Congratulations on your heroic defence of Mafeking and the dear old Flag. Invite you to visit Townsville at your earliest convenience.
Telegram to Col. Baden-Powell from the Mayor, 19 May 1900
MARIA WAS A STRANGER to me.
I knew she was watching, though.
I sometimes tried to catch her eye but was never quick enough. After a while, it became normal, this circling.
I was at the table. She was at the stove, stabbing the grate with a poker.
A coal fell to the floor and she flicked it expertly back with her fingers.
‘Maudit!’ Ladies never swore, and if they did it was never in English.
I watched her when she had her back to me. Sometimes lately, staring at the bow of an apron, I could imagine that I didn’t know her at all. Once, a few days before, I couldn’t remember her name. I’d had to think back to when we first met. I’d been studying in Ireland, and had admired her riding. She taught French, she said. I thought she was frightfully aristocratic. Miss Maria Mahood.
Australians could ride, but it turned out most were a linguistic disappointment, and Mrs Linford Row had made a habit of voicing it, I suppose. It had been amusing at first.
Maria put breakfast in front of me.
I stared at the sausages and eggs. The toothache had returned and I wasn’t hungry.
‘Allan says you’ve been angry.’ Her voice was quiet, flat, uninflected.
I pricked the sausage and it spat at me. ‘Did he tell you why?’
She picked up a tea towel and stood over the tub, looking out the window. I watched her now in the light. ‘Perhaps if someone took the time to teach him how to shoot.’
I put down my fork. This was almost a conversation. ‘Are you suggesting I teach him how to shoot?’
She suddenly screamed, ‘As-tu perdu la tête?’ and rushed from the kitchen, throwing the towel to the floor as she ran.
Damn it! ‘It’s not me who’s out of his mind,’ I shouted back. I stood and followed her out the front door.
Maria was on the road, swearing at the man driving the nightsoil cart.
‘My children walk here, debile!’ pointing at the road. The man had stopped and was looking over his shoulder from my wife to the place on the road she pointed at. He then turned to me, shrugged, and drove off.
‘Va chez le diable!’ and lifting her skirts Maria turned and stormed past me.
I found my jacket and decided to get the devil away myself.
A breeze had sprung up and brought with it the smells of other breakfasts. A dog which had come out through a gate pattered happily beside me until I reached the top of Denham-street. The dog stopped at a telegraph pole and was left behind as I gave the Carbine its head, and in a moment of furious exhilaration I passed the nightsoil cart and executed a smooth sweep into Sturt-street.
I’d had one victory in council. The municipality had agreed to employ a team of workers to sweep Flinders-street daily. Sturt-street, though, which ran parallel to it, was still covered with the drying scabs of horse pats.
I dodged as many as I could, but couldn’t avoid the smell of rotting scraps from rubbish piled in back yards. Here in the ditch were paper bags and green beer bottles, and there a dead dog, black with flies. And another dead dog. If a shopkeeper didn’t move a carcass, it could stay there for days. Some of the more exceptional carcasses became landmarks by which people would be directed to some shop or other. They were particularly useful to strangers because few of the streets were signed.
The boarding house faced two streets and had wide iron-laced verandahs along each frontage. It would have been a handsome building if it hadn’t been painted green. Also in white lettering on a green board at the front was: Glendinning Townsville Boarding House.
I leaned my bicycle against the picket fence. The gate was open, the door wide for a breeze, the hallway empty, but I could hear creaks and the groan of water pipes.
I walked up the path and through the open door. On the hallway wall were some drab prints of Ireland. The front room had been set for breakfast. I followed the sounds of cooking to the kitchen, and knocked on the green doorframe.
A stout woman with grey hair appeared, holding a towel.
‘Take a seat,’ she said, and disappeared.
I stepped through the doorway.
‘Blimey,’ she said, from the stove. ‘I’ll be with you in a tick. Take a seat.’
I started to say something, but then decided to wait until she’d finished, and went back into the dining room, listening to the scrape of a frypan, more sizzling sausages.
A man shuffled into the room and looked at me with red eyes, nodded and took a seat at a corner table. He produced a bottle of beer from the folds of his coat and put it on the table, stared at the bottle for a moment, then opened it deftly with a flick of the wrist and perhaps a coin he had in his hand.
‘You one of mine?’ The woman I assumed was Mrs Glendinning was at the door. She looked me up and down. ‘You’re not, are you. If you’re after a room we’re full up.’
‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said.
‘You won’t find him here.’
‘If I told you who –’
‘Whoever it is, he’s not here,’ she said, and went over to her other guest, grabbed the beer bottle and strode with it back into the kitchen. The man at the table simply stared at the place where the bottle had been. The landlord taketh away. I followed Mrs Glendinning into the kitchen.
It seemed unlikely Walter Gard’s wife would still be here, or Gard would have known, surely. The Post Master had simply looked the name up in his directory.
‘I’ve a message to deliver, that’s all,’ I told Mrs Glendinning.
‘Is that right?’ and she poured the beer on to a pile of greasy plates in the sink.
I looked around at the kitchen’s turmoil. The floor looked as though it had been washed a few days earlier. The stove was clean, but a grey scum and beer foam lapped the plates in the sink. A rooster crowed loudly near the back door, which was open for the flies. A dog was sniffing at a large bucket of scraps and slunk away with a chop bone.
‘I’m not a constable,’ I said.
She looked me up and down, suspicious now I’d mentioned the police.
‘You got no business in here then.’
She stood in front of me, her hands twisting a filthy dishcloth into a rope, and I thought she was about to shoo me out like a child.
‘Mrs Gard?’ I said. ‘Is she still here?’
‘I already told you she’s not.’ She flicked the cloth, ‘Sorry,’ and turned away.
‘Mrs Glendinning, I’m the municipal health officer.’
Without turning she said, ‘Ah bloomin’,’ and threw the dishcloth on the floor, standing by the sink with her back to me. ‘You can’t close me down.’
I looked around the kitchen and thought I probably could.
‘I keep the place clean,’ she said, gesturing at the cracked floor. ‘You take a look. I do what I gotta. Oh bloomin’…’ She turned and her chin was wobbling.
‘I’m just here to deliver a message to a Mrs Gard.’
She didn’t seem to believe me. ‘I can’t…I don’t…’
She picked up the dishcloth and wiped her hands on it.
‘If you tell me she’s not here and I learn later that she is here,’ I said, ‘I’ll be back with a sanitation inspector.’
She threw the cloth down again.
‘Number eight,’ she gestured behind me with her chin. ‘Up the stairs. She won’t take kindly to someone visiting this early.’
She followed me out of the kitchen. The man who’d lost his breakfast drink had his head in his hands. I set my foot on the yellow stair runner.
‘Hope you are who you say you are,’ she said, but added, ‘Left at the top. Second door on yer right.’
I put my hand on the banister. A cockroach scuttled between my feet, hit the bottom board and then ran into the hall. Mrs Glendinning tried to tread on it and then followed it down the hallway stamping a foot. ‘Git. Go on, git yer little bugger. Bloomin’…’
I climbed the stairs.
Outside number eight I paused, trying not to breathe too hard, turning an ear towards the nicotine-stained door. The hallway smelled of tobacco and stale beer.
Someone was coughing, and I knocked. Silence. I knocked again and there was a muffled voice.
‘Mrs Gard?’ I said.
‘Who is it?’ A woman’s voice.
‘My name is Dr Row. Are you Mrs Gard?’
‘Why?’ The voice caught and there was a cough and then breathlessly, ‘Who’s this?’ louder, and I imagined both of us now pressing our heads together, a door’s thickness apart.
‘I have a message. From your husband.’
A long pause. ‘My husband?’
‘You are Mrs Gard?’
Another long pause. ‘Is he here?’
‘He sent a message.’
A cough. Then a child’s voice and the woman saying, ‘Shoosh,’ and then, ‘What’s the message?’
‘It’s in a letter.’
‘Slip it under the door.’
I stood back and looked at the thin gap beneath the door and took the letter from my pocket.
‘I can’t,’ I lied.
There was a curse and then the shuffle of feet, and eventually the scrape of a bolt being drawn and the door opened a few inches. Part of a face appeared, a pale blue eye, pale powdery skin, light red hair over a smooth white forehead.
She held out a thin hand. And then she opened her mouth and coughed.
I stood there, stunned, and watched her, the red hair tied back, her thin white neck, as her body shuddered.
‘Bad cough.’
She nodded.
She eventually raised her head, wiping her hand across her mouth, her eyes watering.
‘Mummy,’ from behind her.
‘I said shoosh.’
