Seaside Hospital (16 page)

Then he recalled that there was a likeness between the two girls, and the truth now glared at him. Of course; why hadn’t he realized it before? The two girls must be sisters. Jacky was the girl whom Lisa was shielding, the girl who suffered from kleptomania.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“W
here’s Jacky!” Lisa cried, opening her door at once.

“What’s the idea?” she heard Ellard shout. “Here, she’s running off, Lisa!”

To her dismay, Lisa saw Jacky running down the moonlit cliff path to the beach.

“Jacky, come back! It’s me, Lisa!” she shouted going after her, but her sister took no notice.

She followed the beam of Jacky’s flashlight, and could hear Ellard close behind her, but Jacky had had a good start.

Frustrated, Lisa stopped short and waited for Ellard to catch up. “It’s no good chasing after her. She’s making for the caves. It’s your fault, Ellard. She only wants to talk to me. Don’t come any nearer till I find out what it’s all about.”

He nodded curtly and waited, but as soon as Lisa had climbed up to one of the caves, he broke into a run and followed them. This was a high entrance, well above the waterline, but he could hear them talking clearly.

“Why didn’t you come alone?” he heard Jacky say. “I must have money. I’ve got to get away! Don’t you understand, if anyone else knows about it, I won’t stand a chance!”

“It’s only Ellard, Jacky, and he’ll probably help you. We know about the bracelet,” Lisa said urgently. “It’s only a copy, but it’s marked. Don’t you see?”

“I know it’s only a copy.” Jacky said impatiently. “That’s just it. I tried to raise money on it tonight—a friend of mine—he said it was a fake and he wouldn’t touch it. I need cash, don’t you see—”

“Then let Ellard come and talk to us. He’s actually offered—” Lisa broke in desperately.

She wondered afterward if she could have made Jacky understand, but at that moment Ellard called out to them.

“Come out!” His voice rang sharply through the cave, distorted and unfamiliar. “The tide’s coming in—we’ll be cut off!”

Jacky did not recognize his voice, and panicked.

“It’s the police you brought with you!” she screamed. She extinguished her flashlight plunging the cave into darkness.

Lisa blundered to the cave mouth. “Ellard, you promised to keep away!” she shouted furiously.

“Tell her she can come with us on the plane!” he shouted in answer, but his voice was drowned by a new sound at the back of the cave, where the hysterical Jacky was trying to press farther back out of sight.

“The cave roof’s falling in!” Jacky screamed. “My foot! It’s trapped!”

Ellard was furious. “Look, Lisa,” he said, taking her shoulders and shaking them, “time’s running out. There’s a plane waiting to take us to Paris, all three of us. Is that clear!”

“I’ve told you—I’m not coming with you. Neither is Jacky. All I want you to do is to get help.”

“But I can’t—we haven’t time!”

“Ellard, all you have to do is go to the telephone booth just up the lane from where your car is parked. Dial the emergency number you’ll find on the front of the coin box and ask for the ambulance. That’s all I want you to do. Then you can go and get your plane. But
I’m not coming with you
!”

Suddenly it came over Ellard that, desirable as Lisa was, her very unwillingness to come with him might well be an embarrassment to him if he forced her. Shrugging, he hurried out of the cave and up the beach.

As he climbed to the top of the cliffs, he halted in dismay and dropped sharply to the ground. Where he had left his car in darkness was now a blaze of light from the headlights of a big car, and a lot of powerful flashlights. He did not need to wonder who those people were around his car. The police had arrived.

Crouching as much as possible, he reached the cover of some bushes and did some quick thinking. It was certain that he could not reach the plane by road now, but he recollected that behind him was a rough path doubling back across the fields, along the side of some woods, to the airfield. With a bit of luck he could reach the plane on foot, before the pilot grew tired of w
a
iting for him and took off.

Lisa returned to where Jacky was sobbing hysterically. “I’m here—it’s all right, Jacky,” she said soothingly. “Where is your flashlight?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Jacky cried wildly. “Get me free! I must get away before the police come!”

