Читать книгу Wings Above the Diamantina - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 9

Guests At Coolibah

Elizabeth Nettlefold waited on the east veranda before the hall door to welcome her guests. She was gowned in a semi-evening frock of biscuit-coloured voile, and in the deepening twilight she appeared extremely attractive.

“I am so glad you came, Doctor,” she said, taking Knowles’s hand. “Good evening, Sergeant Cox! Did you have a good flight?”

Dr Knowles turned to face both the sergeant and Elizabeth.

“I tried to make him sick, Miss Nettlefold,” he told her with mockery in his voice. “After what he’s been through nothing would upset him; not even a hurricane in the North Sea on a fishing trawler.”

“I’ve lived before my time,” Cox complained in his official voice. “I should not have been born until the year nineteen-eighty, and then I would have graduated as an air cop.”

“You were born in a lucky year, Sergeant Cox,” Elizabeth affirmed, giving Knowles a reproachful look. “Come in, please. Will you see the girl now, Doctor?”

“Yes! Oh yes! I’ll examine her now. Cox can see her afterwards.”

He went off with Elizabeth, her father conducting the policeman to his own room, which he was pleased to call his study and which opened on to the western end of the south veranda. Elizabeth led the doctor along the cool, dimly-lit corridor to pause outside a door with her hand on the handle. The smile of welcome had vanished, replaced in her dark eyes by one of pleading.

“It is the most terrible thing I have ever seen,” she cried softly. “The poor girl cannot move a muscle. She can’t even raise or lower her eyelids. Promise me something before we go in.”

“What do you want me to promise?”

He stood looking down at her, his cheeks criss-crossed with fine blue lines caused by excess. His eyes were bloodshot, and the fingers which stroked the small black moustache markedly trembled. He was still good looking despite his thirty-eight years and hard living. His cultured English voice was the only thing about him which did not reflect his mode of life.

“What is it you want me to promise?” he repeated when she continued to stare up at him. With a start, she collected herself.

“Promise me that you won’t order her off to a hospital,” she replied earnestly. “Hetty and I will nurse her very, very carefully. We will do everything you say, and Dad says he will spare no reasonable expense.”

“But the girl is nothing to you, is she? Do you know her?”

“We have never seen her before, Doctor, but nursing her will give me something to do. You couldn’t understand, but … but she will give me an interest in life. You will not order her away, will you?”

“Not unless it would be for her own good,” he compromised. “Come! Take me to her.”

“A moment! You will not permit Sergeant Cox to have her moved to the hospital at Winton, will you? Promise me that.”

A faint smile crept into the man’s dark eyes.

“I’ll promise you that,” he told her, to add with a flash of humour: “Cox owes me a debt.”

They found Hetty seated in a chair beside the bed, at her side an electric reading lamp which sent its shaded radiance to the edge of the small occasional table. The woman rose when they approached.

“This is Mrs Hetty Brown, my co-nurse.”

Knowles nodded and passed to the bed. He raised the lamp-shade so that its light fell on the patient’s face. And then he stepped back with a sharp ejaculation to stare down at the immobile features. His eyes grew big with amazement.

Astonished, herself, Elizabeth asked: “Do you know her, Doctor?”

She had to repeat her question before he was able to master himself enough to answer.

“No,” he said sharply, and bent over the helpless girl. Elizabeth noticed that no longer were his hands trembling, and when he spoke his voice again was steady.

“Well, young lady, you appear to be in a peculiar fix,” he drawled. “If you are conscious and can hear what I’m saying, don’t be afraid. They say that I am the best doctor in western Queensland, but, as I do not agree, you need not believe it.”

Presently he raised the patient’s eyelids and gazed steadily into the large, blue, intelligent and pleading orbs. He smiled at her, and the watching Elizabeth saw his expression soften, become one of infinite pity. She had heard a great deal about the flying doctor and his wild life. She had often seen him and conversed with him, and she had never thought he could be anything but reckless and cynical.

“I believe that if you could speak, you would tell us a lot of interesting things,” he went on. “But never mind that now. You must not worry. You will regain the use of all your muscles quite suddenly, and the less you worry and fret the sooner that will be. Ah! I can see that you hear and understand me. Now I will partly lower your eyelids so that you will be able to note your surroundings.”

