LOVE Set Free

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1046, 9 August 1930, Page 23

LOVE Set Free

COPYRIGHT

Autbor el "ClmuiM Fir«.- -la Apple Bloxwro Time." •■Ttuead. a! Lit.," ete.

CHAPTER X. “You wanted to see me? My servant did not mention your name.” Dr. John’s voice was courteous, but there was in it a ring of authoritativeness which made his visitor look at him curiously. He was not prepared for just that authoritative note. Somehow he had not quite expected to fiud in the little house by the river a man who spoke precisely in this way. He had supposed he should find a typical East End general practitioner, and the man before him did not answer to that conception. “My name?” he answ’ered in what was meant to be a bluff and hearty voice, though it did not quite succeed in being either. "Oh, my name is of uo importance; that is quite a detail. I have not come to consult you as a patient. I am not ill or anything of that sort. I wanted to ask whether you could give me any information about a young fellow in whom I am interested—Herbert Holt by name? ! understand you know him.” you understand I know him?” Dashwood's quiet eyes scrutinised the other's face, and the scrutiny seemed to be oddly disconcerting to the big visitor, who fidgeted from one foot to the other, looked away from the doctor toward the small window, and, in some indefinable fashion, seemed to lose some of his bluffness. “Yes, yes,” he said impatiently, but with a shade less of arrogance. “I am told you know Holt, that you may be able to tell me where he is. I think he has not been well. I want to find him and give him a helping hand.” "Oh, yes, I see —give him a helping hand. You were in touch with him. but have now lost sight of him. Is that it?” “Yes, of course, that is the point,” the visitor's tones became increasingly irascible, while his uneasiness also became more marked. “If I knew where Holt was I should not come here inquiring about him. I've lost track of him. and I want to be put on the track again. That, is all. It is very simple. Can you give me the information I want?” ' “Will you tell me, first of all, why you want information about him?” came the quiet reply. "Forgive me for seeming insistent, but as a man of the world you will understand that r am a medical man, and even if I knew anything about this man Holt I should not feel justified in passing on my knowledge to a stranger who does not tell me why he wants to find Holt. Nor does he care to give me his own name.”

The quiet voice, the quiet eyes, the whole quiet dominating manner of this doctor, with the short brown beard and air of distinction, had a curiously daunting effect upon tile would-be bluff and hearty visitor, whose bluffness sagged more and more. “Oh, well,” he blustered. “I should say it is palpably absurd to take such a line with me. Heavens alive! why should there be all this fuss? 1 come down to these God forsaken parts to look up a young man who once worked for me: I knew he had been ill. I thought he might be in difficulties. 1 came to look him up. and could not find him. I was advised to apply to you as the nearest doctor, or as a doctor who might help me, and now I come I am met with—” “You are met with the very natural question I put to you,” the other man said gently. “Doctors do not pass on information about patients promiscuously to any chance stranger who asks for if. Will you tell me who you are, and why you want information about this man. Herbert Holt? After that, if I cau help. I will.” That dominating voice and luauner had their due effect, although the visitor would have denied the influence. "Dear me. you are making a mountain out of a ridiculously small molehill,” he said, with a show of impatience. “There’s no mystery whatever about my errand or my name. Why should there be? lam a bit worried

