Andrew hesitated. Here his anxiety should end, because the danger, if any, would be at Walden House, not in town. In the morning he could send the girl a telegram asking her to telephone him. Or he might call at an early hour. So long as he warned her about the danger that might threaten her at Cheriton Shawe, his duty would be done.
He turned away in bitterness, thinking of Mr. Hinckleigh. He went to a pub on King’s Road and had a drink. He was a little hungry then, but thought with loathing of a lonely dinner in an unknown cafe. He felt grubby, too, after the long day of running round to no purpose, and discontent accentuated the feeling till he believed he must look like a tramp. Impossible to think of eating before he had been home for a wash and a clean shirt.
A taxi took him across to Holland Park. There were limits beyond which economy became foolish even for a potential hospital registrar, and the limits were reached in his weariness and dejection.
He did feel a little better for the wash and the change, though, as he knotted his tie, it seemed to him that the Maclaren face had lost a lot of its buoyant air. It had a hunted look; and there was a dark puffiness under the eyes that no medical man could accept with equanimity, especially in the absence of compensating dissipation. He shook his head. A little of that dissipation would be good for him. Up to now this so-called holiday in London, this homecoming spree, had been a flop. Time he had a few drinks; time he announced himself to his friends; time he took a nice girl out to a good dinner. Who was Mr. Hinckleigh that he should have all the fun? Dr. Maclaren was not without resources. Indeed, no! Marilyn Webb, for instance. Lovely, witty, cheerful, and he’d get all the inside dope on the hospitals at the same time. But perhaps not tonight.
He went through the list of resources, and finally decided on Sophie Gaines, who was lovely, witty and cheerful, and didn’t know a hospital from a hole in the ground. The best of the lot of them. He had always liked her. If he hadn’t gone off on his Red Cross jaunt, who knows what might not have happened. A radiant girl, Sophie. She glowed.
It was singular, then, that he dialled her number without any responsive glow. As he swung his finger round the circle from the last cipher, he was more dejected than before. Only when he discovered that he had got on to a wrong number did he feel the slightest relief; but doggedly he began to dial again. As the mechanism whirred unhurriedly, the bell of the flat door rang loudly.
Eight… nine… He dialled the last two digits of Sophie’s number, wondering about the caller at the door. An impertinence, walking up the stairs to the flat without so much as pushing the bell button at the front entrance to give one notice. Jordaens, probably. The police approach.
The automatic ringing-tone was calling Miss Gaines.
He held on. The caller on the door mat might, of course, be somebody for Lang; somebody accustomed to coming informally up the stairs. Or it could be Mr. Botten. After his experiences in M.I. something-or-other, Charley probably considered it undignified to bother about house bells when front doors were open.
Another imperious summons from the flat door cut through the transmitted ringing-tone of the telephone.
Andrew slammed the telephone down on the cradle and bounded from his chair. Then, as he touched the latch, another possibility occurred to him. The enemy had come back. Kretchmann, Haller, Mr. Jolly-Face, the man in the flapping raincoat. One or more of them, and the boss himself for choice. Andrew was in the mood, ready for him, a word of welcome on his lips.
He flung open the door and then jumped as if he had been shot. A flash of light made him close his eyes, but the flash was an inward experience, unseen. He opened his eyes and blinked as if the illumination had been actual. Ruth Meriden was still there on the threshold.
Ten
The first thing he saw was that something had upset her very considerably, but even as he stood aside for her to come in, she burst out exasperatedly.
“Where have you been? I came here looking for you before. I phoned! I phoned and phoned! Where have you been?”
“Looking for you. You told me you were going home. I had to see you, so I went out there.”
“To Cheriton Shawe?”
“Yes, but what on earth’s happened to you?”
She limped past him into the room. There was a long scratch on her face and mud on her coat.
“I fell down,” she said wearily. “And I think I’d like a brandy-”
Something in her tone stilled the questions crowding to his lips. He went to her quickly.
“Here, you’d better sit down. I’ll get you something.”
She sank into a chair exhaustedly. “I ought to have gone back to Palgrave Street,” she said. “But like a fool I didn’t. You see, I got frightened.”
“Oh.” He handed her a glass. “Don’t sip it. Drink it right down.”
She did, then gasped a little. He took the glass away and refilled it.
“What scratched your face?” he asked.
“A bramble.”
‘What about your leg?”
“I’ve bruised my knee. It’s a bit stiff, that’s all.” He gave her the refilled glass. “You’d better sip that one.”
“I shall be drunk.”
“No, you won’t. Do you feel like telling me what happened now?”
She nodded and then, to his relief, she smiled. “It was that wretched boat,” she said. “I tried to find it for you.”
“You did what?”
And then she told him.
Throughout the morning her thoughts had kept going to the boat. For that reason, perhaps, she had failed to take any interest in the American dealer and, in the end, had asked him to postpone his visit to Cheriton Shawe until his return from Paris a fortnight hence. She pleaded that she would then have more work to show him. They had argued about schedules and sailing dates with Mr. Hinckleigh, and finally it was agreed. Then Mr. Alec Foster bought them a good lunch. He was really a very nice person, and she liked him very much.
“But the boat?”
“I’m telling it just as it happened,” she said. “After lunch I went to see the lawyer. He didn’t know anything about the boat, but he remembered the mill.” She paused. “It’s a windmill,” she said.
“A windmill!” With his knowledge of John Quayle Meriden’s peculiarities, the information should not have been startling. He was surprised because he had visualised something else. A windmill did not seem to go with streams and landing stages. It was rather a thing of bleak uplands and windswept plains.
“Is it the mill we’re looking for?” he asked.
“I don’t know. It seems likely, from the position. I was too frightened to make certain.”
“What do you mean?”
She said irritably: “Why did you go down to Cheriton Shawe this afternoon?”
“Never mind that now. Tell me about the mill.”
It seemed that years ago Uncle John had gone duck shooting at Groper’s Wade on the Thames Estuary and had returned in a state of high excitement about this windmill. He had recently read a magazine article on the production of electricity by wind power, and had been inspired by the idea. He would buy the ruined mill, restore it, equip it with a generating plant and demonstrate that the theories of the magazine writer were sound. Then he would buy up windmills all over the country and furnish enough cheap electricity to supply the nation’s needs. The Meriden System would be the salvation of industry, and John Quayle would be honoured wherever a spark was required to turn a wheel or light the darkness.
“You find out who owns that mill,” he had instructed the lawyer. “Get it for me cheap, and keep your mouth shut. Once my plan is known, the price of windmills will go up.”
The lawyer had opened his mouth only to make objections, but Uncle John had remained firm. When he had heard the price, he had been delighted. He had never known anything so cheap, a bargain! The owner threw in the mill cottage, landing stage, all appurtenances, and riparian rights, if any. The agreement had been signed and the price paid. Within a week he had forgotten about it, and nobody had been inclined to remind him.