For some moments I just stood in the long, silent corridor, my heart jumping and my knees knocking, then slowly I took hold of myself. With one hand against the wall to support me, I set off slowly towards the massive door at the end of the corridor. I passed four other doors before I came to the end one. I ran my hands over the surface, feeling the soft rubber cool against my hot skin. I turned the handle, but nothing happened. The door was locked as fast as Pharaoh’s tomb.
Well, I expected that. But if I could I was going to get out of here. The thought of going back to that charnel-house of a room gave me the shakes. I took hold of the door handle and bent my strength to it. Nothing happened. It was like trying to push over the Great Wall of China.
That wasn’t the way out.
I retraced my steps to the far end of the corridor and examined the mess-grill window. Nothing short of a crowbar would have shifted it, and even with a crowbar it would have taken hall a day to break out.
The next move was to find a weapon. If I could find something I could use as a cosh I had only to hide myself near the main door and wait for someone to show up. Q.E.D. Even a Malloy will get an idea sometimes.
I began to move along the corridor. The first door I tried was unlocked. I peered cautiously into darkness, listened, heard my own breathing and nothing else, groped for the light switch and turned on the light. Probably Quell’s room. It was neat and tidy and clean, and there was no weapon in sight or nothing I could use for a weapon. A white uniform hanging on a stretcher gave me an idea. I slid into the room and tried on the coat. It didn’t fit me any better than a mole-skin would fit a Polar bear, so I dropped the idea.
The next room was also empty of life. Above the dirty-looking bed was a large coloured print of a girl in a G-string and a rope of pearls. She smiled at me invitingly, but I didn’t smile back. That made it Bland’s room.
I slid in and shut the door. A rapid search through the chest of drawers produced among other things a leather-bound cosh with a wrist thong: a nicely-balanced, murderous little weapon, and just what I warned.
I went across the room to a cupboard, found a spare uniform and tried on the jacket. It was a fair fit, a little big, but good enough. I changed, leaving my pyjamas on the floor. I felt a lot better once I was in trousers and shoes again. Pyjamas and bare feet are not the kit for fighting. I shoved the cosh into my hip pocket, and wished I had a gun.
At the bottom of the cupboard I found a pint bottle of Irish whisky. I broke the seal, unscrewed the cap and took a slug. The liquor went down like silk and exploded in my stomach like a touched-off Mills bomb.
Good liquor, I thought, and, to make sure, had another pull at the bottle. Still very good. Then I packed the pint in a side pocket and moved to the door again. I was coming on.
As I opened the door, I heard footsteps. I stood quieter than a mouse that sees a cat, and waited. The hatchet-faced nurse came along the corridor, humming to herself. She passed quite close to me, and would have seen me if she had looked my way, but she didn’t. She kept on, opened a door on the other side of the corridor and went into a dimly-lit room. The door closed.
I waited, breathing gently, feeling a lot better for the whisky. Minutes ticked by. A small piece of fluff, driven by the draught from under the door, scuttled along the corridor apologetically. A sudden squall of rain lashed against the grill-covered window. The wind sighed around the house. I kept on waiting. I didn’t want to cosh the nurse if I could help it. I’m sentimental about hitting women: they hit me instead.
The nurse appeared again, walked the length of the corridor, produced a key, unlocked the main door before I realized what she was doing. I saw the door open. I saw a flight of stairs leading to a lighted something beyond. I jumped forward, but she had passed through the doorway and closed the door behind her.
Anyway, I consoled myself I wasn’t ready to leave yet. The door could wait. I decided I would investigate the room the nurse had just left. Maybe that was where Anona was.
I eased out the cosh, resisted the temptation to take another drink and walked along the corridor. I paused outside the door, pressed my ear to the panel and listened. I heard nothing but the wind and the rain against the mess-grilled window. I looked back over my shoulder. No one was peering at me from around the other doors. The corridor looked as lonely and as empty as a church on a Monday afternoon. I squeezed the door handle and turned slowly. The door opened, and I looked into a room built and furnished along the lines of the room in which I had been kept a prisoner.
There were two beds; one of them empty. In the other, opposite me, was a woman. A blue night lamp made an eerie light over the white sheet and her white face. The halo of fair hair rested on the pillow, the eyes were studying the ceiling with the perplexed look of a lost child.
I pushed the door open a little wider and walked softly into the room, closed the door and leaned against it. I wondered if she would scream. The rubber-lined door reassured me that if she did no one would hear her; but she didn’t. Her eyes continued to stare at the ceiling, but a nerve in her cheek began to jump. I waited. There was no immediate hurry, and I didn’t want to scare her.
Slowly the eyes moved along the ceiling to the wall, down the wall until they rested on me. We looked at each other. I was aware I was breathing gently and the cosh I held in my hand was as unnecessary as a Tommy gun at a choir practice. I slid it back into my pocket.
She studied me, the nerve jumping and her eyes widening.
“Hello, there,” I said, cheerfully and quietly. I even managed a smile.
Malloy and his bedside manner: a talent to be discussed with bated breath by his grandchildren; if he ever had any grandchildren, which was doubtful.
“Who are you?” She didn’t scream nor try to run up the wall, but the nerve kept on jumping.
“I am a sort of detective,” I said, hoping to reassure her. “I’m here to take you home.”
Now I was closer to her I could see the pupils of her blue eyes were like pin-points.
“I haven’t any clothes,” she said. “They’ve taken them away.”
“I’ll find you some more. How do you feel?”
“All right.” The fair head rolled to the right and then to the left. “But I can’t remember who I am. The man with the white hair told me I’ve lost my memory. He’s nice, isn’t he?”
“So I am told,” I said carefully. “But you want to go home, don’t you? “
“I haven’t a home.” She drew one long naked arm from under the sheet and ran slender fingers through the mop of fair hair. Her hand slid down until it rested on the jumping nerve. She pressed a finger against the nerve as if to hide it. “It got lost, but the nurse said they were looking for it. Have you found it?”
“Yes; that’s why I am here.”
She thought about that for some moments, frowning.
“Then you know who I am?” she said at last.
“Your name is Anona Freedlander,” I said. “And you live in San Francisco.”
“Do I? I don’t remember that. Are you sure?”
I was eyeing her arm. It was riddled with tiny scars. They had kept her drugged for a long time. She was more or less drugged now.
“Yes, I’m sure. Can you get out of bed?”
“I don’t think I want to,” she said. “I think I would rather go to sleep.”
“That’s all right,” I told her. “You go to sleep. We’re not ready to leave just yet. In a little while: after you’ve had your sleep, we’ll go.”
“I haven’t any clothes, or did I tell you that? I haven’t anything on now. I threw my nightdress into the bath. The nurse was very angry.”
“You don’t have to bother about anything. I’ll do the bothering. I’ll find you something to wear when we’re ready to go.”