The Silver Dragon (2 page)

“You have had a severe shock,” he told her, “coupled with a head injury. Coming as they did at the same time, they have blotted out all memory of the past.” She shivered and he went on kindly. “Let me put it like this. It’s a sort of protective mechanism the brain uses as an escape route. Some disaster—some form of worry, perhaps—has become too much for the mind to cope with
under a given set of circumstances and so it takes refuge behind a screen of forgetfulness.”

The gray eyes, intent and intelligent, did not leave his face for an instant, nor did they waver as she asked, “How long will it last? How long do you expect me to be
...
like this?”

He found it difficult to answer her with absolute truth.

“We must make sure of my diagnosis before I can tell you that with absolute certainty,” he said,

“Doctor,” she suggested almost gently, “you don’t often make mistakes, do you? You ... look like the sort of person who would be reasonably sure of a diagnosis before he even suggested it to himself.”

He smiled at that.

“The best of physicians have been known to make mistakes,” he countered. “And, after all, I am only a beginner!”

“But you have treated cases like mine before?”

“I have seen amnesia, yes.”

“Then please tell me the truth. Have I lost my memory for good?”

“I hope not.” His answer was quite definite now. “Even if this is what I believe it to be, we have all sort of aids to a cure.”

“Such as?” She was not going to allow him to dissemble. “I’m afraid I’m going to be a nuisance, but you see, I’ve got to know. I’d rather know,” she added, biting her lower lip between her small white teeth in case it should tremble and betray her. “I’d rather face the truth than go on hoping for a cure if that is impossible.”

He swabbed an area of skin on her upper arm, pushing the needle home before he answered.

“Nothing is impossible, Miss Cabot,” he said, straightening his broad back. “We have only to fight this thing with the weapons we have available.”

“Even if it could take months or years?” She moved herself higher on her pillows. “That was what you really meant to say, wasn’t it?” she probed. “It’s going to take a long, long time.”

He put the syringe back into the kidney dish on the top of the cabinet, looking around at her with a determined smile in his eyes. The rather wide mouth was grim, however, and his jaw tight.

“We can’t afford to measure time in days or weeks in your case,” he said. “We can only talk about it in terms of achievement. Step by step. We have already taken the first step forward. We know your name. The next step will be the contents of your suitcase. When you feel up to opening it we’ll go through it together.” She clung to that final word, “together.” Deep down in her secret heart she acknowledged a strange fear of being alone, as if it had been something she had been forced to live with in the past, something that hurt and left her curiously vulnerable in consequence. She had accepted the name of Adele Cabot, although it meant nothing to her, and that fact alone was unnerving. It was as if she stood on the edge of a void with the unknown future ahead of her and the unknown past behind. The world of now was unreal and would have been doubly frightening if it had not been for the warmth and understanding of the young man standing beside her bed.

She knew nothing of him except the fact that the nun had called him Dr. Ordley, but he was the only friend
s
he had in the world. Or so she felt.

“The others?” she asked unsteadily. “The people I was with? You said there were three others.”

For a second time he took her fingers into his warm grasp.

“I don’t want you to think about them for the moment,” he decided. “Their identities have been established, but the general opinion here is that you met accidentally on the train coming from Geneva. You booked in at the hotel together and lunched together, but Jane Pettigrew, the English girl, was the only one who had made a previous reservation. She made it in England three weeks ago, and her luggage has been sent back to her home address.”

“Which means that she is dead? They’re all dead?” Her voice sounded flat, emotionless almost. Why was it that she could not feel acutely about the past?

“I’m afraid so.” John Ordley was watching her closely. “I think you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She gave a small involuntary shiver. “I knew when I saw the rope—the severed end. It wasn’t a very difficult step to the conclusion that I had been saved from death by a miracle—a broken rope.”

“Or one severed miraculously by your fall.” He turned to go. “We may discover the truth about that, too, in time,” he added cheerfully.

Tenaciously she clung to his hand.

