Juliet Armstrong - Isle of the Hummingbird

by Juliet Armstrong

  For a minute or two Dr. O'Dane was silent.

  'I'll have a try,' he said wearily. 'But how I wish, with all my heart, that Perry was here. If I knew where he was, I'd feel like cabling him to come home—but he's moving around from place to place.'

  She nodded miserably.

  'In any case—to bring him back when he's on a Government mission ——-‘ You couldn't do that without making a stir. Everyone would want to know why he'd come rushing back.' And then she said, still more wretchedly: 'What I'm so afraid of is that this friend of mine, Hugh Woods, may get involved. He's been rather friendly with the people at the Polydore boutique, in the course of business—without having the slightest idea, I'm certain, what they're really doing. If he was here he'd help us, I know.'

  'Well, my dear, as we've got to manage alone we must make the best of it. I'll make a tactful approach to the police, and you'll do what you can with Sally. I'll make a professional call on her tomorrow, when she should be properly awake, and give her something to help her. She'll be feeling like hell—wretched kid!'

  She conjured up a wavering smile.

  'I guess you and I are feeling pretty much like that ourselves,' she said.

  Sally's recovery was accompanied by extreme depression, and by a blank refusal to discuss her shattering experience with anyone. On the first day that she was well enough to get dressed and out on to the loggia she admitted to Bryony, who had been helping her, that she had learned her lesson. But this statement, made in a hard, bitter voice, was as far as she would go. Indeed, when Dr. O'Dane and Bryony tried getting her to tell them who it was who had given her the drug, she became hysterical; and they came to the conclusion that it was not merely a mistaken sense of loyalty that was imposing silence on her, but deadly fear of reprisals.

  The fact that her panic was probably causeless made no difference.

  'We can fix police protection for you—if that's what's worrying you,' Dr. O'Dane had assured her. 'Be a brave girl, and tell us all you can.'

  But Sally, maintaining stubbornly that she wasn't scared at all—a statement contradicted by the sick terror in her eyes—declared that she couldn't and wouldn't chew this wretched business over, and she repeated again: 'I've been a fool, but I've learnt my lesson. That's all there is to it.'

  'It's no good pressing her any more,' Dr. O'Dane told Bryony. 'We'd only push her into a breakdown. All we can hope is that she'll feel differently in a few days.' And then he went on to say that the police could not so far pin anything on the people at the Polydore boutique. They appeared to be carrying on a perfectly legitimate business. However, they knew that drug-peddling was going on in the island, and they were keeping a very careful watch on the place. The trouble was that people who could speak wouldn't, they said. Either they were afraid that supplies of the drug they had learned to crave would dry up or they were terrified of the vengeance that might fall on them if they revealed the channels through which they had obtained it.

  Letters and postcards had been arriving all this time from Peregrine and Anne-Marie, and from Hugh, too, occasionally. Perry appeared to be having an exhausting but mentally stimulating time, and Anne-Marie was doing the round of art exhibitions.

  'This Mr. Heathley who wants to buy my sketch of you,' she wrote to Bryony, 'is still very keen, but I intend to keep it. I look on it as a sort of mascot, and I don't mean to part with it ever. Even though it didn't get me a prize, that "Commended" which it earned has given me faith in myself. I know now that one day I'll be a portrait painter—and I don't care how hard I work to fulfil that ambition.'

  And then she added, as a postscript:

  'I finally told Mr. Heathley, who's quite a considerable artist himself, that if he's so eager for a picture of you, he'd better come over to Trinidad and do one of you himself. And—don't laugh—he thinks it a very good idea. So keep up the face-cream and skin-food routine. He works in oils, not in black and white.'

  A loving letter from Hugh, which expressed a faint hope that he might soon be in Trinidad again, gave Bryony's spirits a much-needed boost. Also for once in a way he provided her with an address where he would quite certainly be able to collect mail, if she wrote in the near future. It was in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, and it cheered her, too, to think that he was not so very far away. Not that Caracas itself was all that near—but from a part of the Trinidad coast one could actually see Venezuela, grey and shadowy—a mere seven miles or so away.

