The Silver Dragon (3 page)

CHAPTER TWO

“It’s four days now,”
Adele Cabot said, laying aside the book she had been trying to read, “and still there’s no reply. If there had been a telephone number we could have phone
d. It would have been quicker.”

“We’ve made inquiries about the telephone and drawn a blank there, too.” John Ordley closed the glass doors leading to the balcony, shutting out a wind that had grown suddenly cold. It came down from the Dents du Midi with the bite of ice in its breath, although the sun still shone brightly in a clear blue sky. “The owners of Les Rochers Blanches, whoever they may be, are not in favor of the telephone, it would seem. Anyway, they have never had one installed, which seems to suggest,” he added carefully, “that we can do no m
o
re than wait with what patience we still have at our command.”

“I have no patience, I’m afraid,” Adele sighed. “It’s most ungrateful of me, I know,” she apologized with a small wavering smile. “You've been so kind.”

The young doctor crossed to her side. She was out of bed now, sitting in a cane chaise longue near the window, and for the past three days he had spent most of his free time in her room, talking, reasoning, assuring and all the while watching for the slightest hint of diminishing amnesia.

“It’s my job,” he said lightly. “You don’t owe me anything. I’m a doctor and I must explore every avenue to make you well. I also happen to have a great fund of patience,” he added. “Enough, perhaps, for us both.”

“Supposing it was the address of a hotel, or a pension, or something,” she suggested. “It could be closed for the winter, couldn’t it?”

“It could be,” he agreed, “but somehow I don’t think it is. I mean, I don’t think it’s a hotel,” he added. “Not with a name like that.”

She forced a smile.

“Which isn’t exactly sound reasoning,” she pointed out. “It’s a very expressive name, but lots of hotels have descriptive names.”

“Like the Bellevue and the De la Mer and the Hotel Terminus,” he agreed. “Even the De la Plage, which can turn out disconcertingly to be over a mile from the sea! I’ll agree with you there, but this place sounds private to me. It’s a sort of personal name. Or so I feel. Don’t ask me why,” he added, “because I couldn’t give you a sound reason for thinking as I do. I just feel it in my bones.”

He was looking down at her, sorry for her, she supposed, and doing what he could to cheer her up in the face of what she was forced to admit was a steadily growing disappointment.

She had pinned all her hopes on the address they had found and to the letter Professor Attenhofer had written to Les Rochers Blanches. But once more they had come up against a blank wall.

“Give them time,” John advised, putting a firm hand on her shoulder. “It’s only four days after all.”

It had seemed more like four years. Rather
shakily
she got to her feet, crossing to the window to look out. The world she saw seemed inordinately bright, full of an almost garish sunlight, which had no real warmth in it, but perhaps she was seeing everything through a haze of unreality just now. If only there had been a reply to the professor’s letter—some sort of reply!

“We’ll give them another two days,” John decided, “and then I think we ought to do something definite.”

She looked around at him with a question in her gray eyes, and he smiled back at her with the utmost confidence.

“Such as going to see for ourselves,” he said.

“We?” she echoed. “But this isn’t your affair, John.”

He came to stand beside her.

“I think it is,” he said slowly. “You were my last case. I can’t move on and leave the cure half
completed.”

As their eyes met and held she was aware of a strange sense of loss.

“You’re leaving the clinic?” she asked. “You’re
...
going home?”

He fumbled for a cigarette and offered her one and lighted them before he answered.

“My time with the professor is up,” he explained
. “I
came over here on a six-month .postgraduate course, which has taught me a lot, but now it’s time to move on.”

“Back to England?”

“Eventually.” He bent o
v
er and took the cigarette from between her fingers. “Y’know,” he said with exaggerated lightness, “that’s something else we’ve learned. You were not a habitual smoker.”

“How do you know?”

“By the way you handle a cigarette and the odd little expression of distaste when you let the smoke get into your eyes!” He snubbed what remained of her cigarette into an ashtray. “So far so good! What I was about to say was that I intended to take a holiday when my course was over, a sort of roving affair along the south coast and down through Italy. It’s a route I’ve always fancied, and I don’t really need to be back in London much before July.”

“Have you ... no one to go back to?” she asked
uncertainly, thinking that she had no right to probe into his personal background in this way, but obeying an impulse to know more about him that she could not cheek.

