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PART II:
White Knight

3

AS SOON AS THE NURSE TURNED HER BACK, SMEDLEY SPAT OUT THE sleeping pill. When the light was turned off, he placed it carefully under his pillow. He would need it later. He rolled onto his back and prepared to wait.

His right hand throbbed. The fingers were tightly clenched, the nails digging into his palm. They were all somewhere back in Belgium, but he could feel exactly what they were doing . . . hurt like hell sometimes. Just part of the trouble of going bonkers.

Staffles had not been designed as a hospital. He shared a room with two other men, and there was barely room to walk between the beds. Rattray tossed and scuffled on the right; Wilkinson wheezed and bubbled on the left, his lungs ruined by gas. Very shortly both men were snoring—those pills packed a punch like twelve-inch howitzers.

Light filtered in from the corridor. The sounds of the hospital dwindled into silence. Once in a while it trembled as a train clattered by, London to Dover or Dover to London . . . no question which was the better way to be heading these days. The guns were still throbbing.

He needed a fag, but the nurses gathered up every cigarette in the building at lights-out. Staffles was one giant firetrap.

He lay and brooded, trying to fit what he had learned about the anonymous John Three in the west wing to the Exeter story he had heard from Jones—how that man had aged! An impossible disappearance and an impossible reappearance? Somehow that was appropriate. At least it made sense to a loony with a bad case of shell shock who couldn't sit still for ten minutes without having an attack of the willies.

I would kill for a cigarette.

He should have done something about Exeter days ago, but he hadn't really been able to believe himself. It had taken Ginger's reassurance to convince him of his own story, to persuade him he wasn't that far gone in the head. Not quite. Close, but not on target.

Exeter had vanished from Albert Memorial Hospital in Greyfriars. Somehow he had passed by the nurses on duty and the doorman, all of whom had sworn he had not. The night nurse had discovered his room wrecked, blood on the floor, and yet no one had heard a thing. Impossible, but Ginger believed, although he admitted it was hearsay. Hearsay from Mrs. Bodgley was good as Holy Writ.

John Three had been brought in from the battlefield with no uniform on. With nothing on, so the rumors said—shows how far gone the poor sod must be. No sane skulker would go so far as to strip to the buff in that rain-swept, bullet-swept, shell-swept hell. Mad as a March hare.

There were only two ways into no-man's-land. Either he had come from the British lines or the German lines. Or perhaps he'd cracked up an aeroplane. But why bare arsed? The mud had been known to suck off a man's boots and trousers but not his tunic. Shell blast could collapse his lungs or his brain and kill him without leaving a visible mark on him, but stripping him naked without otherwise harming him seemed rather too freakish even for shell blast.

I would give my right arm for a fag. It's no damn use anyway.

Why John Three? Could he speak at all? Why not invent a name?

Name, rank, and serial number.

The alternative was a bullet.

Why had Exeter not been shot out of hand? Why was he not in a provost cell, at least, instead of a low-security mental ward? There were weird rumors. Or at least there were rumors of rumors, tales of people who knew more than they were able to tell but rolled their eyes expressively.

He might not have been faking when he was brought in. Men picked up in battlefields were usually in bloody rotten shape. The journey back on a stretcher would be enough of an ordeal to drive a chap bonkers all by itself. So perhaps Exeter had genuinely been unable to talk when he was brought in, although Smedley himself had walked on his own feet into the casualty clearing station and tried to shake hands with—never mind.

Exeter had been putting up a stall on Wednesday. He had known Smedley. And if there was one thing Smedley had learned to recognize in Belgium, it was terror.

Exeter hadn't even given him a don't-give-me-away look. It had been an attempt at an I-don't-know-you look. That rankled a little, but if he couldn't trust an old pal not to give him away, then he was in something very deep and ever so smelly.

How long could he swing it? The medicals weren't dumb; they knew a skulker when they saw one. They'd use all kinds of tricks—sneak up behind him and bark orders, ask unexpected questions, leave newspapers lying around . . . .

