When Grice arrived, the clock was striking the quarter, Rollison walked away; Pomeroy had either used a side entrance or was still inside the house.
Jolly was standing by the radiogram in a corner of the big room at the flat, and Lady Lost was leaning back in an easy chair with her eyes closed and a faint smile at her lips. Rollison entered the room, and Jolly bowed slightly and motioned to the radiogram. Rollison nodded. When the last record was played, a bright and lively waltz by Johann Strauss, Jolly stopped the disc and inquired:
“Is there anything you require, sir?”
“Let’s have some coffee,” said Rollison.
“Very good, sir.” Jolly went out and Rollison stood looking at Lady Lost. She had opened her eyes and was looking at him. The smile had died, and something of the hurt she had suffered at Barrington House showed on her face; it was as if she were keeping her eyes half-closed to prevent him from seeing the hurt in them.
He could not understand the turmoil in his mind.
This woman might be a fraud; Gwendoline might be right; but he desired above all else to prove that Lady Lost was innocent of all chicanery; he wanted to believe her memory gone, and longed to restore it.
At last she broke the silence.
“Please do not talk of what happened. It is—forgotten.”
“Is it?” asked Rollison, slowly.
“Yes, and it does not matter. The girl dislikes me. Once she came to see me at the hospital, and then it was clear—she dislikes and distrusts me, and who can be blamed for talking as she did of a person whom one does not trust?”
“There’s something in that,” said Rollison. He offered cigarettes, but she refused. He lit one, slowly. “She says that you know her father, and that you saw him several times before you appeared at Barrington House.”
The woman sat up, her eyes ablaze.
“Then where is he?
“He has gone away,” said Rollison, gently.
“To where? How long must I wait?”
“No one knows where,” said Rollison.
She looked acutely disappointed; he could not bring himself to believe it was feigned. She stared at him with her eyes wide open and her lips parted.
“Has he—been hurt?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Rollison.
“You would tell me if that were so,” she said.
“Yes. Listen to me.
“I do not know,” she said. “I just do not know.”
He smiled.
“I shouldn’t have worried you with that, just now.”
Jolly came in with the coffee and some biscuits.
“Pour out, Jolly, please,” said Rollison, and stepped towards the radiogram. Four records were spread out on top—the National Anthems of Yugo-Slavia, Greece, Rumania and Bulgaria. The coffee in that tiny pot was of a kind popular in the Balkans and the Middle East.
“Please, I do not like coffee,” said the lady.
“Try this,” said Rollison, “just to please me.”
At the first sip, her expression altered; she looked almost startled, and she stared at the cup, then at Rollison, while Jolly stood hopefully by the door, and Rollison, without turning his head, put the needle in position and switched on the radiogram. The first strains of the Yugo-Slav National Anthem came softly from the record, while the visitor sipped the coffee again and said:
“This is remarkable! It is”
She stopped abruptly.
The tune was clearer now, after the opening bars. Played in slow time by a massed band, the volume swelled and filled the room—but Rollison was not listening. He was oblivious of everything but Lady Lost, who was leaning forward in her chair, her eyes shining, the cup and saucer trembling in her hand. She did not speak, but she put the coffee down and rose slowly to her feet, moving towards him as if in a dream.
She reached his side, and they stood together while the music came like a magic which had touched some hidden chord and brought to her eyes ineffable delight.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE anthem ended
The Lady of Lost Memory stood looking at Rollison. Rollison switched off, and silence fell.