For a little while he sat at the foot of the bed in a most unprofessional attitude whilst he regarded the pale face, almost beautiful in its impassiveness. Elizabeth and Hetty watched him, but they could not guess what passed through his mind. It seemed that he had utterly forgotten them.

“What do you think of her?” Elizabeth asked presently.

“What? Oh, what this young lady needs is quiet and careful attention. Yes, and a little amusement to stop her thinking about herself. I think we will have her up and about in no time. I will come to see her again during the late evening, and meanwhile I will ask my colleague to drop in and see her. Au revoir, young lady. Remember now, no worry! Hetty will read you a book and talk to you, and to-morrow, perhaps, Miss Nettlefold will have the radio brought in.”

Standing up, he then reached forward and took one of her palsied hands, which lay so still on the white coverlet.

“Au revoir!” he again said softly.

When in the corridor with Elizabeth, with the door closed behind them, he asked:

“Have you discovered any clue about her? Any laundry marks or initials on her linen?”

“Yes. Several articles have the initials M.M. worked on them with silk. That is all.”

“Hum! She is rather lovely, don’t you think? Not more than twenty-five. Perhaps not twenty.”

“What is the matter with her, Doctor?”

“Candidly, I do not know yet,” he confessed. “Has she eaten?”

“No. She can swallow, but she cannot move her jaw.”

“All that she can do is to swallow and slightly, very slightly, move her eyes,” he said slowly, as though to himself. “No, I do not understand. I might in the morning when I have examined her again. What liquids have you given her?”

“Milk.”

“Good! Don’t, however, give her too much. Give her cocoa and beef tea. I will draw up a diet list before I leave. To-night give her a teaspoonful of brandy in coffee. Who will be with her during the night?”

“I will from ten o’clock.”

“Oh! I believe you will make an excellent nurse, Miss Nettlefold. I will look in before going to bed. Now we will permit Sergeant Cox to pay his official visit—as my medical colleague.”

“Why as your colleague?”

“Because I am not going to have my patient frightened by a policeman.”

She took him along to the study where they found Cox taking notes from what the cattleman was telling him.

“Well, do you know her?” asked the sergeant.

“No. I have never seen her before,” Knowles answered, and Elizabeth looked at him intently.

“May I have a look at her?”

“You may,” Knowles assented, a little curtly. Then, when the sergeant stood up, he added: “My patient is suffering from a form of muscular paralysis. She is conscious and her mind is clear, but she is quite unable to articulate. I don’t care a sixpence who stole the aeroplane. All that concerns me is that she’s my patient, and I will not have her frightened or worried, you understand. She is powerless to run away and escape from you. I told her that my colleague would visit her, just to look at her. It is no use your putting questions to her, but by all means ascertain if you can identify her.”

Sergeant Cox glared at the doctor, and Knowles strolled across to a wall cabinet where he could see a decanter, glasses and a soda bottle.

“I won’t excite her,” Cox promised readily. “Do you think she could have stolen the aeroplane?”

“No … emphatically.”

“Is there any basis for your opinion?”

“So far there is nothing definite on which I could base any opinion,” Knowles replied, turning with a filled tumbler in his hand. “In her present condition it would, of course, be quite impossible for her to have flown the machine. I have never before seen a case even remotely like it. The general paralysis of all consciously controlled muscles may have been produced by physical injury, mental shock, or—” and he made a distinct pause: “or drugs. I can find no external physical injury, but I will examine her again to-morrow. I can conceive no mental shock of sufficient strength to produce such a result. Therefore I incline to the hypothesis that she has been drugged.”

Cox pulled savagely at his grey moustache. Elizabeth stared with peculiar intensity at the doctor. Her father frowned down at his polished slippers, and began a hunt for tobacco plug and clasp knife.

“If the poor thing has been drugged, Doctor, will not the drug wear out of her system in time?” Elizabeth asked.

“Drugs are so varied in their effects,” Knowles replied. “If the patient has been drugged the drug may slowly lose its hold upon her. I stress the word ‘may’.”

“And if it does not?” put in Cox.

“Then she will inevitably die despite all our efforts to save her. The paralysis of the consciously controlled processes will have a grave effect on those that are involuntary.”

“Go along and find out if you know her, Cox,” urged Nettlefold.

The sergeant nodded and followed Elizabeth.

“Pardon me, Nettlefold,” said Knowles, “for helping myself to your whisky. Ah … but I was perishing.”