Thinking about that, Smedley began to sweat. How long could a man go without speaking? It would be like solitary, but solitary in the middle of a crowd. Voluntary Coventry? Never speaking, never admitting that you could understand? Hour after hour. Day after day. It would crack a man. If Exeter wasn't already off his rocker, the strain of pretending to be would make it so. Playing crazy, he'd go crazy!

Smedley realized with a shock that he hadn't been weeping or even twitching. Just lying there, thinking and wishing for a Player's. The Exeter puzzle had given his mind something to chew on.

He had a strange jumpy feeling, not altogether unpleasant. He wasn't going to be in any personal danger. Hell, he could paint his face green or dance hornpipes on the piano and no one would do anything more than sigh and write a note on his file.

The danger would be to Exeter. If Smedley got caught showing interest in the mystery man, then someone might put two and two together. If anyone ever made the Fallow connection, then the jig would be up. Which might be why Exeter was keeping his mouth shut instead of spinning a yarn. An Englishman's voice would place him within a county. Or his school. Put Professor Higgins on the case and he'd say, "Fallow!" in two shakes.

 

Smedley awoke with a blast of terror, sweating torrents and choking back a scream. He had been asleep! Without a pill! Jolly good! First time since . . . since never mind. Snores to the right of him, snores to the left of him, volleyed and thundered. So he hadn't actually shrieked aloud. He had slept! Perhaps he was getting a little better, just a little? Please, Lord?

He tried to see his watch and couldn't. Still, it felt like time to go. He swallowed the ashtray taste in his mouth and eased back the blankets.

Dressing one-handed was bad enough in daylight. From now on he'd have his suits made with flies that buttoned on the left. He had thought to pull his shoes off without untying them, but getting them on again was harder. Neckties were an invention of the devil . . . . Hairbrush . . .

One wan bulb lit the corridor, invoking vast shadows. He set off on tiptoe, thinking of the poor sods in the trenches in Belgium, going over the top. At least in the artillery he'd never had to do that. Primary target: the linen closet down the hall. Pray it wasn't locked.

It was. Hellfire!

In two weeks he had snooped everywhere in Staffles—upstairs, downstairs, in any chamber he was allowed into—hoping he was doing it from boredom and because it was better than sitting still, frightened he was doing it because his loose brains were looking for bogeys.

Secondary target: one of the doctors' rooms.

He found a doctors' cubbyhole that was not locked, that did have a white coat hanging behind the door. Some kind saint had even left a stethoscope in the pocket. Now that was really shockingly careless! Take that man's name, Sergeant.

His fingers were shaking so much he could barely fasten the buttons. Nelly! He hung the stethoscope around his neck like a gas mask. He tucked a pencil behind his ear and his stump in his pocket and a clipboard under his arm. Then he stiffened his upper lip and marched off boldly in the direction of the west wing.

 

The house was dim and silent. It stank of disinfectant and the eternal stench of stale cigarette smoke.

A real doctor was the worst danger, and there would be one on duty somewhere. A nurse might be overawed by the stethoscope. Guards . . .

One guard, reading a newspaper.

"Don't get up!" the doctor said, and walked right by him.

 

It would not have worked in a proper hospital, but Staffles was not a proper hospital. The night nurses were not sitting out at a duty desk where they could view the corridor. Light pouring from an open door was the best they could manage, and apparently no one noticed the white shape flit past. The west wing had been servants' quarters—low ceilings, painted plaster walls. Feeling the guard's eyes boring into his backbone, Smedley chose a room at random.

There were two beds crammed in there. One was empty. The man in the other was bandaged beyond recognition, but he sounded asleep.

Would the guard register that the doctor had not turned on the light?

Smedley waited a couple of minutes, about two thousand heartbeats.

Then he peeked cautiously. The guard was back in his newspaper. The light from the duty room shone unobstructed.

The next room was not the right one either.

Nor the next.

The next was.

