rabbit punch across the stooping back of the other’s neck. He dropped like a stone, and the brigadier quickly dragged him out of the booth onto the pavement.

“Now we can look for a bobby,” he said calmly.

He knelt by the fallen man and took first a gun and then some letters from his right-hand jacket pocket. Dan at once recognized the writing on the envelopes.

“Give me those,” he said. “Clare wrote them. She’s at the Hall. She must be!”

A crowd had gathered about them already.

“I’ve got to get back to the Hall,” Dan urged in a low voice. “Will you cope? I can’t risk being stuck with the law here.”

“Of course,” said the brigadier briskly. “Put my dog out on the pavement and get away at once. Ah, officer,” he said, rising to his feet as a tall figure pushed through the crowd. “This man has just run over my dog in his van. He refused to answer my questions, so I stopped him. He appears to be a doubtful character. He had this on him.”

The figure on the pavement stirred and groaned.

“Your dog, did you say, sir?” asked the constable.

“My black spaniel, Spot. He’s on the edge of the pavement, behind the van over there.”

Dan heard these words directly after he had deposited the dog and started his car. He drove off, took the next turning towards the London road, and was soon out of the town and heading back towards Hetherton.

As it was now quite dark, he followed the route he had taken earlier in the day, not attempting Brigadier Arkwright’s shortcut. He stopped the car short of the Hall gates, parking it well up on the verge of the road after turning it to face the way he had come. He meant to take Clare away from this place, and he might have to go in a hurry.

He went up to the gates. They were still open as he had seen them when he met Arkwright. For a few seconds he wondered if he should drive boldly in, demand to see Clare, and insist on leaving with her. But he decided that though this would seem to be a properly heroic gesture it was probably about the silliest thing he could do. No one must know he was anywhere near or had anything to do with Clare. So he walked back down the road, where he found a tree growing conveniently near the wall. It was easy to climb it and from one stout branch reach the top of the wall, which was not guarded with glass or any other dangerous obstruction. He let himself down on his arms and dropped into a soft bed of leaves.

For some time he wandered in the rough parkland surrounding the house, uncertain of where he was or where he would find a path to lead him to the building. At last he saw lights in the distance and realized that the house was just ahead of him and that he was approaching a wide lawn. He began to stumble among the hummocks of long-neglected grass.

Slowly and carefully he made his way round the open space until he reached a thicket of bushes, where he stopped and listened. No sound of any kind came from the direction of the house. After another pause to make sure of this, he moved forward again, skirting the bushes until he saw he had indeed arrived at the building, which stood up very black against the clouded night sky. His eyes were well accustomed to the dark by now. He followed the line of the wall and came out into the open near the porch, where a glimmer of light fell on the gravel from the fanlight.

There were lights, too, behind curtains, in several rooms, he saw as he crept nearer. So the place was still occupied. Should he ring the bell? No, he had decided against bold action of any kind. Then should he try to make his way in by some window, if he could find one unlatched?

He did neither. He went up the steps, turned the large handle, pushed open the wide door, and walked into the house. The hall was empty. The doors of the rooms were all open. There was no one there.

This was a shock. Had the crooks been warned? Had they snatched Clare from him again if not before his eyes, then just before he got there?

He shivered and knew that he was afraid. The next instant he found another explanation. Had the police come here? Was it the criminals who had been taken away? If so, was Clare with them, safe but snatched from him just the same? His feeling of helplessness, of futility, deepened. What the hell was he doing here at all?

He decided to make sure the whole place was empty before going back to his car. So he moved slowly up the stairs, and as he reached the first landing he heard a soft murmur of voices. He laid his head against the door from behind which the sounds were coming. To his infinite joy he heard Clare’s voice say, “Try to eat a little more, Miss Hetherton. You must get your strength back, mustn’t you?”

Inside the room Clare was bending over her patient when she saw her stiffen, stare towards the door, and exclaim, as she had done so recently, “Who are you?”

Clare shot upright, turning to face the door, fear clutching at her heart. There stood Dan, disheveled, moss sticking to his jacket from his climb over the wall, earth on his shoes, and a broad grin on his face.

Without a sound, wholly forgetting Miss Hetherton, she flew to his arms. He held her close, trying to understand her muffled, disjointed words. It was the patient on the bed who recalled them to their senses. She had watched them with astonishment that passed into incredulity.

“Nurse!” she exclaimed. “Who is this young man? Why is he here? Why are you both behaving like the last scene of a tedious film?”

Clare freed herself to go back to the bed. She looked down at Miss Hetherton with a scarlet face, but could say nothing.

“Miss Marshall and I are engaged,” said Dan firmly, moving forward. “She was brought here under false pretenses because she knows too much about an incident at a certain nightclub in London where I think you were yourself four nights ago.”