  Obsessed with the idea that he might, on his return to Trinidad, get mixed up, in all innocence, with the dubious crew at the boutique, she wrote at once to warn him in strict confidence against having anything further to do with them. They were under suspicion of drug-peddling, she told him, and the police had the boutique under constant scrutiny. And she finished by asking him earnestly to come and see her at once, if he managed to get to Trinidad. She knew by experience that he had a fund of common sense, and she badly needed advice. It was terrible, all this happening with Peregrine away in America.

  No letter came from him in answer to this, but within a week, a few days before Perry was due to return, he rang her up in the evening, telling her that he had just arrived at the airport.

  'You sounded so worried, darling,' he said, in that gentle attractive voice of his, 'that I felt I must come over at once and see what it's all about. I haven't fixed anywhere to stay yet. My first thought is to get a taxi and drive out to you immediately.'

  He didn't want a meal, he said, in answer to her quick query. He just wanted to see her alone, and find how best he could help her.

  Next to Peregrine, Hugh, Bryony felt, was the best person to advise her. Affection for her would make him eager to do what he could, and though Leoni and the Blavona woman were only business acquaintances, the fact that he knew them at all was of great importance. He might well be instrumental in bringing them to justice. She could not imagine his being in the least alarmed by any threats they might make. He would simply laugh at them.

  As always, one of the surgeries, empty at this hour of patients, seemed the best place for a strictly private conversation, and when he arrived she lost little time in taking him down the colonnade and opening up the place with one of May Wicker's keys. They could, perhaps, have talked in the sitting-room, for both Miss Fanier and Sally had gone to their rooms. But the surgeries afforded more privacy.

  As soon as they were alone he took her in his arms and kissed her, murmuring that he loved her more than ever, that not a day had passed without his thinking of her—longing for her.

  'But we must be sensible,' he said. 'I want to hear all about these worries of yours. The only thing is, I wonder if I could possibly have a short drink. I felt queasy on the plane and had a brandy. But I could well do with another.'

  'Of course!' She hurried back to the house and returned a few minutes later followed by Solomon, carrying in stately fashion a cut-glass decanter of brandy, a syphon and tumblers.

  They both thanked Solomon and he went away, beaming. He had become attached to Bryony and evidently approved of her entertaining a personable boy-friend.

  She wouldn't drink herself but poured a generous tot for Hugh, who sipped it with appreciation. And then she began to tell him, in the strictest confidence, of Sally's terribly disturbing adventure, and of her strong suspicion that Leoni was at the bottom of it. He stared at her in horrified astonishment.

  'I wouldn't have been surprised to hear that he and his relations were up to a few fiddles,' he said. 'But drug-peddling—that's a very different matter. I still can hardly credit it.'

  She elaborated her reasons for distrust of Leoni— telling him how Sally had worried her by seeming to be attracted to him, and how she had disappeared— 'with Leoni and another man, I'm sure'—on the night of a private dance at a city hotel, and been brought home by friends in a state veering between drowsiness and excitability.

  He still looked doubtful.

  'Leoni's a very ordinary type,' he said. 'You might have been mi
staken about those men you glimpsed going into the hotel during that dance. You've no proof, either, that he had anything to do with taking Sally to that house where you eventually found her. If she refuses to talk——'

  'I believe we could have got something out of Bernard, the boy who told her about this party, and then funked going to it himself. But for one thing, he'd have been too scared to say much, and for the other, we're desperately anxious that Sally shouldn't be involved in a scandal. We don't want her dragged into a court case, on any account.'

  He nodded, deep in thought.

  'I quite see all that. But we've got to lay these chaps, whoever they are, by the heels. The idea,' and his voice was indignant now, 'of leaving that poor kid alone in the house because it was too dangerous to try to smuggle her home I Suppose you hadn't got that tip from—what's his name?—Bernard somebody. Can you imagine her gradually coming to herself, and realising her horrible predicament? A house of that sort wouldn't have a telephone—and I suppose she'd be in evening dress——-'

  'I know. Probably the woman from next door would have come in, during the day—but oh, dear!'

