The young surgeon’s square, immobile face became a shade darker and, leaning towards the girl, he said something abruptly. She hesitated, looked up at him and nodded.
A moment later the waiter was off across the room again, a faint smile on his face. The Superintendent frowned.
‘What happened?’ he demanded. ‘I didn’t see, did you? Wait a minute.’
Before Campion could stop him he had risen from his seat and sauntered off across the room, ostensibly to get a pipe out of the pocket of his overcoat which hung on a stand near the doorway. The somewhat circuitous route he chose led him directly behind March’s chair at the moment when he received the return note from the waiter.
Oates came back smiling.
‘I thought so,’ he said triumphantly as he sat down. ‘She wrapped her engagement ring in his own note and sent it back to him. Oh, very dignified and crushing, whatever he wrote! Look at him now … is he going to make a row?’
‘I hope not,’ said Mr Campion fervently.
‘No, he’s thought better of it. He’s going.’ The Superintendent seemed a little disappointed. ‘He’s livid, though. Look at his hands. He’s shaking with fury. I say, Campion, I don’t like the look of him; he’s demented with rage.’
‘Don’t gawp at him then, poor chap,’ his host protested. ‘You were going to tell me something of unparalleled interest about company law.’
The Superintendent frowned, his eyes still on the retreating figures at the other side of the room.
‘Was I? This little show has put it out of my head,’ he said. ‘Ah, they’ve gone and the other two are settling down again. Well, that’s the end of that little romance. I enjoyed it.’
‘Obviously,’ said Mr Campion bitterly. ‘It’s probably cost me two perfectly good acquaintances, but what of that if you’re happy? The whole incident would have been washed away with a few pretty tears in a day or so and might have been decently forgotten. Still, if you enjoyed it …’
The ex-Inspector regarded him owlishly.
‘You’re wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m not a man given to – er – soothsaying … what’s the word?’
‘Prophecy?’ suggested Campion, laughing.
‘Prophecy,’ echoed Oates with success. ‘But I tell you, Campion, that the incident we have just witnessed is going to have far-reaching consequences.’
‘You’re tight,’ said his companion.
He was, of course, but it was a remarkable thing, as he himself pointed out afterwards, that he was unequivocably right at the same time.
The engagement between Miss Denise Warren and Mr Rupert Fielding, F.R.C.S., was announced at the end of August, a decent six weeks after the intimation that her marriage to Mr Arthur March, son of the late Sir Joshua March, would not take place, and when Mr Campion walked down Pall Mall to the Junior Greys one morning in October the whole affair was ancient history.
It was a little before twelve and the sun was shining in at the great bay windows of the club, windows so large and frank that the decorous gentlemen within looked almost more like exhibits under glass than spectators of the procession of traffic in the street below.
As he approached the building Mr Campion was aware of a subtle sense of loss. It was not until he had stood for some seconds on the pavement surveying the broad façade of the left wing of the building that he realised where the difference lay. When he saw it he was shocked. The great chair in the centre window of the lounge was occupied not by the familiar aquiline figure of old Rosemary but by a short fattish old gentleman by the name of Briggs, a member of but ten or fifteen years’ standing, a truculent tasteless person of little popularity.
Mr Campion entered beneath the Adam porch with a premonition of disaster and was confirmed in his suspicions a few moments later when he discovered Walters, the head steward, in tears. Since Walters was a portly sixty-five and possessed a dignity which was proverbial, the spectacle was both shocking and embarrassing. He blew his nose hastily when Mr Campion appeared and murmured a word of apology, after which he added baldly: ‘He’s gone, sir.’
‘Not old – I mean Sir Charles Rosemary?’ Mr Campion was shocked.
‘Yes, sir.’ Walters permitted himself a ghostly sniff. ‘It happened this morning, sir. In his chair where he always sat, just as he would have liked. Mr March and one or two other gentlemen had a word with him when he first came in and then he dozed off. I saw him sleeping heavily but didn’t think anything of it, him being so old; but when Mr Fielding came in about an hour ago he noticed at once that something was wrong and called me. We got the old gentleman into a taxi between us and Mr Fielding took him home. He died in the taxi. Mr Fielding has just come in and told us. He’d have been ninety in two days’ time. It’s been a great shock. Like the end of an era, sir. I remember the old Queen going but it didn’t seem like this. I remember him when I came here forty years ago, you see.’