Lisa groped around in the darkness, and found it. When she switched it on, her heart lurched in relief. Jacky was certainly imprisoned, but as Lisa’s hands feverishly tore away the rocks, she could see that very little damage was done to Jacky’s foot.

“There, now you’re free. Take it easy, and let me examine it. No, no bones broken. Hurts there, does it? I think you’re going to be badly bruised, and you’ll have to rest—”

“How on earth can I rest?” Jacky flared, pushing her sister away. “Where can I rest? Don’t you understand? Derek’s father planted a trap—fake jewelry left lying about, and marked at that! I tell you, I’ve got to get away!”

“All right, can you put your weight on that foot?” Lisa asked, in a practical voice.

Jacky tried and winced, crying out.

“I thought so. You see? We’ll just have to wait for the ambulance, and that might be some time. Now, sit down. I want to talk to you.”

Jacky sullenly obeyed, all the fight going out of her.

“Jacky, you’re not going to run away,” Lisa said firmly. “There’s to be no more covering up for you, and no more of your taking what doesn’t belong to you.”

“I tell you, I can’t help it!” Jacky said, her voice rising again.

“I know that,” Lisa said gently. “And so we’re going to do something to stop your hands from doing it. We’re going to take you to a man who is specially good at helping people like you.”

Jacky listened, appalled. “I won’t go and be messed about with! I won’t, I won’t. I won’t go into hospital or be put on a couch and asked a lot of questions. How can you try to make me? You—you who say you care for me so much that you’ll get me out of any trouble! Why, you don’t care for me at all. You hate me, you know you do! Jealous of me, that’s what you are! You’re just like everyone else!” she sobbed. “Nobody loves me!”

“Jacky, stop it! Quit being sorry for yourself!”

Lisa got up and went to the mouth of the cave. This had happened so many times before. She must have patience.

“I suppose dear Ellard did go and telephone for an ambulance?” Jacky said bitterly. “What made you believe he’d do that, I can’t think. He never did anything for anyone else unless there was something in it for himself.”

“He helped you, didn’t he?” Lisa protested.

“What’s that got to do with it? He helped me because I accidentally found out what he was doing,” Jacky said calmly, “and threatened to see that it became known if he didn’t.”

“But he said he had letters from you telling him about things you’d taken!” Lisa gasped, coming back.

Jacky was shocked into silence for a minute, and then she started to laugh. “Did he really take you in like that? Of course there weren’t any letters. Don’t you know me better than to think I would confess on paper?”

“You mean you didn’t? There were no letters? Then why did he force me to go out with him?”

Jacky pulled herself up and hobbled over to where Lisa stood. “Aren’t you simple?” she marvelled, staring into her sister’s face. “You’re different from other girls he knew, that’s why. So unsophisticated, so quiet. But I wonder how long it would have lasted before the novelty wore off.”

“But you seemed afraid of Ellard,” Lisa pointed out, still mystified.

“Did I? Well, I had to put on some sort of act to get you to help me out, because I didn’t happen to want Ellard’s company at that time. Oh, Lisa, don’t you ever work people to your own ends?” she finished impatiently. “You can’t be all that good!”

Ignoring Jacky
’
s remark, Lisa said briskly, “Look, we can’t wait here all night. Give me that flashlight. I expect the beach is under water by now. The only way out is up the cliff face.”

“Oh, be your age,” Jacky begged. “You know how these cliffs crumble. It would be asking for trouble to try and climb them.”

“Well, I’m going to try.” Lisa leaned out of the cave opening. “Yes, the water’s up. That’s funny, there’s lights down there. Here, take this light, Jacky. That’ll free my hands to hang on.”

“What are you going to do?” Jacky asked, alarmed.

“If I can just get around this jutting bit of rock, I ought to be able to get a better view.”

“Well, don’t do anything stupid. Perhaps it’s the ambulance
—
maybe Ellard did phone after all. Try shouting.”

Again and again Lisa shouted, but the lights began to move away.

“It’s no good. I’ll have to try to climb up,” Lisa said and began to move. There was a sudden scuffle of broken rock as the cliff face began to crumble. Jacky’s screams mingled with Lisa’s cry as she fell.

