The Silver Dragon

by Jean S. MacLeod

  Lying very still, she allowed her thoughts to drift as she waited for his return. She would not force them back to that blank will behind which lay all that had happened to her until now, because in that direction lay only frustration and an unbearable agony of mind with which she had wrestled since her return to consciousness out there in the snow.

  Instead, she thought about the man who had just left her, about his ability to help her and the strange warm suggestion of friendliness that had grown between them even in so short a time.

  Of course, being a doctor, he was merely interested in her as a case, she was careful to remind herself. She must be sensible about that, but she felt that he might also be willing to go one step further and befriend her.

  Which might, of course, be no more than an illusion conjured up by her own desperate need, she assured herself firmly as the door opened to admit him once more.

  “Here we are!” he announced. “Complete with all the evidence—and Professor Attenhofer!”

  Behind him towered a giant of a man in a shabby coat and unpressed trousers, with a shock of white hair framing a benign face and kindly eyes peering shortsightedly from behind thick lenses. He wore the ancient spectacles well down on his nose, which gave him a slightly bewildered expression, but there was no keener intellect in all Switzerland when it came to the affairs of the mind. The professor was big in every way, like a great friendly lumbering bear, Adele mused as she watched him approaching the bed. His massive frame seemed to fill up all the available space in the tiny room, but his hands were unbelievably gentle as he helped Dr. Ordley raise her on her pillows.

  “Voila!” he said, speaking French with a slightly guttural intonation. “You are better already! But my colleague, Dr. Ordley, tells me that you also speak excellent English, and that is best for him, since his French is poor!” He smiled across the pink bedspread at his young English protege. “We have had him here for six months now and he is no better with our language, though he is a lot advanced with his medicine! Still he confuses his tenses and calls for one thing when he means another! In the operating theater that could be dangerous, so we compromise and speak, both of us, English!”

  Adele smiled at the professor, wondering all the time what he thought about Dr. Ordley’s diagnosis. They had already discussed her, she felt sure, but she could not read anything in the professor’s face apart from the same warm kindliness she saw in the younger man’s.

  Behind them the nurse waited, clutching an expensive-looking suitcase that she finally set down near the bed.

  Dr. Ordley lifted it and laid it on the bedspread.

  “Shall we begin?” he asked casually enough, adding with a brief glance at the professor, “As soon as you feel tired you must let us know.”

  Adele was sure that she would not feel tired. An almost ungovernable excitement had taken possession of her and two bright spots of color stained her cheeks as she looked at the case. It was made of pigskin, with a small monogram between the two locks, the initials A and C interlaced in gold. She lay staring at them, willing them to mean something to her.

  “We had to force the locks,” Dr. Ordley confessed. “We couldn’t find a key to fit. I think you must have taken your own keys with you in your rucksack, which, of course, was lost. There was nothing in your parka pockets but a handkerchief and some loose francs.”

  “That is so,” the professor agreed, giving him what might have been a warning glance. “But now we will proceed, since the locks are forced.”

  He turned away from the bed, humming tunelessly as he stood gazing out of the window across what was probably a garden. He was evidently not going to embarrass her with a searching scrutiny while she opened the suitcase, for which fact she was profoundly thankful.

  John Ordley, sitting on the visitor’s chair by her side, was quite a different matter. Once again she appreciated the warmth of his understanding and felt safe with him.

  “You open it.” She pushed the suitcase toward him, resting her head back against the pillows with an air of weariness which did not escape him. “I might find it easier to concentrate if you went through it for me,” she added quickly.

  “Just as you say.” He lifted back the lid to reveal the beautifully appointed interior of the case. “Where shall we start?”

  “There ... might be something in the lid pocket,” she suggested. “A ... my passport, perhaps, or a letter.”

  He took out several pairs of nylon stockings, laying them on the bed without comment. They were followed by some exquisite silk lingerie, a pair of woolen ski pants and some leather mitts. There was no sign of a passport. No sign, in fact, of any written matter at all.

  Systematically he went through the suitcase, laying a cocktail dress and silk pajamas and a dressing gown on the pink bedspread for her inspection. These were quickly followed by several heavy knitted sweaters of ornate design and a pair of very high-heeled evening sandals, which looked new. Finally, there was a light coat with the name “Adele Cabot” stitched inside the collar.

  “Well,” Dr. Ordley shrugged, “that would appear to be all.”

  He looked frankly disappointed and the girl lying on the bed gazing at hip felt as if her heart would burst.

  “It can’t be!” she protested at last. “There must be something more—a wallet, traveler’s checks, an address book ...”

  She broke off as his searching hands discovered the final item in the suitcase, tucked under the last of the sweaters.

  “There’s this,” he said without a great deal of enthusiasm. “A ... sort of trinket box, I suppose you would call it.”

  Eagerly she stretched out her hands to take it from him. It did not look important, and as he had said, it might be no more than the receptacle for a few trinkets, the sort of costume jewelry most young girls carried around with them, even on a climbing holiday.

