Juliet Armstrong - Isle of the Hummingbird

by Juliet Armstrong

  CHAPTER NINE

  The great day arrived, and off went Perry and Anne- Marie in the great airliner, leaving a somewhat depressed trio at the airport. A month seemed a very long time to be without the travellers.

  They had had a fine send-off, for the choice of so young a doctor as Peregrine Gray for this important mission had aroused the attention of Press and radio. Several of the foremost medical men on the island had turned up, too, to wish him well—including his partners, Dr. O'Dane and Dr. Leonard, and their wives. He was the hero of the moment.

  Mrs. O'Dane, realising how flat the left behind members of the Gray household must be feeling, proposed a bathing picnic at Maracas Bay. As it was the middle of the week it would not be too crowded, and though it was a long way to come, they had plenty of time. Her husband, of course, would not be able to join them. He and Dr. Leonard would be working extra hard in Perry's absence. But the boys had already talked about going there today, so it would be quite a cheery party—with Aunt Isabel, of course, included.

  The invitation met ready acceptance—though Sally was more polite than enthusiastic. She had seen very little of the O'Dane boys since the night of Bernard's birthday party—and probably, so Bryony thought, was feeling unsure of her welcome.

  However, David and Kenneth seemed to have shed any grievances they had been cherishing. They brought along a girl of about the same age as Sally, from a different school. And the youngest O'Dane brother, not yet liking the company of girls, had a small boy with him.

  'You're the unlucky one, Bryony,' Aunt Isabel told her, as they set off in two cars. 'Mrs. O'Dane and I don't mind being on the shelf—at least I don't—but you should have that charming friend of yours, Hugh Woods, with you.'

  It had already occurred to Bryony—and indeed it often did—that it would be very pleasant to have Hugh around. But she was a little shy at having his name passed round so freely, and said lightly: 'He's travelling round South America. Goodness knows when he'll be in Trinidad again.'

  'Well, it's a pity,' Aunt Isabel affirmed. 'It's not so bad when Perry's here. But a girl of twenty-three ought not to be without a personable escort.'

  'Hear, hear I' came Kenneth's amused voice from the back of the car. 'And if I were five years older I'd certainly be pressing a claim I'

  Things went very well that afternoon, and Bryony felt hopeful that this month without Perry would pass peacefully and uneventfully. Sally seemed to be getting along happily with these redheaded O'Dane boys and with Mary Sim, the delightful schoolgirl they had invited to their picnic. She must fix some sort of return entertainment—another barbecue, or perhaps a visit to the Little Carib Theatre—using some of the money Perry had left with her for spending on treats during his absence.

  For ten days or so all seemed set fair. And then Sally began to show signs of restiveness, to say once again that the O'Dane boys and their friends were too unsophisticated for her: that she wanted friends of twenty-four and twenty-five, to stimulate and amuse her.

  This restless mood was not improved by a jubilant air letter from Anne-Marie announcing that she had been offered quite a high price for the original of her sketch of Bryony. The fact that the man, an American, who wanted to buy it was influenced by its happening to resemble someone he used to know, rather than by its artistic merit, did not help. The jealousy she had been trying so hard to smother rose up again, shown not so much in words as in thoroughly tiresome behaviour.

  The climax came when she wanted to go to a party with Bernard, given by some acquaintances of his. This time there was no question of chaperonage by his parents, nor any clear indication where the affair was to be held. And having rung up Mrs. Glynn and found that she did not even know who was behind the entertainment, Bryony told Sally, with all the tact and kindliness she could show—but with firmness, too— that she could not possibly allow her to go.

  To her relief Sally did not argue over her decision. She shrugged her shoulders, muttered a sullen, 'O.K.', and said no more on the subject.

  And then the awful thing happened.

  After an early night Sally failed to put in an appearance at breakfast, and when Bryony went to see if she had overslept she found, to her sick dismay, that the room was empty—that the bed had not been occupied.

  A glance showed her the clothes that the girl had worn the previous evening thrown anyhow on a chair. And when she flung open the wardrobe door and pulled out the hangers she saw at once that the white and silver dress was missing.