“Whatever you do, don’t perish, or let me perish either,” the big bluff manager returned warmly. “Three fingers is my usual measure.”

The doctor turned again to the wall cabinet. Glass tinkled against glass, and the hiss of aerated water splashing into liquid were the only sounds to break the little silence which lasted until the doctor seated himself, having handed his host a glass.

“It is quite a mystery, isn’t it?” he queried.

“Too deep for me,” Nettlefold admitted. “An aeroplane is stolen at Golden Dawn, and it is then found undamaged one hundred and eighty-four miles away. In it is a drugged girl. The pilot is missing, and there are no tracks showing that he left the machine after he landed it.”

“Your résumé contains several facts but one assumption. You assume that the girl is drugged. That is not proven yet.”

“Then it is possible that she is suffering the effects of some physical injury?”

“Yes. There is that possibility.”

The door opened to admit the sergeant. He was alone, and before he spoke they knew he had been unable to identify the patient.

“I do not know her,” he said. “I have been in control of this district for twenty-four years, and I am positive that she has never lived in it. I could swear that she was not in Golden Dawn yesterday. I was among the small crowd watching the air circus and seeing people taking trips in the de Havilland. You are quite sure, Mr Nettlefold, that you saw no tracks of the pilot leaving the aeroplane?”

“Quite!” replied the cattleman with conviction.

“Then he must have jumped out before the machine landed—if there was a pilot other than that girl.”

“In that case, would not the machine have crashed?” Nettlefold asked the doctor.

Cox looked steadily at Knowles.

“My machine would go into a fatal spin immediately I left the controls,” he said. “Captain Loveacre’s monoplane, however, might not. There was the affair during the war when a German flier was shot dead when over the lines, and his machine made a perfect landing several miles behind our front. Better ask Loveacre how his monoplane behaves.”

“Yes. And, by the way, I told him, Mr Nettlefold, that you would supply him with information how to get to Emu Lake. May I ring him up?”

Dr Knowles again permitted himself to become the needle attracted by the magnet of the wall cabinet. There was something terrible in his steady drinking as well as in the extraordinary effects it appeared to have on him. The potent spirit attacked his legs and arms, but failed utterly to cloud his mind or thicken his speech. Before leaving the cabinet he refilled the glass to take with him to one of the lounge chairs, and into that he dropped to lean back his head to rest on the cushion and to stare up at the coloured lamp-shade.

It was obvious that he did not hear, whilst the others were too much engrossed by the telephone to note Elizabeth’s quiet entry. She stood now just inside the door she had quietly closed, and there she continued to stand.

She saw and heard her father speaking into the telephone. She saw Cox crouching forward across the large writing-table. And then she saw the white, upturned face of Dr Knowles. He was staring at the lamp-shade, and the light fell directly on his face. It was devoid of expression, a cold white mask beneath the glaring electric light. The little silky black moustache and the fine black hair but emphasized the whiteness of the skin, an unnatural whiteness, considering that the man spent hours in the air every week.

He was a clever doctor, she knew. She knew, too, that his medical studies had been interrupted by fifteen months in the Royal Air Force during the war. For a period of that time—how long she did not know—he and the owner of Tintanoo had been pilots in the same squadron. But, while John Kane often spoke of those days, Dr Knowles always avoided the subject of army flying.

Her father having called good night, and the telephone receiver having been replaced on its hooks, she stepped forward and suggested supper. Not till then was Knowles aware of her presence, when he flung himself to his feet so precipitately as to indicate annoyance.

“I am ready to eat—anything,” he said, smiling to conceal his confusion.

“And the flight has sharpened my appetite instead of blunting it,” added Cox.

“Then come along. I have to go on night duty at ten o’clock,” Elizabeth told them.

She led them to a cold supper set out in the dining-room. Her father carved from a great round of beef, the quality of which is never found on offer in a butcher’s shop. Everything was in keeping with the furniture, solid and homely, easy and comfortably luxurious.

Beneath the conversation was an undercurrent of excitement, of expectancy. They could discuss nothing save the helpless young woman lying on Elizabeth’s bed, although the sergeant did make several attempts. Through the open windows came the subdued and methodical reports of the petrol engine running the station dynamo. From farther afield drifted the notes of an accordion. The night was silent and peaceful and warm. They each sensed rather than knew positively that drama had come to Coolibah.