I tried to catch a glimpse of the little girl.
‘I’ve seen you before,’ I said.
Her eyes narrowed suddenly and she went to close the door again.
‘Wait. The letter.’ I held it out and she tried to snatch it, but I pulled it out of her reach.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said.
‘Church. We go to the same church.’
She seemed to relax a little, and looked me up and down. ‘How’d you know where I was?’ she said.
‘I found your address at the post office.’
‘Does he know I’m here?’
I shook my head. ‘He just gave me the letter.’
‘Where is he then?’
‘At the quarantine station.’
She screwed up her forehead. ‘Sick?’
‘No. No.’ Hadn’t she heard? She grabbed at the letter again and this time I wasn’t quick enough. I thought she’d close the door in my face, but she kept it open and held the letter up. Her pale red lips formed the words of her own name. Her skin was slightly freckled and dusty dry.
Then she slammed the door. Somewhere down the hallway, a man was shouting for someone to damned well shut up.
I stood there wondering if I should go, but I thumped the door again with the palm of my hand. It opened a fraction.
‘What?’
I didn’t know what. I could smell her scent.
‘I’m a doctor.’
‘So?’
‘I could examine you both.’
Her eyes narrowed again. ‘I have my bag,’ I added quickly, holding it up.
‘What for?’
‘Your cough. You sound ill. There’s medicine I could get for you.’
I had to press myself against the wedge of the door and lean close to speak with her. She kept hold of the knob, looking me up and down.
‘You don’t look like no doctor.’
I could see past her a narrow slice of room, a glimpse of her life, an impression of cobwebbed ceiling, bottles on a dresser, clothes on the floor, a doll. I couldn’t see the child.
Mrs Gard wore a dress so thin that the light from behind her seeped through, outlining a sliver of her body, her hip, the sketch of a breast pressed against the cotton.
‘I’m a doctor. With the council.’
‘I’m all right.’ She drew an arm across her nose and looked down at the letter again. ‘Don’t tell him I’m here.’
‘He’s your husband,’ I said.
She looked into my eyes and for a moment it seemed as if I was looking into the face of a drowning woman.
Then she shut the door.
‘Maybe I’ll see you in church?’ I called out, but there was no reply. Down the hallway someone started laughing.
I was still shaken when I walked through the door to Turner’s office.
‘Roll up your sleeve,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Come.’
He picked up a huge hypodermic syringe from an enamel kidney dish on his table and squirted a little yellow fluid into the air.
‘Haffkine’s serum.’
‘I’ve already had one.’
‘This one’s better. New batch just arrived. Twenty-six doses. Sleeve.’
He came around the table and plunged a hot steel ball into my arm.
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘No need to blaspheme, Row. And don’t tell me that hurt.’
‘It bloody did.’
‘Nonsense.’
He put some blotting paper on the blossom of blood and I held it there, flexing my arm, trying to get the ball rolling. He went back to his laboratory to clean up, and appeared more excited than usual.
‘Why the rush?’ I said.
‘Just had a look at another rat,’ he said, and he pointed to the microscope. ‘Take a look.’
I knew what I’d see, of course. Nevertheless, when I took my eye away I felt a little out of breath.
‘Pasteurella pestis?’ I said.
‘No question. Not many, but enough.’ I thought he was about to applaud, but he wrung his hands together and said, ‘Coffee?’
He went through his coffee ritual.
‘As I say, only twenty-six doses. It’s nowhere near enough, of course. All medical staff, health officials and contacts? No. I’m hoping to get some dried serum, but we don’t have enough for an outbreak.’
‘I can give you your shot now if you like,’ I said.
‘Very kind, but I’ve done it myself.’
I inspected the wound and the bleeding had already stopped, but I pressed the paper to it again and rolled the sleeve down carefully.
‘No need to be alarmed, Row. That’s just a booster. More vaccine’s on its way from India,’ Turner was saying. ‘In all the Australian colonies there are only five hundred doses left. We’re lucky to get twenty-six, I suppose. Now,’ he checked his watch, ‘let’s go for a stroll.’
Turner was whistling a tune. It may have been ‘Annie Laurie’, but I couldn’t be sure. He may have been tone deaf. We stopped to watch a sea-eagle.
‘“A fing of beauty is a joy for ever”,’ he said.
I asked him if I should have my family vaccinated.
‘Do you have rats?’
