At seven-forty-five she struck, about three cables from the land. I had the tug about a cable’s length away; we lay there watching, helpless to do more than we had done. The mast fell as she struck, and she was swept at once by every wave. She went to pieces as we watched; I saw no sign of any men.
As it grew dark I drew away, and headed up for Plymouth. Off Rame Head, carrying a high sea on the quarter, we were badly pooped; the tug broached to and we were in a nasty mess. God sent us respite for a minute and a half, so that by the time the next one came we had things straightened up, and we passed the breakwater with the starboard engine dead and a foot of water sluicing in the engine-room. It was midnight when we anchored in the Cattewater.
CHAPTER XIII
WE were dead tired when the anchor dropped. Stenning came stumbling aft down from the bows, walking like a drunken man and muttering about a riding-light. I clambered stiffly from the wheel-house and looked round; in the Cattewater it seemed immensely calm and quiet, and the ship was still. Fleming came up and sat upon his engine hatch, and for a few minutes we stood there together, watching the lights from the town reflected on the rippled, oily sea. We had been out for little more than twenty hours, but we were very, very tired. It was the seasickness that did it, I suppose—that and the short, uneasy motion of the tug, that gave no rest.
At last I stirred. “Got to go on shore,” I muttered. I turned to Stenning: “See if you can get Mount Batten or the Citadel with that signal lamp, and ask them to send a boat, or have one sent. Say that it’s urgent. I’m going aft to turn those policemen out.”
I went down to the cuddy. They were sprawling on the bench seats, fast asleep; I stood there swaying in the fætid, reeking air, fumbling to light the lamp that hangs upon the bulkhead. They must have had a rotten time of it. Most of the time they had been battened down below; I had not felt that I could trust them upon deck in the conditions we had had, and it had been impossible to keep the cuddy open in that sea. They lay on the benches sleeping, exhausted and ill. I bent over the sergeant and shook him into wakefulness.
“Wake your man and come on deck,” I said. “We’re anchored in the Cattewater—at Plymouth. It’s about one o’clock, or getting on that way. We’re going ashore in a few minutes now.”
I went on deck again, glad to get out of the place, and found Stenning busy at the signal lamp. He had got a reply from the Mount Batten seaplane station, and he was talking to them in quick flashes of Morse code. At last he stood up and turned to me:
“I think they’re sending out a launch.”
We stood and waited in the cold, dark night, interminably. From the shore we heard the whistling of trains and the long clank of shunting in the goods yard. The police came up and joined us by the engine-room, walking unsteadily upon the deck. At last we heard the motor of the launch; it came alongside with a sergeant in charge, and we persuaded it to take us to the Citadel.
It was striking one o’clock when we got on shore. The policemen led the way, and Stenning and I followed in their wake, down the long, empty streets towards the police station.
They knew about us there, but they had heard nothing of the wreck out at the Shackles. Nobody had seen that vessel go on shore. “They went on the Shackles in trying to get away from us,” I said. The police confirmed what I said, and that tale went, and has done till this day.
They got through on the telephone to Dartmouth and I spoke a little to Norman at the police station there. I told him briefly my version of what had occurred; that we had been sticking to their heels and waiting till some vessel came to help, and that in trying to shake off our pursuit they had gone ashore. I said that we had done everything that could be done, which was as true as made no matter. And then I said that I was coming back to Dartmouth as soon as I could get a car.
I asked how Mollie and Fedden were getting on. He said: “Both going on quite all right, I believe. To tell the truth, I’ve not had time to bother about them for the last few hours. That was at about six o’clock when I heard last. Fedden was the one they were concerned about—the shock, you know. The girl was getting on quite well.”
I told him that I was going to try and get a car, and rang off. There was some business then with the police; the whole coast had to be patrolled for bodies or other evidence that might be washed ashore for fifteen miles each side of the Dodman, and it was evidently necessary that the watchers should be out by dawn. That took a bit of arranging, and it was nearly three o’clock when Stenning and I and the two policemen bundled sleepily into the car that was to drive us home.
That run seemed interminable. I do it in forty minutes in the Bentley; in that car it took an hour and a half. It was cold, too. By the time we crawled up the last hill to my house it was full dawn; Stenning and I got out on the gravel in front of my house and stared at each other in the clear, fresh morning light. It was about thirty hours since we had left the house.
“Bath,” said Stenning sourly. “God, you want a shave.”
We went into the house and he went on upstairs. I paused for a minute, and sat down to the telephone. I rang up the nursing home—the same that I had visited from time to time. The matron answered me.
“Commander Stevenson this end,” I said. “I rang up to inquire how Colonel Fedden and Miss Gordon were getting on. I’ve just got back.”
She said: “Oh, Colonel Fedden’s through the worst of it. We were a little worried this afternoon; the shock, you know. He’s not a young man, is he? And it does tell, for all that he keeps himself so fit. But I think that’s all over. He’s having a lovely sleep now. I really don’t think you need worry about him at all, Commander.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “What about Miss Gordon?”
There was a momentary pause, and then she said: “Oh, well, I think she’s going on as well as could be expected, you know.” She repeated: “Oh, yes, as well as could be expected. Of course, you can’t expect her to be quite the same as Colonel Fedden, can you?”
