Seaside Hospital

by Pauline Ash

  “The police!” Lisa echoed, and looked down again at the jeweled clip.

  “It’ll be all right if there’s nothing here,” Jacky said, her confidence returning as always, when Lisa was there to manage things. “All I have to do is to say I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Does Derek Frenton know you have it?” Lisa asked.

  Jacky’s glance was withering. “Of course he doesn’t! If he ever suspected, it would ruin everything, as far as I’m concerned,” and Lisa noticed that for the first time Jacky looked genuinely worried. Jacky was remembering the way Derek had reacted when she had suggested running away to get married. She must tread carefully, now more than ever!

  “What am I supposed to do with it?” Lisa demanded.

  “Oh, you’ll think of something. The best thing to do would be to put it back somehow, of course, only that would be tricky,” Jacky mused, chewing her lip. Then, brightening, she added, “Best take it back to the hospital with you. In any case, the police would never think of searching the nurses’ residence at St. Mildred’s. Now don’t argue, Lisa darling—think of something, but get out of here now. There’s the callboy. I’m on in two minutes.”

  Lisa found herself in the passage outside, with the clip still in her hand. Hurriedly she put it into her purse, feeling almost as if it were burning a hole in her palm.

  Somehow she descended the little winding iron stairway and out into the street. Her legs felt like rubber and her mouth was dry. This wasn’t the first time Jacky had called on her to get her out of a scrape, but it was the first time she had ever had something in her possession that was so valuable and that was known to have been stolen.

  Stark anxiety for Jacky pushed the horror of her own position to the back of her mind. How could she make Jacky see that she was doing wrong, she wondered desperately, that this wasn’t borrowing but just plain theft?

  Who could she turn to for advice and help? Who would be prepared to advise her, without informing the police? Mary? No, she was a dear, but not responsible enough to trust with such a secret or to give useful advice. Lisa could think of no one else, and in bewilderment she realized that she could not handle this alone. It needed a man's help.

  Like a bell ringing, the answer came. Ellard Lindon, who knew of Jacky’s past activities, and who, in spite of everything, hadn’t gone to the police! Surely he was the one to approach, the only one. Lisa felt a wave of relief, as she recalled how tenderly he had talked to her that last time, sweeping aside all her former instinctive distrust of him in that one short conversation before he had bought her the powder compact.

  She went to a booth and telephoned him.

  “Something’s happened, Lisa,” he said at once, catching the distress in her voice. “I’m at home all evening. Come on over, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

  Ellard was waiting for her in the vestibule of his hotel, ready to take her at once to the bar, but she protested.

  “I don’t want a drink,” she said, but her teeth were chattering and she felt cold. When he swept aside her arguments and made her tackle the scorching liquid, she felt better.

  “Ellard, what I want to talk to you about is awfully personal and private,” she said, looking doubtfully at the crowds about them.

  “Better come with me where it’s quiet and we won’t be interrupted, then,” he said, in a voice that brooked no argument.

  She had had no food for hours, and the unaccustomed drink had made her head feel muzzy.

  She followed him blindly, only too glad and thankful to have found someone she could unload her trouble onto without fear.

  “This is my sitting room, Lisa,” Ellard said, and he threw open a door to reveal a room with a settee and two armchairs.

  “Now come on in and sit down and tell me what’s made you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” he said.

  She sank into one of the armchairs, and he took a chair facing her and offered her a cigarette. Watching him light his own, Lisa felt it all seemed so perfectly right and normal that she forgot about the question of where they were, and began to tell him all about it. Finally, she handed him the jeweled clip.

  Ellard’s manner seemed to change. He dropped it back into her lap and stood saying, “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Advise me,” she whispered. “What shall I do? Jacky wants me to find a way to get it back, but how?”

  “She would!” he said grimly and began to pace up and down, deep in thought, until presently he said, half to himself, “It isn’t like Jacky to panic, even if she did suddenly realize that the maid couldn’t be blamed.”

  “She heard that the whole thing isn’t going to be hushed up this time,” Lisa said dully.

  “I see. Of course, you could go to the police yourself,” he suggested, stopping in front of her.

  She shook her head fiercely, and he laughed.

  “You’d protect that sister of yours to the last, wouldn’t you? And yet, you know, Lisa, you’d be kinder if you went to the police.”

  “How could you say such a thing?” Lisa cried, jumping to her feet and standing to face him.

  “It’s the truth,” he said, coolly. “Jacky’s ill. As a nurse, you know very well what people are called who can’t resist taking what doesn’t belong to them. You know, too, that she ought to be treated for it by a doctor.”

  She covered her face with her hands. “You don’t have to tell me, Ellard. I shall have to do something later. For the moment, we have to decide what I shall do about ... this,” and she looked in distaste at the clip where it lay on the rug.

  He picked it up. “I could get rid of it quite easily for you,” he said, dropping it into her pocket. “Friends of mine might be persuaded to drop it in the grounds, or pop it into an open window, so that it would look as if that stupid woman had dropped it, or lost, it while wearing it.”

  Lisa’s face lit with hope as she looked up at him.

  “Do you mean that, Ellard?”