‘No.’
‘I wouldn’t worry just yet. We need all the doses we have at the moment just for medical staff.’
The raptor made lazy circles as it followed Ross Creek west. Another joined it.
‘It’s quite a beautiful spot. From up here,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think?’
He waved his hand over the town. The tableau in front of us was more grey than green, the coastal plain stretching south into swamps and saltpans, a slate-grey sea, grey scrub rising to blue-grey mountains, and in the west smoke and dust to the horizon.
‘It’s not jolly old England though,’ I said.
‘No. Did I tell you – I was actually born in China.’
He started prattling on. His father was a missionary, and the family lived in Canton until his parents fell ill with some Oriental disease and they all moved back to London. Public school, University College Medical School, and then to Australia, for his health. He took a deep breath and slapped his thin chest.
‘And you believe you’ve come to the right place?’ I said.
‘Of course. What about you, Row?’
‘I’m a native, I’m afraid.’
‘I meant here. Why Townsville?’
‘You know why I’m here.’ I didn’t want to answer any more of Turner’s damned questions. ‘Maria’s health.’
‘She’s ill?’
‘You know what I mean.’ I snapped, I suppose, but Turner of all people should understand.
We walked in silence for a while. I gathered we were heading for the hospital. It was on the other side of the ridge that ran from Castle Hill towards the mouth of the creek. It was a good site for a hospital, away from the stench of the creek and its beard of swamps and bogs, the coastal waterholes, and the stagnant drains that criss-crossed the settlement. The sick convalesced on its screened verandahs with their backs to the town and had a splendid view of the sea if they could enjoy it.
We were too heavily dressed for the outing. Turner took off his pith helmet to wipe his brow and the wind caught his hair and blew it across his head. Everything he did seemed to be done with a boyish enthusiasm, a clumsy disregard for how it made him appear, a sort of guilelessness that I supposed would become either annoying or endearing.
‘What you gain from risking an adventure more often than not compensates for what you’ve left behind,’ he said. ‘In fact, the soul usually makes a profit on the deal. In my experience.’
‘You think I did the right thing? Coming north.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I’m not sure what I’m doing here,’ I heard myself say, before I could shut my mouth.
‘Well,’ said Turner, ‘it’s probably a question we should all ask ourselves from time to time.’
The chief surgeon, Dr William Bacot, was pacing the hospital corridor. He had his hands in his pockets and his head bowed as he marched towards us, but just before we collided he turned on his heel and went the other way.
I cleared my throat and he looked back over his shoulder, annoyance passing quickly, replaced by a tight, thin smile.
Bacot looked older than I, but younger than Turner. He must have been in his late thirties and had a long face and the professional man’s moustache: the carefully tended variety in the shape of bicycle handlebars, worn by the men he thought of as his peers. He also had a reputation for having a short fuse and I tried to avoid him.
‘Blasted suicides, you know. Should be a law. Well, I suppose there is, but who’s ever charged, eh?’
He led us down a long corridor, explaining how he was treating his second attempted self-poisoning for the week. Rough on Rats. Hadn’t we noticed?
No, I said. I read the list of registered deaths and hadn’t seen that many poisonings.
‘Ah, that’s because they usually have to find something else to finish the job. A gun, a rope.’
‘I have noticed a few gunshots.’
‘Rough on Rats,’ spat Bacot. ‘There you go.’
A trolley hummed past on rubber wheels.
I said, ‘So, there could be an epidemic of poisonings and they wouldn’t show up on my weekly lists.’
‘There certainly is an epidemic.’ He stopped and looked at us. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I wanted to discuss preparations for the plague,’ said Turner.
‘Plague,’ he snorted and we followed him into a large room at the end of the corridor. ‘I suppose you’ll want coffee.’
Turner smiled.
The window in Bacot’s office was open. A draught that ran the length of the building was expelled here, so that the window appeared to be trying to swallow the curtains. I could see Kissing Point and West Point, the sea in between, salted with whitecaps.
I envied Bacot. He’d been given a small garrison up here and managed to fortify it so that, although he was hounded occasionally by Humphry, he was left for most of the time to run his own show. He had a staff of doctors and the most coveted collection of single women in the town. He was living in a detached house nearby, but there were never any of those sorts of rumours about him.
Bacot called a nurse to bring coffee and slumped into his chair with the window at his back.
