In the Teeth of Adversity

by Marian Babson

  They descended the stairs and I told myself I wasn’t interested in these newest figments of the General’s imagination, anyway. Let them have their secrets. The only problem was that I was stuck on guard here, with no clear idea of whom – or what – I should be guarding against. I wondered how Gerry was making out.

  The mutter of voices died away downstairs, leaving the house more silent than ever. Pandora began to purr; that suited her to a T.

  “It’s all very well for you,” I told her. “No worries, no work to do, no problems, spoiled within an inch of your life ...”

  “Prrryeh,” she agreed, slithering down into my arms to blink up at me contentedly.

  The front door opened and shut again. Was it the General going out, Sir Geoffrey abandoning his post, or – I moved to the top of the stairs again. “Penny ?”

  “What’s that?” Inspector Rennolds came into view. “You still here?”

  “Not still,” I corrected, “again. I came back later.” I’d forgotten we’d arranged that late appointment for him. Surely, Penny ought to be back to resume her nursing duties – she wouldn’t have forgotten, she took things like that seriously. On the other hand, she’d said she wanted to take a long walk.

  “Oh!” Just short of the top of the stairs, Rennolds halted. “You’ve got that cat with you.”

  “Prryeh.” Pandora regarded him thoughtfully. He didn’t stamp his feet and he wasn’t shouting. She yawned at him with sleepy approval.

  “She seems different.” Hesitantly, he resumed his progress, drawing even with us. “Friendlier.”

  “You didn’t meet her at her best,” I reminded him. “She was very upset at that show.”

  Pandora’s homely purr throbbed loudly in the stillness. Rennolds advanced cautiously, a man determined not to be disarmed.

  “You can pat her,” I said. “She won’t mind.”

  “No, no.” He shied away, a touch of his old phobia showing. “No time. I’m late for my appointment now.” He glanced toward the surgery door anxiously. “The dentist hasn’t given up on me, has he?” he asked hopefully. “I’m quite late. It couldn’t be helped.”

  “I’m sure he wouldn’t cancel your appointment,” I said.

  He looked as though he’d been afraid of that. For someone who’d been so anxious to get an appointment this afternoon, he was dragging his heels just like the rest of us now that the hour was actually in view.

  “The case is coming along quite well.” He offered the information as though it might bring him some reward – like the miraculous cure of an aching tooth without the necessity of going through any unpleasant mechanics. “We expect developments soon. Possibly an arrest within forty-eight hours.”

  He sounded like an official press release. I wondered if he remembered that I was in that business myself, or whether he was mistaking me for a reporter.

  “That’s fine,” I applauded. “Congratulations. But the dentist is waiting.”

  “I’m aware of that.” He was annoyed, perhaps disappointed. Had he been expecting me to try to pump him for further information? If so, he was going to stay disappointed. I didn’t particularly care who had done the murders so long as it wasn’t my client. And I would be delighted to get the whole thing over with so that I could stop holding Zayle’s hand, riding herd on his wife, and playing soldiers with his father. I wanted to get back to the paying clients again.

  If Zayle was the killer, I didn’t want to know that, either. Not to the point of angling for advance information. The blow would fall soon enough, in that case, and I’d just as soon find out when the rest of the populace did.

  “You might be surprised, you know,” he said.

  “Nothing surprises me,” I said. “Least of all, delaying tactics at the dentist’s.”

  He drew himself up and gave me an et tu, Brute look, although we’d never been on those terms to begin with.

  “All right,” he said with the sort of hauteur Pandora would use if she could talk. “I’m going.”

  He didn’t go in any hurry. He seemed to be hoping I might change my mind and call him back for a nice long gossip. I didn’t.

  Pandora stirred uneasily as the strong whiff of antiseptic eddied out at the opening of the surgery door. I soothed her. She was really fairly relaxed. She seemed to realize that, this time, those strange smells had nothing to do with her. She nestled into a slightly more comfortable position in my arms and went back to sleep.