Miss Hetherton’s face was quite blank.

“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about,” she said. “I’ve been ill.” She put a shaking hand to her head and went on, more to herself than to them. “This is my house. This is my room, but I’m damned if I remember how I got here.” She raised her voice, looking at them with startled eyes. “How did I get home? I was staying in London. I have to stay in London to get—”

She broke off, taking Clare’s hand in hers and beginning again in a coaxing, wheedling voice that sent a chill down her hearers’ spines. “I take snuff, my dear. A pretty silver snuffbox. On my dressing table, I expect. I want it, please. I want it. My snuffbox!”

“Oh God!” said Clare under her breath.

“It isn’t here,” Dan told her.

“Not here? It must be here! I must have my snuff. I must—”

“Listen, Miss Hetherton. Your snuffbox was found in your brother’s pocket. It is in London.”

“Brian!” the sick woman said. She lay back on her pillows, breathing fast. “Brian. Yes. I remember. At the club. He went with me. I didn’t want to take him, but he insisted. He took my box from me. He took it!”

She covered her face with her hands.

“Yes,” Dan prompted her. “He took it. And then?”

She looked up at him. “He went away,” she said. “He didn’t come back.” She suddenly gripped Dan’s wrist. “How d’you know he took it, young man?” Her eyes became small and cunning. “Does he use snuff himself, d’you think? Did Charles fill the box for him?”

“Who—” began Dan but Clare stopped him.

“You mean Dr. Freeman, don’t you, Miss Hetherton?”

She laughed. “Yes. Such a good kind doctor. We couldn’t get on without him. D’you know Charles Freeman?” she asked, peering up at Clare.

Dan put out a hand to the girl’s arm and drew her away from the bed.

“No good wasting time trying to get any sense out of her,” he whispered. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I can’t leave—”

“No, listen. I’ve got the car in the road. The house is absolutely empty, and the front door is unlocked. I don’t understand it. I don’t like it. They may have left it that way because you’re no longer important. I hope so. But why did they leave her? When her mind’s clearer, she can ruin them finally. She’s right in the racket, isn’t she?”

Clare nodded.

“They may have thought she’d be dead. I gave her water instead of the last dose of morphine.”

“We’ll have to take her with us. That or wait for the police. They must be on the way.”

“Don’t let’s wait. Please not.”

“Darling! I hoped you’d say that. Can you get her up?”

“I’ll try.”

“Right. I’ll have a quick look round the house.”

“No. Don’t go without us. I’m frightened. Help me to get her up.” Miss Hetherton protested a little, but she was getting very restless as the effects of the narcotic wore off and her need for cocaine grew stronger. She became voluble, and though her ramblings were disjointed, Clare and Dan learned a good deal more about the life she had been leading for the last five years, ever since her brother left her to go to Canada.

At last they had her dressed warmly. Dan helped her into a fur coat while Clare ran upstairs, bundled her own things into a bag, put on her uniform overcoat and hat, and joined him again at Miss Hetherton’s door.

The latter was on her feet, leaning on Dan’s arm. Clare moved to her other side.

“He’s a doctor,” Miss Hetherton explained carefully to Clare. “He’s going to take me to his surgery and give me — what I need to take. He understands, nurse. He understands.”

They got her downstairs and across the hall and, by slow, painful steps, down the drive towards the gates.

“We’ll never get her over the wall,” Dan muttered to Clare across the drooping figure between them. “I’m banking on no one’s seeing us go through the gates. I wish I could be certain they’ve all gone and are not watching us from some hideout.”

“Don’t!” said Clare. “I can’t take much more.”

After the last bend they peered ahead.

“Can you see if they’re still open?” Clare said anxiously.

The answer came from the road: a hum of powerful engines, a long brilliant headlight snaking over the hedges, giving them an instant clear picture ahead.

“They are open,” Dan said with relief.

“The cars are stopping,” Clare cried. “It might be—”

“Off the drive!” Dan ordered.

They swung Miss Hetherton round, almost lifting her off her feet, and plunged with her through the bushes. A second later Dan tripped, swore, and fell on his face. The immediate sequel, drowning Miss Hetherton’s faint cry and Clare’s exclamation of concern, was a muffled roar from the house they had just left.

At the same instant the headlight of the leading car turned into the drive. Whoever it was, they were coming in, and the distant thunder had made them pause in the act of doing so. Miss Hetherton, continuing her strange bleating cry, broke from Clare and struggled back into the drive.

“Stop!” yelled Dan. He had disentangled his feet from the wire that had tripped him and now leaped up. Crying, “Stay where you are!” to Clare, he pushed through the bushes, yelling again “Come back!” to the stumbling, grotesque figure of Miss Hetherton, who with flying hair and outstretched hands staggered on towards the now stationary car.