‘I’m busy,’ he said. He tipped his head back and shut his eyes, waving a hand around his office. It was cluttered with papers; some had blown on to the floor and were making a scratching sound. To be fair, he’d probably been working all night. He never slept, I heard.
‘What we really wanted was your opinion,’ said Turner. ‘About the plague hospital.’
He snapped his head forward again. ‘Not here, you don’t.’
‘No. It needs to be further out of town.’
Bacot leaned back again and looked at us both with suspicion.
Turner continued, ‘We’re considering Three Mile Creek instead of the quarantine station for an isolation hospital.’
Bacot spun in his chair and looked up the coast. He spun back to Turner.
‘A rough drive.’
‘Better than the six miles by launch to West Point,’ I said.
Bacot stared at me, probably wondering what I was doing there. He’d refused a position on the Epidemic Board, and may not have known or even cared that I’d taken it up.
‘Yes. Tents, I assume,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ said Turner.
The surgeon shrugged. ‘All right. What’s it to do with me?’
‘It would have a lot to do with you,’ said Turner. ‘I presume, if it comes to the worst, some plague patients would first arrive at this hospital and after being diagnosed would need to be transferred to Three Mile Creek. We have to make sure that is done as quickly and efficiently as possible to spare the patients further discomfort and to protect them, and the staff and the other patients here, of course.’
‘I won’t be treating plague patients here.’
‘You might have no choice. We won’t know who has plague until they’re diagnosed. It’s reasonable to assume some sick people may turn up at this hospital.’
Bacot made an exasperated sound and shook his head, looking at us as if we were idiots. ‘It won’t come to that.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Turner. ‘If it does come to that, Dr Row here, Dr Humphry and myself are to be responsible for making the official diagnoses. We’ll have the power to compel infected people to go to the plague hospital –’
‘And that will make you all very popular,’ he snorted.
‘…and to use force if necessary.’
Turner stood then and opened his medical bag, taking out a syringe and a small corked bottle.
‘Arm or thigh?’
Bacot stared and gave a short laugh. ‘What?’
‘Haffkine’s serum. We have to inoculate everyone who’ll be dealing with plague patients.’
‘Not me.’
‘Especially you,’ and Turner produced a copy of the plague regulations, putting it on the table and pointing to the paragraph on the protection of staff.
‘I’m not having you give me that jab,’ said Bacot, watching Turner draw the fluid up into the syringe.
‘Would you rather Dr Row?’
‘God, no.’
‘I had a rat brought to me this morning,’ said Turner. ‘It had plague.’
Bacot drummed his fingers on the desk, staring from the syringe to me.
‘Are you frightened of a little injection?’
The nurse arrived just then with coffee in china cups and looked startled by Turner’s needle. It was quiet for a moment except for the rustling papers and the flapping curtains.
‘Oh, all right.’ Bacot took off his jacket and rolled up the sleeve of his left arm and Turner, with more care than he’d used on me, pushed the needle under the skin.
Bacot was determined not to wince. ‘Damned waste of time,’ he muttered, as Turner put a wad of cotton on the wound and removed the needle.
‘Hold it there.’ Turner packed the syringe away, and Bacot sat.
‘What if people don’t want to go to this…this isolation hospital at Three Mile Creek?’
‘I hope by then everyone will be clear as to why it’s necessary,’ Turner said, picking up his coffee.
‘I’m not clear.’
‘About what?’
‘As to why it’s necessary.’
‘To stop the spread of infection.’
‘It wouldn’t work.’
‘It’s the law.’
Bacot spun his chair around again to look out the window, still grasping his arm. ‘I heard about the commotion at West Point.’
‘We’ll be asking for police assistance. But I believe all reasonable people will understand.’
Bacot turned back to Turner and gave another short snorting laugh.
‘Glad I’m not in either of your shoes,’ and he examined the cotton and rolled his sleeve back down.
Turner stood. ‘Thanks for the coffee.’
We shook hands and turned to leave. Turner reached the doorway and turned around. ‘One more thing.’
Bacot had just brought his cup to his lips.
‘I’d like you to be in charge of the plague hospital.’
There was a long pause before Bacot said, ‘I’m sorry, what authority did you say you had here?’
‘I’m the government medical officer for north and central Queensland. The Queensland Government’s given me the authority to make these arrangements. I’m not ordering you to take this on, but you’re the only man with the administrative experience to run a hospital. In fact, the Central Board of Health’s already approved your appointment.’