“Dozens of casual acquaintances,” he assured her with a shrug. “My parents are in Canada at the moment, visiting my married sister for a year, so I have no actual home ties.”

Which meant he wasn’t married. She had wondered about that, too.

“So you see, I could quite easily drive you down to Cap Ferrat and find out what we can discover from a personal contact.”

“I couldn’t expect you to do that,” she protested.

“Why not?”

“It would spoil your holiday, for one thing.”

“And the other?” He stubbed out his own cigarette and took her by the shoulders, turning her to face the full light from the window. “Adele,” he said, “this case is important to me. I want to see it through to its logical
c
onclusion. Is that explanation enough?”

“It ought to be,” she said, “but supposing there is no logical conclusion, as you call it?”

Her eyes were dark with pain and the shadow of a new fear, but they continued to meet his steadily enough.

“There must be.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “This kind of amnesia just doesn’t stand still forever. We must find the contacts that will help.”

“But it could stand still for a very long time,” she said without making it a question. “The professor more or less admitted that yesterday. I suppose I badgered him about it,” she added with a hint of desperation in her voice, “but I have to know. I feel that I must know quite soon, John, or I shall go mad.”

He gave her a half-impatient shake.

“You mustn’t talk like that,” he commanded. “It could have been a lot worse.”

“I know. I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Please forgive me. I ought not to burden you with my feelings like this.”

“Who else would you talk to?” he asked briskly. “I’m your doctor.”

She was forced to smile.

“You’re very kind,” she said.

“And you’ll consider the trip to Cap Ferrat?” he asked. “You can always cancel out any feeling of obligation by offering me hospitality when we get there,” he added lightly.

The suggestion distressed her because she could feel nothing about Les Rochers Blanches, no sense of belonging, or even a vague stirring of familiarity. Yet all that might come once she reached the Riviera and found herself in known surroundings.

That was what John Ordley was hoping for, and suddenly she found herself clutching at his offer of help. He gave her amazing confidence in a world that had become no more than an empty shell.

They waited for two more days, at the end of which time the professor decided she was fit to travel.

“I would not let you go if you were not in safe keeping,” he said, “but Dr. Ordley has my complete confidence. He is also in touch with the police, so that every help will be given to him when you reach your destination.”

They set out the following morning, going by Bourg through the Col de la Forlaz to Chatelard, where they were held up at the border. The doctor’s passport was in order, of course, but there was much consultation and even a little argument about the police pass that permitted him to convey his patient to the south of France. A patient, it was noted, who was suffering from
loss of memory and who would report to the prefecture of police at Nice on her arrival.

The Swiss guards let them continue their journey eventually with a brief military bow, and the French received them with an expressive shrug. It was not within their province to argue, since there was the pass, but
mademoiselle
did not look ill, they observed. There was, of course, the bandage on her brow, but otherwise her eyes were bright and her cheeks were flushed with a healthy color. It was more as if the two young people were setting out on a honeymoon!

Again the uniformed shoulders lifted, but this time the road barrier was raised and John Ordley let in his clutch and drove into France.

Mentally he heaved a sigh of relief. Questions could have been awkward, causing them unnecessary delay.

At Chamonix they stopped for a meal and he took out his road map and spread it on the table as they lingered over some excellent coffee.

“We’re not going to make it in one day,” he decided. “We got off to rather a late start with all those goodbyes at the clinic. If we make Brian
c
on, or somewhere near there, you’ll have done pretty well for one day.” He looked at her closely. “How do you feel?”

“Disgustingly replete!” She tried not to let him see her anxiety. “I really could go on, if you think that would be the best way,” she offered.

“I don’t.” His decision was unhesitating. “Besides,” he added, “this is a holiday as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to see something of Savoie without rushing madly along the main arterial roads to the south and seeing nothing but advertisements for oil and tires!”

“I’m willing,” she capitulated. “I’m guiltily conscious of spoiling your pleasure as it is!”

He did not answer, and if the truth were told, she was not so desperately anxious to reach the Mediterranean now. This protracted journey was proving very pleasant, and for a mile or two she had even been able to thrust her personal problems into the background while she listened to what John called “the unexciting story of my life.”

