CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE SISTER’S STORY
A strange sensation crept over me, for I suddenly felt that my brain, dazed by that subtle odour of pot-pourri, was slowly unclouding—ever so slowly—until, to my amazement, I found myself seated upon a garden chair on a long veranda which overlooked a sloping garden, with the blue-green sunlit sea beyond.
Of the lapse of time I have no idea to this day; nor have I any knowledge of what happened to me.
All I am able to relate is the fact that I found myself in overcoat and hat seated upon a long terrace in the noon sunlight of winter.
I gazed around, utterly astonished. The clothes I wore seemed coarse and unfamiliar. My hand went to my chin, when I found that I had grown a beard! My surroundings were strange and mysterious. The houses on either side were white and inartistic, with sloping roofs and square windows. They were foreign—evidently French!
The shrill siren of a factory sounded somewhere, releasing the workers. Far away before me a steamer away on the horizon left a long trail of smoke behind, while here and there showed the brown sails of fishing boats.
I rose from my seat, filled with curiosity, and glanced at the house before which I stood. It was a big square building of red brick with many square windows. It seemed like a hospital or institution.
That it was the former was quickly revealed, for a few moments after I had risen, a nursing-sister in a tri-winged linen head-dress appeared and spoke kindly to me, asking in French how I felt on that glorious morning.
“I am quite all right,” was my reply in French. “But where am I?” I inquired, utterly dazed.
“Never mind, m’sieur, where you are,” replied the stout, middle-aged woman in blue uniform and broad collar. “You have only to get better.”
“But I am better,” I protested. “I lost consciousness in London—and now I awake here to find myself—where?”
“You are in good hands, so why trouble?” asked the Sister very kindly. “You are upset, I know. Do not worry. Take things quite easily. Do not try to recall the past.”
“The past!” I cried. “What has passed—eh? What has happened since I went through Stretton Street the other night?”
The Sister smiled at me. She seemed inclined to humour me—as she would a child.
“Do not perturb yourself, I beg of you,” she said in a sympathetic voice. “There is really no need for it. Only just remain calm—and all will be right.”
“But you do not explain, Sister,” I said. “Why am I here? And where am I?” I asked, gazing vacantly around me.
“You are with friends—friends who have looked after you,” was her reply. “We are all very sorry for your motor accident.”
“Motor accident!” I echoed. “I have had no motor accident.”
Again the dark-eyed woman smiled in disbelief, and it annoyed me. Indeed, it goaded me to anger.
“But you told us all about it. How you started out from the Quay at Boulogne late at night to drive to Abbeville, and how your hired chauffeur held you up, and left you at the roadside,” she said. “Yet the curious fact about your strange story is the money.”
“Money! What money?” I gasped, utterly astounded by the Sister’s remark.
“The money they found upon you, a packet of bank notes. The police have the five thousand pounds in English money, I believe.”
“The police! Why?” I asked.
“No,” she said, smiling, and still humouring me as though I were a child. “Don’t bother about it now. You are a little better to-day. To-morrow we will talk of it all.”
“But where am I?” I demanded, still bewildered.
“You are in St. Malo,” was her slow reply.
“St. Malo!” I echoed. “How did I get here? I have no remembrance of it.”
“Of course you have not,” replied the kindly woman in the cool-looking head-dress. “You are only just recovering.”
“From what?”
“From loss of memory, and—well, the doctors say you have suffered from a complete nervous breakdown.”
I was aghast, scarce believing myself to be in my senses, and at the same time wondering if it were not all a dream. But no! Gradually all the events of that night in Stretton Street arose before me. I saw them again in every detail—Oswald De Gex, his servant, Horton, and the dead girl, pale but very beautiful, as she lay with closed eyes upon her deathbed.
I recollected, too, the certificate I had given for payment—those notes which the police held in safe custody.
The whole adventure seemed a hideous nightmare. And yet it was all so real.
But how did I come to be in St. Malo? How did I travel from London?
“Sister,” I said presently. “What is the date of to-day?”
“The eleventh of December,” she replied.
The affair at Stretton Street had occurred on the night of November 7th, over a month before!
“And how long have I been here?”
“Nearly three weeks,” was her answer.
Was it really possible that I had been lost for the previous ten days or so?
I tried to obtain some further facts from my nurse, but she refused to satisfy my curiosity.
“I have been ordered by the doctors to keep you very quiet,” she said. “Please do not ask me to break my promise. You will be much better to-morrow—and they will tell you everything.”
“But mine is a strange case, is it not?” I asked.
“Very strange,” she admitted. “We have all been much puzzled concerning you.”
“Then why not tell me all the circumstances now? Why keep me in suspense?” I urged.
“Because you have not yet quite recovered. You are not entirely yourself. Come,” she added kindly, “let us take a little walk. It will do you good for the weather is so lovely to-day.”