  “I do. They wouldn’t do it for nothing, of course.”

  Dismay was plain in her face as she remembered that she had no money left. “I couldn’t pay anything—all my savings went on getting your cigarette case back,” she blurted out, and then bit her lip.

  “How very remiss of me. I should have refunded that, Lisa. I can’t expect you to pay for that.”

  “I didn’t mean I wanted it refunded,” she said quickly.

  “And I didn’t mean that I wanted money from you, Lisa, for anything. No, I should personally reimburse my—er—friends, for any help they gave in getting the clip back. The point is, how would you reimburse me, shall we say, for my planning the whole thing?”

  Misgiving pricked her for the first time. Although he was smiling slightly, the gentleness and sincerity of the afternoon in Chertonbury were missing from his manner. This, she realized with a shock, was the Ellard she had distrusted so much when she had first met him.

  “I don’t think I understand,” she said haltingly.

  “Then let me illustrate,” he said, and before she realized what was happening, he had drawn her into his arms and was kissing her with a roughness that both hurt and terrified her.

  Only by exerting every ounce of her strength did she manage to push away from him.

  “Oh, how could you, how could you?” she cried, her face flushed with anger, her eyes wide and frightened. “And I trusted you!”

  “Don’t tell me you can’t stand a few kisses,” he said coldly. “Then how do you propose to discharge your debts?”

  “I didn’t agree to—” she began, but he broke in.

  “Nothing was agreed about the way our arrangement should work out,” he repudiated. “I left that to your own—er—good nature, shall we say, considering how much there was at stake, and how much I knew about Jacky’s past.”

  Never before had she felt so trapped. She stared unbelievingly into his cold, hard face. This was the man she had come to for help and advice, believing him to be her one friend. In all in
nocence, trusting him, she now realized that she had played into his hands. Although she was at her wits’ ends to know what to do, she asked herself, as she stumbled out into the corridor, how she could have been so foolish?

  Lisa never remembered how she got downstairs to the hotel vestibule from Ellard’s room. She only realized that she was there, trying to push her way through the crowds in evening dress, on their way to and from the brilliantly lit bar and dance room. A clock on the wall pointed to nine forty-five, and she forced herself to work out how much time there was left. A waiter reminded her of how conspicuous her nurse’s uniform looked in that glittering throng, by coming over to her and asking her if she was looking for someone.

  She shook her head, and then saw someone she knew—Derek Frenton. Alone, with a glass in his hand, he was pushing his way through to her from the direction of the bar.

  “Lisa! What on earth are you doing here? Are you all right?” he said, taking her arm. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

  “I—came—” she began, and then said, almost hysterically, “How is it you aren’t at the theater, waiting for my sister Jacky?”

  “Oh well, Jacky and I—Lisa, let’s sit down somewhere. I want to talk to you.”

  He took her into a corner where it was quiet, and signalled to a waiter. “Have you had supper, Lisa?”

  She shook her head, so he ordered sandwiches and a drink. It steadied her, and she felt better for the food.

  “Jacky’s got it all wrong, you know,” Derek was saying, and she forced herself to listen. “She thinks I’m going to marry her, but that was never the idea. If I married anyone at all—” and he broke off to look eloquently at her.

  “Does my sister know this?” she found herself saying, while all the time sheer panic drove her to think, to try and work out how she could get the dangerously valuable clip now reposing in her pocket back to where it belonged.

  “Of course Jacky doesn’t know it,” Derek said impatiently. “I’ve tried to tell her, but she won’t listen when she doesn’t want to hear something.”

  “Jacky’s like that,” Lisa agreed, and then quite suddenly her chaotic thoughts straightened out, and she knew what she had to do. “Derek, never mind Jacky. Listen, I want you to do something for me.”

  He brightened up at once. “Anything, Lisa,” he said, remembering the scene with his father again that afternoon, about getting Lisa back. “You’ve only to say!”

  “It’s rather tricky,” she warned him. “You see, when I was at the do this afternoon, there was trouble about the children I had with me.”

  “The youngsters in the pond? Good heavens, were they the ones you had with you? Mother was furious about them—until she found her clip was missing!”

  “That’s what I mean. You see, I ought to have said that the clip had come into my possession,” she said, framing her words carefully so that she could stick to the truth. “But I forgot, I’m afraid, when our senior surgeon told me to take the children back to the hospital in his own car. He’s awful when he’s angry, so everything went out of my head. I got into trouble for leaving the children and—”

  “You say you have Mother’s clip?” he broke in.

  “Yes, but that’s not all,” she said earnestly. “I want you to return it secretly—I’m in enough trouble as it is, and if it got out that I’d forgotten to turn it in this afternoon, well, you can imagine what hot water I’d be in at the hospital!”

  “Good heavens! Where did you find it, Lisa?”

  “Oh, lying on the ground,” she said, purposely vague, but realizing with anguish that the further she went into this thing to save Jacky, the further from the truth she would be forced to stray. “Never mind that—will you return it for me?”

  “If that clip’s safe and sound, I’ll do anything you say,” he said fervently. “Where is it now, Lisa?”

  She showed him the clip, lying in her pocket.