Mr Campion was surprised to find that he was a trifle shaken himself. There was a great deal in what Walters said. Old Rosemary had been an institution.
As he came into the lounge he caught sight of Fielding standing by the eastern fireplace with a small crowd round him. Mr Campion joined it.
Fielding’s professional calm was standing him in good stead. He was giving information quietly and seriously, without capitalising or even seeming conscious of the undue prominence into which chance had forced him. He nodded to Campion and went on with his story.
‘He was breathing so stertorously that I went and had a look at him,’ he was saying. ‘He wasn’t conscious then and didn’t recover before the end, which came in the taxi, as you know.’
‘He had a flat in Dover Street, hadn’t he?’ said someone.
Fielding nodded. ‘Yes. Walters got me the address. He’d gone before we arrived and I knew I couldn’t do anything, so I got hold of his man, who seems a very capable chap. We put him on to his bed and the servant told me that his regular doctor was Philipson, so I rang Harley Street and came away.’
‘Sir Edgar was upset, I bet,’ said a man Campion did not know. ‘They knew each other well. Still, he was very old. I don’t suppose he was surprised. The very old often die suddenly and peacefully like that.’
The crowd split up into smaller groups, which grew again as other members came in to lunch. Mr Brigg’s behaviour in commandeering the favourite seat came in for a good deal of comment and the secretary received several complaints. A half-excited gloom, as at a major disaster, settled over the smoking-room, and the newspapers, who had already been notified by one of Walter’s underlings, received quite a number of calls.
The awkward incident occurred just before lunch, however. Mr Campion witnessed it and was shocked by it, in company with nine-tenths of his fellow-members present. Arthur March came in and made a scene.
It began in the hall when he heard the news from Scroop, the porter. His high thin tones protesting disbelief reached the lounge before he appeared himself, pale and excitable, in the doorway. He sank into a chair, snapped at the wine steward, and, after mopping his brow a trifle ostentatiously, rose to his feet again and came across the room to where Fielding stood with Campion.
‘This is ghastly,’ he said without preamble. ‘I was with the old man only this morning, you know. He was in one of his black moods but otherwise he seemed perfectly all right. You found him, didn’t you? Was – was it peaceful?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Fielding shortly. He was obviously embarrassed and Campion found himself wondering if the two men had ever spoken since the little scene in the City chop-house earlier in the year.
‘Thank God!’ said March with nauseating fervour. ‘Oh, thank God!’
He did not move away and the surgeon hesitated.
‘Relation of yours?’ he enquired abruptly.
March coloured. ‘Practically,’ he said. ‘My grandfather and he were like brothers.’
The explanation evidently sounded a little lame, even to himself, for he took refuge in wholly unwarrantab
le abuse.
‘You wouldn’t understand that sort of loyalty,’ he muttered and turned on his heel.
Fielding stood looking after him, his eyebrows raised.
‘That chap’s in a funny mental state …’ he was beginning when Mr Campion touched his sleeve.
‘Lunch,’ said Mr Campion.
It was after the meal, nearing the end of the hour of pleasant somnolence sacred to the gods of digestion, when the Junior Greys experienced its first real sensation since the suffragette outrage, of which no one ever speaks. Campion had been watching with lazy eyes the efforts of the bishop in the chair next his own to keep his attention on the pamphlet on his knee when he saw that divine sit upright in his chair, the healthy colour draining rapidly from his plump cheeks.
At the same moment, on the other side of the room, Major-General Stukely Wivenhoe’s cigar dropped from his mouth and rolled on the carpet.
A communal intake of breath, like the sigh of a great animal, sounded all over the room and in a far corner somebody knocked over a coffee-cup.
Mr Campion hoisted himself on one elbow and looked round. He remained arrested in that uncomfortable position for some seconds.