“I always had a yen for medicine,” he confessed, guiding the car out along the road to St. Gervais-les-Bains. “It was traditional, I suppose. Both my father and my grandfather were in the profession. The old man retired a year ago and, as I told you, went off to Canada on a protracted holiday. The professor and my old man were colleagues years ago in Geneva and so I got the invitation to study under him. It was a wonderful chance and I seized it with both hands, knowing that I ought to profit by it in the future. I haven’t made any definite plans,” he mused, keeping his eyes fixed on the dangerous windings of the road. “I suppose I considered there was plenty of time for making decisions once I got back to London. I’ve done my hospital stint and this postgraduate course, and I’m pretty interested in the respiratory diseases, so I guess I’ll probably end up at some remote little sanatorium in the country somewhere, where I can live out my days in peace!”

“I don’t think you will,” she said, watching his strong purposeful hands on the steering wheel. “You’re much too vital to stagnate in a backwater, even though you might be doing good there. I feel sure I shall hear of you again, in some famous hospital, perhaps, covering your name with glory!”

“You’re being much too generous,” he grinned. “But so long as you do expect to hear, I won’t quarrel with your forecast.” Suddenly he took one hand from the wheel to lay it over hers. “I don’t think we’re going to say goodbye when we reach Cap Ferrat,” he added decisively.

She couldn’t find anything to say to that. All her uncertainty, all the inexplicable doubts that had beset her from the beginning came back to torment her so that even the breathtaking beauty of the Haute Savoie was lost to her. The high mountains with their sparkling snow-encrusted crests were once more the sinister trap for her memory, and she could not look on their sun-kissed faces without fear.

Her tiredness began to show long before they had reached Brian
c
on. For the past half hour John Ordley had watched the rearview mirror under cover of their conversation, and what he saw made him turn the car off the main highway into a secondary road that wandered back into the mountains.

“Why did you do that?” she asked, looking through the mirror at the small car that had turned in their tracks but now seemed to be hesitating about passing them. “You
...
don’t think we’re being followed, do you?”

He laughed abruptly.

“Hardly!”

His tone did not quite hold conviction, and the car behind them slackened speed when they did.

“Do you think he wants to pass?” Adele asked.

“I’m not sure.” John was frowning now. “He’ll have to make up his mind before he’s much older if he does,” he added. “We appear to be in for a fairly stiff climb and I’m not going to let him pass me on any of those devilish little hairpin bends one comes across in the Alps!”

“Has he been behind us for long?”

“About twenty miles or so, but I think I saw the car at Chamonix. It could be coincidence, of course,” he added lightly. “There are plenty of these little Dauphines on the road. Grand little cars they are. Full of pep! He’ll probably show us his dust on the next straight.”

The Dauphine, however, stayed behind, following them at a respectful distance until they reached Sancey-le-Bas. It was a remote little place lying on the floor of a narrow valley, with a snow-fed river flowing through it, and the soundlessness of high places wrapping it around.

John did not seem impressed. With a quick glance through his driving mirror, he said, “We’ll push on and see what we feel about Sancey-le-Haut, shall we? There’s sure to be an inn of sorts there, and if we’re going to have mountain air we may as well have cowbells and all the rest of it!”

Adele knew that he was trying to shake off the green Dauphine, but she did not question him. The chill of the unknown had clamped down on her again and all she wanted to do was to leave Sancey-le-Bas and the Dauphine behind.

Slowly they wound up the mountain road, leaving the trees and the valley far beneath them. High above the road the peaks were white with snow and blue in the crevices where the ice lay.

“It’s like Bourg-St. Pierre,” Adele said in a stifled whisper. “Only the snow has gone from the valley.”

“All these Alpine villages look much the same,” he answered almost curtly. “Don’t think about the past if it distresses you so much.”

“No, I won’t. I’m sorry,” she apologized.

She looked back for the Dauphine, but the road behind them was deserted. The occupant of the other car had obviously decided to remain in Sancey-le-Bas.

The inn at Sancey-le-Haut was unpretentious, but like all French establishments, it was scrupulously clean and the food was excellent. When they had satisfied appetites sharpened by the keen mountain air, they were both quite ready to turn in for the night.

“All the same,” John decided, “we ought to walk off some of this food. Come on, we’ll walk up to the waterfall and back. It can’t be much more than a kilometer, and we need the exercise.”