I said: “Do you mean she’s ill?”
“Oh no. Just a little temperature, you know; nothing to worry about. She’s rather restless——” She broke off. “Oh, there is Dr. Dixon, just coming out of her room now. Would you like to have a word with him?”
I said: “I should.”
Dixon came to the telephone. He asked where I was speaking from, and then:
“I think you’d better come down here,” he said. “Yes; I rather want to see you. Yes; it’s about the girl. I think it might be a good thing to have another opinion—things move so quickly in these cases, you know. Anyway, we’ll have a talk about it when you come down.”
I nodded slowly. “I’ll be with you in ten minutes,” I replied, and rang him off.
The sun was just rising as I went through to the stable yard; it came up behind a bank of watery clouds; the gale was dying with the dawn. I opened the stable gates and got the Bentley out, and ran down to the nursing home. I found Dixon in the surgery, and he got up to meet me as I came in.
I went straight to the point. “This girl,” I said. “I take it that you mean there’s something wrong.”
He met my eyes. “I hope not,” he replied. “The position is this. She was all right till nine o’clock last night. Then the temperature began, and the pulse went up in sympathy—you understand.”
I nodded. “What’s the temperature now?”
“A hundred and three point five.”
“And the pulse?”
“About a hundred and forty.”
I said: “And what is it you think she’s got?”
He hesitated. “Provisionally, I am treating for septicæmia. That is—what I should be apprehensive of.”
There was a little silence in the room. “Is there anything else that it could be?” I asked.
He said something a little diffidently about coincidences: I gathered that he was thinking of measles or something of that sort. Frankly, he did not think that that was very probable. And then he said that
if it was septicæmia he would prefer to have some help. “Things change, you know—the treatments,” he said, a little apologetically. “It’s some time since I had a case like this. Now, Holderness over at Plymouth, I know he had three at least last year—he was dining with me the other night. I think it might be as well to have him over.”
I nodded. “By all means. Get on to him at once.”
He went out of the room to get the matron to put through the call for him, and when he came back I asked him: “Who’s the authority on this thing at the present time?”
He glanced at me. “You mean in this part of the world?”
“In England. Harley Street.”
He considered for a moment, and absently turned a pile of periodicals upon his desk. “I don’t think Harley Street,” he said at last. “I think you’d have to go to Liverpool, perhaps. Sir Donald McKenzie—he’s the chap that writes so much about it, and he certainly has done wonderful work on it up there.”
I nodded. “We’d better get him down,” I said. “At once.” I paused. “Get a call through to him, and tell him to fly down if he can. If not, to telegraph what time he can reach Exeter—I’ll have the car to meet him there.” I turned and stared him grimly in the eyes. “You understand? He’s to drop everything, and come at once. He is to start within an hour from now.”
“Well, of course,” said Dixon, “if you do that you’ll get the very best advice obtainable.” He hesitated for a moment. “And, of course, you’ll have to pay for it.”
I asked: “How much?”
Dixon hesitated. “I really couldn’t say. It is conceivable that if I ask him to drop everything as you suggest and fly down here, he might charge as much as two hundred guineas. I should not say it would be more.”
I nodded slowly, and the room seemed to nod with me: I steadied myself by the table, for I was very tired. “Offer five hundred on the telephone,” I said wearily. “Get him to come at any price he wants.”
I sat down on a chair; Dixon stood eyeing me. And then he said: “I’m very sorry, Stevenson. You can depend upon us to do everything that can be done, regardless of expense.”
I raised my heavy head. “You can have carte blanche up to ten thousand pounds,” I said. “I’ll give you that in writing, if you like. And after that as much more as you want.”
He left me then to telephone, and I sat on there in the surgery for what seemed many hours, until he came again. “McKenzie arrives at Exeter at 2.15,” he said. “That is the best that I could do. And Holderness is on his way here now.”
I got on to my feet. “Good man,” I said. And then I said, a little timidly: “Do you think I could look in and see her for a bit? Or wouldn’t that be wise?”
“I think it would be excellent,” he said. “She was asking for you all day yesterday. But you don’t want to go in there like that.”
“Like what?” I asked stupidly.
He laughed and swung a mirrored door till I could see myself. I was still in sea clothes, serge trousers and blue jersey, and an oilskin over all. I had a growth of stubble straggling across my face, and the features that looked back at me were lined and worn. Dixon laughed. “Get along back and have a bath and shave, and come down when you’ve had some breakfast,” he said. “I’ll expect you here at about eight o’clock.”
Stenning had gone to bed, and was asleep when I got back. I left him there and went and had a bath, and shaved, and dressed carefully and neatly that disastrous day. When I had finished, I looked in the glass. Everything was neat and orderly except my face, which was all grey, the face of an old man. I went downstairs to my ruined dining-room and poured a whisky from the decanter which was still upon the table, and with that inside me I felt more myself.
Rogers brought me breakfast in the library, but I didn’t fancy it. By eight o’clock I was down at the nursing home, and waiting in the surgery till Dixon came.
