Chapter 13
MARKING TIME
Grant did not sleep well that night. There was every reason why he should have slept in all the sublime peace of the righteous man of good digestion. He had finished the work he had come to do, and his case was complete. He had had a hard day in the open, in air that was at once a stimulant and a narcotic. The dinner provided by Drysdale had been all that either a hungry man or an epicure could have wished for. The sea outside his window breathed in long, gentle sighs that were the apotheosis of content. The turf fire glowed soothingly as no flickering bonfire of wood or coals ever does. But Grant slept badly. Moreover, there was discomfort in his mind somewhere, and like all self-analytical people, he was conscious of it and wanted to locate it, so that he could drag it out to the light and say, “Goodness, is that all!” and find relief and comfort as he had so often done before. He knew quite well how that uneasiness which ruined the comfort of his twelve mattresses of happiness proved on investigation to be merely the pea of the fairy-tale. But, rout round as he would, he could find no reason for his lack of content. He produced several reasons, examined them, and threw them away. Was it the girl? Was he being sorry for her because of her pluck and decency? But he had no real reason to think that she cared for the man other than as a friend. Her undeniable interest in him at tea might have been due merely to his being the only interesting man from her point of view in a barren countryside. Was he overtired, then? It was a long time since he had had a whole day’s fishing followed by a burst across country at a killing pace. Or was it fear that his man would even yet slip through his fingers? But Dr. Anderson had said that there was no fracture and the man would be able to travel in a day or two. And his chances of escape now weren’t worth considering, even as hypothesis.
There was nothing in all the world, apparently, to worry him, and yet he had that vague uneasiness in his mind. During one of his periodical tossings and turnings he heard the nurse go along the corridor, and decided that he would get up and see if he could be of any use. He put on his dressing-gown and made for the wedge of light that came from the door she had left ajar. As he went, she came behind him with a candle.
“He’s quite safe, Inspector,” she said, and the mockery in her tone stung him as being unfair.
“I wasn’t asleep, and I heard you moving and thought I might be of some use,” he said, with as much dignity as one can achieve in the déshabillé of the small hours.
She relented a little. “No, thank you,” she said; “there’s nothing to do. He’s still unconscious.” She pushed open the door and led him in.
There was a lamp at the bedside, but otherwise the room was dark and filled with the sound of the sea—the gentle hushzsh which is so different from the roar of breakers on an open coast. The man, as she said, was still unconscious, and Grant examined him critically in the light of the lamp. He looked better, and his breathing was better. “He’ll be conscious before morning,” she said, and it sounded more like a promise than a statement.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” Grant said suddenly, “that you should have had all this—that you should have been brought into this.”
“Don’t worry, Inspector; I’m not at all fragile. But I’d like to keep my mother and uncle from knowing about it. Can you manage that?”
“Oh, I think so. We can get Dr. Anderson to prescribe south treatment for him.”
She moved abruptly, and he was conscious of the unhappiness of his phrase, but could see no way of remedying it, and was silent.
“Is he a bad lot?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, apart from—”
“No,” said Grant, “not as far as we know.” And then, afraid that the green growth he had burned out last night might begin to shoot again, and more pain be in store for her, he added, “But he stuck his friend in the back.”
“The man in the queue?” she said, and Grant nodded. Even yet he was waiting momentarily for the “I don’t believe it.” But it did not come. He had at last met a woman whose common sense was greater than her emotions. She had known the man only three days, he had lied to her every hour of these days, and the police wanted him for murder. That was sufficient evidence in her clear eyes to prevent her taking any brief in his favour.
“I have just put the kettle on the gas-ring in the bathroom for tea,” she said. “Will you have some?” and Grant accepted and they drank the scalding liquid by the open window, the sea heaving below them in the strangely balmy west-coast night. And Grant went to bed again quite sure that it was not Miss Dinmont’s emotions that worried him, but still uneasy about something. And now, writing triumphant telegrams to Barker in the golden morning, with the comfortable smell of bacon and eggs contending amiably with the fragrance of seaweed, he was still not as happy as he should have been. Miss Dinmont had come in, still in the white overall that made her look half surgeon, half religieuse, to say that her patient was conscious, but would Grant not come to him until Dr. Anderson had been?—she was afraid of the excitement; and Grant had thought that eminently reasonable.
“Has he just come round?” he asked.
No, she said; he had been conscious for some hours, and she went serenely away, leaving Grant wondering what had passed between patient and nurse in those few hours. Drysdale joined him at breakfast, with his queer mixture of taciturnity and amiability, and arranged that he should have a real day’s fishing as an offset to the distracted flogging of the water which had occupied him yesterday. Grant said that, once Anderson had been and he had heard a report of his man, he would go. He supposed any telegrams could be sent down to him.
“Oh, yes; there’s nothing Pidgeon likes like being important. He’s in his element at the moment.”
Dr. Anderson, a little man in ancient and none too clean tweeds, said that the patient was very well indeed—even his memory was unimpaired—but he would advise Grant, whom he took to be the man’s nearest friend, not to see him until this evening. It would be best to give him a day to be quiet in. And since Miss Dinmont seemed determined to look after him, they need have no fear about him. She was an excellent nurse.
“When can he travel?” asked Grant. “We’re in a hurry to get south.”
“If it is very important, the day after tomorrow, perhaps.” And seeing Grant look disappointed, “Or even tomorrow, if the journey were made comfortable. It all depends on the comfort of the travel. But I wouldn’t recommend it till the day after tomorrow at the earliest.”
“What’s the hurry?” Drysdale said. “Why spoil the ship for a ha’p’orth of tar?”
“Afraid of loose moorings,” Grant said.
“Don’t worry. The excellent Pidgeon will dote on being head warder.”
Then Grant turned to the surprised doctor and explained the truth of the situation. “There’s no chance of his getting away if we let him stay here till he is stronger?”
“He’s safe enough today,” Anderson said. “The man isn’t fit to lift a little finger at the moment. He’d have to be carried if he escaped, and I don’t suppose there’s any one here who would be willing to carry him.”
So Grant, conscious of being entirely unreasonable and at sea with himself, agreed, wrote a second report to Barker to supplement the one he had written on the previous night, and departed to the river with Drysdale.
After a day of wide content,