  I went back to patrolling the empty hallways, up the stairs and down again. Now that Rennolds was gone, I missed him. And all this pacing lent itself too readily to an accompanying brooding. I wondered if the General would notice my absence if I sneaked up another flight and visited Gerry. I doubted that he was enjoying his sentry-go either, and he didn’t even have a sleeping Pandora for company.

  I stopped pacing and listened. There was no sound from below, nor from above. You couldn’t even hear anything stirring in the surgery. They don’t build houses like that anymore. Probably just as well. There’s nothing like total silence for undermining one’s nerves.

  Why was it so quiet downstairs? Had the General suddenly slipped into one of his lucid intervals, aware of the correct time and place, and been persuaded by Sir Geoffrey to roam round to the pub?

  And why was it so quiet upstairs? It was most unlike Gerry. Failing anything else to trip over, he could usually manage to fall over his own feet.

  And why the silence from the surgery? Not that I expected Rennolds to be anything but stoic when faced with the drill, but –

  My mind refused to play anymore. All this was simply masking my real worry. The one I didn’t want to face. Where was Penny?

  I thought I heard a movement, too quiet to be anything but stealthy, downstairs. I moved swiftly to the head of the stairs, peering down, unable to distinguish anything in the darkness below.

  “Penny?” I called softly, but without any real hope.

  I should never have let her go. No matter how much she insisted. At least, I should have made sure she put her coat on first. She wasn’t herself. Even Sir Geoffrey had remarked on it.

  Why hadn’t Sir Geoffrey caught her and brought her back? He was a doctor, wasn’t he? He ought to have recognized she was in no fit condition to go roaming the streets by herself. What kind of a quack was he?

  But my mind wouldn’t let me get away with placing the blame on anyone else. Penny was my responsibility. She was in this because we had asked her to substitute for Zayle’s flu-bedded nurse. She had even stayed late tonight because of the late appointment with Rennolds I had arranged.

  So why wasn’t she here for it? Why had she dashed out on the feeble excuse of needing air? There was more to it than there seemed. Why had she kept using such a curious word as must She must go for a long walk. There was nothing obligatory about going for a walk. She could have got quite enough fresh air standing on the doorstep.

  Distracted though I had been by General Sir Malcolm, I should have been more quick-witted. I should never have let her go. And – there was something else disturbing. What was it? I grappled with recollections of the last hour or so, and then I had it.

  Sir Geoffrey’s snap diagnosis of Penny. “Seemed almost in a daze.” Now that I thought about it, that was the way she had appeared to me, as well. The way she didn’t quite focus, the way she kept repeating words. A daze – or a state of shock.

  A state of shock. That fitted Penny’s condition better than any other explanation. She had come rushing out of that surgery incoherent and desperate to escape to the outside world.

  What had happened in that surgery ?

  What was happening in there now? What had Rennolds walked into?

  I was at the door, turning the handle noiselessly. The door swung inward silently and I slipped just inside, so quietly that no one was aware of my presence.

  I promptly went into a state of shock myself.

  Endicott Zayle had gone raving mad.

  Chapter 15

 
It was worse than I had feared. A nightmare scene far beyond anything a decent, reticent nightmare had ever produced in the haunted, broken hours just before dawn.

  Rennolds slumped in the dental chair, oblivious to everything taking place. Above him, the dentist crouched purposefully, more reminiscent of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street than an honest Harley Street practitioner.

  The aura of evil hovered in the air as the dentist’s drill – armed with the thickest, largest burr, descended toward the unknowing Rennolds.

  For the scene was grotesquely askew: Rennolds was not leaning back against the headrest with his mouth open; the dentist was not concentrating on a discoloured cavity.

  Rennolds was slumped forward. His forehead rested against the porcelain tray of instruments; the vulnerable nape of his neck was exposed to the descending drill.