about this young fellow-, Herbert Holt. As I tell you, 1 knew he was ill. He has been in my employ, and I had lost sight of him. I came down here to find him, and was unsuccessful. That is all.” “Yes?” The word w-as still interrogative. “As for my name,” the visitor went on irritably, “my name is Robertson. Here is my card.” He handed a card to the doctor, who read upon it.: Mr. Horace Robertson, and, written underneath the printed characters, the address: IXO Garden Court Temple, E.C. “I am rentiug a friend's flat, in the Temple,” the visitor said easily. “I have no house of my own in town at the moment, and I find my friend's flat every convenient, both for the City and the West End.” “Quite so, most convenient. I am sure. And now, about this man for whom you are asking, Holt. You came down here to see him, .expecting to find him as usual.” “I don’t know what you mean by ‘as usual.’ Do you suppose I am in the habit of frequenting this rather sordid neighbourhood?” Mr. Robertson almost snorted in his wrath. “It does not seem such a savoury place that one would care to come here unnecessarily.” “Ah! the neighbourhood is entirely new to you?” Were the words a question or an assertion? It was hard to say. The face of the man who uttered them was. as before, quiet and non-committal. Horace Robertson, In spite of all the astuteness upon which he prided himself, felt quite unable to decide whether this “Doctor Chap” (as he called him) was making a statement about him or not. He stared rather hard at the face whose expression did not alter in the least under his scrutiny, and his frown became a scowl. There was some innate power about Dr. Smith, which his visitor both realised and resented, though he was powerless to resist it. He was dominated, and lie knew he was dominated; the knowledge angered him. “The neighbourhood new to me?” he blurted out angrily. “What do you suppose? You surely don’t imagine i belong to this part of the world?” he laughed shortly. “I was not imagining anything in the matter,” was the enigmatical reply. “You mentioned that you had come down here to find your friend ” “My friend!” Robertson interrupted roughly. “My friend!” He laughed again. “Young Holt has done some work for me, and I am Interested in his welfare. When two letters I had written him had remained unanswered, and he did not turn up for an appointment which T had made with him, I began to feel uneasy—perhaps not unnaturally. I understood that he was lodging down here to be near the docks, because he had some job connected -with shipping. T knew his address, and. as I say, being unea.sy, I thought 1 would come and look him up.” “Yes —you came to look him up. 1 have grasped that. And then?” “Then when I got to the house—a poor-looking place—his landlady, a

Mrs. Simmonds, could tell me nothing definite about him. and declared she didn't know where he had gone. A nurse came up at the moment, and she made some very wild statement about poor Holt—very wild indeed.” “A nurse?”

“Yes, a tall, rather good-looking woman, not at all the type 1 should have expected to see in these parts.” Robertson smiled a leering, significant smile which, combined with his ■words, gave his listener an intense desire to hit his face and wipe the smile from it.

“What did the nurse say?” lie asked coldly, controlling the anger which, rather to his own consternation, boiled up within him. “Oh, made most confounded and ridiculous statements about poor Holt,” was the airy answer, “talked

aboul opium, and Lord knows what.” “If you are alluding to the district nurse in this parish, Nurse Alison, she would most certainly know what was wrong with any patient who had ever been under lier care. She is a very skilled and capable nurse.” The stern iciness of the tone checked Robertson's facetious levity, and the smile left his face. “Oh, well, she may be clever. I know nothing about her, except that she is decidedly good-looking. But she has no right to accuse a man of being an opium addict. Bless my soul! —it is almost, libellous, a defamation of character.” “Jt is no such thing,” the doctor spoke so sharply that Robertson looked startled. “As it happens, Nurse Alison is perfectly right. The man, Holt, lias lately come under my care. He is, to all intents and purposes, a hopeless drug addict; and, for the moment, at least, I can give his address to nobody. He is not in a condition to receive any visitor whatever ” CHAPTER Xr. AN UNWELCOME VISITOR Judith looked round the big drawing room of Mrs. Dashwood's house, and was surprised to find no one there. Since lunch on that sunny summer afternoon she had been busily engaged in writing scores of invitations for what her employer called “a perfectly informal tea,” and she had come with the notes in her hand to ask tor

some addresses she did not know. The room was empty. “She is probably dressing to go out. I'll wait here,” tbe girl reflected. "I can’t write any more till I see her.” Putting her bundle of notes down upon the table she herself dropped into a big armchair near the open window' and picked up a novel. The empty room gave her a sense of relief; for this was one of Millicent's bad days, when nothing and nobody was right, when she reduced every member of her household to a condition of frayed nerves and tempers. Judith had long ceased to be surprised that the servants were continually giving notice; and that the tradesmen occasionally, as she expressed it, “turned like the much-trodden-on worm.” She sometimes wondered how long she herself would be able to endure her employer's capricious and worse than capricious humours; whether she. too, would one day come to an end of her patience and depart, thankfully shaking off the dust of the great house from her feet. That she had actually spent some months in Millieent Bashwood's employ was a source of surprise even to herself. She realised dimly that an apparent miracle had been achieved, chiefly because she had taught herself to live only a moment at a time, looking neither backward nor forward, facing the present with such courage as she might. “But can I go on?” she mused now, lying back with half-closed eyes, dreamily aware of the pleasant coolness of the big room: of the sweetness of the roses which Millieent bought in such lavish profusion; of the distant murmur of traffic which somehow made her think of the sea. “Can I go on?” She opened her eyes

