“I understand,” Jane assured him, thinking abruptly what a dismal prospect it would be, even if she thought the world of Karl, to be married to a man whose every moment was spent, either in actual, physical fact or merely mentally, on duty.
“Then until tomorrow evening—and may your answer be all I should wish for and your own common sense decree!”
He bowed again, formally, and Jane bit back the hysterical laughter which threatened to overwhelm her. It might be wrong, she reflected, and undoubtedly it was wrong, but it struck he as unbearably funny that this man should ask her to marry him, obviously admire her, at least as much as he was capable of admiring any woman, and at the same time utter yet another warning as to the possible consequences of his dismissal!
She heard him clatter down the stairs and waited a few minutes to make certain the black police car had driven away from the flats, then, giving her reflection one last hasty scrutiny, hurried to report to Dr. Jim.
He looked up as she entered the office, a frown between his brows.
“You’re very late, Staff Nurse,” he reproved. “Are you not well?”
“I ... I had a visitor this morning,” Jane ventured. “Karl Brotnovitch called, just as I was ready to come on duty.”
“What did he want?” The question was sharp, authoritative.
“He ... came to advise me to marry him,” Jane said demurely, and was rewarded by the sudden up-shooting of Jim’s expressive eyebrows and the generally startled expression on his face.
“The devil he did!” Jim ejaculated, and immediately apologised. “Sorry if that sounded rude,” he gave a weak chuckle. “I didn’t mean you to imagine I don’t think the match ... suitable, or to imply any criticism of Karl himself. It was just ... I didn’t know you knew him as well as that, or,” he added with significance, “that you found him quite favourable.”
“I don’t,” Jane admitted honestly. “I mean, I neither know him well or find him favourable as a ... as a possible husband.” In spite of herself she could not repress a shiver as she imagined for a second what it must be like to see Karl Brotnovitch in that role. “I was as surprised as you are!” she ended truthfully.
“What did you say?” Jim queried, adding hastily: “Don’t tell me if you’d rather not! It’s none of my business, after all, and you’re old enough to please yourself in matters such as this ... it’s just that I’d like to know whether or not I ought to be applying for another staff nurse quite so soon. I know the Chief of Police won’t wish his wife to be working at St. George’s!”
“He’s coming back for his answer tomorrow night,” Jane said, aware that the words “it’s none of my business” had struck with a force Jim would never imagine. “I ... was too astonished to say anything this morning.”
“Then we’ll have a chat about it later, if you’d care to, of course.” Dr. Jim rose and briskly gathered his papers about him. “I’d like you to see someone specials the laddie I’ve just admitted to emergency. He’s a haemophiliac, and on a continuous blood transfusion. We shall have to ask for more blood, too,” he went on worriedly. “This bank is far from adequate...”
He went on to discuss the cases of the day as they progressed towards the theatre. Jane reflected how much more difficult was his work than that of a S.S.O. in any general hospital or infirmary at home. Here he had to be all things to all patients—and to the staff as well—and he bore all his duties with an air of really enjoying them, his sole object the relief of pain and illness, the continued struggle towards better health conditions for those he had come to serve.
There were four small operations to be performed that morning, none of them complicated, and Jane, sensing Kevin’s gaze fixed upon her, looked over her mask. He raised his eyebrows interrogatively, and although no word was spoken she knew he was asking whether or not she would consent to his—in her eyes—outrageous plan. Slowly but very definitely she shook her head, wanting to warn him that he had been watched when leaving her flat in the early hours of the morning, but there was too much to be done, too few people to cope, to allow for any private conversation.
Jane’s mind was in a ferment all day. She made mistakes such as she had never made even in her early days, and once or twice she saw Jim looking at her with a speculative air, but he made no comment. Not until, for the first time in her life, she omitted to remember the patient with a gastric ulcer who was on a two-hourly diet of citrated milk, olive oil and an atropine mixture.
“Really, Staff,” Jim said, but, for which she was truly thankful, for her ear alone, “a person in your position should be more careful! Such an omission on the part of a first-year nurse in a busy medical ward at home might at least have some grounds, but here, where we all have to more than double duty in every way, and when so much depends on how far the people may rely upon us, it’s not really excusable at all. Either your evening out,” he looked more closely at her, “or the unexpected proposal of this morning must have interfered more than you are aware with your customary efficiency! That will not do, Nurse. I, the other staff, the patients all depend a great deal upon yourself. I think,” he went on in a more gentle and considerate tone, “it may be as well if you went off duty earlier today and took this opportunity of a long rest. One of the difficulties of our being so short of staff is that we none of us have as much free time as we would wish. Perhaps you will be back to normal, once one problem is out of your mind.”
There was something in the way in which he had said “one problem” which really hurt. It wasn’t because he was jealous, she knew. He had shown no interest whatsoever in herself until last evening, and even then, she remembered, after what had seemed to Jane to have been one of the most perfect evenings of the whole of her life, he had left her at the flat with nothing more than a friendly “good-night, Nurse.” She had felt he really did like her. She had sensed, in the way a woman does sense these things, that he had been proud to have her with him at the Brentlovs’ and later at Alexis Nimtvitch’s home. Only now did she admit to herself she had been pinning her hopes on other such visits and a furtherance of his interest—perhaps even his love—in and for herself as a consequence.