  Zayle was insane; he had to be. There was a mindless vindictiveness about the act that went beyond revenge – beyond sanity. His figure was almost totally enshrouded by the long white jacket. The surgeon’s cap covered his hair and was pulled low on his forehead. The surgical mask covered the lower half of his face and partially protected his neck. There wasn’t much exposed surface from which he would have to wash the bloodstains before departing.

  He leaned forward, concentrating almost lovingly on the target area. His small, well-shaped hand brushed the indentation at the base of the skull as though testing for the most vulnerable spot. His thumb found it, pointed fingernail digging into it, and the humming drill began its slow descent.

  There was nothing I could do. I stood there, fighting that grim knowledge. At this stage, trying to rush Zayle was useless.

  In another few seconds, the drill would bite deep into that warm, throbbing, mortal flesh. Blood would spurt, and bits of bone and soft grey brain itself would splatter through the room, staining walls, ceiling, and linoleum.

  It was good-bye to Inspector Rennolds. There was no way I could reach him in time.

  Unless –

  The sudden inspiration leaped into my mind and seemed to crackle in the very air like electricity.

  Pandora caught it. She woke abruptly, raising her head to glare at me with bright blue eyes, the pupils of which had narrowed to suspicious slits.

  Sorry, old girl, I apologized to her mentally – and hurled her across the room at the dentist.

  She landed, clawing and spitting, between his shoulder blades, digging for a foothold.

  The drill flew backward from his nerveless hand. Once more, he emitted that curiously high-pitched scream and reeled back, both hands raking desperately behind him to try to dislodge the snarling fury that had attacked him.

  I was across the room in three strides, no longer worried about how much noise I made.

  Pandora leaped clear as I grasped the dentist’s shoulder and spun him into position for a knockout blow.

  Then, just too late to pull my punch, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Zayle. He was lying, curled into foetal position, in the far corner of the room, a peaceful smile on his face.

  My fist cracked into the fragile jaw with full ferocity. As she crumpled to the ground, the surgeon’s cap fell from her head and a dark cascade of curls spilled across the linoleum as she hit the floor.

  I stood there, staring down at her in dazed horror. It wasn’t possible. Why should she –?

  The house was suddenly filled with the sound of running footsteps. From all directions, they converged on the surgery.

  Sir Geoffrey rushed to the dental chair, checked Rennolds’s pulse, nodded with relief, and began giving first aid.

  Adele rushed to Endicott Zayle, calling his name in tones more anxious than I would have expected.

  Gerry came up behind me. “Are you all right?” he asked. Pandora marched up to him for comfort, uttering bitter complaints about the treatment she had received, demanding his sympathy and attention.

  General Sir Malcolm stooped and snatched the surgical mask from the face of the limp figure on the floor and straightened up, beaming with satisfaction.

  “Good lad,” he said approvingly. “You’ve nabbed the traitorous little wench!”

  First things first. While the others administered first aid to the stricken and waited for the police to arrive to deal with Morgana Fane, Gerry and I went looking for Penny.

  We split up outside to quarter the area. Gerry went toward Wigmore Street and I struck off toward the next most likely section.

  I found her walking up and down Marylebone High Street. She didn’t seem to recognize me, but I was prepared for that. This time I knew the reason why.

  “Penny.” I caught her arm gently and halted her aimless progress. “Penny?”

  “I need air.” She tried to pull away. “I must go for a long walk.”

  “Penny.” I was saddened, but not surprised. I had been listening before I left the house, and I had also seen Morgana Fane in action, without knowing it at the time. I knew what had to be done.

  “Penny!” I thrust my hand in front of her face and snapped my fingers sharply. “Come out of it!”

  “Wha –?” Dazedly, she shook her head, looking around us with bewilderment. “Where are we? What are we doing here?”

  “We got caught up in a bad dream,” I said. “But we’re all right now.”

  She began shivering and I held out her coat, which I had brought along. Gerry had borrowed a coat of Adele’s in case he was the one to find her.