“Please don’t go,” she found herself begging. “If you have time—if you’re not too busy—I feel that we ought to go through the contents of my suitcase right away.” She put her free hand to her forehead, as if she would brush away the confining bandages. “I feel quite up to it,” she assured him almost desperately, although with the effort to sit up she had felt giddy.

He hesitated.

“There’s plenty of time,” he began, but she shook her head.

“There isn’t. Somehow I feel there isn’t! It’s foolish, I know, but
...
but being like this doesn’t give me a chance. I want to know who I am, where I belong. I’m sorry,” she apologized in a more restrained voice, “I shouldn’t have spoken like that. I know you’re doing your best for me.”

Without answering he slipped his fingers down until they closed firmly over her pulse.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed after the necessary pause. “We can always pack up as soon as you show the least sign of strain.”

She accepted his decision without demur, watching as he crossed to the door and made his way out of the room, with the white-habited figure of the nun in attendance.

Lying very still, she allowed her thoughts to drift as she waited for his return. She would not force them back to that blank will behind which lay all that had happened to her until now, because in that direction lay only frustration and an unbearable agony of mind with which she had wrestled since her return to consciousness out there in the snow.

Instead, she thought about the man who had just left her, about his ability to help her and the strange warm suggestion of friendliness that had grown between them even in so short a time.

Of course, being a doctor, he was merely interested in her as a case, she was careful to remind herself. She must be sensible about that, but she felt that he might also be willing to go one step further and befriend her.

Which might, of course, be no more than an illusion conjured up by her own desperate need, she assured herself firmly as the door opened to admit him once more.

“Here we are!” he announced. “Complete with all the evidence—and Professor Attenhofer!”

Behind him towered a giant of a man in a shabby coat and unpressed trousers, with a shock of white hair framing a benign face and kindly eyes peering shortsightedly from behind thick lenses. He wore the ancient spectacles well down on his nose, which gave him a slightly bewildered expression, but there was no keener intellect in all Switzerland when it came to the affairs of the mind. The professor was big in every way, like a great friendly lumbering bear, Adele mused as she
watched him approaching the bed. His massive frame seemed to fill up all the available space in the tiny room, but his hands were unbelievably gentle as he helped Dr. Ordley raise her on her pillows.

“
Voila
!”
he said, speaking French with a slightly guttural intonation. “You are better already! But my colleague, Dr. Ordley, tells me that you also speak excellent English, and that is best for him, since his French is poor!” He smiled across the pink bedspread at his young English protege. “We have had him here for six months now and he is no better with our language, though he is a lot advanced with his medicine! Still he confuses his tenses and calls for one thing when he means another! In the operating theater that could be dangerous, so we compromise and speak, both of us, English!”

Adele smiled at the professor, wondering all the time what he thought about Dr. Ordley’s diagnosis. They had already discussed her, she felt sure, but she could not read anything in the professor’s face apart from the same warm kindliness she saw in the younger man’s.

Behind them the nurse waited, clutching an expensive-looking suitcase that she finally set down near the bed.

Dr. Ordley lifted it and laid it on the bedspread.

“Shall we begin?” he asked casually enough, adding with a brief glance at the professor, “As soon as you feel tired you must let us know.”

Adele was sure that she would not feel tired. An almost ungovernable excitement had taken possession of her and two bright spots of color stained her cheeks as she looked at the case. It was made of pigskin, with a small monogram between the two locks, the initials A and C interlaced in gold. She lay staring at them, willing them to mean something to her.

“We had to force the locks,” Dr. Ordley confessed. “We couldn’t find a key to fit. I think you must have taken your own keys with you in your rucksack, which, of course, was lost. There was nothing in your parka pockets but a handkerchief and some loose francs.”

“That is so,” the professor agreed, giving him what might have been a warning glance. “But now we will proceed, since the locks are forced.”

He turned away from the bed, humming tunelessly as he stood gazing out of the window across what was probably a garden. He was evidently not going to embarrass her with a searching scrutiny while she opened the suitcase, for which fact she was profoundly thankful.

