“I’ll take the risk,” said the inspector, bluntly, as he walked out into the hall.
He glanced at his watch to make sure that the Counsellor and Querrin would be in their place; then very gently he opened the door of the darkened bedroom and switched on the light. His glance went to the window, and he saw the curtains waving gently.
“Thank the Lord that all these doctors are fresh-air fiends,” he reflected. “The window’s open wide.”
Trulock had followed him into the bedroom, the constable close on his heels. The inspector moved over to the side of the bed in which a form was lying, heavily bandaged about the head. The eyes were open but they seemed to take no note of the entry of the trio into the room.
The inspector coughed loudly and then, turning to Trulock, demanded in a loud voice:
“Who is she?”
Before Trulock could answer, an even louder voice sounded from outside the window:
“Helen! Helen!! Are you there? It’s Howard, here. Wake up, dear!”
The inspector, his eyes on the muffled form beside him, saw a movement in response to the cry. For a moment the eyes examined him and then, as though in disappointment, the lids closed. But what he saw had been quite enough to satisfy him. He turned to Trulock.
“So that’s how it is,” he said softly, echoing one of The Counsellor’s clichés. “You’re going to have a lot to answer for, it seems.” Then he added to the constable: “Take him next door and see he tries no tricks.”
When Trulock had gone, the inspector went the window and held a short conversation with the two men outside. Then he switched off the light and left the room, closing the door gently behind him. At the front door he found a fresh visitor, an alert, keen-faced man, with an air of decision about him.
“Come in, Dr. Westhorpe,” the inspector greeted the new arrival. “You’re exactly on time—thanks. Your patient’s in that room there,” he nodded towards the closed door. “You know what’s wanted. Can we give you any help?”
“I’ve brought a nurse with me,” Dr. Westhorpe explained, with a gesture towards his car, which was standing in the sweep before the front door. “We needn’t waste any time.”
Pagnell saluted the nurse as she came up; and she followed the doctor into the bedroom. When the door had closed behind them, Pagnell went out on to the front steps and summoned Querrin and The Counsellor.
“Nothing to do now but wait,” he explained. “It shouldn’t take long till we’re certain.”
“Where’s this scoundrel Trulock?” demanded Querrin, between his teeth.
“Under my protection, for the moment,” the inspector replied, with a certain stiffness. “I know just how you feel, Mr. Querrin, and I don’t say I don’t sympathise—unofficially. But we want nothing in the way of a rough house. Not with an invalid next door.”
The last sentence had more effect on Querrin than the rest.
“Quite right, Inspector,” he agreed, with obvious regret.
To be on the safe side, the inspector descended the steps and began to pace up and down the gravel sweep, inviting the others with a gesture to join him.
“Next question is,” he pointed out, “what’s to be done with this patient of Dr. Westhorpe’s? She can’t be left here, if she’s fit to be moved. That’s plain enough.”
“It depends on what she’s fit for,” suggested The Counsellor. “If she can stand being taken away in an ambulance, perhaps the best thing would be to remove her to my house in town. There’s any amount of room there. I can put you up as well, Querrin, if you like. And we can get in a couple of nurses to look after her. And Miss Rainham would come in useful if anything had to be done. It would be more homelike than a nursing home, once she can get about again. And Westhorpe’s my own doctor—first-rate man—so he’d be on tap at any time we needed him.”
“She can’t go back to Longstoke House, and that’s a fact,” the inspector pointed out.
“It’s damned decent of you,” Querrin hastened to add. “I don’t know how to thank you. Nothing could be better.”
“Right!” said The Counsellor, hurriedly. “Then that’s fixed, if she can be moved.”
The inspector felt it advisable to keep the conversation going, to distract Querrin’s thoughts from reprisals. He turned to The Counsellor with a question.
“You haven’t told me, sir, how you got on with your inquiries about these pictures. The possibility of substitution, I mean.”
“I’ve only had information from two places,” The Counsellor explained. “There’s hardly been time yet to get a full set of facts. But in these two cases the results are negative. No substitution either tried or accomplished. It looks as if I’d been barking up the wrong tree with that idea. Still, that’s no odds. Fresh ideas are cheap.”