  He smiled then.

  ' "Oh, dear" is hardly a strong enough expletive,' he said. Then he added, his expression darkening: 'If I could lay my hands on any of those wretches behind all this, I'd knock the living daylights out of them! Even Leoni, if he proved to be implicated.'

  She offered him some more brandy, but he wouldn't take it, and she said: 'At least you don't seem scared of them. Maybe you could do a little sleuthing on your own.'

  'That's just what I intend to do—without getting in touch with the police until I've definite proof.

  There'll be an element of danger for me, of course— but when I think of those devils getting hold of young boys and girls and encouraging them to try out drugs for a kick, turning them eventually into addicts, I feel I can't wait to bring them to justice.'

  And then he got up.

  'I'll be off now. I've got a taxi ticking up outside. I can't tell you where I'll be staying, because I don't know myself, but I'll find a room in some quiet hotel, and ring you up when I've any news.'

  His arms went round her and she clung to him for a minute.

  'I'll never forget this, Hugh. But, my dear, do be careful.'

  He kissed her.

  'Don't worry, my sweet. This won't be the first time I've been in danger. But I truly believe I've a charmed life.'

  She sighed, 'I hope you're right,' and led him, locking the little building behind her, down the colonnade and out by the front door. And a few moments later she heard the purr of a motor engine and saw the tail-lights of a car. He was on his way back to Port-of-Spain.

  Feeling very proud of him—and very grateful—she went to bed and was soon fast asleep.

  She was very busy next day, or she would have worried at hearing nothing from Hugh. With Peregrine and Anne-Marie due to arrive at the end of the week, there was much to be done in the way of preparations. It was a labour of love, but labour none the less. The house must look as fresh as a new pin, the garden neatened, and there must be great consultations with Tina over the important matter of meals. The returning travellers must have their favourite dishes, simple or elaborate. Nothing, in Tina's view, anyway, could be too much trouble.

  In the middle of everything Laura turned up with

  Welcome Home presents for both of them, done up modishly in cellophane.

  She had been across two or three times to enquire about Sally—knowing, Bryony was certain, rather more about that escapade than appeared. So far Sally had evaded her. Now, however, she brought her, in an ordinary paper bag, what she called a 'cheer up gift'—a box of 'exotic' soap—and asked to see her. And Sally, coming unwillingly into the drawing-room, was obliged to take it from her.

  'It's very kind of you,' she said lamely; then suddenly noticing the trade name—Polydore—on the bag, she changed colour and mumbled awkwardly: 'Sorry, but I never use anything but lavender in the way of perfume. They—they make a fuss at school if one wears anything else.'

  The lameness of her excuse made Laura redden.

  'It would be nice to think that the nuns controlled all your doings during the holiday season,' she said acidly. 'However, I can easily find someone who will appreciate quality soap,' and she held out her hand for it.

  The reference to her doings during the holiday season made Sally look paler and more hunted than ever. She pushed the box into her tormentor's' hands and ran out of the room.

  When she had gone, Laura, seating herself on a straight-backed chair, said, her light blue eyes very angry: 'I warned Peregrine that a girl of twenty-three would be hopeless as a chaperone for his young sisters.'

  'Isn't that for Peregine himself to decide?' Bryony was determined not to lose her temper.

  'Perhaps he doesn't notice how Sally's manners have deteriorated since you came,' was Laura's stiff reply. 'Giving that rude and stupid reason for refusing to take a present from me! But then she's probably getting encouragement from you to dislike me. Knows that it gives you a kick when she's insolent to me.'

  'Mrs. Forrest, that's quite untrue.' Because she owed it to Perry to be polite to his friends—so she felt—she still spoke courteously. 'Sally's going through an awkward age. She's still an adolescent—hardly knows, herself, from one moment to another, how she's going to behave. Needs a lot of patience.'

  'So it seems—from what I hear.' Laura's tone was significant. 'However, there's something else I want to talk to you about. I'm not keeping that woman Lucy—Tina's daughter. She's a good cook, but I feel I can't trust her. She's sly, and I'm paying her up tomorrow and sending her off.'

