At first he did not recognize it at all. The white garments hanging upon the wall, the desk, the sinks, and the heavy mahogany cases bewildered him.
Suddenly, however, he caught sight of a white linen mask lying upon the table, and recollection came back to him. He remembered being shown round a big London hospital by one of the surgeons and seeing the little robing room off the operating theatre where the surgeon donned his coat, gloves, and helmet.
The room into which he peered was a smaller, less efficient travesty of the robing room at the hospital.
He was in a genuine nursing home, then.
But it was not this discovery which made him stiffen and brought a fresh ray of hope. In those mahogany cases not far from his hand, although so well protected by the narrow grille, were doubtless surgical instruments—weapons, certain and deadly, if he could lay hands on them.
He tried the grille tentatively and his heart leapt. Although by no means loose, it gave definite signs of yielding.
CHAPTER 16
Terror’s Captive
“I SHALL be glad if you will get me my clothes, Nurse Agnes. I’m perfectly well, and there’s no point in keeping me in bed.”
Jennifer sat upright among the pillows in the bleak, cheerless little room and regarded the woman who stood at the end of the bed with as much courage as she could muster. She was very weak. The effects of the drug which had been administered to her before leaving the house in Regent’s Park had worn off but had left her pale and weak.
Her spirit was not broken, however, and the old imperious light had flashed into her mild eyes, and her tone was firm and vibrant.
Save for the bed on which she lay and a single table beneath the high window, the room was completely devoid of furniture, and its white walls were unrelieved by any form of decoration.
The temperature was low, and the whole place contrived to give an atmosphere of chilly inhumanity which would have quelled the heart of many hardier persons than Jennifer Fern.
The nurse, austere as the room itself in her crackling white uniform, stood looking at the girl with a faintly supercilious smile.
“Lie down,” she said. “Lie down and keep quiet. You’ll never get well if you don’t,” she added, and there was something that was almost amusement in her cold eyes.
The colour rushed into the girl’s face.
“You’re laughing at me,” she said. “You’re torturing me deliberately. You know perfectly well that I’m quite all right. You must be able to see it. You know I’m being kept here a prisoner and you’re conniving at it. How can you?—How can you? If you had any spark of human feeling in you at all you’d show a little mercy and try to get me out of this place.”
The woman laughed dryly.
“My dear child,” she said, “did you know that I am supposed to take down everything you say, so that the doctors may see it and draw their own conclusions concerning the state of your—er—mental balance? I should be very careful how you talk, young lady. This illness of yours sometimes takes a very long time to cure. Sometimes”—she lowered her voice—“a lifetime.”
Jennifer grew suddenly cold as the significance of the last words sank into her mind. “Sometimes a lifetime.” She saw herself trapped, caught in the toils of a malignant fate, inhuman and relentless.
“This is incredible!” she said breathlessly. “I am well, I tell you, perfectly well. I’ve never been so sane in my life as I am now. You can’t mean that I’m going to be forsaken here for a long time? I should go mad.”
The amused expression which passed over the other’s hard face caught her up sharply. Her first fears were giving place to sheer undiluted terror. She felt her control slipping. She felt that the hold she had upon herself must snap and she must give way to screaming hysteria. She felt she must spring from her bed and attack this grinning fiend who tormented her.
Fortunately, however, her better self came to her rescue, and she began to reason swiftly, her brain becoming cool, as is often the case when genuine danger threatens.
Her only chance, she knew instinctively, was to keep her head. If she gave way to her fears, she would be playing straight into her enemy’s hands.
She leant back among the pillows, therefore, and forced a wan smile.
“Of course you know best, Nurse,” she said, her voice sounding pathetically childlike in her attempt at subterfuge. “I feel much better, though. Perhaps if you could get me paper and a pencil I could write to my father. I should like him to know that I am quite comfortable and—and happy.”
She watched the woman carefully to see the effect of this new move and was delighted to find that she was inclined to be obliging.
“Yes,” said Nurse Agnes dubiously. “I think that could be arranged.”
She hurried out of the room, locking the door ostentatiously behind her, and returned a moment or so later with a pad of paper and a lead pencil.
Jennifer fell upon them with the eagerness of a child.
“Oh, thank you,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll write at once if I may. I—I’m very fond of my father, you know. I should like him to come and see me. Dr. Crupiner did promise that he should come, you know.”
The woman did not reply but stood watching her as she began to write feverishly. Her hand moved like lightning, and her confused thoughts were poured out upon the paper.
Nurse Agnes stood looking down at her, an inscrutable expression on her broad face.
She allowed the girl to write three pages, three poignant, ill-constructed pages of passionate appeal. Then she moved over to the door.
“I shall come back in an hour,” she said. “I am glad to see you amusing yourself. There’s just one thing, Miss Fern, which perhaps may make some difference to your enthusiasm.”
Something in the mocking voice made the girl look up.
“You mean—you mean my letters won’t be sent?”
The nurse’s smile broadened.
“Letters of mental patients are never sent,” she said quietly. “We keep them as amusing and interesting documents. Still, write away, my dear. It passes the time and does no one any harm.”
