She said nothing to this, just finished tying up my arm and helping me into a long-sleeved shirt. After that she fixed up the splints and plaster again on my right ankle, went to the cupboard and brought back her handbag. I said sourly: “Going to powder your nose for the boy-friend?”
“I’m going to powder yours,” she said. Before I was properly aware of what she was doing she had some kind of cream on my face, and rubbed it in and was dusting powder over it. After a bit she leaned back and surveyed her handiwork. “You look simply sweet,” she murmured and handed me her pocket mirror.
I looked awful. One horrified glance at me would have had any life assurance salesman in the land jumping on his fountain pen with both feet. The drawn features, the bloodshot eyes with the blue under them were my own contributions: but the ghastly and highly convincing pallor of the rest of my face was entirely due to Marie.
“Wonderful,” I agreed. “And what’s going to happen when the professor gets a good whiff of this face powder?”
She drew a miniature scent-spray from her bag. “After I’ve sprayed a couple of ounces of Night of Mystery on myself he won’t be able to smell anything else within twenty yards.”
I wrinkled my nose and said: “I see your point.” Night of Mystery was pretty powerful stuff, at least in the quantities she was using. “What happens if I start “sweating? Won’t all this cream and powder stuff start to streak?”
“It’s guaranteed not to.” She smiled. “If it does, we’ll sue the makers.”
“Sure,” I said heavily. “That should be interesting. You know, “The shades of the late J. Bentall and M. Hopeman herewith propose to raise an action-‘ ”
“Stop it!” she said sharply. “Stop it, will you?”
I stopped it. She was a very touchy girl on some subjects. Or maybe I was just clumsy and careless. I said, “Don’t you think the half-hour is just about up?”
She nodded. “Yes. We’d better go.”
It took me until I had got down the steps and moved six paces into the sunshine to realise that Marie’s careful preparation with the cream and powder was probably just so much wasted effort. The way I felt, nothing could have made me look worse. With only one foot in commission and the other shoeless foot swinging clear of the ground I was forced to throw much of my weight on the crutches and with every thud of the left-hand crutch on the hard-baked earth a violent jolt of pain stabbed clear through my arm, from the finger-tips all the way to the shoulder, then across my back to the very top of my head. I didn’t see why an arm injury should give me a violent headache, but it did. This was something else to take up with the medical profession.
Old Witherspoon had either been watching or had heard the thud of my crutches for he opened the door and came hopping briskly down the steps to greet us. The broad beam of welcome changed to a look of distress as he caught sight of my face.
“God bless my soul! Bless my soul!” He came hurrying anxiously forward and took my arm. “You look-I mean, this has given you a terrible shake. Good God, my boy, the sweat’s pouring down your face.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. It was pouring down my face. It had started pouring at the precise instant that he had gripped me by the arm, the left arm, just above the elbow. He was screwing my arm off at the shoulder socket. He thought he was helping me.
“I’ll be all right.” I gave him my wan smile. “Just jarred my foot coming down our steps. Otherwise I hardly feel a thing.”
“You shouldn’t have come out,” he scolded. “Foolish, terribly foolish. We would have sent lunch across. However, now that you’re here … Dear me, dear me, I feel so guilty about all this.”
“It’s not your fault,” I reassured him. He’d shifted his grip higher to assist me up the steps and I noted with faint surprise that his house was swaying from side to side. “You weren’t to know that the floor was unsafe.”
“But I did, I did. That’s what vexes me so much. Unforgivable, unforgivable.” He ushered me into a chair in his living-room, fussing and clucking around like an old hen. “By Jove, you do look ill. Brandy, eh, brandy?”
“Nothing I’d like better,” I said honestly.
He did his usual testing to destruction act with the handbell, brandy was brought and the patient revived. He waited till I’d downed half my drink, then said: “Don’t you think I should have another look at that ankle?”
