Sir Ferdinand Shawle stretched out his long thin legs to the blaze.
“Yes,” he said softly, and there was something approaching awe in his tone. “I sometimes wonder if our friend the Dealer is human, or——” He shrugged his shoulders.
“The devil himself?” suggested Ash and laughed.
Sir Henry Fern’s partner was the same unprepossessing figure he had been at the meeting in Sir Ferdinand’s own house. His pale eyes seemed to be if anything of a more indeterminate colour than before, and his thick loose white skin looked pasty and unhealthy.
“I’m sorry for the girl in a way,” he said. “After all, she’s so very young. But I must say that the Dealer has pulled off a master stroke. In Crupiner’s private sanatorium she couldn’t be safer, from our point of view. She’ll be given every care, so the chances of her dying are remote. People live to ripe old ages in such places, I believe. And she certainly can’t marry. I see no reason why the box should ever be opened.”
Sir Ferdinand rose abruptly to his feet. “It’s diabolical,” he said, and added with an unpleasant laugh, “but, as you point out, damned ingenious.”
Ash took his arm. “I think we’d better be getting back to the hall. Dr. Crupiner will be finishing his interview with the girl, and I fancy Sir Henry will need a strong hand. After all, these scenes are very painful.”
He got no further, for at that moment the door was thrown open and Jennifer, followed by her father, burst into the room. At first sight of the two occupants the girl was inclined to withdraw, but the glimpse of a rubicund little person in gold pince-nez following her father decided her, and she came on. Her eyes were red and tear-stained, and there was nameless terror on her face.
“I won’t go. I won’t go. I won’t—never. Don’t let them take me! Please, Daddy, please! At least give me a fair chance. You’ve got no grounds for thinking that there’s anything wrong with me at all, except for my own story concerning Sir Ferdinand in the taxi. But wait for Mrs. Phipps. I implore you!”
The person in the pince-nez bustled forward with a sickeningly ingratiating smile on his plump face.
“Now, little girl,” he said in a syrupy, irritating voice, “we don’t want any fireworks. We want to get you well. You’re upsetting your father. When you’ve had rest you’ll feel better. Then we can have a nice long talk and find out just what strange ideas have got into your funny little mind.”
Jennifer’s gentle temper had been strained beyond endurance. She turned like a tigress on her persecutor.
“I hate you,” she said. “I hate you. You’re trapping me, catching me into silly admissions, destroying my faith in myself.”
The plump man drew back and shrugged his shoulders, nodding to Ash and Sir Ferdinand.
Sir Henry, his face white with agony and his blue eyes dangerously shiny, put his arms round the girl.
“Quiet, Jenny, my darling. Quiet,” he whispered. “Keep your head. Keep your head.”
It was at this moment that old Williamson, who seemed to have grown visibly older since the morning, opened the door and announced firmly: “Mrs. Phipps.”
The old lady came bustling in. In spite of the urgency of the call she had attired herself in her best black costume, her little tippet of real fur and the toque which had been considered so fashionable three years before.
She stood clutching her bag and umbrella and surveying the company with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity.
Jennifer uttered a little cry of relief as she caught sight of the kind, homely face and saw the honest eyes peering at her across the room.
“Mrs. Phipps! Oh, Mrs. Phipps!” she said brokenly. “Come and tell them it’s true. Come and save me. Tell them——”
Dr. Crupiner intervened.
“Really,” he said. “This is most irregular and dangerous. The patient must not be excited further. I will see this woman in another room.”
Mrs. Phipps, who objected to the appellation “woman,” bridled visibly and took a step closer to the girl, and Sir Henry Fern, in one of his rare flashes of authority, spoke abruptly.
“Let the child defend herself, Doctor. We must get this thing straight.”
Richard Crupiner would have raised further objections, but Nelson Ash rather surprisingly came to his partner’s aid. It would seem that his curiosity had been aroused.
“I agree emphatically with Sir Henry,” he said. “I think the girl should be allowed to have every chance.”
