Fey handed the doctor his drink upon a silver tray, and then:
“I don’t exactly know, sir,” he replied; “and with regard to the pipe, sir: as you are aware, I am not unlike Sir Denis in build, and my orders are to keep walking up and down in view of the Embankment, below, smoking a pipe, but not to show my face too much.”
Petrie set his glass down.
“Do you mean that he is out on some investigation—and that your job is to pretend that he is at home?”
“Exactly, sir—excuse me.”
Fey went out and returned smoking the briar, strolled forward and stared out of the window. The night was damp but not foggy. The sky was overcast. He turned and walked back into the room.
“Is there any news, Fey, of... my daughter?”
“Sir Denis is certain that she is in London, sir, and alive.”
“Thank God!”
Dr. Petrie finished his whisky and soda at a gulp.
“There’s a bit of a mix up, sir, I am sorry to say. Things have been moving very fast. That Chinese devil has got hold of Mr. Sterling.”
“What!”
“But he was 0. K. this morning; we had a message from him. I am a bit anxious to-night, though, and I’m glad you’ve arrived, sir.”
The unusual volubility of Fey alarmed Dr. Petrie anew.
“Where is Sir Denis?” he asked; “I must get in touch with him.”
“He’s gone to a place called Sam Pak’s, sir, in Limehouse. Somehow, I didn’t like the sound of it to-night, sir. This Chinese devil is desperate; it’s a fight to the death . . .”
CHAPTER
41
THE LAST BUS
Fleurette opened her eyes and looked in the direction where she thought the porthole of her cabin should be.
She closed them again quickly. She saw a small curtained window, but not a porthole. This seemed to be a cottage bedroom, very cleanly and simply furnished. She opened her eyes again.
The room remained as she had first seen it—she was not dreaming.
She clenched her hands tightly and sat up in bed.
Only a few hours before, her brain told her, she had parted from Alan in her cabin on the
And now, what in heaven’s name had happened? Where was she? And how had she got here?
It was very silent, this place in which she found herself, until a slight movement in an adjoining room told her that there was someone in there.
The room was lighted by moonlight, and although she could see that there was a lamp on the table beside the bed, she was afraid to switch it on. Throwing off the bedclothes she slipped lightly to the floor.
She realized that she was wearing a suit of pyjamas which did not belong to her. But, staring at a heap of garments in an armchair, she recognized the suit which she had actually been wearing when she had parted from Alan on the ship!
Her head ached slightly, and she knew that she had been dreaming. It was difficult to believe that she was not dreaming, now. She stepped to the window, and gently drawing the curtain aside, looked out.
She saw a little hedge-bordered garden with a smooth patch of grass in the centre of which stood a stone bird bath.
There was a gaunt looking apple tree on the left, leafless now, a weird silhouette against the moon. Over the hedge, she could see the tops of other trees; but apparently the ground fell away there. She was, as she had supposed, in a cottage.
Whose cottage? And how had she got there?
Above all, where was Alan, and where was her father?
Was it possible that she had been seriously, dangerously ill?—that there had been a hiatus of which she knew nothing—that now she was convalescent?
Perhaps that person whose movements she had detected in the next room was a nurse. She retraced her steps, her bare feet making no sound upon the carpet, and looked for evidence to support this theory. There were no medicine bottles or cooling draughts upon the table beside the bed; nothing but a cigarette case—her own—and a box of matches.
A further slight movement in the adjoining room indicated that someone was seated there, reading. Fleurette had heard the rustle of a turned page.
She recognized with gratitude that despite this insane, this inexplicable awakening, she was cool and self- controlled. The theory of serious illness did not hold good. She felt perfectly fit except for that slight headache. She seated herself on the side of the bed, thinking deeply.
Her first impulse, to open the door and demand of whoever was in the next room what it was all about, she conquered. Fleurette had had the advantage of a very singular training. She had been taught to think, and this teaching availed her now. She crossed to the door very quietly, and by minute fractions of an inch began to turn the handle.
The door was locked.
Fleurette nodded.
A louder movement in the next room warned her that someone might be approaching. She slipped back into bed, drawing the clothes up close to her chin, but preparing to peep under her long lashes at anyone who should come in.
A key was quietly turned in the lock and the door opened.
Light shone in from a little sitting-room; Fleurette could see one end of it from where she lay. A newspaper and some illustrated magazines were upon a table beside which an armchair was drawn up. Her nostrils were assailed by that stuffy smell which tells of a gas fire. A strange looking old woman came into the bedroom.
She was big and very fat. In the glimpse which Fleurette had of her face in the lamplight, before she crossed the threshold, she saw that this was a puffy, yellow, wrinkled face, decorated by wide rimmed spectacles. The woman wore a costume which might possibly have been that of a hospital nurse. In silence she stood just within the little room, looking down at Fleurette.
To her horror, Fleurette saw that the woman carried a hypodermic syringe in her hand.
“Are you asleep?” she whispered softly.
She spoke in English, but with a strange accent. There was something in the crouching attitude of this huge woman, and something in the tones of her voice so threatening and sinister, that Fleurette clenched her hands beneath the coverlet. She lay quite still.
“Ah hah!” the woman sighed, evidently satisfied.
She returned quietly to the outer room, closing and gently relocking the door.
Fleurette listened intently, and whilst she listened she was thinking hard.
Sounds of subdued movements came from the outer room:—the chinking of glass, that subdued popping sound which indicates that a gas fire has been turned off; then a click—and the streak of light beneath the door vanished. Soft footsteps, evidently the woman wore padded slippers, moved beyond the partition against which Fleurette’s bed was set. A door was closed.
Her guardian had gone to bed.
Controlling her impatience only by means of a great effort, Fleurette waited, her ear pressed to the wooden partition.
She could hear the woman moving about in what was evidently an adjoining bedroom, and at last came the creak of a bed, as the heavily built custodian retired. Finally, she heard the click of an extinguished electric light.