“Thank you, but fortunately no need,” I said easily. “Marie fixed it this morning. I had the good sense to marry a fully qualified nurse. I hear you’ve had a little trouble yourself. Did you find your dog?”
“No trace of him anywhere. Most vexing, most disturbing. A Doberman, you know-very devoted to him. Yes, very devoted. I can’t think what has happened.” He shook his head worriedly, poured some sherry for himself and Marie and sat beside her on the rattan couch. “I fear some misfortune has overtaken him.”
“Misfortune?” Marie gazed at him, wide-eyed. “On this peaceful little island?”
“Snakes, I’m afraid. Highly poisonous vipers. They infest the southern part of the island and live in the rocks at the foot of the mountain. Carl-my dog-may have been bitten by one of those. Incidentally, I meant to warn you-on no account go near that part of the island. Extremely dangerous, extremely.”
“Vipers!” Marie shuddered. “Do they-do they come near the houses here?”
“Oh, dear me, no.” The professor patted her hand in absent-minded affection. “No need to worry, my dear. They hate this phosphate dust. Just remind yourself to confine your Walks to this part of the island.”
“I certainly shall,” Marie agreed. “But tell me, professor, if the vipers had got him wouldn’t you-or someone-have found his body?”
“Not if he were in among the rocks at the foot of the mountain. Fearful jumble there. Of course, he may come back yet.”
“Or he may have taken a swim,” I suggested.
“A swim?” The professor frowned. “I don’t follow you, my boy.”
“Was he fond of water?”
“As a matter of fact, he was. By Jove, I believe you’ve hit on it. Lagoon’s full of tiger sharks. Monsters, some of them, up to eighteen feet-and I do know they move close in at night. That must have been it, that must have been it. Poor Carl! One of those monsters could have bitten him clear in two. What an end for a dog, what an end.” Witherspoon shook his head mournfully and cleared his throat. “Dear me, I shall miss him. He was more than a dog, he was a friend. A faithful and a gentle friend.”
We all sat around for a couple of minutes in silent sorrow, paying our last respects to this departed pillar of canine benevolence, and then we got on with the lunch.
* * *
It was still daylight, but the sun had sunk beyond the shoulder of the mountain when I woke up. I felt fresh and rested, and while my arm was still stiff and sore, the throbbing pain of the morning had gone: as long as I didn’t have to move around, the discomfort was hardly worth mentioning.
Marie had not yet returned. She and the professor had gone out trolling for trevally-whatever trevally might be- with the two Fijian boys after lunch while I had returned to bed. The professor had invited me also, but it had obviously been only as a gesture of politeness, I hadn’t the strength to pull in a sardine that afternoon. So they’d gone without me. Professor Witherspoon had expressed regrets and apologies and hoped I didn’t mind his taking my wife with him. I’d told him not at all and hoped that they would enjoy themselves and he’d given me a funny look that I couldn’t quite figure out, and I’d had the obscure uneasy feeling of having put a foot wrong somewhere. But whatever it was he hadn’t let it puzzle him long. He was too interested in his trevally. Not to mention Marie.
I’d washed and shaved and managed to make myself look more or less respectable by the time they returned. It appeared that the trevally hadn’t been biting that day. Neither of them seemed very upset about it. The professor was in tremendous form at the table that evening, a genial thoughtful host with a fund of good stories. He really went out of his way to entertain us and it didn’t require any great deductive powers to guess that the effort wasn’t being made on my behalf or on the behalf of Hewell, who sat at the opposite end of the table from me, brooding and silent and remote. Marie laughed and smiled and talked almost as much as the professor. She seemed to find his charm and good humour infectious, but it didn’t infect me any: I’d done a good solid hour of constructive thinking before I’d gone to sleep that afternoon and the thinking had led me to inevitable conclusions that I found very frightening indeed. I don’t scare easy but I know when to be scared: and never a better time in my opinion than when you’ve made the discovery that you’re under the sentence of death. And I was under the sentence of death. I had no doubt at all left in my mind about this.