Old Rosemary, immaculate and jaunty as ever, was coming slowly across the room. There was a red carnation in his buttonhole, his flowing white hair glistened, and his curiously unwrinkled face wore its customary faint smile.
Behind him, portly and efficient, strode Sir Edgar Philipson, the Harley Street man.
It was a petrifying moment and one which demanded every ounce of the Junior Greys’ celebrated aplomb.
Half-way across the room the newcomers were met by a page hurrying in with the early editions. Confronted by the spectacle of old Rosemary himself the boy lost his head completely. He thrust an Evening Wire at the old man.
‘They – they say you’re dead, sir,’ he blurted out idiotically.
Rosemary took the paper and peered at it while the stupefied room waited in silence.
‘Greatly exaggerated,’ he said in the unmistakable clipped tone they all knew so well. ‘Take it away.’
He moved on to his chair. No one saw Briggs leave it. Some insist that he crawled out behind the screen on all fours; and others, more imaginative, that he dived out of the window and was afterwards found gibbering in the basement. But at all events, his departure was silent and immediate.
Old Rosemary sat down, and beckoning to a paralysed servant, ordered a whisky and soda.
Meanwhile, Sir Edgar Philipson stood looking round the room, and Fielding, pale and incredulous, rose to meet him. The elder man was not kind.
‘That’s the trouble with you younger men, Fielding,’ he said in a rumbling undertone that was yet loud enough to be heard. ‘Overhasty in your diagnosis. Make sure before you act, my boy. Make sure.’
He walked away, a handsome old man very pleased with himself.
Fielding glanced helplessly round the room, but no one met his eyes. Mr Campion, who alone was sympathetic, was looking at old Rosemary, noting the healthy brilliance of his eyes and the colour in his cheeks. Fielding walked out of the room in silence.
Mr Campion dined alone that evening and was writing a brief report on his own share in the Case of the Yellow Shoes, which had just come to a satisfactory conclusion, when the young surgeon called. Fielding was embarrassed and said so. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the study in the flat in Bottle Street and made a hesitating apology.
‘I’m terribly sorry to presume on an acquaintance like this, Campion,’ he said, ‘but I’m in such a devil of a mess. That chap Rosemary, you know, he was dead as mutton this morning.’
Mr Campion produced a decanter.
‘I should sit down,’ he said. ‘It soothes the nerves and rests the feet. I suppose this affair is going to be – er – bad for business?’
Fielding looked relieved and a faint smile appeared for an instant on his square, solemn face.
‘Frightfully,’ he said, accepting the glass Campion handed him. ‘It makes such a darned good story, you see. Rupert Fielding is such a brilliant surgeon that he doesn’t know when he’s beaten and the patient is dead – it’s all over the place already. I shall be ruined. Incompetence is bad enough in any profession, but in mine it’s unforgivable. And,’ he added helplessly, ‘he was dead, or at least I thought so. His heart had stopped and when I got him home I tried the mirror test. Of course, miracles do happen nowadays, but not under old Philipson. At least, I wouldn’t have said so yesterday. It’s funny, isn’t it?’
‘Odd, certainly,’ Mr Campion agreed slowly. ‘When you talk of these modern miracles, what are they exactly?’
‘Oh, electrical treatment and that sort of thing.’ Fielding spoke vaguely. ‘You see,’ he added frankly, ‘I’m not a physician; I’m a surgeon. I’ve done a certain amount of medicine, of course, but I don’t set up to be a G.P. Drugs are not in my line.’
Mr Campion glanced up and his pale eyes behind his spectacles were inquisitive.
‘You’re wondering if the old boy couldn’t have taken something that produced a pretty good simulation of death?’ he suggested.
The younger man regarded him steadily. ‘It sounds farfetched, I know,’ he said, ‘but it’s the only explanation I can think of, although what on earth the stuff can have been I can’t imagine. You see, the dreadful thing is that I didn’t do anything. I just made up my mind he was dead and, realising the whole was hopeless, I simply rang up Philipson in accordance with medical etiquette.’
‘I see,’ Mr Campion spoke gravely. ‘What do you want me to do?’
