The Silver Dragon (16 page)

“Which doesn’t get us very far,” he observed. “But you can’t sit out here all night. Come on in and say
hello to the professor. He’s been operating all afternoon, but he should be through now. I’ll bring your suitcase.”

She hesitated.

“We’ll be able to put you up all right,” he assured her. “You’re still our most intriguing case, you know! I’m afraid we can’t do as much for Cabot, but he should be able to find a hotel room without much difficulty.”

“John,” she asked as they went along the familiar corridor, “what exactly has Dixon told you?”

He slowed his pace a little.

“Not a great deal. He told me, of course, that you were wrongly identified, that you may have been someone impersonating his wife, and that you had several thousand pounds’ worth of stolen diamonds in your possession when you decided on a climbing holiday and came to Martigny.”

“That’s the evidence,” she said bitterly. “Dixon seems to be quite sure that they were concealed in a jewel case I had that was taken from my room at Sancey-le-Haut. You remember how it was turned upside down that night for no apparent reason while we were at dinner, and I said there didn’t appear to be anything missing? Well, the jewel case was, and I didn’t notice. We picked it up this morning on our way here—empty, of course.”

“But look! There were only a few trinkets in it when you went through it after your accident,” he protested.

“There was a secret drawer.”

He whistled softly.

“Sounds like a movie!” he grinned.

“But as far as I’m concerned, it’s serious, John.”

“Sorry!” he apologized instantly, squeezing her hand. “Do you think Cabot’s in on this? The jewel racket, I mean?”

“He knows a great deal about it,” she said with difficulty.

“There’s a devil of a lot to clear up here,” he mused.

“Have you any theories?”

“A few. I’ll tell you about those later, though.” He tucked a hand through her arm. “Come and have a good English cup of tea. No tea bags, I promise you.”

He drew up outside a closed door and before he opened it she asked, “John, have any of the bodies been found? The others
...
”

He shook his head.

“The avalanche must have taken them right down into the crevasse with it,” he said. “I’ve been up there and there’s just nothing to see. It’s the end of the glacier and the snow lies there all summer. The rescue team just couldn’t do a thing about it. The guides went up, but it was hopeless. They say a glacier never gives up its dead.”

She shivered, pressing a hand to her eyes as if to blot out some ugly scene.

“I wonder if I knew them
...
really well,” she said.

“You’ll know in time,” he promised with an odd sort of reticence. “And now, in you come and have that tea!”

Dixon was in the room, as was the Mother Superior, who came to meet her with both hands outstretched. They had, she said, been worrying about her, but all was now well.

A white-coiffed nurse brought in their tea, and when the professor arrived Adele was swept into the warmth of his obvious concern for her.

“Sit down and tell me what you have been doing with yourself,” he commanded. “And then we will tell you what we have planned for the future.”

While they talked John drew Dixon aside, but she could not hear what they said to each other. When Dixon went to book a room for himself, however, John went with him.

“You remember no more?” the professor asked when they were alone. “No, do not distress yourself if that is so. It is early yet for such a hope to materialize. We must be patient, for that is the only way to succeed.
I
l
n’y a que le premier pas qui coute
!”
he declared cheerfully. “We know now that a mistake has been made, and Dr. Ordley has a new theory. That was what brought him back here to see me. He feels that you could have been confused with Madame Cabot. That you are, in fact, the other climber—the English lady who was also in the party.”

Adele felt no immediate sense of shock. Instead, she found herself saying almost calmly, “If that is so why was Adele Cabot’s name sewn into my clothes?”

“Only into the parka you were wearing,” he corrected her, getting up from the stove to prowl around the room in the characteristic manner of the lecturer whose explanations are always clearest when he is on the move. “That could quite easily be explained away by the fact that you had borrowed it”

“But
...
the hotel? They seemed to be quite sure of my identity,” she protested.