Then, before the horrified girl could speak, she had hurried out of the room with a rustle of starched garments, and Jennifer heard the turn of the key in the lock as she fastened the door before going downstairs.
For some time the girl sat motionless. Then she began to cry.
She sat there sobbing in the little white bed for some time. She dared not think of her father, and Robin’s behaviour bewildered her. Of course he did not know of her present terrible predicament. If he did he would never let her be taken to a place like this without first seeing her himself.
In that moment of her despair she longed for him more than for anyone else in the world.
Robin was clear-headed and intelligent. Robin was not the man to be deceived by any lies told by a little gold-spectacled quack doctor. But she knew in her heart that Robin would not come. Something had happened to prevent him hearing of her troubles; she was sure of it.
She tore the letter she had been writing to her father into a hundred pieces and buried her face in the pillows. They might keep her here for life. The thought petrified her. Medical men, she knew, had strange powers. To the layman their word was law.
Her own helplessness terrified her, and she summoned to her aid every ounce of courage left in her make-up. She sat up in bed again and looked about her.
The window was high up in the wall and protected on the outside by a very heavy set of iron bars. She listened, but there was no sound from without, and presently she slipped out of bed and crept over to the table.
She was surprised to find how weak she was, and her fear of her enemies increased. She was completely at their mercy. They could drug her into insensibility if they wished. With a great effort she climbed up on the table and peered out through the narrow window.
Her room was evidently very high up in a large building surrounded by a massive wall, the to
p of which was liberally spiked. She could see over the wall, and beyond, instead of the quiet meadows of an English countryside, were the desolate mud flats of the East Anglian coast stretching out for a mile or more to the grey sea.
The landscape was completely flat, but as far as the eye could reach there was no sign of human habitation or even of life itself, save for myriad sea gulls wheeling and screaming over the desolate mud.
She guessed that the tide must be out and realized with dismay that when it came in it must lap against the wall which surrounded her prison.
The cold grey noon increased the dreariness of the scene, and Jennifer, trembling in the chilly little room, felt that she was surveying a picture of the end of the world.
She crept down from the table again and clambered back into bed. She was past weeping. Despair had settled down upon her.
How long she lay there staring up at the white ceiling she never knew, but she was interrupted in her reverie by the sudden unlocking of the bedroom door and the reappearance of Nurse Agnes, with Dr. Crupiner close behind her.
The little man appeared to be in a state of high excitement. There was more colour than usual in his cheeks, and his eyes behind his spectacles were glittering.
Jennifer caught the impression that there had been a hasty consultation behind her door just before they came in, and she guessed that something unexpected had occurred to alarm, or at least embarrass, the little doctor.
As he came over to the bed he had lost much of his usual good humour, and his voice when he spoke was no longer modulated soothingly.
Instead he was surprisingly brisk.
“Now Miss Fern,” he said, “I can see you’ve quite recovered from your journey. I want you to get up and dress and go with Nurse Agnes down to the rest room on the next floor. You may be receiving visitors this afternoon.”
“My father?”
The girl spoke eagerly, and the nurse and the doctor exchanged sly understanding glances.
Dr. Crupiner laughed.
“Your father would hardly come here as a visitor, Miss Fern,” he said. “Hurry and dress now, and I’ll see you later.”
He bustled off, leaving Jennifer to ponder over the exact meaning of his last cryptic remark concerning her father.
Suddenly she turned upon the nurse.
“Do you have only one kind of patient here?” she demanded.
The woman looked up at her slyly, and Jennifer was conscious of something malignant and cruel lingering behind her shrewd glance.
“Yes,” she said distinctly. “Only one kind of patient—like yourself.”
Jennifer asked no more questions. Clad in her own garments, she felt more herself. But some of her fear returned when the woman insisted on her wearing a coarse grey cotton frock, which buttoned down the back, instead of her own dainty skirt and blouse.
“It’s the rule of the house and Dr. Crupiner’s orders,” she said. “I’m afraid you must wear it. Now hurry up, dear.”
It was a pathetic little Jennifer, muffled in the unbecoming folds of the hideous dress, who permitted the stalwart nurse to lead her down the corridor outside her room to a flight of stairs, chilly and uncarpeted.
When these had been negotiated they came at last to another room situated on the warmer side of the house.
Here the nurse left her and went out, locking the door.
Feeling weak and helpless, Jennifer crept in, grateful for the warmth but appalled by the hideousness of the furnishing, which was bare and unlovely as a barracks.
The one bright thing in the room was the window, and she hurried over to it eagerly.
To her relief it gave upon a garden, comparatively well kept and very green for the time of year. In the distance she could see the great wall encircling the house and grounds, but it did not seem so ugly when separated by this expanse of smooth, velvety lawn.
As she was standing there looking down, she fancied she heard a movement in the room behind her.
Turning swiftly, she was just in time to see a little observation hatch high up in the wall which contained the door spring shut.
She shivered. Even here she was being watched.
The next moment, however, she turned to look out into the garden again.