  Her first instinct was to call the police, but she decided against it. Perry had told her that in any real trouble she was to get in touch with one of his partners—Dr. O'Dane, preferably, as he lived nearer the Grays' house than Dr. Leonard. And, thankful that Miss Fanier was having breakfast in bed, she hurried down the colonnade and into the little building which housed the dispensary and the two surgeries, where May Wicker was opening up for the day.

  m

  'May, I want to make a very private and personal telephone call,' she said, trying to sound calm. 'Will you give Perry's surgery over to me for a few minutes?'

  'Of course!' May produced a key and opened the door. And then she added: 'I don't want to seem inquisitive, but I hope there's nothing seriously wrong. You look ghastly.'

  'I'll tell you presently, May. But meanwhile I want to be alone for a minute or two.'

  'That's all right.' And May, with a look of concern in her protuberant grey eyes, went into the other surgery and got busy with her feather duster.

  Dr. O'Dane, summoned from under the shower by his wife, barked out a few words, but they were such as to give Bryony great comfort. He'd be along in a matter of minutes. She came out of the surgery looking a shade less ill and said to May: 'Can you give me your word to keep what I'm going to tell you a dead secret?'

  May nodded. Always a pale little person, her face was now as chalk-white as Bryony's.

  'Sally's vanished. She went to her room about nine o'clock, but never went to bed.'

  'Good lord, what a terribly naughty girl she is! To run off, with her brother away and all!'

  'She certainly wouldn't have done it if Perry had been around. Nor if she had had any affection for me whatever.' Bryony's tone was bitter. 'But I must go. Dr. O'Dane's coming at once to see me.'

  Helping herself to a cup of strong coffee, Bryony went to sit on the front veranda, desperately anxious for a sight of Dr. O'Dane. But she could not sit still, and wandered about the garden in a turmoil of distress, until at last, hearing a car coming up the drive, she went again to the front of the house.

  Hoping that Miss Fanier would not get up too soon, Bryony took the doctor into the big drawing-room and told him of her guess about the original cause of Sally's escapade—that she wanted to go to a party which sounded very odd indeed, and which Bryony had told her she was not on any account to attend.

  'I understood that she had accepted my ruling— even if ungraciously. But I suppose she made up her mind to slip out when we had all gone to our rooms and creep back in the early hours. I can't believe that she intended to run away altogether.'

  'She must have arranged for someone to pick her up—a little way down the road, probably. But you can soon see if she's meaning to stay away by what she's taken with her.'

  'She meant to come back after the party, I'm sure. I sent a quick look round when I found she was missing, and her wardrobe was full of clothes. Only her newest evening frock had gone. She must have left wearing that.'

  'Have you rung up the Glynn family?'

  She shook her head, very near tears.

  'All I could think of was to do what Perry said—in any real fix, telephone Dr. O'Dane. In any case, the Glynns surely wouldn't keep Sally there all night without letting us know.'

  'Come along to the surgery before patients start to arrive, and we'll do some private telephoning,' he said kindly. 'And don't be sore with yourself because you haven't acted exactly like a sleuth in a crime novel. Better to do too little than too much.'r />
  At the Glynns' house they learned from Bernard that he had changed his mind about going to the party, and had strongly advised Sally to do the same. But he had been well snubbed for his pains. Sally had told him he was nothing but an overgrown schoolboy —which, considering she was still at school herself——-

  However, when they managed to cut short his grievances they collected a valuable piece of information from him—the address of the house, in a suburb of Port-of-Spain, where the party was being held.

  'I'll leave a note for Leonard to cope with my patients,' Dr. O'Dane said crisply. 'You and I will go straight to this place and see what we can discover. It's better than contacting the police at this stage. We don't want things getting into the papers.'

  'Fine. I'll pop in and tell Miss Fanier you're running me into Port-of-Spain before the traffic starts— and won't wait for questions and comments. She'll think it's for urgent shopping—I hope!'

  The shabby, old-fashioned house to which they drove had all the appearance of a cheap pension, and so, it appeared, it had been until recently—according to a bedraggled woman from next door who came over to speak to them.