  The box itself was shabby enough and looked as if it had been well used over a period of years. It was made of green morocco leather and had an ornate gilt clasp that she was able to snap open without any trouble. Inside she found two shallow trays with a padded division between them to take rings. On one tray lay a single string of pearls; on the other a curiously carved jade bracelet. She could not say whether the pearls were real or not, but the bracelet looked valuable.

  Underneath each tray there was a small lined compartment. In the first lay a plain gold ring—a wedding ring. She lay gazing down at it for a moment before she replaced the tray and turned to the last compartment.

  There was nothing in it but a scrap of torn envelope with an address on it. When she picked it up her fingers were trembling.

  “It’s an address,” she said, raising her eyes to the watchful brown ones at the side of the bed. “An address in the south of France.”

  The doctor took the paper from her, his own hands not altogether steady. He ought to be delighted by such a find, he told himself. He was delighted, but there was also an odd reluctance in him as he read the carefully written address.

  It was no more than an address. There was no name, and he read it over twice before he said, “This would appear to take us another step forward. Les Rochers Blanches, St. Jean,” he reflected, turning to the professor, who was no longer humming his endless little tune and no longer gazing out of the window. “That’s Cap Ferrat, isn’t it?”

  “To be sure!” the professor agreed, coming toward them. “Les Rochers Blanches,” he repeated thoughtfully. “What a picturesque name for a house, for we are to presume that it is a private villa, are we not?”

  The sound of a small indrawn breath came from the bed.

  “It could be a hotel, of course,” the doctor said, voicing his patient’s silent fear. “An address someone had given you, perhaps. But why keep it in your jewel case?”

  She could not help him.

  “What do you mean to do?” she asked.

  “Write to Les Rochers Blanches and hope for a satisfactory reply,” he decided immediately. “You can’t leave h
ere, in any case, for a day or two—a week anyway,” he amended when he saw the consternation reflected in her eyes. “We can’t risk that head wound, for one thing, and you really ought not to travel any distance alone.” He rose, pacing around the room for a moment. “No,” he repeated as if to end all argument on the subject, “it would be madness to let you go off alone under the circumstances.”

  The professor came to stand at the foot of the bed.

  “Assuredly,” he agreed, smiling at her. “We must write without delay to Les Rochers Blanches and hope that someone will come to claim you and take you home!”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “It’s four days now,” Adele Cabot said, laying aside the book she had been trying to read, “and still there’s no reply. If there had been a telephone number we could have phoned. It would have been quicker.”

  “We’ve made inquiries about the telephone and drawn a blank there, too.” John Ordley closed the glass doors leading to the balcony, shutting out a wind that had grown suddenly cold. It came down from the Dents du Midi with the bite of ice in its breath, although the sun still shone brightly in a clear blue sky. “The owners of Les Rochers Blanches, whoever they may be, are not in favor of the telephone, it would seem. Anyway, they have never had one installed, which seems to suggest,” he added carefully, “that we can do no more than wait with what patience we still have at our command.”

  “I have no patience, I’m afraid,” Adele sighed. “It’s most ungrateful of me, I know,” she apologized with a small wavering smile. “You've been so kind.”

  The young doctor crossed to her side. She was out of bed now, sitting in a cane chaise longue near the window, and for the past three days he had spent most of his free time in her room, talking, reasoning, assuring and all the while watching for the slightest hint of diminishing amnesia.

  “It’s my job,” he said lightly. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m a doctor and I must explore every avenue to make you well. I also happen to have a great fund of patience,” he added. “Enough, perhaps, for us both.”

  “Supposing it was the address of a hotel, or a pension, or something,” she suggested. “It could be closed for the winter, couldn’t it?”

  “It could be,” he agreed, “but somehow I don’t think it is. I mean, I don’t think it’s a hotel,” he added. “Not with a name like that.”

  She forced a smile.

  “Which isn’t exactly sound reasoning,” she pointed out. “It’s a very expressive name, but lots of hotels have descriptive names.”

  “Like the Bellevue and the De la Mer and the Hotel Terminus,” he agreed. “Even the De la Plage, which can turn out disconcertingly to be over a mile from the sea! I’ll agree with you there, but this place sounds private to me. It’s a sort of personal name. Or so I feel. Don’t ask me why,” he added, “because I couldn’t give you a sound reason for thinking as I do. I just feel it in my bones.”

  He was looking down at her, sorry for her, she supposed, and doing what he could to cheer her up in the face of what she was forced to admit was a steadily growing disappointment.

  She had pinned all her hopes on the address they had found and to the letter Professor Attenhofer had written to Les Rochers Blanches. But once more they had come up against a blank wall.

  “Give them time,” John advised, putting a firm hand on her shoulder. “It’s only four days after all.”

  It had seemed more like four years. Rather shakily she got to her feet, crossing to the window to look out. The world she saw seemed inordinately bright, full of an almost garish sunlight, which had no real warmth in it, but perhaps she was seeing everything through a haze of unreality just now. If only there had been a reply to the professor’s letter—some sort of reply!

