The Knocker on Death's Door

convulsive effort and a shivering shock, like a sleep-walker rudely startled into wakefulness.

“Just one moment, sir—if you wouldn’t mind coming in here to the light.”

Robert allowed himself to be led into his own drawing-room, and into the slanting afternoon light from the window.

“Do you recognise this, sir?”

The fluted gold cap tapered away to a minute star, and there was a pocket-clip like a scroll fastened to its side. It was individual enough to be recognisable once one knew it, and solid enough to be, in any one house, probably the only one of its kind around. Robert looked at it with his slightly dazed eyes, hollow with wakefulness, and said almost automatically:

“Why, yes, it’s mine—but I lost that pencil a long time ago. Where did you find it?”

Brice said nothing; it was not necessary. The words were scarcely spoken when Robert himself, struggling to a plane somewhere nearer full consciousness, knew the answer. True, they had been hunting through the entire house, apart from the room where his mother lay doped and mute and fighting for her life, but not for this, or any trifles like it. There was only one place where such a losable thing, once found, could be of any significance.

The hand Robert had extended to take up the cap faltered, recoiled, swayed in mid-air. Brice, startled, looked up from the hand to the face, saw the abrupt, bluish pallor turn the long features to dead clay, and the eyes roll upwards in their sockets. The tall, thin body began to fold at the joints with infinite slowness, collapsing like a dropped puppet. Everything else had fallen on Robert, and had not felled him, but this tiny thing dropped him as a shot might have done.

Brice cried in alarm: “Here, hold up, sir!” and caught him by the arm; but it was Barnes, huge and imperturbable in the background, a carefully placed witness, who swung a chair forward with monumental presence of mind, caught Robert round the body, and lowered him smoothly into it.

“You think there’d be any brandy around, Mr. Brice?”

Robert drew himself together with a spasmodic effect, heaved a vast breath into his lungs, and opened his eyes. He gripped the arms of the chair resolutely, and drew himself a little more erect.

“Thank you, but I’m all right. I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’ve been up too long… I didn’t mean to distress you.”

They waited, watching the faint colour return to his face; it was never more than faint, but the livid blue tint subsided slowly, his lips regained a flush of pink. He moistened them, and even that was an effort.

“I’m quite all right now, thank you, I never intended to inhibit you, officer, if you want to charge me…”

He waited. Brice remembered the moment for its strangeness, ceremony and civility, all of which were confounding.

“No, sir, at present I’ve no charge to make.”

“But I thought…” Robert shook his head, frowning a little. “I don’t understand,” he said with a deep sigh, and abandoned the effort to find a way through the tangle. And in a moment he tightened his grip on the arms of the chair, drew his languid members together and thrust himself to his feet. Barnes took a step towards him, warily, but he stood quite steadily. “If you’ve finished with me, then, I’ll go back to my mother. You know where to find me if you do need me.”

He walked slowly but firmly to the door, and let himself out. In a moment they heard him climbing the stairs.

Hugh drove into the yard at the garage towards six o’clock, and let himself into the house by the back door. Dinah was just beginning her preparations for the evening meal, and had the makings of a salad on the kitchen table, but she put down her knife and pushed the chopping-board away when Hugh came in. She had been half- expecting him all the afternoon.

“Dinah, would you come? We don’t know who else to ask. Only until night…”

“Is she worse?” asked Dinah. “What does the doctor say?”

“He’s getting a nurse to come out for nights, but she won’t get here until about nine o’clock. We’ll be all right tomorrow, old Nurse Taylor—you know, the retired one— she’s willing to come in tomorrow, but she couldn’t make it today. It’s just until nine o’clock, this one night… Rob’s just about out on his feet, he hasn’t closed his eyes for thirty-six hours. And you know me, I’m no good…”

“Idiot, shut up!” said Dinah bracingly. “Of course I’ll come. I’m not much good, either, but it’s only a matter of using a bit of nous, that’s all.”

She made some tea for him, and forced him to eat something before they left; who knew if he’d even thought about such mundane things, in this mood? She talked sense to him, prosaically; he had never demanded poetry of her.

“Now look, she’s past seventy… nearly seventy-two, isn’t it? Don’t get to thinking you’ve somehow done this to her, she’s seventy-two, and it happens. Do you know how many people over fifty this ’flu’s knocked off, the last two years? Well, then…”

Dave came in to hang up the workshop keys, and she told him everything. Nobody had to explain to her that Dave didn’t want her to go. Nobody had to explain to Dave that she was going, anyhow. They didn’t argue about it.

“I’ll come round and fetch you at nine, then,” said Dave.

“I can bring her back,” objected Hugh. “Earlier, if the night nurse shows up before then.”

“All right, but if she isn’t back by nine I’ll come round anyhow.”

“I’d better slip across the yard and pick up some more clothes,” Hugh said. “It looks as if I shall have to stay over there for a while.”

He came down in a few minutes to join Dinah in the yard, carrying a small case, which he tossed into the back seat of the Mini. They sat in silence for a while as he drove out along the lane towards the Abbey. It was nearly dark; the hummock of the rising ridge beyond the village lay limp and quiet like a sleeping lizard. The trees were losing their leaves rapidly now, the next high wind would strip the more exposed branches bare.