“Oh,” answered the inspector. “So that’s a blank end? Now there’s another point that’s rather worrying me, Mr. Brand. You gave sworn evidence about Trulock dealing in Dangerous Drugs. I take it you didn’t do that without some grounds, but I’d like to know just what they amounted to.”
“The symptoms I saw amongst that gang the other night,” declared The Counsellor. “I consulted a good man, and he agreed with me that the stuff was probably a mixture with some hemp extract in it. I mean the dose that Querrin got, not the one I swallowed. And hemp extract means a skilled man of sorts, when it’s a matter of giving just the right dose. And there was Trulock, that night, all present and correct, with medical knowledge and all. I felt justified in swearing that information. After all, short of actually seeing him make the extract and administer it, what other kind of evidence could one have? My conscience is clear.”
“And elastic?” queried the inspector, with a grin. “Well, if there’s a sample of a Dangerous Drug on these premises, I’ll find it, if I have to take the place to pieces in the attempt. I’ve seen enough of Dr. Trulock to dislike his methods.”
The Counsellor laughed, taking no offence at the inspector’s insinuation.
“Good hunting!” he said, heartily. Then he turned to Querrin. “Ever hear of live bait?”
“In fishing? Yes, I have.”
“Care for a job of the sort?” demanded The Counsellor. “It’s just an idea of mine. Say No, if you don’t like it.”
“I’d need to hear a bit more about it, first,” Querrin objected.
“I thought you’d leap at it, after all I’ve done for you,” said The Counsellor in mock reproach. “You’re giving me a poor opinion of American enterprise, Querrin. And that’s not patriotic of you. But if you’ll step a bit further down the avenue, out of earshot of the house, I’ll put you wise.”
Ten minutes later, they returned to the house to find Dr. Westhorpe awaiting them. Querrin, though he had kept himself under control, was evidently on tenterhooks, and it was he who spoke first.
“Is she badly hurt, Doctor? Disfigured?”
The doctor’s smile reassured him more than words could have done.
“Not a bit of it. She’s been heavily doped and she’s still under the effects of the stuff. I’ve never seen anything like it before. If you hadn’t explained beforehand—” he glanced at The Counsellor—“I couldn’t have made head or tail of it. But she’s physically perfectly unharmed. We took off the bandages with the utmost care, and then found we’d had our pains for nothing. Not a mark on her skin. Not a hair singed. Nothing. Once she gets over this dope, she’ll be absolutely all right, I should say. A bit run down, probably, but that’s all. At the moment, she’s in a queer state, very rum. What she says sounds like sheer delirium.”
“Fit to move in an ambulance?” demanded The Counsellor.
“Oh, I see nothing against it. Want me to fix up a nursing home?”
The Counsellor explained his plans, and Dr. Westhorpe agreed to them at once.
“I’ll be interested to see the end of it,” he admitted, with a lapse into professionalism. “Nothing of the sort’s come my way before. Now what about an ambulance? I suppose we can ring up from here.�
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“You get an ambulance. And a couple of sympathetic nurses. Tell ’em to go to my house and wait,” said The Counsellor. “I’ve made all arrangements there already.”
“Pretty sure of your ground, weren’t you?” said the doctor, chaffingly. “And now I come to think of it, you haven’t seen my patient. How do you know you’ve got the right girl?”
Evidently The Counsellor had primed him with the whole story beforehand.
“The resources of civilisation are not exhausted, never fear,” said The Counsellor. “Querrin, here, knows her better than anyone else. Suppose you take him in to have a peep at her.”
When Querrin and the doctor turned away, The Counsellor leaned over to the inspector.
“Take my tip and get your prisoner off the premises before Querrin comes out.”
“Something in that,” admitted the inspector, taking a stride towards the sitting-room where Trulock was under guard. “You detain Mr. Querrin for five minutes, sir, till we get him away in a car.”
Chapter Twenty
Under False Colours
WHEN it came to hospitality, The Counsellor never did things by halves. He set aside a suite in his house for Helen Treverton and her nurses; called a couple of specialists into consultation with Dr. Westhorpe; established Sandra Rainham on the premises to play her part in his guest’s recovery; and invited Querrin to make the house his headquarters, so that he might be at hand if wanted. Then he firmly suppressed his curiosity until, after a few days, the doctors decided that Helen had recovered sufficiently to make a statement.