Though it was evident he spoke merely because his curiosity had been aroused, he received a grateful glance from his partner.
“Miss Phipps,” Jennifer said suddenly, “a gentleman came to fetch me from your house about an hour ago, didn’t he? You let him in downstairs.”
Mrs. Phipps’s puzzled expression vanished, and she smiled brightly round the expectant company.
“Yes,” she said, “that’s right. You were waiting for Mr. Robin, and I went down to make you a cup of tea. While I was in the basement the front door bell went. ‘Now who can that be?’ I said to myself. ‘Pulling on the wires like a lunatic.’ So I ran along to see. Such a nice gentleman stood on the doorstep. ‘I’m Miss Jennifer Fern’s father,’ he said. ‘Are you, sir?’ said I, wondering what I ought to say next. Well, he got round me.”
She smiled disarmingly at the little group before her.
“And in the end I said, ‘Well, you run up to her. I daresay you’d rather see her alone.’ I know girls are headstrong sometimes—I was when I was a child. And after all,” she went on, patting Jennifer’s arm, “we older people always side together when it’s a question of parents’ authority. So I said, ‘You go straight up, sir.’
“I was surprised, I must say, when I found you’d both gone off without saying good-bye. Still, I understand. You can’t always be thinking of manners.”
Jennifer broke into this harangue, a sob of relief mingling with the words.
“Oh, Mrs. Phipps, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you. This was the gentleman, wasn’t it?”
She took Sir Ferdinand by the arm and led him forward.
Mrs. Phipps peered into the dark face and then drew back, bewilderment on her own.
“Why, no, my dear,” she said. “Of course it wasn’t. I’ve never seen this gentleman before in all my life. I wouldn’t say that the man who called for you wasn’t wearing a dark suit, but he was very different from this gentleman here. Why, I’d know him again wherever I saw him.”
“You’ve got funny ideas, young lady. You want a rest.”
There was complete silence in the crowded little breakfast room as Mrs. Phipps ceased speaking. Jennifer stood as though petrified. The colour slowly drained out of her face, and her eyes had the hurt expression of a child who has been unaccountably let down by one whom it believes it has every reason to trust.
Sir Henry put his arms round his daughter’s shoulders, and a spasm of pain passed over his handsome old face. If Mrs. Phipps had dropped a bomb she could have produced no more consternation in the father and daughter.
The old woman stood looking about her, a puzzled expression in her birdlike eyes. No one in the room doubted for an instant that she had spoken with perfect sincerity when she had declared that Sir Ferdinand Shawle was not the man who had come to fetch Jennifer from her house earlier in the evening.
She gripped her bag and umbrella as though they were her one mainstay in these palatial surroundings in which she found herself so unaccountably, and nodded her head emphatically.
“You go to bed and have a good sleep, my dear,” she said. “You’re not the first person in the world to have an attack of nerves, nor yet the last, by a long chalk. You need a rest.”
Dr. Richard Crupiner came bustling forward, the smug, self-satisfied smile which seemed to be his chief characteristic very much in evidence.
“This good lady has given you better advice than she knows, Miss Fern,” he said. “Now I must ask you to sit down quietly in the other room while your maid gets a
hat and coat, and then we’ll go for a long drive to a beautiful retreat in the country where you can rest completely undisturbed.”
His tone had the soothing inflection which some misguided persons adopt towards recalcitrant children, and guaranteed to move to fury any person of sound and adult mind.
Jennifer was no exception to the rule. She clung to her father.
“There’s some terrible mistake,” she said, her voice rising hysterically. “Don’t let that man touch me. I won’t go with him. I won’t—I won’t—I won’t! Daddy, don’t you see what they’re saying? Don’t you see what they’re hinting? They’re suggesting that I’m not responsible, that my mind isn’t—isn’t to be trusted. Oh, Daddy, don’t let them, don’t let them—shut me up!”
Sir Henry Fern, his face contorted and his eyes wet with the tears he could no longer control, grasped her hands.