  “We’ll give them another two days,” John decided, “and then I think we ought to do something definite.”

  She looked around at him with a question in her gray eyes, and he smiled back at her with the utmost confidence.

  “Such as going to see for ourselves,” he said.

  “We?” she echoed. “But this isn’t your affair, John.”

  He came to stand beside her.

  “I think it is,” he said slowly. “You were my last case. I can’t move on and leave the cure half completed.”

  As their eyes met and held she was aware of a strange sense of loss.

  “You’re leaving the clinic?” she asked. “You’re ... going home?”

  He fumbled for a cigarette and offered her one and lighted them before he answered.

  “My time with the professor is up,” he explained. “I came over here on a six-month .postgraduate course, which has taught me a lot, but now it’s time to move on.”

  “Back to England?”

  “Eventually.” He bent over and took the cigarette from between her fingers. “Y’know,” he said with exaggerated lightness, “that’s something else we’ve learned. You were not a habitual smoker.”

  “How do you know?”

  “By the way you handle a cigarette and the odd little expression of distaste when you let the smoke get into your eyes!” He snubbed what remained of her cigarette into an ashtray. “So far so good! What I was about to say was that I intended to take a holiday when my course was over, a sort of roving affair along the south coast and down through Italy. It’s a route I’ve always fancied, and I don’t really need to be back in London much before July.”

  “Have you ... no one to go back to?” she asked uncertainly, thinking that she had no right to probe into his personal background in this way, but obeying an impulse to know more about him that she could not cheek.

  “Dozens of casual acquaintances,” he assured her with a shrug. “My parents are in Canada at the moment, visiting my married sister for a year, so I have no actual home ties.”

  Which meant he wasn’t married. She had wondered about that, too.

  “So you see, I could quite easily drive you down to Cap Ferrat and find out what we can discover from a personal contact.”

  “I couldn’t expect you to do that,” she protested.

  “Why not?”

  “It would spoil your holiday, for one thing.”

  “And the other?” He stubbed out his own cigarette and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face the full light from the window. “Adele,” he said, “this case is important to me. I want to see it through to its logical conclusion. Is that explanation enough?”

  “It ought to be,” she said, “but supposing there is no logical conclusion, as you call it?”

  Her eyes were dark with pain and the shadow of a new fear, but they continued to meet his steadily enough.

  “There must be.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “This kind of amnesia just doesn’t stand still forever. We must find the contacts that will help.”

  “But it could stand still for a very long time,” she said without making it a question. “The professor more or less admitted that yesterday. I suppose I badgered him about it,” she added with a hint of desperation in her voice, “but I have to know. I feel that I must know quite soon, John, or I shall go mad.”

  He gave her a half-impatient shake.

  “You mustn’t talk like that,” he commanded. “It could have been a lot worse.”

  “I know. I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Please forgive me. I ought not to burden you with my feelings like this.”

  “Who else would you talk to?” he asked briskly. “I’m your doctor.”

  She was forced to smile.

  “You’re very kind,” she said.

  “And you’ll consider the trip to Cap Ferrat?” he asked. “You can always cancel out any feeling of obligation by offering me hospitality when we get there,” he added lightly.

  The suggestion distressed her because she could feel nothing about Les Rochers Blanches, no sense of belonging, or even a vague stirring of familiarity. Yet all that might come once she reached the Riviera and found herself in known surroundings.

 
That was what John Ordley was hoping for, and suddenly she found herself clutching at his offer of help. He gave her amazing confidence in a world that had become no more than an empty shell.

  They waited for two more days, at the end of which time the professor decided she was fit to travel.

  “I would not let you go if you were not in safe keeping,” he said, “but Dr. Ordley has my complete confidence. He is also in touch with the police, so that every help will be given to him when you reach your destination.”

  They set out the following morning, going by Bourg through the Col de la Forlaz to Chatelard, where they were held up at the border. The doctor’s passport was in order, of course, but there was much consultation and even a little argument about the police pass that permitted him to convey his patient to the south of France. A patient, it was noted, who was suffering from loss of memory and who would report to the prefecture of police at Nice on her arrival.

  The Swiss guards let them continue their journey eventually with a brief military bow, and the French received them with an expressive shrug. It was not within their province to argue, since there was the pass, but mademoiselle did not look ill, they observed. There was, of course, the bandage on her brow, but otherwise her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed with a healthy color. It was more as if the two young people were setting out on a honeymoon!

  Again the uniformed shoulders lifted, but this time the road barrier was raised and John Ordley let in his clutch and drove into France.

  Mentally he heaved a sigh of relief. Questions could have been awkward, causing them unnecessary delay.

  At Chamonix they stopped for a meal and he took out his road map and spread it on the table as they lingered over some excellent coffee.

  “We’re not going to make it in one day,” he decided. “We got off to rather a late start with all those goodbyes at the clinic. If we make Briancon, or somewhere near there, you’ll have done pretty well for one day.” He looked at her closely. “How do you feel?”