Dan had taken two steps towards her when she reached the wire and set off the second charge. He never knew afterwards if in that split second of awareness he had flung himself down or if the explosion had caught him. Certainly Clare was taken unawares. It seemed to her that the world had suddenly split into fragments with a roar and a flash that both deafened and blinded her. She found herself lying with her face in the leaves, sobbing for Dan. But it was not Dan who knelt beside her, asking if she was hurt.

“Dan!” she screamed, picking herself up and clutching at, the uniformed figure.

“He’ll be all right. Only dazed and a bit bruised where the drive came over and hit him.”

“Miss Hetherton?”

“Come along to Dr. Jackson, miss. He’s asking for you.”

This magnificent understatement was quite enough to pull Clare together. She was not hurt. The thick screen of bushes had protected her from the worst of the blast. She needed no assistance to reach the drive and paid no heed to the small crater in the middle of it, the police car with its shattered windscreen, the group of figures standing close together near the crater. She found Dan lying covered up with rugs near the gate, two more figures lying beside him.

She flung herself down.

“Are you really not badly hurt?” she cried, still sobbing and shivering. “Oh, darling, what happened? Tell me you’re not hurt and what happened?”

“Of course I’m not hurt,” his voice came weakly. “Not now I can see you’re all of a piece.”

“What happened?” she repeated.

“Double booby trap. The police car was meant to go up in the drive, and set off the bomb in the house to get you and Miss Hetherton, when they searched the bushes.”

“Miss Hetherton!”

“It got her all right.”

“Poor woman,” said Clare. “I tried to stop her, but she thought it was Freeman come back with her dope. I heard her trying to call to him.”

She glanced round at the other two bundles.

“They were in the car. Cuts from the windscreen and shock.”

“I must help,” Clare began but one of the bundles spoke.

“They’ve fixed us up already, nurse. You’ve done your share. We’re not too bad, really.”

She sat down beside Dan and took his head onto her lap, and he gave a great sigh of content. They had both done their best and now they were well out of it, he decided.

A red glow came up over the trees that hid the house from the gates. Hetherton Hall was well alight. By the time the ambulances had done their work and the police car had been moved from between the gates and the crater filled sufficiently for the fire engines to get through, there was not much left of it. For the second time in history Hetherton Hall was burned to the ground, but this time it would not rise again.

Both Dan and Clare spent that night at a hospital in Dorset. His injuries were all quite superficial, and though he found the next morning that he was stiff all over, he was passed fit to drive his car, which the police had obligingly brought in for him. So by the late afternoon he and Clare were both back in London and by the evening were heartily sick of describing their adventures over and over again, both to their friends and to Scotland Yard.

In the latter place, however, they did get some satisfaction in return. The Yard was, on the whole, quite pleased with them. Dan’s chase after the man in the van had at first appeared to wreck the careful plan of letting the driver in it lead the way to the headquarters of the gang. But the brigadier’s rough method of securing the killer of his dog broke that brutal coward’s nerve. He understood that the game was up, in more senses than one. He swore that he was on his way home; that Dr. Freeman was the head of the drug syndicate; that Brian Hetherton had followed his sister to the nightclub, made a row, started a fight that had brought in the cops, got himself knifed, and was dumped in Stone Street, while the whole outfit, except himself and one other, piled into cars and went down to Hetherton Hall. His job was to watch the dying man and take steps to prevent him being identified too soon. He and another had got Clare’s name and address at the hospital.

“It was my fault you didn’t have the snuffbox earlier,” Clare said remorsefully.

“It didn’t really hold us up. There were other clues,” she was told.

“Have you got Freeman?” Dan asked.

“Watch your newspapers,” was the answer to that one.

There was a silence and then Clare said, “Those bombs or whatever they were? They were meant to get the police car first, and that would have set off the other one in the house and got Miss Hetherton and me?”

“Something like that. Or you first at the gates if you’d left. You’ve got Dr. Jackson here to thank for saving your life.”

That evening, in his sitting room in the residents’ quarters at St. Edmund’s, Dan reminded her of this remark. She put her hands on his shoulders, holding him away from her.

“You don’t have to tell me again. But I’m going to remind you of something.”

With his arms round her he began to draw her close. “Go ahead.”

“If you hadn’t been so — mean — and... and... well, I wouldn’t have taken that job if I hadn’t wanted to get away from you.”

“Touché. I’ll never behave like that again. I swear it.”

His face was close above hers.

“I’ll never run away again.”

“I’ll never let you. Because we’ll be together from now on. We’ll be married, won’t we?”

“If you still want me, Dan.”

“If? Darling, I’ve never wanted anything else.”

This time no urgent call interrupted the sealing of their bond.