Now, abruptly, with the first reprimand he had ever administered to herself, he had dashed those hopes and dreams even before they had really been admitted to her own consciousness, and her heart sank. Had he ever shown any interest whatsoever in her as a person, she might have believed him to be jealous. As it was she dismissed the thought. The truth was, she reflected with an inward sigh for her lost dreams, he had been pleased enough by her company, proud, maybe, of the fact that the Brentlovs and Nimtvitch himself had found her company agreeable, but her late arrival on duty that morning, as well as her reason for being late, appeared to have combined to irritate him as she had never previously seen him irritated, not even when he had been expostulating about Kevin Dean.
She was scarcely aware she was still standing there, apparently giving him her full attention, until he spoke again, recalling her from her introspection.
“Have you no friends you could visit for an hour or two, Nurse?” he queried sharply, unaware himself of the tone of his voice. He only knew he could not bear to see her standing there like a child who feels itself in disgrace, and, busy as he was, he would have given a great deal to wipe that look of being emotionally stunned from her lovely face. “What about the old couple Nurse Palmer used to visit so often? I know she took you to meet them, and they’d be more than delighted by a visit from someone from St. George’s. Most of the young people will be at work or in the college,” he said, “and Karl, as we know, is on duty. I’ll get Larlez to run you over to see Granny and Grandpa for an hour or two. That’ll be doing something kind and useful as well as helping you to take your mind from your own problem for a time. Would you like that?”
Jane felt she would have agreed to go to the Congo if he’d suggested it at that moment. She wanted to be busy, she wanted someone or something which would demand her full attention for a ti
me. Anything rather than to have to think about Kevin and what he proposed to do, or about Karl, and the way in which he had suggested he might protect herself!
“I’d like to go,” she told Jim now. “I feel I’ve neglected the old people, and they were such good friends of Nurse Palmer’s, or so she told me.”
“Then that’s settled,” Jim said decisively, but he looked sharply at her as he spoke. There was something so defenceless about her at present, he thought. She did not in the least look like the usual exuberant Jane, bubbling over with laughter, even at the most difficult times, with her ever-present high spirits apparently reduced to their lowest ebb. He felt a sudden and overwhelming urge to protect her, even from herself, and his tone was considerably more friendly as he resumed.
“Larlez will take you there,” he informed her, “and when I’ve finished here—at least for my free time and before the evening round is due—I’ll drive out and bring you back. I haven’t been to see the Hanvitchs for a long time. They’ll think we’ve all been neglecting them, and they’ve both worked hard for St. George’s ever since it opened.”
Jane went up to flat to change, feeling she had been, in some way, dismissed from responsibility. She tried to see Kevin alone before she went, but he was doing a round of the male medical ward and there was no excuse she could think of which would take her there. She went slowly to her flat and changed, resisting, by sheer effort of will power, the temptation to pull an ugly face in the direction of the ever-watchful caretaker, since she was more than convinced it was he who had telephoned Karl Brotnovitch and had someone spy on Kevin’s leaving the flat.
She changed into her cream wool skirt and royal blue sweater. There was something about this outfit and the effect she knew it had on her eyes her hair and complexion which always boosted her morale, and this, she felt, was badly needed just now.
The drive out was pleasant, and if she had not been so worried by the thought of what Kevin was determined to risk, his career, his integrity, the trust of the government of both his own country and the country in which he had come to work, she might have been better able to relax. Except, conscience reminded her, that only that morning Karl Brotnovitch had offered what to him appeared to be the ideal solution where Jane, at any rate, was concerned.
There was little point in thinking along these lines, she knew. Once at the small, cosy house she made a determined effort to put it all behind her and to concentrate on Granny’s conversation. The old lady loved to air her knowledge of Jane’s language, and although at times the context of her words didn’t quite fit the occasion, all the same they got along splendidly together, Jane listening as the old couple talked of the people and things they believed would interest their visitor.
She was never certain at what point in the conversation the name of the Chief of Police cropped up, but
Granny, once launched on a topic, was not to be lightly discouraged. It appeared Granny had known Karl from boyhood, and his family background was as familiar to her as her own.
“He’s hard on top,” she said now, “but he has to be. Seonyata needed a strong man, someone with a firm hand on the guiding reins after the war. He’s clever. He can see things other people miss; there’s not much escapes his notice, and he usually works things out in the best way for everybody in the end ... I hope you trust him, Nurse Kelsey?” she asked anxiously. “His mother was one of the most wonderful people I ever knew, and he’s very like her.”
Jane evaded a direct answer. This was an entirely new aspect of the man she had come to regard as a sort of human machine for vengeance. This was a side of Karl about which she would have to think more seriously before she explained to him that, flattered though she might be by his concern and his attentions, she could not be less than honest and must tell him she could never love him enough to marry him, no matter what the consequence to herself, for the simple reason that her love was already given elsewhere. If, she thought wryly, he was as clever and as honest as that, it wouldn’t be hard for him to understand that it would be the-height of dishonesty for her to pretend otherwise.