A fair-haired head. Asleep. Just a kid, but lying on his back and breathing noisily. Exeter's black hair on the other pillow.

Suddenly Smedley was back in Paris, three years ago, staying at Uncle Frank's on his way to Crete, sharing a room with Exeter. His heart twisted in his chest. Ye gods and little fishes, man! How can you still look so young?

He left the door open. To close it would attract attention if a nurse had to pass by. He squeezed in between the bed and the wall, on the right side. He knelt down, dropping the clipboard. He laid his hand over Exeter's mouth.

A wild reaction almost blew the gaff. Bedsprings creaked. Arms and legs flailed; a hand grabbed his wrist so hard he thought it would crack.

"Shush, you idiot! It's me. Smedley. Julian!"

A grunt. A groan. Exeter subsided. The kid in the other bed paused in his breathing—and then resumed. Smedley's heart crawled back where it belonged.

He leaned close. "I know who you are," he whispered. "This is on the level. No one put me up to this. I swear that! I want to help."

The blue eyes were silver gray in the dark, even with his, staring at him from the pillow.

"Ginger Jones came calling today."

Exeter sucked in a long breath and sighed it out again. He was drugged and still mostly asleep. Dopey, trying not to show any reaction.

"I don't believe you killed—I don't think Bagpipe's death was your doing. Ginger doesn't, either. I know you disappeared mysteriously from a hospital. Can you disappear from this one?"

Pause. Very slightly, Exeter shook his head.

That was a very deniable shake. Why wouldn't he trust an old friend?

"Can you talk?"

An almost imperceptible nod.

"You won't fool them for long, Edward! Do you want help getting out of here?"

A stronger nod. More blinks, as if Julian Smedley might not be the only man in the world with eye troubles.

"Can you tell me what's going on?" Smedley begged.

Another faint shake.

"For God's sake, man! Trust me!" He felt his cheek beginning to twitch. Any minute now the tears would start. Then where would trust go?

He waited stubbornly, sweating, gritting his teeth, fighting against twitching and weeping. He thought he wasn't going to get an answer. Then it came, a tenuous sound, like a whisper from beyond the grave and yet so close that he could smell the breath that brought it.

"You couldn't believe me."

"From the rumors I've heard, I can believe anything."

A shake: no.

"Look, I'm not going to be here much longer. I don't know how to get you out of here, and I don't know where I could take you that would be safe. Have you any ideas? Any suggestions? Anyone who needs to be told?"

Exeter's fingers reached out and took the pencil from behind Smedley's ear.

Smedley fumbled awkwardly to retrieve the clipboard. It had slipped under the bed. He passed it up. Exeter turned over the top sheet and wrote on the back of it. He handed them both back.

Smedley took the pencil in his left hand and tried to take the clipboard with his stump.

"Oh, my god!"

Exeter had spoken aloud, almost shouted. The kid on the next bed fell silent. Smedley crouched down low, out of sight. He was shaking. He must get out of here before he had an attack of the willies! In a moment the slow breathing resumed.

When he straightened up again, Exeter's hand gripped his shoulder and squeezed like a vise. They stared at each other.

Well! So there were other men who had trouble with watery eyes these days? Lot of it going around.

"Edward—"

Somebody screamed farther along the hall. Then screamed again.

Smedley wanted to dive under the bed. He forced himself to stand up and go to the door. Confused voices rising in protest, more screams . . . Some poor bugger having nightmares. A nurse hurried by. Then another.

Then the heavy tread of the guard. They all went by. Splendid!

He glanced around. Exeter was sitting up straight, face pale, eyes wide.

"Enfilading fire, old man!" Smedley said cheerily. He waved his stump and departed.

If one of the nurses came out to fetch something and saw a doctor in the corridor—but that didn't happen.

Smedley went back to bed and wept until his sleeping pill took effect.

 

On Sunday it rained most of the day. He practiced left-handed writing all morning. In the evening he walked down to the village and posted two letters, to the addresses Exeter had given him.

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Framed