Then something happened that put Hilda’s dago friend right out of my mind. A big something. And, in the result, a very unpleasant one.
It all started with another of those cryptic messages. Only this time the method of delivery was different. Instead of being left for me on my pillow-case, it came by test tube. Or, rather, it was in the test tube and I collected it.
There were five of us in the lab. at that time—Bansted, Rogers, Mellon, Gillett and myself. Bansted and Rogers were on my side. And Mellon was opposite. Gillett had a bench under the window just behind. Lunch was over, and altogether it promised to be one of those long, quiet, boring, unsatisfying afternoons that all research workers know so well. It was an afternoon that would end at about five-thirty, with eternity left behind somewhere around tea-time.
I was just coming away from the steriliser where I had been to collect another frame of test tubes when I saw that there was something inside one of them. It shouldn’t have been there, and I held it up against the light to see what it was. It was obviously a screw of paper. But the one thing that simply didn’t occur to me was that there would be any writing on it. Let alone that the writing would be intended for me.
I removed the stopper of cotton-wool and shook out the little paper spill. The steriliser had been set a bit on the high side, and the paper like the cotton-wool was slightly charred. But not so charred that the words did not stand out plainly. The letters were all in good bold capitals. There in best office typing I read the message: KEEP AWAY. THIS MEANS YOU. It made even less sense than usual. And I spread it out on the bench in front of me, and sat there staring at it.
There were several points about it that were odd. In the first place, all five of us went to the same oven for our sterilised tubes. And if that particular tube had really been intended for me the odds were precisely five to one against my ever getting it at all. Then there is a note of privacy and intimacy about a pillow-case that is distinctly lacking from a test tube that is going to be unstoppered in a busy laboratory. But that, I realised, could mean one of several things. It might be that I hadn’t taken as much notice as somebody wanted me to take of the messages that I had already received. This last one could have been intended as a sort of in-thy-bed-or-at-thy-work-bench-I-am-beside-you reminder. If so, it struck me as rather artistic and well conceived. The only difficulty was that if it really did mean ME, I still didn’t know what ME had to keep away from. There was a third possibility, viz., that someone, still for purposes that I couldn’t understand, wanted me to sound the tocsin on a bell-jar and announce at the top of my voice that I was being persecuted—and that, in turn, might be to provide a brief but effective distraction while something a good deal more important was going on elsewhere. Possibility number four was that the instruction might not have been intended for me at all and that I had been guilty of the offence of opening somebody else’s mail: for all I knew, the whole Institute might have been living under a snowstorm of these little bits of paper. It could all have been a game in which I was simply odd man out. . . .
Before I had reached the nth variant, however, I was cut short by young Mellon. He was exactly opposite to me, and not more than six feet away.
“Say, what is it—a date with a dame?” he asked.
It struck me then that if it were variant Number Three, the tocsin-and-persecution device that had been intended, I could hardly have responded better. And I don’t like being made a stooge at any time. So I screwed up the little piece of paper and chucked it into the waste-bin at my feet.
“They’re all after me,” I said. “When I don’t reply, they just go crazy. It’s something to do with the hair line.”
That seemed to satisfy Mellon who went back to his blood-counts again. And it satisfied me, too. I meant to recover the piece of paper later on because I wanted it to add to my collection.
It was just then that the Old Man sent for me. i! though he was such a mild whiskery old thing he didn’t to be kept waiting. Moreover, as the hag secretary herself had come to collect me there was nothing for it but to go along. But I might have known it. There was nothing urgent or even important about the Old Man’s summons. It was simply that he wanted to find out if I’d give a lantion lecture on B. typhosus to the student nurses in the local isolation hospital.
I could have done without that. Student nurses in the mass somehow lack the charm that they may or may not possess individually. But after my bad black over the one-day visa, I felt that I owed it to myself to show something of the charm side of my nature.
“May I really?” I asked eagerly. “If they don’t mind something a bit elementary, I’d love to have a shot at it.”
The Old Man was so pleased that I think, if the Government hadn’t been cutting down on everything, he would have recommended me for an increment on the spot. I learnt afterwards that I had been number nine on his list of candidates, and the other eight had all risked their careers by refusing.
I waited long enough to inquire after Una. And immediately the Old Man gave one of his nervous starts that always reminded me of someone who has just reached the theatre and then finds that he has left the tickets at home.
“That reminds me,” he said. “She was asking for you just now.”
“For me?” I asked, keeping my voice as level-sounding as possible.
“Probably wants to say thank you,” he went on. “After all, you did save her life, you know.”
made the ordinary pooh-pounds. Then, so that you might have thought that I was simply talking in my sleep, I added: “Of course. I’d be delighted. It’s only because I thought she needed rest that I haven’t been bothering her.”
Because Ma Clewes was out scouring the Bodmin market, it was he Clewes’s maid who showed me up to Una’s room. And because she was only the maid she withdrew as soon as she had knocked on the door. That, I considered, was very understanding of her. I registered her action for an extra shilling in the Christmas box. It occurred to me only afterwards that it might have been Una herself who had arranged it.
“I wanted to see you alone,” was what she said.
I told her that I thought that was nice of her, and took the chair that was drawn up alongside the bed. I have never denied that there is a lot to be said for really dark hair when it is cut rather short. That is when it is the kind of hair that reflects the light and takes on other colours as well. Una’s was that kind. And the pink bed-jacket was just right for it. Between the two of them, they showed her eyes up to perfection. And except for an occasional flicker that I kept waiting for because I liked it, the blinds weren’t drawn at all. For most of the time I was looking full into a pair of eyes that were so dark that I had to keep on taking another look just to make sure whether they were really violet or only an astonishingly deep blue.
They didn’t waver once. Not even when she said: “I want you to do something for me.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m getting up to-morrow,” she went on. “And I shall be back in the lab. on Monday.”
Frankly, I was a bit disappointed. There didn’t seem to be much in this for me.
“Isn’t that rather silly,” I said, “coming back before you’re really fit?”
“But that’s why I’ve asked you,” she replied. “I want you to keep an eye on things.”
“What sort of things?”
Una’s face was turned full towards me. It was the best view of her eyes that I had been able to get so far.
“Me mostly,” she said. “I’d just like it if you’d stay somewhere near me.”
This was distinctly better. But I still remembered my manners.
“Isn’t that Gillett’s job?”
It is interesting the way certain things conform to a dull and rather obvious pattern. I knew Gillett’s first name all right; and she knew that I knew. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Not to her at least.
“Michael doesn’t mind,” she said. “It’s his idea really, just as much as mine.”
There was a sudden sweep of the lashes as she said it, and I knew that at this particular moment she wasn’t exactly speaking the truth. But I’ve never been a stickler about small things like that. And, in any case, Una hadn’t finished what she had to say.
“There are bound to be times when Michael isn’t there,” she went on. “And I’d feel safer to-morrow if I knew that there was someone else around.”
“There’ll be someone,” I told her.
There was a pause. A long one. The interview had reached that awkward stage when all the bits and pieces begin falling apart. Una was quite as much aware of it as I was.
“Well,” she said, “I suppose you’d better be going now. Otherwise, people will begin to wonder what’s happening.”
“Not unless they’re psychic, they won’t,” I answered.
And bending over the bed, I kissed her. When it was over Una didn’t attempt to say anything. If anyone was to speak, it was obviously my turn.
“Sorry, ma’am,” I said, and left her.