By the time Dr. Jim came for her she had an entirely fresh mental view of the Chief of Police. Now she saw him as he was, a man whose life was as dedicated to and as devoted in performance for the good of his fellow-countrymen as was Dr. Jim’s, although in an entirely different way. The idea made her thoughtful as she sat beside Jim on the return journey to her flat.
“I heard something of what Granny had to say,” he broke the silence which had fallen between them. “She’s a little prejudiced, of course. She helped to bring him up, years ago, but she’s right too, of course. He’s a good man, according to his lights. It’s just that, somehow, I can’t see you fitting in with his ideas and his environment. Can you, Jane?”
“Not at all,” she said quietly. “And yet there’s something likeable about him, even though he does make my blood run cold. I suppose it’s his job, and the fact that if he wants to protect me...”
“From what?” Jim shot the question at her, and immediately she regretted her words, though she could not have said why.
“From ... Kevin ... Dr. Dean, I think,” she said lamely, and was rewarded by a sound of smothered indignation from beside her.
“There are other ways of coping with him!” Dr. Jim said fiercely. “So far he hasn’t done anything stupid enough for my having valid reason for his removal, but it could be arranged, and someone else sent out in his stead. What I’m trying to tell you, Jane,” she noted he had reverted to the use of her Christian name and her heart leapt in delight, “is that you have no real need to agree to this ... proposal of Karl’s if you would rather not ... no need whatsoever. Leave it with me,” he went on magnanimously as he halted outside the door of the block of flats, “and I promise I’ll find a better solution for you than a drastic step such as Karl proposes!” Jane thanked him, knowing an inner relief she could scarcely believe, and when she ran upstairs even the knowledge of the watchful caretaker could do nothing to dampen her suddenly rising spirits. After all, Karl was not calling until the next evening, and perhaps before then Jim would have told her whatever he had thought of as a proposed solution. Of Kevin she refused to think. He had been warned, cautioned, advised, not only by herself but by Karl, the government departments, everyone, and he persisted in whatever it was he was doing.
Maybe, she thought with sudden understanding for his peculiar temperament, there was nothing more to it where he was concerned than his love of excitement, of adventure. Maybe there was nothing more to it all than that. She did not believe him the type to consider money of more importance than his own integrity, but he belonged to that kind of men who never really outgrow their “cowboy and Indian” ideas of living, or “gangsters in the underworld.”
Reflecting that it was more than likely the mere sense of outwitting someone like Karl, of flouting authority—as well as being well paid for it—the sense of adventure, were all which prompted his activities amongst the members of the New Thought, the majority of whom seemed to be much younger than himself.
By the time she was undressed and had composed herself for sleep she felt more sure of herself than after her two unexpected visitors had called and between them thrown her, willy-nilly, into a state of panic.
Karl would not be here until the following evening, and in some strange way—maybe the “fey” way of Dorothy Wroe—she was certain that by that time Jim would have found an alternative solution. She snapped off the light and thought of Granny’s words: “He usually works things out the best way for everybody in the end,” and with a soundless prayer that Granny might prove to be right, she turned on her side and settled down.
She was wakened by the shrilling of the emergency bell which was installed in her room. There was one number for all St. George’s and another one for Dr. Jim. It was from his phone the alarm bell was wired to her own and to the rooms of the other two English nurses. Something must be very wrong for her bell to be ringing so insiste
ntly at this hour of the night.
She glanced at her clock as she picked up the instrument. The dial read ten minutes to three in the morning, and with her heart suddenly hammering like a mad thing, Jane spoke into the receiver.
“Staff Nurse Kelsey here,” she said breathlessly. “What is it?”
Jim’s voice came to her over the wire. He sounded upset and disturbed, but his voice was under complete control. It was only because she knew him so well, recognised every inflection of his tone, that she recognised the signs of strain.
“Come to the theatre at once, will you, please, Jane?” he said quietly. “Dr. Dean’s been shot, and I’m operating immediately.”
CHAPTER 9
NEVER before in her life had Jane dressed so speedily. On the occasion of the disaster when she had been at Rawbridge General she had been amazed by the speed at which everyone, herself included, had been ready and able to deal with whatever came to hand in their line of duty. Here there was no such colossal disaster, but something told her there was more behind the apparently small emergency than she had yet realised.
She was running a comb through her hair preparatory to fixing on her cap, when the explosion sounded through the still night air. Jane resisted the impulse to rush to the window and look out. Whatever had happened now it seemed fairly certain that the results of this further event would soon be with them in the wards of St. George’s. She ran downstairs, mindful of the caretaker’s open mouth as she rushed past him. There was a temptation to call something out, to tell him Dr. Dean had been shot, probably as a direct result of his spying on whatever Kevin had been up to or believed to have been up to, but of course she did no such thing. She gathered her cloak around her and sped to the theatre, scarcely surprised when Amy Dawlish joined her, panting, as they raced along together. There was no time for words or explanations. Neither of them spoke until they were in the small wash and changing room outside the theatre.
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