At her suggestion I strolled by her side through the pleasant grounds of the hospital, down into St. Malo, the busy streets of which were, however, entirely unfamiliar to me. Yet, according to the Sister, I had walked in them a number of times before. Still, I had no recollection of doing so.
“I am taking you for your favourite stroll,” she said, as we went down one of the steep, tortuous streets to the little Place Châteaubriand in front of the ancient castle, which, she told me, was now a barracks.
Presently she mounted to the ramparts, and as we strolled round them, I admired the beautiful view of the sea, the many islets, and the curious appearance of the town. The tide was up, and the view on that sunny December morning was glorious.
At one point where we halted my nurse pointed out the little summer town of Dinard and St. Enogat, and told me the names of the various islets rising from the sea, Les Herbiers, the Grand Jardin, La Conchée, and all the rest.
But I walked those ramparts like a man in a dream. A new life had, in that past hour, opened up to me. What had occurred since I had accepted that bundle of bank notes from the millionaire’s hand I did not know. I had emerged from the darkness of unconsciousness into the knowledge of things about me, and found myself amid surroundings which I had never before known—in a French hospital where they evidently viewed me as an interesting “case.”
I stood against the wall and gazed about. My habit was to carry my cigarette-case in my upper waistcoat pocket. Instinctively I felt for it, and it was there. It was not my own silver case, but a big nickel one, yet in it there were some of my own brand.
I looked inquiringly at my nurse.
She smiled, saying:
“You haven’t many left. Why can’t you smoke some other brand? You always insist upon that one. I had so much difficulty in getting them for you yesterday!”
“They are my own particular fancy,” I said, tapping one of them upon the case before lighting it.
“I know. But here, in France, they are most difficult to get. The other day you said you had smoked them all through the war, and even when you were in Italy you had had them sent out to you from London.”
That was quite correct.
“Well, Sister,” I laughed. “I have no recollection of saying that, but it is perfectly true. It seems that only this morning I regained consciousness.”
“Professor Thillot said you would. Others gave you up, but he declared that after careful nursing your memory would regain its normal balance.”
“Who is Professor Thillot?”
“The great nerve specialist of Paris. The police engaged him to come to see you. He was here ten days ago, and he put you under my charge.”
I laughed.
“Then I am still an interesting case, Sister—eh?”
“Yes. You certainly are.”
“But do tell me more of what I am in ignorance,” I implored. “I want to know how I came here—in France—when I lost all consciousness in a house just off Park Lane, in London.”
“To-morrow,” she said, firmly, but kindly. She was a charming woman, whose name she gave me as Sœur Marie.
We strolled back to the hospital, but on the way along the Quai Duguay-Trouin—I noticed it written up—I became again confused. My vision was not as it should have been, and my memory seemed blurred, even of the happenings of the past hour.
My nurse chatted as we walked together through the streets, but I know that my answers were unintelligible. I felt I was not myself. All my senses were keen as far as I could gauge—all save that of my memory of the past.
As I ascended through the pretty grounds of the hospital, the Sister beside me, I felt a curious failing of my heart. I experienced a sensation which I cannot here describe, as of one who had lost all interest in life, and who longed for death.
There may be some among my readers who have experienced it, perhaps. I cannot describe it; I merely explain that I felt inert, inefficient, and bored with life.
No such feeling had ever fallen upon me before. Hitherto I had been quick, alert, and full of the enjoyment of living. At Rivermead Mansions Harry Hambledon and I had prided ourselves on our post-war alertness.
Where was Harry? What was he doing? Would he be wondering why I was absent from our riparian bachelor home?
I was reflecting upon all this when suddenly, without any apparent cause, I once more lost consciousness. We were at that moment entering the door of the hospital and the Sister had just exclaimed:
“Now, do remain quite quiet and not worry over the past. It will all be right to-morrow,” she urged.
I know not what words I uttered in reply. A curious sense of oppression had fallen upon me, a hot, burning feeling as though my skull was filled with molten metal, while at the back of my neck was a sharp excruciating pain which caused me to hold my breath.
The Sister apparently noticed my sudden relapse, for she expressed a hope that I was not feeling worse. I tried to reassure her that I was all right, but I know I failed to do so, for once again I lost all knowledge of things about me.
After that I recollect nothing more. Probably I walked on mechanically back to my bed.
When my lapse had passed, and I again regained consciousness, I found myself in bed gazing up at the ceiling. On either side of me were men, also in bed. They were talking in French.
I listened, and in a few seconds I recollected the events of the previous day. Then a sharp-featured nurse, whom I had not seen before, told us it was time to dress. I obeyed, but my clothes were entirely unfamiliar. They were coarse and did not fit me.