  Bryony, foreseeing Tina's tears and lamentations, was deeply troubled.

  'Can't you at least keep her until Perry comes back at the end of the week?' she pleaded.

  'No, I can't,' Laura snapped. 'I've another girl coming in a day or two, with an excellent reference, and I don't want the two to meet.'

  'You haven't found Lucy actually dishonest, have you?' Bryony asked anxiously.

  'Well, no,' Laura admitted. 'But I don't like the way she slips off to Port-of-Spain, and comes back with new dresses. Unsuitables ones, at that.'

  'She brings Pearl and Gloria frocks and shoes sometimes,' Bryony told her defensively. 'You pay her well, I'm sure, so that—————'

  'I certainly pay her well,' Laura affirmed coldly. 'And I'm giving her a month's wages in lieu of notice. So really you've no need to concern yourself about her. She can get herself a room in some respectable lodging-house in Port-of-Spain until she finds another job. I'm quite ready to give her a reference.'

  'Perry's anxious to keep her on the straight and level for the sake of Tina and Solomon,' Bryony said miserably. 'If you turn her off, with all that money, she'll get in with her old pals and start treating them—and herself—to rum. And in less than a year she'll turn up and hand over another grandchild for

  Tina to cope with. At least I'm sure that's what Peregrine would say.'

  Laura began to waver.

  'Very well,' she said at last. 'I'm going against my own instinct, but I'll keep her on until I can hand the whole problem over to Perry. I can probably get the other girl in as a housemaid. She calls herself a cook- general, so she probably doesn't mind what she does.'

  Bryony gave a sigh of relief.

  'It's wonderful of you,' she told Laura. 'I'm so very glad.'

  Laura shrugged her shoulders.

  'I suppose I should say I think it's wonderful of you to take so much interest in Lucy,' she said offhandedly. 'I certainly think it surprising.'

  A remark—apparently quite insignificant—which Bryony was to remember one day all too clearly.

  She went to bed that night very tired, and was asleep almost immediately. But after what seemed to her a very short time—in reality three hours or so—she was awakened by Sally touching her gently on her bare arm, and whispering urgently: 'Bryony! There's something going on
outside!' And as Bryony shot up in bed and put out her hand to switch on the light she went on quickly: 'No, don't do that, for God's sake!'

  She was trembling, and Bryony put her arms round her comfortingly.

  'My darling, you've probably had a nightmare,' she murmured.

  'No, indeed. I heard movements near the house. And look, there are lights down in the garden, near the surgeries.'

  Bryony slipped out of bed and peeped through the wrought-iron screen which served as a window. Certainly someone was down there with a torch—a pencil- slim one, she guessed.

  She felt very frightened. With no one in the house beside herself but Sally and Aunt Isabel, it was up to her to deal with the situation. And highly necessary to appear calm.

  'I'll ring the police,' she said quietly. 'Don't get panicky, dear. It will be people trying, as they've done before, to steal drugs from the dispensary.'

  But when she tried to use the telephone she found it was out of order, and knew with sick dismay that the lines had been cut.

  What was she to do? Stay here shivering and let thieves get hold of dangerous drugs to ruin and eventually kill the wretch they corrupted? Have Perry come home to find the dispensary ransacked without anyone making the least attempt to circumvent the burglars?

  She came back to the bedroom, and found Sally sitting crouched in the middle of the bed, her face white in the darkness.

  'I'm going to slip on some jeans and steal down to see what's happening,' she told her softly. 'I've got a torch. And—and I know where Perry keeps his gun.'

  'Bryony, don't be such a fool't' Sally exclaimed in horror. 'It's you that'll get shot.'

  'These people won't be carrying arms. They never do—not the sophisticated ones who go after drugs. The penalties are too heavy if they get caught.' Bryony was pulling on some clothes in the near- darkness. 'Anyway, all I'm hoping to do is to identify them. I shan't produce the revolver except as a last resort.'