“They presumed they were right,” he said. “But after all, you arrived together and went up into the mountains almost as soon as you arrived. There was only one receptionist on duty at the time and the gentlemen of your party offered to carry up your luggage. The receptionist saw you for perhaps five minutes after you had registered, together, as part of a group. You took your one and only meal in the hotel at the same table, apparently, so that she had very little time to sort you out—to make individuals of you. Madame Cabot—the English lady! The English lady—Madame Cabot! Which was which?”

“Only the name on the parka,” Adele repeated slowly to herself.

Suddenly she was galvanized into action. All her tiredness slipped from her as she faced the professor across the room.

“What happened when the other girl’s belongings were sent back to England?” she asked.

“They were accepted by her relations without question, I understand. What more could they d
o
?”

“They
...
they didn’t attempt to come out here?”

“No. Alas! We had nothing more to offer them. If there had been a body to identify that would have been quite different.”

“And there was no body. Supposing,” she added slowly, “there was never a body? Professor Attenhofer, are you sure—absolutely sure—that three people died in the avalanche?
Can
we be sure? Have we any definite unassailable proof?”

“Only the proof as we have already accepted it,” he said, obviously perturbed. “You were found on the glacier at the end of a severed rope. Until you have recovered from your amnesia that is all we have to help us to the truth. We must assume that the other climbers were swept down into the crevasse, that your companions perished while you were saved.”

Until you recover from your amnesia! The words hit her with the force of a blow. Weeks, months, years might pass before she could see clearly into the past. “I can’t wait,” she said. “I can’t possibly wait!” The professor looked distressed.

“You are tired,” he said kindly. “I will call Soeur Celeste to show you to your room.”

Before he could press the bell, however, he was called away. A white-robed nun stood in the doorway.

“It is your patient, professor,” she said gently. “He has need of you.”

John came back into the room as the professor hurried along the corridor.

“John,” Adele said, “I’ve got to go up onto the glacier. It’s the only way. I’ve got to try to remember and live those last hours before the accident over again.”

“I’ll admit I gave the idea more than a passing thought,” he admitted. “It would be risky, of course, but it might produce the answer.”

“You see,” she said, as if he had not broken in on her train of thought, “there might not have been a tragedy at all.”

“Explain,” he prompted gently, leading her back to the warmth of the stove. “We can’t go out tonight, so we may as well air our theories while we sit around waiting for the dawn!”

She sank down on the low divan, hugging her knees, while he put his feet up on the tiles surrounding the stove.

“We know about the diamonds,” she said. “We know they were stolen. Adele Cabot had something to do with the theft. I’m absolutely convinced of that. She had the diamonds in her possession. Dixon said so. She also left the Riviera and came here, or so we must suppose at the moment. She had three companions who traveled with her from Geneva—two men and an English girl.”

“Jane Pettigrew,” he supplied. “We tried repeating the name to you when you were first brought in here, but the experiment didn’t work. It just didn’t seem to ring the necessary bell.
Does it now?” he asked without much hope.

“Not any more than it did at the beginning,” she was forced to confess, but now she leaned eagerly toward him. “But supposing I am Jane—just supposing—could I have been a sort of scapegoat for these people? If Adele Cabot had the jewels and she was being followed, wouldn’t it suit her purpose to ‘die’?”

He swung his feet down off the tiles.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “You mean murder?”

“A climbing accident,” she said slowly, “sounds much better.”

“By jove!” He gazed at her in consternation. “You may have something there. An accident that didn’t come off!”

“Or didn’t work out in quite the way it had been planned.”

“Look!” he said. “Let’s get this straight. Madame Cabot beats it from the villa or Nice or somewhere, with fifty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels. Someone knows she has them and follows her. She has two companions, possibly three. One of them an English girl named Jane Pettigrew. They arrive at the hotel together, Madame Cabot meets or sees her pursuer and thinks out her little plan. She and Jane must change places. They are all experienced mountaineers and they must go out roped together. There must be an accident and one of them must fall. The body isn’t recoverable and ‘Jane Pettigrew’ will return to the hotel with her two male companions and collect her luggage and disappear.”

“
That might have been the plan,” Adele agreed, “but something went wrong. The wrong person came back.
I
came back.”

