by Mike Ashley
The odd thing was that it was evident Dr. Galtie was a more or less unwilling visitor. Solange chaffed him about the difficulty she had had in getting him to fix a day to come and see her, and even now that he was sitting in their pleasant drawing-room, he seemed, for all his charming, easy manners, to be rather plainly making the visit as formal as possible. It was with all the more surprise that Raymond heard Solange say, as she leant back on her chaise-longue, as though the effort of pouring out tea had taxed her strength:
“Papa has set his heart on my trying a month at your sanatorium, Dr. Galtie. The symptoms refuse to yield to treatment down here. Please say you will consent to put up with me, after all. There can’t really be any objection, you know, and I shall feel you have taken a dislike to me personally, or that you think I will make a bad patient, if you refuse. Or, worse still, that you despair of curing me, and that would be too depressing.”
There was a little silence, and then Galtie said, putting down his cup and looking straight at Solange:
“I have already told you, mademoiselle, that not only can I find no trace of organic disease in you, but not even the danger of it which you and your father seem to fear. My sanatorium is for consumptives.”
“Not for hypochondriacs, he means,” said Solange, laughing; “but I’m really not that, M. Galtie. It’s papa’s fault. You see he fusses over me absurdly, and when you have a thing like that in the family, and your only child loses strength and languishes, you naturally get alarmed. I know his panic must seem inexcusable in a man of science, but you must remember he is a parent as well, and parents are notoriously unreasonable.”
Dr. Galtie’s face still looked unyielding, but at that moment the maid announced another visitor, and at the name of “Madame Sorel,” Solange got to her feet and went to meet the little lady who advanced into the room.
Madame Sorel, though only a couple of years older than Solange, who was thirty-one, looked nearly forty, for life had dealt hardly with her. Raymond, looking at her sensitive, eager little face, began to remember various things Solange had let fall about the little lady from time to time. She had been at the same convent school as Solange, and had married almost at once on leaving. He remembered Solange and her father discussing the marriage one day, saying how badly it had turned out, how Monsieur Sorel, a man much older than herself, had played ducks and drakes with her, and finally died, leaving her and her two little girls very ill-provided for.
She and Solange greeted each other affectionately, while the two men stood waiting, and then Valerie Sorel caught sight of Dr. Galtie. A wave of deep red flowed up over her small face as she put out her hand.
“M. Galtie; I did not know you knew my dear Mademoiselle Fontaine. What a pleasant surprise to find you here.”
“And I, madame,” returned Galtie, “was not aware you had any friends in Nice—except myself, if I may dare to call myself your friend.”
“Who should if not you?” said Valerie artlessly; and turning to Solange, she went on: “You can’t think how good Dr. Galtie is being to me. Fancy, he is having the children up at his place for the summer. You may imagine the weight it is off my mind. Nice gets so dreadfully hot, and little Fernande has such a horrid cough.”
“Ninette has it, too, I fear,” said Galtie; “but,” as she turned startled eyes on him, “don’t worry. They will soon be all right. Leave them in my hands, and you will see how strong and fat they will grow and what roses they will bring back to Nice for the winter.”
The next twenty minutes were rather painful. It was so obvious that the faded little Madame Sorel was in love with the handsome doctor who was befriending her. When she got up to go she practically asked him if he were not leaving also, and Raymond—much as he disliked the man—felt almost sorry for him as he gallantly, if reluctantly, offered to drive her home in his car. Farewells were said, and the two went through to the hall, but in a moment Galtie was back, his hat in his hand.
“Mademoiselle Fontaine,” he said, speaking quickly, “I have been thinking it over, and, after all, I see no reason why you should not try my sanatorium. You are undoubtedly very run down, and the air would do you good. You need not mix with the patients, so there would be no fear of infection.”
“I’m not in the least afraid, anyway,” said Solange. “But thank you so much. I’ll write and arrange the date of my arrival. It is au revoir then, M. Galtie.’
“It is au revoir, mademoiselle.”
The two looked at each other for a moment, then the doctor bowed politely, and went out to rejoin Madame Sorel again. Solange met Raymond’s amazed eyes with a laugh.
“Well, what do you know about that?” murmured Raymond.
“Not much yet,” said Solange, “but I think I’m going to know a good deal. Raymond,”—and getting to her feet she went over to him and laid a hand on his shoulder—“I shall want you to help. I think we’re going to find ourselves in a very tight corner.”
“Solange, you aren’t really ill?”
“No, of course not. That’s all put on to get to the sanatorium. Raymond, that doctor, with his splendid looks and his charming manners and his goodness—oh, yes, he does innumerable good actions, and the poor of Nice worship him—fills me with fear. He’s evil, he’s horribly evil, and he’s planning something, but what I don’t know. I only feel it’s something to do with my little friend Valerie or her children.”
“My dear, how can it be? I hated the man myself, but be reasonable. She hasn’t a penny, nor have her children; what designs could he have on them, even if he has an evil heart?”
