was yet fully recognisable, a strangled
agonised cry. At the same moment the buzzer
on Miss Grosvenor’s desk sounded in a longdrawn
frenzied summons. Miss Grosvenor,
startled for a moment into complete
immobility, rose uncertainly to her feet.
Confronted by the unexpected, her poise was
4
shaken. However, she moved towards Mr.
Fortescue’s door in her usual statuesque
fashion, tapped and entered.
What she saw upset her poise still further.
Her employer behind his desk seemed contorted
with agony. His convulsive movements
were alarming to watch.
Miss Grosvenor said, “Oh dear, Mr. Fortescue,
are you ill?” and was immediately
conscious of the idiocy of the question. There
was no doubt but that Mr. Fortescue was
very seriously ill. Even as she came up to
him, his body was convulsed in a painful
spasmodic movement.
Words came out in jerky gasps.
“Tea–what the hell–you put in the
tea–get help–quick get a doctor—-”
Miss Grosvenor fled from the room. She
was no longer the supercilious blonde secretary–she
was a thoroughly frightened
woman who had lost her head.
She came running into the typists’ office
crying out:
“Mr. Fortescue’s having a fit–he’s
dying–we must get a doctor–he looks
awful–I’m sure he’s dying.”
Reactions were immediate and varied a
good deal.
Miss Bell, the youngest typist, said, “If it’s
epilepsy we ought to put a cork in his mouth.
Who’s got a cork?”
Nobody had a cork.
Miss Somers said, “At his age it’s probably
apoplexy.”
Miss Griffith said, “We must get a doctoral
once.”
But she was hampered in her usual efficiency
because in all her sixteen years of service
it had never been necessary to call a
doctor to the city office. There was her own
doctor but that was at Streatham Hill. Where
was there a doctor near here?
Nobody knew. Miss Bell seized a telephone
directory and began looking up Doctors
under D. But it was not a classified directory
and doctors were not automatically listed like
taxi ranks. Someone suggested a hospital- but which hospital? “It has to be the right
hospital,” Miss Somers insisted, “or else they
won’t come. Because of the National Health,
I mean. It’s got to be in the area.”
Someone suggested 999 but Miss Griffith
was shocked at that and said it would mean
the police and that would never do. For
citizens of a country which enjoyed the
benefits of Medical Service for all, a group of
6
quite reasonably intelligent women showed
incredible ignorance of correct procedure.
Miss Bell started looking up Ambulances
under A. Miss Griffith said, “There’s his
own doctor–he must have a doctor.” Someone
rushed for the private address book. Miss
Griffith instructed the office boy to go out
and find a doctor–somehow, anywhere. In
the private address book. Miss Griffith found
Sir Edwin Sandeman with an address in
Harley Street. Miss Grosvenor, collapsed in a
chair, wailed in a voice whose accent was
noticeably less Mayfair than usual, “I made
the tea just as usual–reely I did–there
couldn’t have been anything wrong in it.”
“Wrong in it?” Miss Griffith paused, her
hand on the dial of the telephone. “Why do
you say that?”
“He said it–Mr. Fortescue–he said it was
the tea—-”
Miss Griffith’s hand hovered irresolutely
between Welbeck and 999. Miss Bell, young
and hopeful, said: “We ought to give him
some mustard and water–Mow. Isn’t there
any mustard in the office?”
There was no mustard in the office.
Some short while later Dr. Isaacs of
Bethnal Green, and Sir Edwin Sandeman met
in the elevator just as two different ambulances
drew up in front of the building. The
telephone and the office boy had done their
work.
8
2
NSPECTOR NEELE sat in Mr. Fortescue’s
sanctum behind Mr. Fortescue’s vast
sycamore desk. One of his underlings with
a notebook sat unobtrusively against the wall
near the door.
I
Inspector Neele had a smart soldierly appearance
with crisp brown hair growing back
from a rather low forehead. When he uttered
the phrase “just a matter of routine” those
addressed were wont to think spitefully:
“And routine is about all you’re capable of!”
They would have been quite wrong. Behind
his unimaginative appearance. Inspector
Neele was a highly imaginative thinker, and