When she came into the room on Querrin’s arm, the effect of three weeks under the influence of drugs was painfully evident. She looked pale and fragile, and the dimples in her cheeks had deepened into hollows. She walked with a hesitating step, as though she had not fully recovered the normal spring. Sandra rose and came forward.
“This is my cousin, Mark Brand,” she explained, indicating The Counsellor. “No, you’re not to thank him just now,” she added, as Helen began to speak. “You’re not to tire yourself in any way until you’ve told us about your adventures. Dr. Westhorpe’s orders. This is Inspector Pagnell. But of course you know him already. He’s going to take notes of what you say, but he won’t worry you with too many questions just now. And this is Mr. Standish. I’ve told you about him also. And you know Dr. Westhorpe. He’s here to see that you don’t over-tire yourself. Now you know who they are. Take this chair, and go as slow as you please. There’s heaps of time, and you mustn’t let yourself get hurried or worried. You know we’re all friends.”
“Very good friends, I know,” said Helen Treverton, with a rather weary smile. “What do you want me to tell you exactly?” she asked, glancing towards the inspector.
“Perhaps if I asked you a question or two at the start?” suggested Pagnell. “I’m sorry if it’s painful, Miss Treverton, but we have to know some things. You and your uncle had a kind of a disagreement hadn’t you? A recent disagreement?”
In The Counsellor’s judgment, Helen Treverton was not the sort of girl to make a show of emotion in normal circumstances; but she had been sapped by the long course of drugs and her control was not yet perfect. They could see tears come to her eyes at the inspector’s question.
“Poor uncle! I wish it hadn’t happened like that,” she began. “I’ll tell you exactly how it came about. You know he’d set his heart carrying on the Ravenscourt Press on his own lines, although he could never make it pay. Things got worse and worse financially with him, and he came to me and borrowed some of my capital to make ends meet from time to time. I didn’t mind that, for you see I was fond of him, and the Press was everything to him. But by-and-by, things changed without any of us meaning it”—she glanced down at a new ring on her engagement finger—“and then I needed my money, and when he came to me for more, I’m afraid we quarrelled, and rather badly. I wish it hadn’t happened, now that he’s gone. But, of course, I couldn’t know what was coming. He was hurt and angry, and I was hurt, too, because he put the Press in front of me so obviously. It came to a head just a few weeks ago.”
“Thanks,” said the inspector. “I’m sorry, miss. I had to get the point clear. Now would you tell us just how things happened on the day you disappeared—Thursday, September 8th, that was.”
A look of slight perplexity settled on Helen Treverton’s face.
“I’m trying to remember everything,” she explained after a second or two, “but it’s difficult in places. My memory doesn’t seem to be working properly even yet, and there are gaps in it. You see, I’ve been living in a most extraordinary world—for some weeks, it appears—and it’s so difficult to link up real things with the rest of it, that in some places I hardly know whether I remember things that really happened or whether I’m just fitting on bits of the nightmare, if one can call it a nightmare. Illusions, they were, anyhow. I’ll do my best, of course, but you understand how puzzling it is, don’t you?”
“Quite so,” admitted the inspector. “Then suppose we go back to the morning of that day. Do you remember anything about your car? I’m trying to avoid leading questions as much as I can.”
“My car?” Helen knitted her brows for a moment or two. “Yes, I remember taking my car into Grendon St. Giles, and going to the bank to draw a little pocket-money. Yes, that’s quite clear. . . . And I remember meeting Mrs. Trulock in the bank and . . . Yes, she asked me if I would be sure to go over to Fairlawns that afternoon. I remember that distinctly enough. It’s only later that things seem to get all muddled up. And I remember I took Mr. Whitgift into Grendon St. Giles with me, and brought him back again.”
“You remember using your cheque-book at the bank, then,” interrupted the inspector. “What did you do with it when you got home again?”
“I put it in a drawer in my writing-desk,” Helen declared without hesitation. “I always keep it there.”
“And you don’t remember taking it out again?” demanded the inspector, who had been well primed by The Counsellor for this examination. “You didn’t take it to Fairlawns with you?”