“I don’t know,” repeated Solange—“I don’t know. But I do know that he was afraid to have me at his sanatorium, and that now he sees I know Madame Sorel he is willing to have me out of the way of what he may do in Nice. It makes me wonder whether I am on the right track, whether I ought not to stay here and guard her. And yet when I think of those children—”
“Solange, I wish you wouldn’t go. I’m not thinking of Madame Sorel or her children, I’m thinking of you. You know you’ve never made a mistake when you’ve felt that warning sense of evil. If you go up there, you yourself may not be safe.”
“That’s what I meant by the tight corner. If he’s what I think, if the propensities I feel in him are really developed and not merely latent, then he may not be content with merely having me out of the way temporarily. However, it’s no good worrying, especially when one can hardly see a step of the way ahead, the only thing to do is to proceed very cautiously.”
“Your father must be mad. Why on earth does he let you risk yourself? Surely his daughter is more to him than a little dressmaker he hardly knows?”
“His daughter is, yes; but there’s something that to him ranks above everything—as it does, I hope, to me.”
“And that is?”
“Truth. When you see your job you can’t neglect it, no matter what the risks. That’s the only morality worth anything. I risk myself, papa would go one higher, he would risk me. But, as a matter of fact, he knows nothing about this. I bluffed when I talked about him to Galtie. He’s in Paris for the next few weeks, attending a scientist’s conference. So you must be ready to help me, because I’m sure I shall need you badly.”
And what could Raymond do but promise his help, deeply as the egoism of a would-be lover disapproved the enterprise?
Solange sat on the wide verandah of the sanatorium. At her feet lay mile upon mile of undulating country stretching away to the glittering blue of the Mediterranean; country blurred with olive-trees as with silvery puffs of smoke, and touched here and there with the vivid, tender green of young larches, country whose rugged outlines only showed occasionally in an outcrop of grey boulders, or fields of hardened lava, where even the juniper and myrtle could not encroach. The air was filled with the delicate scent of many flowers, for in that district the blossoms that go to the scent factories of Grasse are grown, and here and there against the sky the mimosa hung out its tassels of vivid yellow.
It was a good world, and, as far as the eye could see, the sanatorium of Dr. Fulgence Galtie went to make it better. The long white building, with its wing-wide emerald green shutters, its deeply fluted roof, its spacious verandah where the shadow lay coolly banded as in a soft blue ribbon amidst all the sun-dazzled whiteness, and where the patients sat or lay about in cushioned chairs, dozing from one meal to the next—all this surely was pleasant not only to the eye but to the mind.
Solange was isolated from the rest of the patients by a woven grass wind-screen that hung across the verandah. The only people near here were two little girls, who were playing with a doll on a rug beside her chair, and talking together in low voices over its blonde tousled head. They were Ninette and Fernande, the children of Valerie Sorel. They wore their black hair cropped square about their transparent, waxen ears, their little faces were pale, and their big brown eyes dark-rimmed; but their business, that exquisite, idle business of children, which stirs a queer pity in the heart, was untouched by any gravity other than the seriousness of intense childhood. Solange watched them gravely, then her eyes wandered to the misty blue of the horizon, where the blatant sea deigned to lose its sparkle at last in a hint of mystery.
Solange had been at the sanatorium three weeks, three long, idle weeks, during which the oppression that the handsome young doctor bore for her slackened somewhat, contrary to her expectations. She had found out nothing.
Madame Sorel, radiant with a glow that seemed miraculously to wipe ten of her hard years from her vivid, eager, dark little face, had motored up once in the doctor’s car and had dropped hints to Solange—hints of a great prosperity to come, of a happiness that might follow in its train. But, oddly enough, these hints, which Valerie evidently thought would rejoice her friend, did nothing of the sort—so much was evident, and Madame Sorel saw it with resentment.
Solange was aware of the resentment, yet was unable to rid herself entirely of the thought that Galtie had a scheme which would not bear the light of day; although not yet had she managed to obtain the smallest scrap of evidence that would show him up unfavourably. The children seemed to grow weaker rather than stronger, that was the only thing, and yet the only credible suspicion—that Galtie might have got the unsuspecting mother to insure them while he was slowly loosening their frail tenure on life—did not seem likely. No company would have insured the two delicate little girls heavily enough to make such a course of action seem worth while. That difficulty was not insuperable there have been many murders planned for quite inadequate insurance money, though perhaps not by the dashing Dr. Galties of the criminal world, but there was a stronger reason why Solange still half-believed, against all proof, that the immediate danger, if any, threatened not the children but their mother, and that was the fact that when he discovered she, Solange, knew Madame Sorel, he had been anxious to have her up at the sanatorium after all.