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “You might have something there!”

“If I have,” she said slowly,
“
I
’
ve got to remember
.”

CHAPTER
NINE

Dixon Cabot stood on
the steps of the clinic veranda, smoking a cigarette. It was the third in succession.

“Is this journey to the glacier going to do the slightest bit of good?” he asked the doctor, who was standing beside him.

John considered his answer for exactly three seconds.

“If I had considered a possible mistaken identity before we came to the villa I might have tried it as soon as she was fit enough to tackle the climb,” he said, “but the whole thing seemed perfectly straightforward, you must admit. They had only arrived at the hotel that day and they went straight on to Bourg-St. Pierre, leaving their luggage in their respective rooms. When only one survivor was brought down from the glacier and identified as Adele Cabot because her name was sewn into her parka, it was natural that we should follow up the address we found in her luggage—in the jewel case. Of course if there had been passports it would have been easy.” He shrugged. “But they were missing. Either both girls carried them with them in their rucksacks, which were never found, or they were stolen.”

Dixon threw his half-smoked cigarette into the flower bed beneath them.

“All this is the merest surmise, of course,” he pointed out. “A hunch, a suspicion. We have absolutely no proof.”

John’s mouth took on a decidedly taciturn twis
t
.

“Have you a better theory?” he asked.

Dixon shook his head.

“Not at the moment. All the definite information I can offer you is that
...
the girl we’ve been calling Adele isn’t my wife.”

“Your theory is, of course, that she could be an interested third party—a clever little crook, in fact, who took your wife’s place when the opportunity presented itself to hang onto the jewels. Why do you feel so sure?”

Dixon thrust both hands deeply into the pockets of his parka.

“I’ve lived on the Riviera for a very long time,” he said.

“But you honestly don’t think that she has anything to do with a gang of jewel thieves?”

John sounded incredulous, and Dixon was saved an answer as the subject of their discussion came out through the swing doors with the professor by her side.

“This is only an experiment,” the professor said, holding fast to his patient’s arm as if to reassure her. “We are simply trying out a theory, you understand?”

She nodded, feeling more nervous than she had ever done.

“If it doesn’t work, we’ll try something else,” he said firmly.

He was not going to Bourg-St. Pierre with them. He thought it better to wait at the clinic; better, in fact, if his patient faced this new test with as little attendant fuss as possible. He had discussed the possibilities of success with young Ordley for fully an hour that morning and now they were both prepared to go ahead with the experiment.

Dixon led the way down to the car and got in behind the wheel. Adele and John occupied the rear seat.

They drove to Orsieres and on to Bourg-St. Pierre, and suddenly the Grand Combin was standing up there
ahead of them. They drove slowly around the lake shore and got out to look at the peak. Adele walked away from the two men, standing alone.

“What’s going to happen if this doesn’t work?” Dixon asked the doctor.

“We’re going to England.”

“To check up with the Pettigrews?”

“Yes.”

By noon they had reached the Cabane de Valsorey. “I want you to take her on from here, Cabot,” John said unexpectedly. “I think it might be better if she went with you alone.”

The decision had been made back at the clinic, a difficult one for him, but the professor had been insistent.

“If there’s some personal connection between her and Cabot, after all,” he had pointed out, “it could help the memory process. You see, we’re only assuming that she could be this English girl. She speaks immaculate French.”

Dixon accepted the suggestion without comment, but for a moment Adele turned to John. Her gray eyes held a definite plea for help.

“Go with him,” John said under his breath. “I won’t be far away.”

She straightened her shoulders.

“What a coward I am,” she said.

They began to climb up over the rough scree.

“I’m no mountaineer,” Dixon confessed, looking down into the terrifyingly deep coomb that fell steeply away from the
cabane
window, its floor completely lost to sight in gray shadow. “I’d rather be at sea any day!”

“You’re not doing ... too badly,” she encouraged him breathlessly, looking across the crevasse to the mighty Mont Blanc chain and the sun-gilded spears of the Aiguilles shining in their icy mail.