John Ordley, sitting on the visitor’s chair by her side, was quite a different matter. Once again she appreciated the warmth of his understanding and felt safe with him.

“You open it.” She pushed the suitcase toward him, resting her head back against the pillows with an air of weariness which did not escape him. “I might find it easier to concentrate if you went through it for me,” she added quickly.

“Just as you say.” He lifted back the lid to reveal the beautifully appointed interior of the case. “Where shall we start?”

“There
...
might be something in the lid pocket,” she suggested. “A
...
my passport, perhaps, or a letter.”

He took out several pairs of nylon stockings, laying them on the bed without comment. They were followed by some exquisite silk lingerie, a pair of woolen ski pants and some leather mitts. There was no sign of a passport. No sign, in fact, of any written matter at all.

Systematically he went through the suitcase, laying a cocktail dress and silk pajamas and a dressing gown on the pink bedspread for her inspection. These were quickly followed by several heavy knitted sweaters of ornate design and a pair of very high-heeled evening
sandals, which looked new. Finally, there was a light coat with the name “Adele Cabot” stitched inside the collar.

“Well,” Dr. Ordley shrugged, “that would appear to be all.”

He looked frankly disappointed and the girl lying on the bed gazing at hip felt as if her heart would burst.

“It can’t be!” she protested at last. “There must be something more—a wallet, traveler’s checks, an address book
...”

She broke off as his searching hands discovered the final item in the suitcase, tucked under the last of the sweaters.

“There’s this,” he said without a great deal of enthusiasm. “A
...
sort of trinket box, I suppose you would call it.”

Eagerly she stretched out her hands to take it from him. It did not look important, and as he had said, it might be no more than the receptacle for a few trinkets, the sort of costume jewelry most young girls carried around with them, even on a climbing holiday.

The box itself was shabby enough and looked as if it had been well used over a period of years. It was made of green morocco leather and had an ornate gilt clasp that she was able to snap open without any trouble. Inside she found two shallow trays with a padded division between them to take rings. On one tray lay a single string of pearls; on the other a curiously carved jade bracelet. She could not say whether the pearls were real or not, but the bracelet looked valuable.

Underneath each tray there was a small lined compartment. In the first lay a plain gold ring—a wedding ring. She lay gazing down at it for a moment before she replaced the tray and turned to the last compartment.

There was nothing in it but a scrap of torn envelope with an address on it. When she picked it up her fingers were trembling.

“It’s an address,” she said, raising her eyes to the watchful brown ones at the side of the bed. “An address in the south of
F
rance.”

The doctor took the paper from her, his own hands not altogether steady. He ought to be delighted by such a find, he told himself. He was delighted, but there was also an odd reluctance in him as he read the carefully written address.

It was no more than an address. There was no name, and he read it over twice before he said, “This would appear to take us another step forward. Les Rochers Blanches, St. Jean,” he reflected, turning to the professor, who was no longer humming his endless little tune and no longer gazing out of the window. “That’s Cap Ferrat, isn’t it?”

“To be sure!” the professor agreed, coming toward them. “Les Rochers Blanches,” he repeated thoughtfully. “What a picturesque name for a house, for we are to presume that it is a private villa, are we not?”

The sound of a small indrawn breath came from the bed.

“It could be a hotel, of course,” the doctor said,
v
oicing his patient’s silent fear. “An address someone had given you, perhaps. But why keep it in your jewel case?”

She could not help him.

“What do you mean to do?” she asked.

“Write to Les Rochers Blanches and hope for a satisfactory reply,” he decided immediately. “You can’t leave here, in any case, for a day or two—a week anyway,” he amended when he saw the consternation reflected in her eyes. “We can’t risk that head wound, for one thing, and you really ought not to travel any distance alone.” He rose, pacing around the room for a moment. “No,” he repeated as if to end all argument on the subject, “it would be madness to let you go off alone under the circumstances.”

The professor came to stand at the foot of the bed.

“Assuredly,” he agreed, smiling at her. “We must write without delay to Les Rochers Blanches and hope that someone will come to claim you and take you home!”