“Gentlemen, please,” he said in a voice harsh and broken by emotion, “perhaps you would be good enough to wait for me in the other room. As you see, this is a very painful situation, and not unnaturally I wish to be alone.”
The last word ended in a gasp, and Nelson Ash gripped Sir Ferdinand’s arm and together they moved discreetly and silently out of the doorway.
Mrs. Phipps stood hesitating for a moment like a frightened hen in the path of a motorcar, and then, with some of the startled bird’s flurry, bolted out into the hall.
Only Dr. Crupiner made no attempt to move. He advanced upon the father and daughter with the same bland, ingratiating smile, his pale eyes hidden behind his gold-rimmed pince-nez and his warm white hands held out soothingly.
“Now,” he said, “come, come. You’re not making things easy for your father, Miss Fern. Remember, you must consider his feelings as well as your own. This is an ordeal for all of us, and you must be as helpful as you can. Don’t forget, my dear,” he went on in the same gently reproachful tone which the girl found so unbearable, “don’t forget that in a sense you are responsible for this upheaval. We know it is not your fault. We know better than anyone that you are not consciously to blame for anything. But after all you must exercise a little control. The more courage you exhibit now, the sooner we shall get you better.”
Jennifer swung round upon the little man, her eyes blazing, but her father’s hand closed over her wrist and warned her to be silent.
“That’ll do, Dr. Crupiner,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any point in reproaching my child.
“You’re not well, Jenny,” he continued, returning to the girl in his arms. “You have lots of silly ideas in your pretty little head, lots of quaint fancies which sometimes come to people when they are overwrought. Now run upstairs, put on your hat and coat, and I’ll come with you. I’ll see you’re comfortable. Don’t worry. You’re going to be looked after. You’re going to be taken care of by kind people.”
There was a tremor on his lips on his last words, and the wistful glance he shot at the doctor was a passionate plea for confirmation.
“But of course.” Dr. Crupiner spoke with his usual cheerfulness. “Miss Fern has nothing to fear from us. It’s the effect her unfortunate illness has on other people which is the only alarming aspect of the whole case.”
“There, my dear, there, you see? Now don’t worry. Don’t worry at all.”
The old man escorted his daughter to the door, and as it swung open both bent figures stiffened a little.
Standing in the hall, severe and businesslike in their starched uniforms, were two nurses. Both were middle-aged women, both had strong, expressionless faces.
The taller of the two stepped forward at once.
“I have Miss Fern’s things in the little dressing room downstairs,” she said in the quiet businesslike way which so many of her profession adopt.
“You will come with me, won’t you, dear?” she went on, and her tone immediately became a replica of the doctor’s when speaking to the patient.
Jennifer shot a despairing glance at her father, but she was tired, and her weariness was fast driving her into a state of apathy.
The other nurse noticed the expression in her eyes, and, hurrying forward, took out a small bottle of what appeared to be aspirin tablets from the pocket of her cloak.
“Poor lamb,” she said, and, although her words and voice were kind, to Jennifer’s ears at least there was something hypocritical, something vaguely untrustworthy in her tone.
She took the tablet obediently, however, and swallowed it. The slightly salty taste of aspirin did not reach her palate, but she thought nothing of it. Her mind was on her father and on the weird succession of incidents which had made him doubt her senses.
Sir Henry Fern watched her disappear down the corridor, flanked by the two strong, efficient women. Then, with bowed head, he turned and went back into the little room where Dr. Richard Crupiner awaited him.
For Jennifer life had become a nightmare. In the little dressing room which she knew so well her own maid, her face pallid beneath her make-up and her dark eyes round pits of terror, stood beside a suitcase, a fur coat and travelling hat in her arms.
“Mademoiselle, shall I be going with you?” she said as she helped the girl into the comforting folds of the long squirrel wrap. “I have everything prepared. I could be with you in a moment.”
Jennifer’s impulse was to cling to the girl, although she felt instinctively that it was only loyalty which made her make the offer, and she could feel her hands trembling with ill-concealed fear as she fumbled with the fur-covered buttons on the coat.
Before she could speak, the taller of the two nurses had intervened.