S
he had forgotten John now, forgotten everything but the climb they were making. A familiar excitement was stirring in her blood as she glanced around at the glittering fairyland of the Alps still deep in snow. It was something she knew; something she had always loved!

They were not going far, but already the ice-cold breath of the mountain was against her cheeks, the urge of conquest brightening her eyes.

They roped together to negotiate the snow slopes toward the Col du Meiten, and she thought how silent her companion had grown. When she glanced back at him she discovered him watching her intently.

Quickly she looked away, her heart thumping unevenly. They were almost on the lip of the col, standing above the basin of the glacier. The white frozen river flowed away beneath them, the blue shadows of its crevasses standing out clearly in the afternoon sun.

The sky and the mountains ringed them and the wind at the head of the glacier blew coldly against them. They sought shelter from its bitter onslaught beneath the rock wall.

“How do you feel?” Dixon asked.

“Like a being revived!” She drew in deep gulps of the ice-laden air, turning her face up to the sun. “This is wonderful!”

They were very near. Suddenly he bent down and untied the rope from around her waist.

“This is as far as we go, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Yes.” Her heart was pounding unevenly now, wa
rn
ingly. “Are you tired?”

He did not look at her as he shook his head.

“Just in need of a smoke. We’ve come quite a way.”

He took out his cigarettes, looking across to the jagged pinnacles of the Maisons Blanches.

“All this meant a great deal to you,” he remarked with conviction. “I’ve been watching you on the way up. You didn’t hesitate once.”

He lit the cigarette, shielding the flame with his hand, an action that reminded her vividly of all those occasions at Les Rochers Blanches when the little flame spurting from between the dragon’s angry jaws had lit up the suspicion in his eyes. Was he still suspicious of her? Was that the reason why he had come? Or was there some deeper reason?

“Have you climbed much?” she asked.

“
Not a great deal. Once or twice in the Bernese Oberland, around Grindelwald, and in Austria.”

He was silent, drawing on the newly lit cigarette. He was not going to press her to try to remember, she realized, but she knew that he was as tensed and doubtful of the result as she was herself.

Then, quite suddenly, she said, “Dixon, will you describe
...
your wife to me as clearly as you can.”

“If you think it might help.”

He got up and moved toward the edge of the glacier, looking down into an icy crevasse.

“Adele was, I should think, about the most beautiful creature I’ve ever set eyes on.” His voice was steady, almost hard. “She was slim and lovely, with gray eyes not unlike your own and about the same shade of hair—a little darker, perhaps. She was my secretary for eight months before I married her. When we worked together she was grave, quiet and efficient. I couldn’t have wished for anyone more competent, and when I was away she looked after my affairs better than I could have done myself. She typed my manuscripts and always had them at the right port of call at the right time for me to correct and send on to my publishers. I had no hesitation about leaving her with the proof corrections when they came. In short, she was that somewhat rare phenomenon, a combination of beauty and brains!”

“And you were deeply in love with her,” she suggested gently.

“I suppose that sort of thing grows gradually out of such close contact,” he said. “I depended on her for most things, I could trust her implicitly. Or so I believed.”

He paused, and she felt herself grow rigid, as if this was the moment she had been waiting for. She stood very still as the snow-clad giants seemed to draw nearer to hear what he had to say next. She felt time was suspended, yet the shadows were already beginning to creep down over the slopes behind them and a rising wind was winnowing the soft snow along the ridge above the glacier bowl.

“I asked her to marry me.” He seemed determined to place the facts before her without offering excuse or self-pity with them. “The thing she wanted most, which surprised me, was to meet the influential people I happened to know on that strip of the Mediterranean coast that is always thick with celebrities. It was easy enough for me to arrange such a party. I had just bought Les Rochers Blanches about six months before that and never given a housewarming. I had been away a lot and Adele had been there most of the time on her own, with Annette and her husband to look after her. She had not made many friends, as far as I could see. I thought her the solitary type.”

He paused, looking at her in the bright reflected light from the snow.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized guiltily. “I can only be causing you needless grief asking you to go over it all like this.”