As her eyes fell upon the lawn for the second time, a cry of mingled bewilderment and delight escaped her. Walking slowly across the grass, his hands clasped behind him and his head bent, was a familiar figure. Even had it not been for a glimpse of his face she would have known him anywhere. The set of the shoulders, the walk, the characteristic droop of the head, she knew them all so well.
She beat upon the glass.
“Daddy! It’s me—Jennifer.”
The figure did not look up. Fearing that he had not heard her, she threw up the sash so that the cool air of the morning blew upon her face.
This window was barred on the outside like the one in her room, but she leant forward and caught the iron rods in her clenched hands.
“Daddy!” she shouted. “Daddy!”
The figure on the lawn was directly beneath the window. At the sound of her voice he turned and looked up at her. The light fell upon his face, and, although he was some twenty feet away from her, she could see his features quite distinctly.
She held out her arms to him.
“Oh, darling, I’m so glad you’ve come! This is a terrible place. I’m frightened here. Make them let you take me home.”
The last word died on her lips, and she felt the blood in her body running slowly cold. The man on the lawn looked at her fixedly. The eyes which she knew and loved regarded her dully, uncomprehendingly.
And then, with a gesture of one who is confronted by a phenomenon he neither can nor wishes to understand, he turned away and walked slowly off across the grass, his hands clasped behind him, his chin upon his breast.
CHAPTER 17
The Sprung Trap
JENNIFER leaned as far out of the window as the bars would permit, and her clear young voice, now shrill with terror, echoed over the sodden garden.
“Daddy! Daddy! Come to me!”
But there was no answer save the plaintive cries of the gulls circling over the mud flats.
Slowly she drew back from the window and mechanically pulled down the sash. She stood very straight and still in her hideous grey dress. She was past tears, and her wide eyes were hard and bright.
Once again the utterly incredible had occurred. She had seen her father face to face and he had not recognized her, and slowly into her mind there crept the insidious doubt of her own brain.
She sank down on the rug before the enclosed iron stove and covered her face with her hands.
She was still in that position five minutes later when the door was thrown unceremoniously open and Dr. Crupiner, a triumphant gleam in his pale eyes behind his spectacles, ushered two men into the room.
Sir Henry Fern, looking paler than usual and somehow shrunken within his heavy overcoat, was followed by the square burly figure of Inspector Whybrow. Both men looked anxious. But while the inspector was merely grave with the expression of one who has an unpleasant, embarrassing duty to perform, there was genuine grief and alarm in Sir Henry’s face.
It was evident that they had not received an encouraging report of the patient’s condition from the doctor, and indeed the little man wore an air of smug regret which was easily recognizable.
Jennifer lifted her head dully as they came in, and then, as her eyes fell upon her father, the swift colour came into her cheeks and she half rose.
The next moment, however, the recollection of her recent experience came back to her, and she drew back stiffly like a hurt, reproachful child who fears for its reception.
Sir Henry, whose face had lighted at the sight of her, was quick to notice the change, and the worried light in his eyes deepened.
“Why, Jenny,” he said, “how are you this morning, my dear? Dr. Crupiner tells me you passed quite a good night. I’ve brought Inspector Whybrow down t
o hear your story about the man you told me had committed suicide in my office. Will you tell it to him, please?”
He was speaking nervously and jerkily, hurrying on further than he had intended because he was puzzled and frightened by the reproach in her eyes.
Jennifer, who was nearly at the end of her tether, suddenly lost her control. That he should have treated her so extraordinarily on the lawn not ten minutes before and then have suddenly confronted her with a lot of stupid questions before a police officer made her indignant, and, in her bewilderment, a little shocked.
“My dear,” she said reproachfully, “why come and ask me this now when you wouldn’t take any notice of me a moment or so ago? When I spoke to you out of the window you simply stared up at me without saying a word. And besides, if you were staying here, why not come and see me before?”
She stopped abruptly. Sir Henry and the inspector had exchanged swift, startled glances, and now Dr. Crupiner stepped forward and murmured a few hurried words. The two men nodded understandingly, and when Sir Henry looked again at his daughter his eyes were full of tears.
“Oh, my Jenny!” he said brokenly. “My poor little girl!”
He held out his arms to her, but before she could reach him Dr. Crupiner had intervened.
“Please, Sir Henry,” he whispered authoritatively. “The patient is very hysterical. She must not be disturbed any more than can possibly be helped at this juncture. I don’t know if you’re convinced, sir,” he went on, turning to the detective, “but it seems to me obvious that you can get no evidence of any real use from Miss Fern in her present condition.”
Inspector Whybrow breathed heavily and nodded. He was profoundly uncomfortable. He was the most human of men, and he found the scene he was forced to witness eminently pathetic and distasteful.
“I agree with you, Doctor,” he said abruptly. “Come, Sir Henry. We can do no good here, I’m afraid.”
“Just a moment, Inspector.”
The old baronet went over to his daughter and took her in his arms. She clung to him, and as her cheek rested against his the idea was slowly borne in upon her that she was the victim of some monstrous trick, some trap, some carefully engineered mistake.
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