I heard him coming down the passage from her room, talking incisively to the matron, and I saw his face before he knew that I was there. He brightened when he saw me. “That’s better,” he remarked. He said that Holderness had been there and had seen the girl, and had gone away to have some breakfast. I gathered that he had not been of much help, and that the thing would have to run its course without much check, pending the arrival of the specialist.
“She’s been asking after you again,” said Dixon. “I think it might be a good thing if you went and sat with her a bit.” He hesitated. “You’ll realise, of course, that she has a high temperature,” he said. “You won’t excite her—she must be kept quite quiet. You may find her wandering a little, too. Still, I think perhaps it might be a good thing if you went and sat there for a bit.”
In the pale room the blinds were still half drawn; a nurse was moving quietly about at the far end. She greeted me with a smile and moved a chair for me beside the bed, and I sat down to throw my weight into the fight. “Don’t worry if she doesn’t know you just at first,” the nurse said quietly behind me. “She will later. She’s been asking for you all the time.”
I sat and stared at Mollie in the bed, flushed and uncomfortable, and most unlike the girl that I had known. I tried to think of something I could say to her as she lay turning restlessly, and staring through the place where I was sitting by her side. And finding nothing I could say, I took one of her hands in mine and sat there stroking it, and listening to the words that dropped from time to time from the hot lips.
And sitting there, I drifted back into another world. The odd phrases and the half sentences were all about her former life, the life that she had lived up in the north. Once came a stanza of a vaudeville song that I remembered seeing early in the war, and there was much about the stage, about soubrettes and leads. There was something of dancing, and of boys. All this came out in little bits and snatches between long, silent intervals of restlessness. Once the nurse came up and looked at her most critically, and felt the pulse. And then she turned to me and said: “She’s ever so much quieter since you came.” And that amazed me.
And presently, when I had been there for perhaps an hour, she suddenly lay quiet and stared at me with dull eyes, but awake. And then she said, quite quietly:
“Is that the Commander?”
“That’s right,” I said, “I’ve come to sit with you for a bit.” And I stroked the hand that I was holding.
She said: “It’s ever so nice of you to come.” And then in explanation she added: “I’ve been such a long way.”
“I know,” I said. “But now you’re home again.”
They turned me out soon after that, telling her that I should come back presently, and I was left to pace the surgery downstairs. Stenning turned up and I told him briefly what was on; he was as powerless as I had been to help. All he could do was to take the burden of negotiations with the police from me, and he left me to go down to Norman to discuss what else had to be done.
I went out once into the town. At the entrance to the nursing home a young man stopped me, and informed me, a little hesitantly, that he represented the Morning Herald. I told him that I owned thirty per cent of the shares in that publication, that he’d be sacked before the week was out, and he could burn in hell for all I cared. That settled him, but there were others that I could not sack so easily. One took a photograph of me as I went back into the home.
I did not see her again before lunch. Dixon came down and said that I had done a bit of good, and that she was quieter than she had been all the night. I had sent Adams with the car to Exeter to meet McKenzie, and I walked up to my house and snatched a little food, and walked down to the nursing home again, blasting and cursing the reporters who accosted me as I was walking down the street. The town seemed full of them that day, and I walked through them, cursing as I went.
McKenzie proved to be a little sandy-haired man with pince-nez, by no means the great figure I had pictured him. Dixon and Holderness were pleased with him, however, and they took him into consultation in the surgery, and I was
left with a dozen old copies of the Tatler and Punch that somebody had given me to read. I heard them leave the surgery and go along the passage to her room, and then there was a good deal of movement of the nurses in the home, and passing in and out. And presently, at rather after four o’clock, I heard them coming down the passage. I heard Dixon say: “You might have a word with him now, perhaps. He’s in the other room.” I got up on my feet as they came in to me.
McKenzie started to tell me how ably his colleague, Dr. Dixon, had been managing the case, as he was bound to do in etiquette. I cut him short when he was half-way through his piece. “You found a sick girl, I’m afraid,” I said.
The little man shot a quick glance at me. “I’ll not deny it. I’ll not deny it at all. I found a very sick girl. Not that she won’t pull through, mind you. Don’t think it, but she’ll want watching to-night, the while she’s in the worst of it, and she’ll do fine. I was just tellin’ the doctor here, I’ll bide with you to-night.”
I cleared my throat. “That would be very kind of you. I was hoping that perhaps you’d stay the night.”
He went into the details of the treatment in his dry Scots way—something to do with scarlet fever anti-toxin, which I have forgotten now. We stood there talking for a quarter of an hour, until he said:
“Well, now. Ye’ll go and sit with her a bit?” He changed to a command. “Ye’ll go away and have a bit of tea, and ye’ll come back at five o’clock and sit with her a while. She likes to have you there, the doctor was telling me. And, man, it’s what she wants she’s got to have this night.”
He eyed me narrowly, this little sandy man. “The doctor was telling me she thinks the world and all of you. Don’t think because I’ve come from Liverpool that I’m the one that’s going to get her through the night. It’s you. Now, are you up to it?” He shot the question at me as a challenge, peering at me through his pince-nez.