and glauced round the luxurious apartment. “I should think poor Dr. Dashwood must have been thankful to die.” her thoughts went on inconsequently. “If I find a few mouths hard to bear, how did he bear it for years?” Her glance travelled to the mantelpiece where Francis Dashwood’s photograph stood, and the pictured face brought courage to her now as it had often done before. The serene eyes, the firmly-closed lips, the quiet strength of the whole, gave her new heart. She pulled herself into a more upright position and resolutely opened the book. “I may as well wait here for Mis. Dashwood," she reflected. “I can’t do any more notes till I have asked her about them.” But still she did not read. Her thoughts were in a wandering mood and refused to he pinned down to anybody, however interesting. The “informal tea party,” for which she was issuing invitations, both outraged her sense of decency and roused her sense of humour. Only a few months a widow and Millicent Dashwood was already trying to get all the amusement out of life which it was possible to get. "And, after all. just asking a few friends to tea. what harm is there in that?” she had asked Judith. The “few friends” had already become a very considerable crowd. But when

Judith ventured to point this out Mil- i licent had only shrugged her shoul- i ders and vituperated her with angry ! sarcasm. j “Presently the ’cosy little dinners’ j to which she asks one or two people ' will grow into huge dinner parties, I suppose,” Judith s reflections ran on, “and they will be given here instead of in restaurants. It seems to be all right for a recent widow to give a dinner party in a restaurant. How funny!” Other musings drifted away and were merged into the thought of j Derek toward whom, siDce that talk in Regent's Park, her thoughts had I often turned. He had given her a sense of strength, just as Francis ' Dashwood had done. The memory of ; him and his words put fresh heart | into her. She was so deeply immersed i in thoughts of him at that moment ! that she did not hear the opening door, ; nor the parlour-maid's voice. Neither i was she even aware that anyone had j come iu until a voice startled her into j consciousness of her surroundings. “At last!” Horace Robertson said the words triumpbf.ntlx', and held Judith’s reluctant hand with both his in a close clasp that nauseated her. She had sprung instantly to her feet, and was facing him with a sudden sense of dismay at finding herself alone with this man. whom of all others she dreaded and detested. “At last!” he repeated, looking down at her with an expression which made ; her think of some hungry beast of prey; and as she drew her hand out of his, she glanced round with a feeling that she must escape without deilay; that she could not endure Horace ; Robertson’s society for another second. ] “No, no, my dear Miss Merivale —or i mayn’t I say Judith—seeing you are

j your father’s daughter and that I was j his close friend?” Robertson moved j into a position between her and the | door, and though he spoke with lni gratiating playfulness, there was a | threatening note in his voice. “Xo, no, you must not try to escape! I'm nor going to let you rush away now I have got you to myself at last. Hitherto 1 have been most unfortunate. When I have called on Mrs. Dashwood you have always been out. I am inclined to think you have often gone out intentionally—to avoid me.” His dark eyes scanned her face with : insolent amusement. and, at her ! heightened colour he smiled tignifii cantly. i “I thought as much'. You have purj posely kept out of my way. Xow, my I dear girl, why try to avoid me? You | must know perfectely well it is a i futile thing to do. When Horace i Robertson puts his hand to any plough, he does not as a rule take it off again until the land is laid out in neat furrows. I am not easily baffled or set on one side. Y'ou must know that well enough.” “I know that you have worried and i bullie dme incessantly, although you • had already ruined and practically ' 1 killed my father,” she cried passior- ! ately. “Why can’t you leave me I alone? Wasn't It enough for you ■ !to kill him?” ( “Come, come, my dear chile, i j moderate your language a little bit,’’ i I Robertson laughed good-humoured.} : though, at her words his eyes had . j flashed. "You are letting your im- • agination run away with you. I was - ; able to put your poor father on to on-* s! or two good things, but unluckily—' .) he shrugged his shoulders and spread 'I si (To be continued on Monday*