Horror filled Jacky. Scream after scream was torn from her throat as she stared down into the inky, foaming water dashing itself on the rocks. Lisa was down there, and Jacky was now alone.

Randall Carson watched the police car ahead of him; he saw it brake, then suddenly stop. Entrapped in the beam of its headlights
was the crimson car, pulled up on one side of the road, high on the grass, empty and in darkness.

Instinctively he drove past as if he had been bound for the secondary road that ran winding along the clifftops. In his stomach was a sick feeling. Where had Ellard gone? Where had he taken Lisa? What would the police do when they found them?

He pulled his own car off the road, turned off the lights and strolled across the clifftop. Laying flat on his face at the cliff edge, he looked down at the beach, to see where the police were. Lights bobbed and glinted on the incoming tide.

Lights steadily approaching in from the water suggested a boat, which complicated things. Was that incidental, or had they decided to take a boat after all?

He got up, deciding that he, too, must get down to the beach. As he stood up, someone broke cover from the gorse bushes and started to run furtively back toward the woods.

Randall called out, heading him off, and after a brief struggle, held the man pinned to the ground. It was then he saw that it was Ellard Lindon.

“Let me go; I’m in a hurry!” Lindon snarled.

“Where is Lisa?” Randall thundered.

Lindon did some quick thinking. “Down there in a cave,” he said at last. “She’s hurt. I was going to call the ambulance.”

Randall did as Ellard thought he would—he let go of him, and Ellard escaped into the darkness.

Randall rushed back to where the police were now returning unsuccessfully from their search of the beach. There was one thought only in his mind, as Ellard had intended: Lisa was down there, hurt.

“I’m a doctor. I’ve just been told there’s someone hurt down there in the caves,” he said crisply, and described how he had run into Ellard Lindon on the clifftop.

The police broke into action. The car went off to the airfield, with the promise that radio message for help would be sent at once. The rest of them went down to the beach with Randall.

As they got to the last strip of uncovered sand, Jacky’s screams cut the night.

Roses were the first sight Lisa set eyes on as she regained consciousness. They were in a blue bowl on a locker by her bed. After a while she recognized the room as a familiar one: one of the small side wards kept for the staff, back at St. Mildred’s.

“Easy now,” a nurse said. “You were knocked out when you fell in the water and struck your head on the rocks. You’ve been out for long enough. I’m to fetch Sister the minute you come to.”

“What for?” Lisa asked blankly, trying to think. The memory of being in the cave with Jacky flooded back. As she recalled the rocks beneath her feet giving way, and that dreadful fall, a pain stabbed through her head, and her exploring fingers found a bandage around it.

No visitors were allowed yet, but Mary wangled permission to slip in and see her. “How are you, Lisa? Can you stand hearing about my engagement?”

Lisa’s face lit with pleasure. “You and Jerry?”

“Ye
s
, and I’m leaving. I’d rather throw it all up than find I’ve failed my finals. Anyway, I expect you’ll be leaving to be married soon, won’t you, Lisa?”

“Me?” Lisa asked blankly.

“Well, honey, even you can’t be in any doubt about the way Randall Carson feels about you now, after he got himself all cut and bruised trying to rescue you!”

“But he wasn’t even there!” Lisa protested.

“Oh yes, he was!” Mary chortled. “Everyone’s talking about it. He intercepted Ellard Lindon on the cliffs. He was attempting to escape by plane, and the police stopped him. It seems they were after him anyway because he was mixed up in smuggling. Then someone was screaming her head off in a cave. It turned out to be your sister, watching you fall into the sea.”

“I was trying to climb up the cliffs.”

“Well, she thought you were going to drown before her eyes, so
they say. She said she couldn’t face it, so she dived in and held you up
—
”

“Jacky saved my life?” Lisa murmured, trying to fit this new fact in, and failing. Jacky had never lifted a finger to help anyone. That she should dive into that boiling sea and hold Lisa up until help came from the boats made the most amazing story.