  The change in his face was almost laughable, if the whole thing had not been so deadly serious. “Here, let’s get out to my car,” he said, getting up.

  “But you will just say you found it, won’t you? Don’t let my name be dragged into it, will you, Derek?” she pleaded.

  He did not answer until he had maneuvered the silver roadster out from the parking lot.

  “But why?” he asked her then. “I mean to say, there’s a fat reward for the return of this thing. Surely you want it, Lisa, and you should have it!”

  “Derek, you don’t understand. Bother the reward—the only thing that means anything to me is that it shan’t get to Matron’s office. You see, I was looking for someone and I went into the house, and I was in uniform, and one of the maids spoke to me. Don’t you see?”

  He laughed. “Surely you don’t think anyone’d think you took it, Lisa!” he said, turning onto the coast road.

  “Where are you taking me, Derek? What’s the time?” she cried in dismay. “I have to be back by eleven.”

  Her urgency communicated itself to him. “You mean you want to go back to the hospital first?”

  “Yes. You can give this clip back afterward.”

  “But I thought you’d gotten a late pass, since you were wandering about in the Royal,” he said, wondering why Lisa had been at the Royal Hotel tonight. Not to see him, he considered, judging by the surprise in her face when she saw him. Who had she been looking for at the party that afternoon? Who had she been expecting to find inside the house? Derek remembered seeing Lisa in Ellard Lindon’s car, and recalled that Lindon lived at the Royal.

  He wanted Lisa back badly. First and foremost because of his father’s ultimatum, but now on account of his discovering that she was no longer a quiet little hospital nurse, but a girl who spent her spare time with men like Lindon, whom everyone locally knew to be a man who made money as quickly as he spent it. She had gone up in his estimation by that.

  His pulses raced as he said, “All right, I’ll run you back to the hospital, then return Mother’s clip and tell her I found it. How will that suit you?”

  “Oh, please, Derek,” Lisa said, feeling almost light-headed with relief. “And remember your promise to keep my name out of it?”

  “Of course,” he said easily.

  He was used to driving Lisa back to the hospital, and slipped into the old trick of nosing the car carefully into the yard so that she had only to make a dash across to the door of the nurses’ residence. “You’ll just do it in time,” he said.

  “But the clock on the dashboard says eleven fifteen!”

  “No, Lisa, that’s fast,” he lied easily and drew her purposefully into his arms.

  “What are you doing, Derek?” she gasped, putting out her hands to push him away from her.

  “I know you said you wouldn’t come back to me at any price, but if I do as you want me to about the clip, it rather alters things, doesn’t it?” he said softly, and he smiled as, after the briefest hesitation Lisa, in despair, succumbed to his kiss.

  Was it always going to be like this, she asked herself wildly, eternally paying the price for getting Jacky out of trouble?

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Where shall we go this afternoon?” Mary asked Lisa the following day. “How about the flicks—it’s the first time our free afternoons have coincided for ages!”

  “It looks like rain,” Lisa objected. She was hoping for a quiet time that she could spend in studying, and had already made up her mind to find a secluded corner seat on the pier.

  “Put in extra time tomorrow on your notes,” Mary advised.

  Mary could be very persuasive, so Lisa agreed.

  As they left the hospital, large spots of rain splashed the pavement, and Mary said, “Oh, dash, we’ve just missed a bus.”

  “Let’s go back, then,” Lisa urged.

  “No, look, Lisa—look at that big car, that red one. The driver’s waving at you. Do you know him?”

  “It’s Ellard Lindon!” Lisa gasped, her heart sinking.

  Ellard had crept u
p so that the car was now abreast of them. “Hop in, Lisa—both of you!” he called, with a cheery smile, as if that distressing scene in his room had never happened.

  With scorching cheeks, Lisa climbed in beside him, Mary sitting next to her. “Now, where do you both want to be dropped?” he asked.

  “The movie theater,” Mary said promptly.

  “Grim way to spend an afternoon, isn’t it?” he laughed. “I’m going to the races. I suppose you wouldn’t both care to come?”

  Mary disregarded Lisa’s swift warning pressure on her arm and said she’d love to.

  “We shall get soaked,” Lisa objected. “I’d much rather go to a movie.”

  “My dear, it’s all under cover. I have seats in the grandstand,” Ellard said, and as far as Mary was concerned, that was all that mattered.

  “Well, I’ll come, even if Lisa won’t,” she said, laughing. “All these years I’ve been in Barnwell Bay, I’ve never yet managed to go to the races; I’d adore it.”

  “All right,” Lisa agreed miserably, feeling that it would be too awkward for words if she insisted on being dropped alone at the cinema, since Ellard had been her friend and not Mary’s.

  Ellard amazed her that afternoon. He was so kind and thoughtful and charming to both of them, and not once did he refer to their evening together the day before.

  Lisa was frankly uneasy, but Mary was so charmed by him that there seemed no point in being unfriendly herself.

  “Have you girls never backed horses before?” Ellard said, as they lost again and again with their small bets.

  “We’ve never had the chance,” the incorrigible Mary said. “You ought to see what life is like in a hospital!”