That could only mean that she would be more in the way in Nice than under his own eye—and yet Solange could not make up her mind to leave the sanatorium. For she realised that, though Dr. Fulgence Galtie might recognise her as a danger, having heard of her as a criminologist of note, yet he was not aware that she was convinced of his evil propensities. He might well think—doubtless did think, knowing she could not really know anything about him—that he had only to keep any suspicious circumstances from her gaze and he would be safe. As far as Solange knew, he did not suspect her of suspicions, there was no reason why he should. Her known skill as a specialist in the detection of criminals was enough to make him nervous if he had anything culpable in his mind, and would make him unwilling to have her in any position where she would have to see him every day. Thus it was easy to see why, in the first place, he was anxious to keep her away from his house, and yet, when he had discovered she was a friend of Madame Sorel’s, it should seem to him expedient to alter his mind and invite her up into the hills. And in his ignorance lay her chance, for in her daily study of the doctor, piecing little thing to little thing in a way only possible when living under the same roof, she might suddenly see the solution to the puzzle more clearly than with all the ordinary detective “stunts” of observing incomings and outgoings that she might have achieved in Nice. There she could have watched his movements—here, she felt, unless she were very dull and dense, she could watch his soul.
But—had she grown dense? That was what was perplexing and torturing her. Had the fine balance of her soul, that exquisite sixth sense by which she had always been able to distinguish evil as an animal smells water, grown blunted, and, if so, why?
Her own heart fearfully prompted the answer. She was thinking of Raymond too much. It had become a species of almost voluptuous rest with her to let her mind stray from the problem before her and dwell upon Raymond, not only on what he looked like, on things he said, on the quick turns of the head or the characteristic attitudes both of mind and body which always occupy the thoughts of a woman prepared to fall in love, but also on imaginary scenes that the future might hold if she only would. What he would say, what she could answer—what “it” would all be like, all the delicious comedy played by every man and woman since the beginning of the world, the comedy that seems at the time of playing so intense, so serious, and that to old age is a memory as sharply sweet as the smell of the autumn earth after rain. Might it not be for her also, this playing with life that made life so much keener a thing? Why not? And even as, in her weakness—that charmed new weakness of soul that enwrapped her—she took the thought out day after day and juggled with it, even in those moments there knocked at her heart the deadly fear that already she was losing keenness of vision. For, so she was fearful, her gift had lain in her impersonality, as any great gift must, and there is nothing so selfishly, ragingly, personal as the period called “being in love.”
Was it the very thought of it, the mere admitting of it as a possibility, that was dulling her fine senses, giving her this distressing sensation of groping in a fog, this fear that unless she found out something soon she might be too late? She tortured herself with the question as she lay on the warm verandah, and her eyes rested on the sleek, dark heads of the two intent children.
The answer to everything was to come to her more suddenly than she, who felt hopelessly “stuck,” could have thought possible. It was to come in the next twenty-four hours, the answer to her own problem, to that of Valerie Sorel, to that of the whole little group—ardent, intelligent, but simple-souled Raymond, pitiful Valerie, helpless children, and daring, anxious, frantic Fulgence Galtie.
It was nearly two weeks since Valerie had come up to the sanatorium, and Solange was wondering uneasily about her. She herself had been down to Nice, but had not succeeded in seeing her friend, for the little house where Valerie lived alone was dumb and blind, and after much knocking Solange had had to conclude she was out. As Solange lay in the verandah, she decided she must go down to Nice again soon, even if it meant breaking all the rules of the establishment and led to her expulsion from it. She was wondering when she had better go, when Raymond Ker was announced.
Raymond looked very unlike himself, one glance at him was sufficient to show her that it was not the urgency of the lover which prompted his visit, and all her thoughts of self fell away from her, over-borne by the older passion, the passion for helping in the dark places.
“Something has happened to Valerie,” she said, running towards him.
He gave one glance at the children, a thoughtfulness for which, even in that moment, she loved him, as he answered:
“I can’t tell you here. Come into the garden.”
They went together past the hideous, formal beds, where palm-trees raised mournful heads above stiff carpet-plants, into the tangle of wild orchard beyond, followed by scandalised glances from patients who would never walk with the heart of youth beneath flowering trees again, before Raymond told her. Then he said:
“Valerie Sorel is very ill. She may be dying.”
“Raymond, I knew it. An
d I up here, useless—”
“No, you mustn’t think that. Even you couldn’t have watched more carefully than I have. Believe me, the only thing to do now is to entrap him. But let me tell you, it’s so difficult to arrange.”
Raymond paused a minute, and then began again.
“She has been well, perfectly well, all the time you have been here, till ten days ago. Then she fell downstairs at her lodging. Apparently, she only jarred herself, but she took to her bed, and sent for the doctor—not Galtie, but a stranger, a Dr. Charlot, who lived in the next street. He treated her for shock, but, after a few days, came to the conclusion she was hysterical, and told her to get up. She doesn’t seem to have had any confidence in him, as he caught her pouring his medicine down the sink, which he has never forgiven.”
“Wait a moment,” said Solange. “What day was it exactly when she fell downstairs?”
“Last Friday week.”
“Dr. Galtie was here all that day and all the evening. Well?”
“Well, she’s been in bed ever since.”