While I washed I burst out laughing. The humour of the situation struck me as distinctly amusing. At one hour I was myself; at the next I was another being!
Was my case that of Jekyll and Hyde?
I knew, and I felt keenly about it, that I had accepted a bribe to perform an illicit service. I had posed as a medical man and given a certificate of death. But my one and only object in life was to see Mr. De Gex and demand of him a full explanation of the amazing and suspicious circumstances.
My lapses were intermittent. At times I was fully conscious of the past. At others my brain was awhirl and aflame. I could think of nothing, see nothing—only distorted visions of things about me.
Apparently twenty-four hours had passed since I walked in the sunshine.
The men in the hospital ward were all Frenchmen, apparently of the lower class. At one end of the room a heated argument was in progress in which four or five men were gesticulating and wrangling, while one man was seated on his bed laughing idiotically, it seemed, at his own thoughts.
Presently a tall thin man in spectacles entered, and addressing me, asked me to follow him.
I obeyed, and he conducted me to a small kind of office in which two men were standing. Both were middle-aged, and of official aspect.
Having given me a chair they all seated themselves when the thin man—who I rightly judged to be the director of the hospital—commenced to interrogate me.
“How do you feel to-day?” was his first question, which he put in French in a quiet, kindly manner.
“I feel much better,” was my reply. “But yesterday my nurse revealed to me some very extraordinary facts concerning myself.”
“Yes. You have been seriously ill,” he said. “But now you are better these gentlemen wish to put a few questions to you.”
“They are police officers, I presume.”
The director nodded in the affirmative.
“We wish to ascertain exactly what happened to you, monsieur,” exclaimed the elder of the pair.
“I really don’t know,” I replied. “I must have lost all consciousness in London, and”
“In London!” exclaimed Monsieur Leullier, the Prefect of Police, in great surprise. “Then how came you here in St. Malo?”
“I have not the slightest idea,” was my reply. “I only presume that I was found here.”
“You were. A fish-porter passing along the Quay St. Vincent at about two o’clock in the morning found you seated on the ground with your back to the wall, moaning as though in pain. He called the police and you were removed on the ambulance to the hospital here. The doctors found that you were in no pain, but that you could give no intelligible account of yourself.”
“What did I tell them?”
“Oh! a number of silly stories. At one moment you said you had come from Italy. Then you said that you had hired a motor-car and the driver had attacked you in the night. Afterwards you believed yourself to be in some office, and talked about electrical engineering.”
“That is my profession,” I said. And I told them my name and my address in London, facts which the police carefully set down.
“You told us that your name was Henry Aitken, and that you lived mostly in Italy—at some place near Rome. We have made inquiries by telegraph of a number of people whom you have mentioned, but all their replies have been in the negative,” said the police official.
“Well, I am now entirely in possession of my full senses,” I declared. “But how I got to France I have not the slightest knowledge. I lost consciousness in a house in Stretton Street, in London. Since then I have known nothing—until yesterday.”
“In what circumstances did you lapse into unconsciousness?” asked the doctor, looking intently at me through his glasses, for mine was no doubt an extremely interesting case. “What do you remember? Did you receive any sudden shock?”
I explained that being on a visit to a friend—as I designated Oswald De Gex—his niece died very suddenly. And after that I became unconscious.
The Prefect of Police naturally became very inquisitive, but I preferred not to satisfy his curiosity. My intention was to return to London and demand from De Gex a full explanation of what had actually occurred on that fatal night. I was full of suspicion regarding the sudden death of his niece, Gabrielle Engledue.
The police official told me that from my clothes all the tabs bearing the tailor’s name had been removed, and also the laundry marks from my underclothes. There was nothing upon me that could possibly establish my identity, though in my pocket was found five thousand pounds in bank notes—which he handed to me. They were intact—the same notes which De Gex has given me in return for the false death certificate I had signed.
I sat utterly aghast at the story of my discovery, of the many attempts made to establish my identity, of the visit of the British Vice-Consul to the hospital, and of his kindness towards me. It seemed that he had questioned me closely, but I had told an utterly fantastic story.
Indeed, as I sat there, I felt that neither of my three interrogators believed a single word of the truth I related. Yet, after all, I was not revealing the whole truth.
Certain recollections which I would have forgotten came to me. I had, I knew, committed a very serious criminal offence in posing as a medical man and giving that death certificate. Possibly I had been an accessory to some great crime—the crime of murder!
That thought held me anxious and filled me with fear.
The Prefect of Police seemed entirely dissatisfied with my explanation, nevertheless he was compelled to accept it, and an hour later I was released from the hospital. Before leaving, however, I was shown the register in which I had signed my name as “Henry Aitken.” This I erased and substituted my own name.
Then I thanked the tall, thin director and walked out into the streets of St. Malo a changed man.