“Miss Fern will not require a maid. It is part of the cure that she should get away from familiar surroundings as much as possible. Sister Agnes and I are perfectly competent to look after her in every way.”
“Very good, madame.”
Jennifer felt a spasm of pain at the ill-concealed tone of relief in the little maid’s voice. “She is afraid of me,” she reflected wretchedly. “Terrified, poor child. Oh, if Robin were only here!”
She turned listlessly. Weariness was stealing over her, a strange lassitude which could not be accounted for by the emotional ordeal through which she had passed. This was something physical, something over which she had no control. The memory of the aspirin tablet came back to her, and she turned to the nurse, a last flash of energy in her eyes.
“That—that was not aspirin,” she said thickly.
The woman seemed to have become very far away, and when she spoke it was as though her voice travelled from a long distance.
“Poor child, you’re tired.”
The next moment Jennifer’s eyes closed and she stood swaying. The two nurses exchanged meaning glances, and the taller of the two put a strong arm round the slender fur-clad shoulders.
They led her out into the hall again, the maid following with the case.
Sir Henry Fern, followed by the doctor, came hurrying down the corridor from the morning room.
“Jenny, my dear,” he said, “Jenny, Dr. Crupiner has almost persuaded me that it would be better for me not to come down with you now. But I shall come soon, my darling. If you want me, my child, even now, I shall disregard his advice and come with you. Why, Jenny, my darling, what’s the matter?”
The girl was taking no notice of him. Although her eyes were open, their expression was dull and apathetic. Her lips were tightly closed, her cheeks ashen.
Dr. Crupiner laid a hand on the old man’s arm.
“Don’t disturb her,” he said. “It’s a normal form of collapse in cases where severe nervous excitement has been undergone. On the way down she’ll drop into a natural sleep and probably remain in a condition of semi-coma for two or even three days. It’s nature’s way of refuelling the exhausted nervous system. There’s nothing to be alarmed about. I shall write you every day and let you know as soon as it will be wise for you to see her. Nurse, take the patient along, please.”
It was an old and broken Sir H
enry Fern who followed the little procession through the hall of his mansion to the street, where a black car with shaded windows was drawn up outside the elaborate portico.
One nurse entered the car, and the other lifted the slight form of the patient bodily and passed her in to her colleague, who made her comfortable among the deep cushions of the limousine.
It was all over in a moment. Dr. Crupiner, his pale eyes glittering behind his pince-nez, shook hands hurriedly and sprang in beside the driver.
The car began to move, and Sir Henry, standing bareheaded in the darkening street, watched it bear the child he loved swiftly away into the twilight.
CHAPTER 14
Gathering Shadows
“I’VE taken the liberty of bringing you the decanter and some sandwiches, sir.”
Williamson’s voice trembled as he spoke, and he set the silver tray down upon the small table at his master’s elbow with a none too steady hand.
The old servant was genuinely grieved, and in his privileged position of butler and confidant to the family for so many years, he went on, still with the same deference and gentle persuasion:
“You really ought to eat something, sir. Sitting brooding over the fire, it’s not healthy, sir, if you’ll forgive my saying so. Do eat something, sir. Just nibble a sandwich if nothing else. It’ll keep up your strength.”
Sir Henry lifted leaden eyes from the fire and, turning his head slowly, regarded the old man.
“Thank you, Williamson,” he said. “Don’t worry. Keep the servants quiet and don’t let me be disturbed.”
Old Williamson bowed. “Very good, sir.”
But he hovered in the background until he had satisfied himself that his master had taken a sandwich from the plate.
As soon as Sir Henry Fern was assured that the old servant had gone, however, he replaced the food on the plate and turned again to his gloomy contemplation of the fire.
He had gone over the ground again and again. In his heart he believed his daughter to be as clear-minded and free from neurosis as any other healthy girl, but he could not explain away her two extraordinary lapses: first the story of her encounter with Sir Ferdinand Shawle, and then her remarkable story of the man who had committed suicide in his own office. That smacked of mania.
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