Fielding hesitated. ‘If you could find out what actually happened you’d save my reason, anyway,’ he said so simply that the words were robbed of any hint of melodrama. ‘Nothing can save my career – at least for a few years, I’m afraid. But I tell you, Campion, I must know if I’m losing my grip or if my mind’s going. I must know how I came to make such an incredible mistake.’
Mr Campion glanced at the dignified youngster and noted that he betrayed no hint of the nervous strain he was undergoing. He felt his sympathy aroused and, at the same time, his curiosity. Before he could speak, however, Fielding went on.
‘There are other complications too,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I’m engaged to old Rosemary’s grandchild, you know, and when I tell you she’s his principal heir you’ll see how infernally awkward it all is.’
Mr Campion whistled. ‘I say, that’s very unfortunate.’
‘It is,’ said Fielding grimly. ‘And it’s not all. I’m afraid she broke off her engagement with Arthur March on my account and he had the impudence to phone her about this business almost as soon as it happened. I saw him this evening and frankly I don’t understand the fellow. My mistake is an appalling one, I know. Old Rosemary’s perfectly entitled to sue me. But March has taken the business as a personal insult. He blew me up as if I was a schoolboy, and, after all, he’s only the grandson of a friend of the family. There’s no blood tie at all. I couldn’t say much to him; I’m so hopelessly in the wrong.’
Mr Campion considered. ‘I noticed the old man when he came in this afternoon,’ he said. ‘He was looking remarkably well.’
Fielding smiled wryly. ‘If you’d gone close to him you’d have been amazed,’ he said. ‘I was when I got him into the cab. It’s vanity, I suppose, but the amount of time he must spend while his man gets him ready for the day must be considerable. It’s gone on for so many years, I suppose, that the little additions and adjustments have mounted up, but what began presumably as a toupet is now damned nearly a wig, I can tell you. I don’t think you’d have seen any ill effects of a drug, even if there were any. Still, I’ve talked too much. Will you have a shot at it?’
Mr Campion would not commit himself. ‘I’ll have a look round,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise anything. It sounds like conjury to me.’
All the same, the following morning found him at the Junior Greys much earlier than usual. He sought out Walters and cornered
him in the deserted smoking-room. The steward was in expansive mood.
‘A dreadful thing, sir,’ he agreed. ‘Quite a scandal in its way. One gets to trust doctors, if I may say so. Still, I’d rather a dozen scandals than lose Sir Charles. Yes, he’s here already, right on his usual time and in one of his good moods.’
Mr Campion smiled. ‘His bad moods were pretty sensational, weren’t they?’
‘Well, he’s old, sir.’ Walters spoke indulgently. ‘There are days when he snaps everybody’s head off and sits sulking over his paper without speaking to a soul, but I don’t take any notice because I know that tomorrow he’ll be quite different, quite his old charming self with a nod and a smile to everyone. I always know which mood it’s to be. As soon as he comes in he calls for a whisky. If it’s a good day it’s whisky and water and if he’s upset it’s whisky and soda, so I have plenty of warning, you see.’
Mr Campion thanked him and wandered away. He had suddenly become very grave and the expression in his eyes behind his horn-rimmed spectacles was one of alarm.
He went down to the telephone and called Oates. Less than twenty minutes later he and the Superintendent were in a taxi speeding towards Fleet Street. Stanislaus Oates was his customary sombre self. The somewhat elephantine gaiety which he had displayed at the chop-house was gone as if it had never been. This morning he was a trifle irritable.
‘I hope this isn’t a wild-goose chase, Campion,’ he protested as the cab lurched down the Embankment. ‘I’m not an idle man, you know, and I’ve got no business careering off on a purely private jaunt like this.’
Campion turned to him and the elder man was surprised by the gravity of his expression.
‘Somehow, I don’t think even you could keep this business private if you wanted to,’ said Mr Campion. ‘Here we are. Wait for me.’
The cab had pulled up outside a dingy building in a narrow court and the Superintendent, peering out after his departing guide, saw him disappear into the offices of the Curtain, a well-known stage weekly, famous for its theatrical cards and intimate gossip.
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