Dr. Morelle at Midnight. Ernest Dudley
‘Then I can’t go back to Monte Carlo?’ The question came quickly.
Kirkland relaxed in his chair, smiling slightly. ‘On the contrary, you should go back at once. The specialist I wish you to see happens to be staying at Monte Carlo. He is doing some work there, quietly, but he will, I know, on hearing from me, be pleased to help you.’ His mind went back to the operating theatre in the early hours of that morning three days ago, and then the brief chat over coffee, afterwards, with the tall, gaunt figure.
‘Who is he?’
‘Dr. Morelle.’ Sir Trevor picked up his pen and began writing on a sheet of notepaper. ‘You may have heard of him,’ he said without raising his head.
‘I have.’ Laking sounded surprised, his expression was suddenly wary.
‘Dr. Morelle’s criminological work forms only a small part of his activities,’ Kirkland said. ‘Shall we say, the more sensational part that gets into the papers?’
‘You think he’d be willing to treat me, out there?’ The other sounded dubious.
‘I have no doubt that he will appreciate the urgency of your case. How long are you staying there?’
‘I’ve taken the villa for three months,’ Laking said. ‘We’ve been there two weeks.’
‘We? Mrs. Laking is with you?’
‘Yes. Also my secretary.’
‘So you are able to avoid any business worries?’
Laking hesitated, but only for a moment. ‘I pay people to do the worrying for me,’ he said brusquely. ‘My secretary and my right-hand man.’
‘Then there appears to be no obstacle in the way of your taking a course of treatment,’ the surgeon said. ‘I cannot say what Dr. Morelle will advise, but you should see him as soon as you return.’
‘I’m returning on the early afternoon flight,’ Laking said.
Sir Trevor nodded. ‘I will write to Dr. Morelle at once and explain the position fully. Meantime, will you take this introductory note along. I have put his address on the envelope.’
He folded the letter, slipped it into the envelope and sealed it. He came round the desk and handed the envelope to Laking. He pressed a buzzer and his receptionist entered. The two men shook hands and then Laking was being shown out into the hot midday sunshine of Harley Street.
Laking walked up Harley Street to the corner of New Cavendish Street. He lit a cigarette, wondered if the girl who glanced at him as she passed could see his hand tremble. Dragging nervously at his cigarette he walked along New Cavendish Street and turned into Portland Place.
He crossed the wide thoroughfare to the terrace of Regency houses on the further side. He walked quickly, glancing neither right nor left and turned into Layton Street. There, almost facing him, was the business he had built, built from one best-selling book.
He went through the reception office with an absent nod at the girl behind the desk, and upstairs to his lavishly equipped front office on the first floor. His desk and trays were clear, the bookshelves tidy, bookshelves lined with books bearing the imprint of the House of Laking on their spines.
Laking didn’t notice them, nor how the polished furniture shone in the sunlight. He went straight to the plain cabinet against the wall. He unlocked it, took out a whisky-bottle and poured himself a stiff shot, squirted in a dash of soda and swallowed it at a gulp. He poured another, stood it on top of the cabinet on the ornate metal tray. He returned the bottle and siphon and locked the cabinet door.
He sat down at the desk, picked up the ivory paper knife, twisting the blade between his twitching fingers. He wasn’t looking forward to going back to Monte Carlo. Consult Dr. Morelle? That was a laugh. His mind was ill? Kirkland had said it, and that was a laugh, too. His body was fine. He smiled to himself. It wasn’t a genial smile.
He took another gulp from the glass as the knock came on the door. He was lighting a cigarette when Duke Fenton’s secretary came in. She was a tall, slim girl. She wore a pleated black skirt and a soft white shirt fastened with a black bow at the neck. She was always calm and efficient but she had the eyes of a flirt. Only she never flirted with her employers.
‘I heard you come in,’ she said, stepping into the room. ‘This cable from New York, about one of the manuscripts Mr. Fenton took away with him.’ she held out the cable. ‘Do you want to send him any instructions?’
‘Leave the cable,’ Laking said. ‘I’ll ring for you in a few minutes.’
The girl went out. Laking stared at the cable on his pad. He was seeing Duke Fenton clearly in his mind. Fenton was a good type. Bachelor. Keen business-sense and a nose for best-sellers.
Laking stared at the book in its place of honour in the special bookcase. The Life and Times of Harry Laking. Ian Laking’s father. The old man’s face glared out at him from the dust jacket. It seemed to mock him and the business he had built on it. More, his father’s face was condemning him, so that as always he had to turn away from it. Laking had never found a really worthwhile book since then. But Fenton had. Fenton got on well with people. With Laking himself. And with Stacey. And Sara, she liked him too. Fenton must feel good. The boss’s wife, the secretary and the boss himself, all in the palm of his hand.
Fenton was a good mixer. Easygoing, but underneath it a great capacity for business, for doing the right thing. He never looked out of place anywhere. He wouldn’t look out of place in Monte Carlo, where he was right now.
Laking pressed the bell-push on the desk. The idea was stronger now, the outlines clearer. The consultation with Kirkland hadn’t worked out quite as he’d thought it would, but it was going to be all right.
Fenton’s secretary came in again and stood waiting, while Laking tried to remember what it was he wanted to tell her about, the other business was so much on his mind.
CHAPTER THREE
Laking dreaded it, that unpleasant queasy feeling in the pit of the stomach whenever the plane left the runway. He had flown often enough but it made no difference. Always that strange disembodied feeling as the aircraft lifted against the pull of gravity. He had to avert his eyes from the windows until the blurred sweep of the ground rushing past just below became a flat, unmoving map thousands of feet away.
He had decided to get the Air France Riviera Express, from London Airport direct to Nice. He would be back in Monte Carlo soon after four that afternoon. He didn’t mind the actual flight. Air travel was quick, comfortable and there was no fuss. Once in the air there was hardly any sensation of flying at all. When the great triangle of runways receded and he could unfasten his seat belt and smoke, the tension and sickness vanished and he could relax.
The faint hum of the four Rolls Royce Dart engines was hardly noticeable in the large pressurized cabin. It was hard to believe that this great turbo-prop monster, eighty-one feet long, its wingspan ninety-four feet, was cruising twenty-thousand feet up, flying towards France at three hundred and ten miles per hour. The smoothness of the flight, the attentive service of the stewards and hostess filled Laking with pleasure.
It was one of his peculiarities that he must always understand the principles of any machine in whose care he had put himself. Cars, ships, aircraft, he had to know how they were driven. Although under their cowlings these aircraft engines appeared huge and complicated, he knew the principle on which they worked was one of the simplest, known and applied since earliest times.
The familiar waterwheel, still seen in rural districts, was itself a turbine, by replacing its paddles with a double ring of high-speed steel blades, and the mill-stream by a powerful jet of gas produced by burning heavy fuel in compressed air, the modern turbine had evolved. The only difference in the latest turbines, Laking knew, was that they made use of gas expansion, giving them greater efficiency than the earlier ones, the compressed air being supplied by compressors driven by the turbine itself, and started up electrically.
The