  A Mrs. Benson-Smith, who had run it for some years, had recently gone to Tobago to live and had left it to be sold just as it stood—fully furnished— with the idea that it would fetch more that way. Meanwhile it could be let furnished for short periods if a proper rent was paid in advance.

  'Paid to me,' she explained. 'And I done let it a week ago to folks who only wanted to use it in the evenings—for parties and such like, as it's turned out. I doubted whether I should have agreed, but the money was right, and I must say they've been quiet enough.'

  'Have you a key?' Dr. O'Dane asked her.

  'Well, yes, sir. And if you're thinking of renting it later on, I'll take you over. There'll be no one there now.'

  The three of them went into the hot, airless house, and the woman opened a door.

  'This is the sitting-room,' she began, and then uttered a cry of horror. 'If there isn't a girl here!' she exclaimed. 'Dead, by the look of it!'

  But the girl in the white and silver dress, lying on the wicker settee, was alive and breathing heavily. And Dr. O'Dane lifted her up in his arms, holding her like a baby.

  'I thought she might be here,' he said. 'I'm taking her home, and when I've done that I shall ring the police. They may be interested in the kind of party that's been going on here just lately.'

  Gently and carefully Dr. O'Dane put Sally into the back of the car, in such a position that no one would be able to see her as they drove home.

  'I'm pretty sure I know what she's been doped with,' he told Bryony brusquely. 'Sodium Amytal. If necessary I'll give her some treatment when we get back. But the odds are that nature will do the trick. She'll sleep it off eventually. And then we'll have to see that she never touches the stuff again.'

  Bryony remembered that drowsiness from which Sally had suffered the day following Bernard's birthday party—drowsiness, alternating with unreasonable fits of anger—and she asked Dr. O'Dane if his boys had ever said anything about the girl's behaviour on that occasion.

  He shook his head.

  'I had the feeling that they were annoyed with her. But you know the way these young things quarrel, and make it up again.'

  'I'm pretty sure now that she'd been drugged then,' Bryony said.

  The doctor looked incredulous.

  ''Impossible. Perry would have spotted it right away!'

  'She probably had the tiniest possible dose. And Perry didn't see her until she was running around again. The rest of us took it for granted that she was over-tired. She's a very temperamental girl.'

  'Well, I don't see how anything like that could have happened at what appears to have been a conventionally respectable dance. However, I'll get hold of David, and see if he can throw any light on the situation. I'll do that before I contact the police. The last thing we want is publicity.'

  They reached home in record time, and now it was impossible to keep Miss Fanier in the dark—nor Tina and Solomon who, having tumbled to the fact that there was something wrong, were hanging about anxiously.

  The presence of Dr. O'Dane had an almost mesmeric effect in preventing anything in the nature of an hysterical outburst.

  Guided by Bryony, he carried Sally into her room and deposited her on the bed; then returning, told Miss Fanier and the servants, who were all looking dazed with horror: 'She's all right. Needs a long sleep, that's all. Miss Fanier, I know you'll not say a word about this. And you, Tina and Solomon, you love the Gray family, I know. For the sake of all of them—and of Dr. Peregrine especially—not a syllable to anyone, please.'

  'You can trust us, Doctor I' The tears were running down Tina's fat cheeks. 'But if anyone done Mis' Sally wrong, no punishment too bad for dem. When Doctor Perry away an' all.'

  'Don' let dem chillen see yo' cryin', Tina,' Solomon said softly. 'I'll send dem up the garden for a while to pick beans, so's you can wipe yo' face good an' nice.'

  When they had gone, Dr. O'Dane reiterated his view that they must think twice about contacting the police.

  'You know how these things leak out,' he said! 'That woman who let us in to the house will probably keep her mouth shut. It's still not unknown for anyone regarded as an informer to have acid splashed over their face, and that's something no one wants to risk. But someone else may have caught a glimpse of my carrying Sally into the car—and that's enough to start a whisper!'

  'What are we to do?' Aunt Isabel asked desperately. 'I've always heard that once people have taken drugs, they'll do anything—absolutely anything—to get more. There must be a gang behind this, and they ought to be trapped.'

