word, he was dead, or had changed his name and disappeared. But at the time it had seemed a high and noble quest. It was crazy, but he remembered it, practically every word of it. And here he was back in Godolphin Square—twenty-six years old, and she . . . He didn’t know. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen, that night, sixteen maybe. Here they both were, after six years. She was in the very house, down below, somewhere, in the dreary effluvia of boiled cabbage and brass polish and fresh paint that they hadn’t bothered to touch up the box room with. Or the little man had said she was.
Thinking of Mr. Pinkerton again, Dan McGrath went over to the door. There was someone in the hall. He had not heard the lift come up. It was probably the chef, or Mr. Pinkerton, going to the w. c. He opened the door, glanced out and closed it quickly.
It was a woman, coming out of Mr. Pinkerton’s room—or going into it, he couldn’t tell—dressed in something that looked very much like a wrapper and a nightgown, with a shawl about her shoulders. It was probably Mrs. Pinkerton. Nobody had mentioned a Mrs. Pinkerton, but if she was as pallid and self-effacing as Mr. Pinkerton, they’d probably not have bothered. He thought back suddenly. Miss Grimstead had only mentioned one of her people, not two, as going on holiday. He opened the door again. Whoever it was, he had scared her off. She was disappearing down the stairs, obviously frightened, clutching her shawl about her throat.
He shook his head, wondering a little, started to close his door again, and stopped. Mr. Pinkerton’s door, he saw now, was ajar, but no light shone out. It seemed a little strange. He hesitated, left his own door as it was and went along the hall.
“Mr. Pinkerton?”
He put his head into the room and spoke again. Mr. Pinkerton was not there. He glanced back at the staircase, pushed the door farther open to let in the light from the hall, and crossed the room to the rickety lamp on the table. The bulb was cold as he felt for the switch. He pressed it on and looked about him at a room nearly as bare as his own. A couple of Dresden china shepherdesses and a few photographs on the mantel were the only personal property he could see, together with a red-green woolen throw on the sofa in front of the open French windows. He looked beyond the sofa, through the windows, out onto the balcony ledge, and took two quick strides across the room. The little man was lying inert, crumpled up, his head against the lead drainpipe.
Dan McGrath said, “Good God!” He bent down quickly, picked Mr. Pinkerton up, carried him into the room and laid him on the day bed. He loosened the purple string tie and ripped open the narrow celluloid collar, opened the band of the shoddy grey trousers and looked about. There was no telephone and no bell, no bottle of whisky, no water. He dashed out into the hall, jabbed the call button on the side of the lift half a dozen times and dashed back. The little man’s eyes were open. He was staring blindly, his face suffused, trying to struggle upright.
“Take it easy, Mr. Pinkerton.”
“She mustn’t go,” Mr. Pinkerton whispered. He clutched at Dan’s sleeve. “Mustn’t go. Mustn’t go to Paris.”
“Okay, okay. Everything’s under control. Just take it easy. It’s me—Dan McGrath.”
As if the word had got through into his dazed semi-conscious mind, the little man sank down on the couch.
“Well get a doctor right away.”
He strode out into the hall, punched the bell violently again and came back. The little man looked pathetically different, lying there, without his brown derby hat. There was something else, Dan thought—his spectacles. The lozenge-shaped steel-rimmed job that made him look like a Dickensian gnome. Without them and the hat he looked indecently nude. Furthermore, he probably couldn’t see. Dan went over to the balcony, hoping the spectacles weren’t broken in his fall, and glanced along the narrow ledge. The brown derby had rolled along nearly to the drain. He retrieved it and looked about for the spectacles. They were nowhere in sight. He glanced down into the street—they could easily have gone over—and went back into the room.
The little man was shivering, his whole meagre frame trembling.
Shock. You keep them warm and get a doctor. He could hear the lift coming up now. You get them warm quick. He picked up the afghan folded over the arm of the sofa, opened it up, threw it over Mr. Pinkerton, and stopped abruptly, staring. A curved metal bow was sticking up through the knitted material. He lifted it quickly and turned it over. Hanging from the coverlet on the inside, the bows caught in the soft woolen stitches, were Mr. Pinkerton’s spectacles.
Dan McGrath stared down at them. Wait a minute, McGrath. Wait just one minute.
He heard the lift stop and the door clang open, and stood there still staring down at the knitted comforter and the spectacles still hanging to it. He glanced out into the hall as it flashed into his mind that it might be a good idea to have a witness, if this meant what he thought it did. It was not Mason there, it was Miss Myrtle Grimstead; and prompted by a quick impulse he put the afghan back, flattened the bows and bunched the soft material together.
“Oh, Mr. McGrath—is there something?” Miss Grimstead had seen him through the open door and came hurrying along the hall. “Mason had to go out for a taxi. One of my people is going to Paris—”
She came to an abrupt halt in the doorway. “There! I knew it! I told him so not two hours ago. I said, Mr. Pinkerton, you are—”
“I know,” Dan said. “But let’s get a doctor, shall we? Quick?”
Miss Grimstead’s triumph transformed itself instantly into brisk and cheerful efficiency. “What a pity,” she said. “We’ll get him to hospital immediately. He wants rest and care.”
“He wants a doctor,” Dan said. “My friend Mr. Pinkerton wants a doctor. Right away. And I want the police, Miss Grimstead. I’ll settle for a doctor first.”
Miss Grimstead, bending down to take the faded cloth cover off Mr. Pinkerton’s sagging couch, flashed rigidly erect. “The police? Mr. McGrath!” Her blue eyes were bulging, her pink powdered cheeks mottled. “What do you mean? Are you mad?”
“I’m pretty mad, Miss Grimstead. I’m going to be a whole lot madder if there isn’t a doctor here in about five minutes.”
Miss Grimstead’s eyes were sharp points of calculation.
“Very well,” she said stiffly. “I’ll call a doctor. I’d like to say first you’re making a great mistake. I don’t know what you’re thinking, but this is England. Not America. Mr. Pinkerton wants care. He’s got neither family nor friends here—”
“Oh, yes.” Dan gave her a frosty smile. “You’re forgetting me. And remember that doctor we were talking about? Isn’t there a doctor in the house?”
Miss Grimstead’s face was still more mottled. “It happens there is. Not professionally. He’s a surgeon, here making a social call. However, I’ll ask him if he cares to step up and see Mr. Pinkerton. Mr. Sidney Copeland is a very busy man . . .”
He listened to her departing feet pepper the worn hall carpet. Miss Grimstead was very angry. He looked thoughtfully down at the bunched bit of knitted wool concealing the lozenge-shaped spectacles. If they had been on the outside of the thing, it was conceivable that they could have fallen off as the little guy staggered out into the fresh air. But they were folded up on the inside.
He looked at the grey pinched face. Mr. Pinkerton’s eyes were closed. There was pain in the haggard lines about his nose and in the