  “I don’t understand –” She pulled the coat on gratefully. “I can’t remember –” Wrinkling her forehead, she tried. “I was in the surgery. I had to stay late because Miss Fane was coming for an appointment –”

  Of course that was the reason she would have had to stay late. Doctors and dentists have to protect themselves against possible accusations of sexual misdemeanours which might be brought by female patients – either hysterical or opportunistic – who find themselves alone with a hapless male. That’s why a nurse has to be present. That was why Penny had to work late. Not because of Rennolds’s appointment, but because Morgana Fane was coming back.

  “I don’t understand it all myself,” I said, “but I’m beginning to. Let’s get back to the surgery and find out what else has been going on.”

  I was glad that Morgana Fane had been taken away by the time we returned. The rest of them gathered in the Zayle living quarters.

  Rennolds was still among them, seemingly untouched by his close miss with a sticky fate, if you discounted the spasmodic shudders that shook his whole body at regular intervals. His colleagues had obviously taken one look at him and decided they could wait until morning for his statement. Meanwhile, Sir Geoffrey was making sure the inspector was quietly getting basic treatment for shock. He’d been given a seat so near to the fire that his suit would have been smouldering if he’d been an inch closer; Adele spooned enough sugar into his cup of tea to turn it into syrup; we were all letting him ramble on – the theory being that talking about it helps.

  But he was in a bad way still. He didn’t even seem to notice that Pandora – to score me off – was lying in his lap. He was even stroking her absently – that was the real measure of his condition. In the ordinary way, he’d have shooed her off. Rather, he’d never have let her get near him to begin with.

  “There’d been that early publicity – forgotten over the years,” he was saying, “about her having been discovered in a seaside holiday show. But no one ever went too deeply into just what her act was. It didn’t take much digging, once we’d started, to uncover that she and her partner did a sort of magic act, leaning more on a combination of hypnosis and mind reading than on actual magic.”

  “Damned silly wench!” the General snorted. “Kept waving some sort of medallion under my nose and insisting we’d been playing chess for hours. Knew perfectly well that she’d only just come into the room.”

  I spared a moment of silent compassion for Morgana Fane. Hypnotizing a subject who hop-scotched the decades must have led to nightmares. The po
sthypnotic suggestion only worked sporadically when the General considered himself in the 1914 era he’d been in when she hypnotized him. Whenever he time-travelled to another favourite era, most of what had happened in the previous era was forgotten – or remembered too well. No wonder Morgana had been so upset when the General recently demanded an introduction to her. She had seen her alibi for the time of Tyler Meredith’s death slipping into the oblivion of an old man’s memories. Until that moment, she had not realized how precarious the General’s grasp of reality might be. Or how it might affect her plans.

  “Did she expect to get away with it?” That was a good question, coming from Endicott Zayle. He was such a perfect subject for hypnosis that staring into Pandora’s eyes had practically sent him into another trance. At the faintest murmur of a posthypnotic suggestion from Morgana Fane, he’d have started down Oxford Street starkers and on all fours. Except that she’d undoubtedly had a more sinister fate planned for him.

  “The weight of circumstantial evidence would have been against you.” Rennolds shuddered abruptly again. “She’d have redressed you in the bloodstained clothing and you’d have been found there with me – with my body.”

  Pandora stirred and complained. She hadn’t bargained for earthquakes when she climbed into that sheltering lap.

  “She’d probably have convinced you that you’d done it,” I told Endicott Zayle, remembering bitterly the struggles I’d been through because his mind had seized upon the notion that I needed emergency treatment. I must have said the wrong thing to him somewhere along the line, since he’d come out of that trance with the firm impression that our cover story was genuine.

  “Nonsense!” His eyes flicked guiltily around the room. “I’m not that weak-minded.”

  “She convinced you that she was lying dead in your dental chair and got you out of the way so that she could murder your partner,” I reminded him. But even though she had planted firmly in his mind the command that he must not go near the police, she had not been able to quell the sense of self-preservation that had sent him scurrying to his public relations men to put the best face on his hallucinatory problem. Perhaps Endicott Zayle might not have come out of it so badly after all.