“Oh, no,” Helen answered definitely. “I’m sure of my memory up to that stage. I put it in the drawer and left it there. I haven’t seen it since.”
The inspector nodded as though he attached no great importance to the point.
“One thing’s puzzled us,” he explained, with a glance at The Counsellor. “You were going to a tennis-party that afternoon. Why didn’t you simply drive over in your tennis things, instead of wearing that grey coat and skirt and having to change when you got to Fairlawns?”
Apparently Helen Treverton had no difficulty in recalling the facts in this matter.
“It was Mrs. Trulock who got me to do that,” she explained. “She had begun to do some dressmaking, just to amuse herself she told me; and she’d been making something like my grey coat and skirt, but she hadn’t managed to get it just right, it seems. So when she met me in Grendon St. Giles that morning, she asked me to wear it coming over to Fairlawns so that she could see where the padding was put in at the shoulders. And I think she’d had trouble with the hang of the skirt, too, so she asked me to wear it that afternoon, so that she could see it, and of course I could change into my tennis things in a few minutes. Of course I was quite glad to help her, so I wore the coat and skirt as she asked, and took my tennis things with me in an attaché case.”
“One moment,” interrupted The Counsellor. “Do you remember any of the Fairlawns people taking photographs of you in that get-up, probably sometime earlier than that?”
Helen Treverton stroked her chin for a moment or two, as if in thought. Then her face brightened, and she turned to The Counsellor.
“Yes, I do, funnily enough,” she declared. “It was some weeks ago, and Mrs. Trulock had just bought a cine-camera and was practising with it. She got me to walk about on the lawn and she took quite a lot of pictures of me, so as to accustom herself to working the camera. I remember that quite well, now
you’ve reminded me of it.”
“Ah!” said The Counsellor with some satisfaction. “I wondered how they managed to have that nannie ready fitted out with a get-up exactly like yours. This explains it.”
The inspector made a jotting in his note-book and then continued his interrogatory.
“Do you remember what you did after lunch that day?”
“I remember taking my racquet and an attaché case with my tennis things to my car. . . . Let me think. . . . And I started for Fairlawns . . . Wait a moment, there’s something else. . . . Oh, yes, I remember stopping in the avenue to talk for a moment or two with Mr. Whitgift!”
“Anything particular about that talk?” asked the inspector. “Think carefully, Miss.”
“Oh, I do remember something, because this is where the thing seems to get weird in my memory. I seem to remember, most distinctly, that he said he’d filled up my tank for me. He was always doing little things like that for me.” She hesitated for a moment. “You see, he proposed to me once, and he wanted, I suppose, to show that he was taking the refusal well. He was very kind in a lot of ways.”
“What happened after that?” asked the inspector.
Helen knitted her brows for a moment, as though striving to be sure of her memory.
“This is where things begin to get hazy,” she said, frankly. “I mean, they don’t seem to fit together, somehow, and I can’t be sure of . . . I can’t be quite certain that I’m not . . . Well, what I mean is that perhaps I may have imagined some of these things and they got to seem real while I was drugged. I want to tell you the exact truth, but even to myself, they don’t fit together properly.”
“Just tell us them, anyhow,” suggested the inspector. “Perhaps we’ll find ways of checking them if they did happen.”
“Well, I just want to be quite straight about it,” Helen said, with a glance round the company. “It may be all imagination, and I don’t want to pretend it’s accurate. If you’ll take it so, then I know you won’t think I’m not telling the truth if it does turn out that these things never happened at all. What I do seem to remember is, that my car stopped suddenly somewhere on the road between our gate and Grendon Manor. I couldn’t make it out; for Mr. Whitgift had filled the tank, and when I looked at the petrol-gauge it showed the tank was full. I remember I thought the feed had got blocked, and I got out and lifted the bonnet to try if the carburettor would flood. It wouldn’t. Now, I remember that perfectly clearly, and yet it must be all nonsense, really, for the tank couldn’t be dry after five minutes’ running. I must have imagined it all . . . and yet, it does seem clear enough. That’s why I warned you against pinning me down in details, which may not be real, though I seem to remember them well enough.”
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