‘You’re joking.’ Bacot put his cup down with a clatter, spilling quite a bit, a brown stain spreading.
‘No.’
Bacot smiled uncertainly. ‘Impossible.’
‘Why?’
‘I have a real hospital to run.’
‘You’re the best man for the job.’ Turner turned to me. ‘Dr Row?’
‘No question.’
Bacot came around his desk looking ferocious.
Before he could say anything, Turner held up his hand and said, ‘There’s more money. You’ll have to use some of the hospital staff, but I have two hundred pounds for wages, supplies and equipment.’
Bacot was breathing heavily and stopped quite close to Turner’s face. ‘Two hundred pounds?’
‘From the Central Board of Health. The money’s been approved. It can be wired to you immediately. We’re pushing this through quickly, because of the emergency. You’ll buy the supplies you need yourself. Brisbane is taking this very seriously. All you have to do is set up the hospital. You can have someone else there to run it day to day. If you like.’
Bacot said nothing so Turner continued. ‘I expect it’ll be a matter of keeping an eye on things. As I said, the government doctors – that is Dr Row here, Dr Humphry and myself – will be taking full responsibility.’
Bacot rubbed his forehead hard. ‘So I can put a superintendent in there?’
‘You have a budget. It just needs to be organised. As you say, it might not come to human cases.’
‘It won’t, you know.’ He turned around and went back to his chair, and Turner and I departed.
I waited until we’d left the hospital grounds. ‘Was that an ambush?’
‘That’s a colourful expression. Completely inappropriate.’
‘You’d appointed him before you saw him.’
‘It’s his own fault if he didn’t see this coming. The facts are laid out. I’m sure he’ll be happy to do his duty.’
‘I’m not completely sure that he’ll see it your way.’
‘What?’
I held up my hands. ‘You might have handled him better. The man’s highly strung. Those facts are laid out, too, if you’d cared to ask. It could have gone badly, that’s all.’
‘Really?’ said Turner. He looked at me with genuine surprise.
I told Humphry later about the incident. His admiration for Turner seemed to be growing. I also told him Bacot’s theory of a poison epidemic. I had to re-examine my lists.
‘It sounds about as far from an Act of God as you can get,’ said Humphry.
Exactly. Poison would mitigate against an Act of God. I could never be sure that someone hadn’t taken poison and then, their reason impaired, gone out into a thunderstorm or fallen down a well.
‘Or got hit by a buggy,’ said Humphry.
Every suspected Act of God would need an autopsy.
The town was whistling and clanging as we descended into it, the bells at the fire station ringing non-stop.
‘What’s going on?’ Turner’s pace quickened.
We were a block away from the main street when a small dog tore out of a lane in front of us, eyes white and ears flat, its tail sprung beneath the body. A lean kangaroo dog followed and caught up with it easily in the middle of the road and they both went tumbling in the dust. The smaller beast cowered, dropping what it had in its mouth. The large dog went to snatch it, but the small one changed its mind and took hold of an ear. There was a distressing howl, a blur of teeth and dust. A man appeared with a whip and the big dog loped off. The other one reclaimed its soggy grey prize and fled, the rat’s tail swinging from its jaw.
Turner wanted to find more rats and I left him at the Town Hall. I did need to see a dentist.
I’d put it off too long, dreading it. But when I arrived at the shop the barber who, I’d been told, ‘pulled teeth painlessly’ had closed for the day to celebrate the great British victory in South Africa, and the damned tooth had stopped aching anyway. I wandered back to my office, relieved.
I must have left my door open. The curtains were still drawn and I was fumbling for the coat hook when a shape came out of the gloom.
I took a quick step back, ‘Get away,’ and I flapped my arms in front of my face.
‘Steady on,’ said Humphry, striking a match and lighting a cigarette. ‘Is that the way to treat a colleague?’
‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ I was gasping.
‘I was looking for you. Anyway, I don’t have time to hang around while you dawdle in to work.’
‘I had business.’ I put my coat on the hook and straightened it while I recovered.
‘Who did you think I was anyway?’ said Humphry.
‘I’ve had bats in here before.’
‘Well, you keep it like a damned cave.’ Humphry came closer and lowered his voice. ‘I have good news and I have bad news.’
‘Well?’
‘It’s awaiting us in Turner’s office now.’