  'Of course. The best way to do it is what we must decide. Now I suggest you and Bryony get Sally undressed and put into bed. Then before she's really awake cart away all her clothes, except the nightdress she's wearing—all footwear of any kind, particularly —and lock it away where she can't possibly get at it. Bryony had better keep the key round her neck.'

  'Do you think there's any danger of someone trying to kidnap her?' Aunt Isabel demanded, wide-eyed.

  'None whatever! If that had been in their minds they would have spirited her away from that house, not left her there where she was bound to be found, sooner or later. No, the danger is of her trying to run away—when she wakes up to the disgrace she's brought on her family—and possibly to a craving for more of that drug.'

  He looked across at Bryony.

  'I'll have a word with David later today, and will probably bring him over. And now it's more than high time I got on with my normal work.'

  That evening when the patients had all gone Dr. O'Dane brought his eldest boy, David, across to the surgery for a quiet talk with Bryony. He hadn't, at first, wanted to answer any questions about that night of Bernard's party, only consenting to do so when he learned that there were serious issues involved.

  He said now that he and Sally and some friends were in the bar drinking cokes when a couple of men, one of whom Sally already seemed to know, began talking to her, and presently invited her to go for a short run with them, by way of getting a breath of fresh air. He had tried to persuade her against it, pointing out how late it was—but she had laughed and told him not to fuss, that she'd be back in no time.

  Well, she hadn't come. He and Kenneth had got really worried. But at last, when the dance was well over, she had turned up in a very odd mood.

  'I ticked her off,' he said, 'and she was furious— though I'm sure she was really ashamed of herself. We told her on the way home that we never wanted to go anywhere with her again——————— ' And then he finished lamely, with a shrug of his shoulders: 'But you know how it is! You can't keep these feuds up indefinitely. We've known each other since kindergarten days.'

  'We think she was with the same people last night,' his father told him heavily. 'There's evidently a set here where drug-peddling's going on. They arranged to fetch her last night, ve
ry late, to what they called a party. Probably left the car up the road a bit so that no one would hear anything.'

  'And when did they bring her back?' David asked, his eyes wide.

  'They didn't.' Dr. O'Dane spoke with great bitterness. 'She must have more or less passed out this time, and they would realise that it would be quite impossible to get her home and into her own room without arousing the household. So they left her lying on a settee, and cleared out. And you can bet they'll never go near the place again.'

  'David, you won't tell anyone about this?' Bryony spoke with passionate earnestness. 'It could easily blow up into a first-class scandal. But if the police wanted you to identify those two men who persuaded Sally to go off with them, that night of Bernard's party, I suppose you could do so.'

  'I'm sure I could—though they were very ordinary- looking chaps. The island's full of them.'

  'O.K., Dave, we needn't worry you about anything else,' his father said, and when the boy had gone he remarked sombrely: 'Blest if I know what's the best thing to do. Those chaps should be nabbed and brought to trial. But how to move without getting the spotlight on to Sally, I just don't know.'

  'If we could coax her, when she recovers, to give the police information enabling them to pounce on the gang, they might keep her out of any case that came up.' Bryony was thinking hard. 'It shouldn't be too difficult, surely, to get a search warrant.'

  Dr. O'Dane looked doubtful.

  'In the first place, it will probably be well-nigh impossible to get Sally talking. She may have a crazy sense of loyalty—or she may be too frightened of reprisals. So where can they start searching?'

  She looked at him steadily.

  'If you could drop them a strong hint to keep their eye on that little boutique in Port-of-Spain where one Polydore runs a hairdressing section, they might get all the evidence of drug-peddling they want without Sally's name being mentioned at all. I've always felt there was something very wrong about that place. And I'm sure a young man called Leoni, who sells clothes there, is one of the ring-leaders in the racket.' She hesitated, then went on: 'I actually caught sight of him and another man going into the hotel where Bernard's party was in full swing. I don't say that their meeting with Sally was prearranged on this occasion, but I'm certain that they were the two who took her off, on the pretence of a drive—and gave her some sort of drug.'