Still the doctor kept his eyes down. “Take your time, old man. It just takes a little while to get it out of your system. You're still fresh out of Hades."
"Er..."
"We've got lots worse than you. Not my specialty, of course. Not my patients, most of them. Can't amputate memories, unfortunately."
They all said this sort of guff at Staffles, but it wasn't what they thought. What they thought was coward and weakling, just like the guv'nor did. When Smedley was thrown out of here, he was going to have to face a world that thought like that.
Still Stringer studied his cigarette, while Smedley's face burned like a sunset and twitched and twitched. His lips and tongue would do nothing but slaver. Why had he come here? Any minute he would blurt out something about Exeter....
"Some poor devils can't even remember their own names,” Stringer said offhandedly, putting his cigarette back in his mouth. He took a letter from a wire basket and scanned it. “Got one chappie upstairs hasn't spoken a word since the day he was brought in. Understands English, though. He reacts—tries not to, but he does. Understands German, too."
Good God! He knew!
"But I don't really think the German's too significant,” Stringer remarked, frowning at the page.
"Probably not,” Smedley agreed. Exeter had always been a sponge for languages. Stringer knew who he was!
"Interesting chappie. Picked up in the middle of a battle without a stitch on him, just outside Ypres. No account of how he got there. And he can't tell us. Or won't, perhaps. There was some talk of just standing him up against a wall and shooting him."
"Why didn't they?” said a voice astonishingly like Smedley's own.
Stringer looked up cautiously and seemed to approve of what he saw. He dropped the letter back in the tray. “Well, it's a rum do. His hair, for one thing."
"Hair, sir?"
"He had a full beard and his hair was down over his ears, like a woman's. I needn't quote King's Regulations to you, Captain, and I dare say the Kaiser feels the same way about lice.” Stringer drew on his cigarette, eyebrows cocked quirkily to indicate that this was all frightfully jolly and nobody need get overwrought. The fishy eyes gleamed. He spun his chair around and opened a drawer in one of the filing cabinets. “At any rate,” he said over his shoulder, “our mystery man was no soldier. That's certain. And then there was his tan. I suppose the south of France is a possibility."
"Tan, sir?” Hospital pallor?
"He had a tan. A corker of a tan.” Stringer spun around to face his visitor again, thumbing through a file. “Yes, here it is. ‘When stripped, the patient appeared to be wearing white shorts. This pigmentation is only compatible with recent, extended exposure to a tropical climate.’ Then he turns up outside Ypres in the wettest summer in fifty years. Odd, isn't it?"
Now the surgeon put his arrogant stare to work, but Smedley was past noticing. Now he knew why Exeter had not been shot as a spy. But he wasn't much further forward. There was still a murder in the background, and now there was also the problem of how Stringer had known....
The surgeon was smiling.
"How?” Smedley asked weakly.
Smirking. “Best fast bowler the school's had this century. Saw him get that hat trick against Eton."
Lord, who would ever forget that day! The willies grabbed Smedley's eyeballs and squeezed.
"Astonishing thing is that no one else's recognized him yet!” Stringer sighed. “What the hell are we going to do?"
"You? You, sir? You'll help, sir?"
"Don't you want me to?"
"Yes, oh, yes! Would you? I mean he was just about my best friend and I'll do anything I can to get him out and clear his—"
"Ah, yes. There is that, isn't there?"
Smedley considered the awful prospect that he had walked into a trap. He had never spoken to this man before, and now he had betrayed his pal. The chance that Stringer would jeopardize a notable career and even risk a prison sentence for abetting the escape of a suspected spy was not the sort of hypothesis even a shell-shocked...
But the doctor had already known.
"Nothing too serious physically,” Stringer muttered, perusing the file. “He picked up some scratches in the mud, of course, and that stuff swarms with microbes. Gas gangrene, tetanus—we have antitoxins now, thank the Lord. Not like 1915. And he got some mustard gas blisters.” He looked up warily. “But he's basically sound, physically that is. You said you were chums? I'd have thought he was a year or two behind you."
"He seems to have worn well.” Smedley had not. “Sir, I will never believe Exeter stabbed a man in the back!"
Stringer pulled a face. “Not what they taught at Fallow in my day! The investigation was thoroughly botched, you know. Some country bobby who'd never dealt with anything worse than poaching. The Home Office sacked the general over it. That wasn't the story, but it's true. He should have called in Scotland Yard or shouted for aid from the next county."
But what did they do now?
"Just as well,” Stringer said, glancing at his watch. “No fingerprints on file. So Mrs. Bodgley tells me. I have to make my rounds right away. We'll have the man in here after and talk it over. You can manage for a half hour or so?"
He smiled quietly and eased the file across to the other side of his desk. Then he stubbed out his cigarette, rose to his feet, and pranced out the door in his fifty-guinea suit. Smedley's mouth was still hanging open.
6
HAD SMEDLEY REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT IT, HE WOULD HAVE SAID that he could no more sit still for half an hour in that cramped little office than his battery could have shelled Berlin from Flanders. Yet he did not go off his rocker. The walls did not fall on him. The willies stayed away, although it was probably nearly a whole hour before he was interrupted.
He had serious planning to do. He must devise a way to smuggle Exeter out of Staffles. After a while he decided that could be arranged. But where could the fugitive run to once he was outside the walls?
He considered Chichester and his gorge rose. In theory an empty house with no tattling servants around would be an ideal hideout, but there would be recurring plagues of aunts. Worse, the guv'nor had no use for Exeter. He blamed Exeter's father for the Nyagatha massacre, claiming the man had gone native. He'd accepted the son's guilt in the Bodgley case right away. Scratch Chichester!
There was Fallow. Term did not start for another ten days. Ginger could arrange something.
So that was settled. Now he had to think of a way to pass the information to Exeter when he was brought in, and right under Stringer's nose, too—another midnight expedition to the west wing would be tempting the gods. He found paper in the desk drawer. Writing left-handed was a bugger. Do not begin, “Dear Exeter!"
Tomorrow night will set off fire alarm. Try to slip away in the confusion. Left at bottom of stair. The yard wall is climbable. Go right. Look for Boadicea's chariot at crossroads, half a mile. Good luck.
He added: God bless! and felt a little shamefaced about that.
Even folding a paper one-handed was tricky, but he wadded the note small and slipped it in his trouser pocket. Then he sat back to examine the file Stringer had so generously left for him.
Boadicea's chariot was Ginger's Austin roadster. Smedley could write a quick letter and catch the evening post with it. It would reach Fallow in the morning—perhaps. If it did not arrive until the afternoon, that would cut things very fine. He had better walk down to the village after dinner and telephone.