XV

Pain that threatened to rend his head asunder played before his eyes in

blinding flashes, like ragged lightning, crimson and soundless--or the

man was deaf to its thunders whose every other faculty was numb in

subjugation to sense of pain intolerable, who was faint with pain, sick

with it . . .

Hands clipped his body under the arm-pits, a thin, far rumour of

articulate noise pronounced some stupidity which he made no attempt

either to comprehend or to acknowledge. Arms wrapped round him from

behind tightened, heaved, he was set upon unsteady feet, then

half-carried, half-guided to an angle of some sort and propped up in it,

with arms resting on two broad, plane surfaces, elbow-high. A rudely

genial voice volunteered: "There you are, sir, and no 'arm done. Now

you'll do nicely."

Lanyard wanted to tell the speaker he was a fool, it was impossible for

one to have come through that motor wreck, impossible for any mortal to

have been caught between two heavy cars meeting head-on in headlong

flight, without incurring desperate if not deadly injuries. How

reasonable and true that was this pain proved that racked him from head

to foot, but more particularly his head, and made him want to retch,

pain so acute it paralyzed the very instinct to complain . . .

His tongue temporarily refusing its office, Lanyard contented himself

with a grunt through locked teeth; and because his knees were as water,

hung on with both hands to the rounded surfaces that met behind his back

to form the angle, till presently the pain grew less, the feeling of

nausea passed off, his senses renewed contact with their environment and

flashed strange tidings to his brain in respect of conditions they could

neither grasp nor accomodate themselves to.

Some moron (he inferred) had taken to amusing himself with the

headlights of one of the motor-cars, switching them on and off while

they stared Lanyard full in the face at such close range that he was

conscious of the heat they generated between the spaces of darkness.

Furthermore, a storm of sorts had evidently sprung up out of that clear

midnight sky: he remembered well how cloudless it had been just before

the collision, how bright with mockery the gibbous moon; the boding calm

which had bound everything in Nature he recalled distinctly, too. But

now a great wind was shrieking like a warlock, gusts of warm rain

spattered the flesh of his face, the very earth beneath him was

convulsed, bucking and rocking like a wild mustang, and the keen, sweet

smell of the inland night had given place to the salt breath of the

sea . . .

Lanyard opened his eyes, only to close them tight the next instant and

shut out what indisputably was the delusion of a mind deranged; yet a

vision so vividly coloured and in every particular so circumstantial,

stamping the retinas with an impression of so much brilliance and

animation, that he could not refrain from looking again, if only to

convince himself of the sheer wonder of it--but half expecting his

sight, on this occasion, to be greeted by another illusion and a

different, if one quite as impossibly unreal.

He saw, however, precisely what he had seen, and rejected, before . . .

A length of steamer deck, looking forward from the angle in which he

stood at the after end of the superstructure, with deck-chairs all

folded and lashed to the inner rail and window-ports all fast; its

scoured planking now blue with shadow cast by the deck overhead, now

flooded with sun glare from end to end, as the vessel rolled in a rough

seaway. Beyond the rail a bright blue sky without a cloud, a horizon

unbroken by any loom of land, a sea of incredible ultramarine creaming

under the lash of a full gale, the sleek hollow bellies of its charging

waves a-dazzle with the sun's spilled gold, its flying spindrift sprays

of diamond-dust . . .

Forward, opposite the entrance to the saloon companionway, a girl

clinging to the rail, bobbed blonde hair fluffed out by the wind, filmy

yellow sweater and brief sports-skirt of white silk moulded to her

slender young contours, intent eyes turned aft to Lanyard. In the dark

mouth of the door a cluster of men and women, likewise staring. Nearer

and a little to the left a lithe young man of British stamp, wearing a

look of cheerful concern and the white-duck jacket of a steward, with

long legs well apart balancing to the motion of the vessel while he

watched Lanyard.

Finding himself the target of the latter's bemused regard, the man

grinned broadly. "Nahsty tumble, sir," he cried in the penetrating pitch

of a seafarer schooled to talk against the wind, and with an inflexion

that suited precisely his racial type--"and a wicked crack it did give

your 'ead and no mistike. Like a pistol shot it sounded. Thought for a

minute it 'ad done you in for fair, but it didn't take long to mike sure

you 'adn't broke' no bones. 'Ow do you feel now, sir?"

"What . . ." Lanyard's voice in his hearing was attenuated and strange.

His tongue felt unwieldy. "What? . . ."

The figure in the white jacket waved a hand toward the foot of a ladder

nearby. "You was comin' down from the bridge-deck, sir--don't you

remember?--when a sea 'it us and knocked you clean off your pins. 'Ad to

'ang on to the rail to keep from bein' knocked abaht myself."

Lanyard replied with a sign of exorcism, releasing the rail with one

hand to describe it. At the same time he shut his eyes fast and made a

determined effort to shake off the bondage of this fantastic dream. But

when he looked again nothing had changed, the hallucination remained as

definite and bright as ever, perfect to its last least detail.

"Feel a bit shiken up, don't you, sir?" The steward moved to Lanyard's

side. "I don't wonder. But if you'll just tike it easy a while, I think

you'll find you aren't much 'urt."

Dumbfoundered, Lanyard wagged his head, bringing about recurrence of its

splitting ache, which none the less led to the discovery that, barring

a bruised shoulder and elbow, a well-battered head was all his damage.

But this too he laid to delirium, as being a manifest physical

inconsistency in one who had just taken part in a motor smash of the

first magnitude. And wondering if exertion of will would bring this

lunatic scramble of a world round to its right guise of reality, he

fixed the steward with an exacting eye, the eye of a man who had made up

his mind to stand for no more nonsense.

"Madame de Montalais?" he enunciated distinctly--"is she all right?"

But demonstrably this wasn't the requisite magic formula, enunciation of

it failed to do away with those unbelievably factual circumstances of a

summer gale at sea and set up in their stead an autumnal nocturne of

moonlit hills and vales. Its only effect, indeed, was to light a flicker

of real solicitude in the steward's eyes.

"Beg pardon, sir: what was that you said?"

"The lady with me--was she injured?"

"But there wasn't any lidy with you, sir--you was quite alone, arf w'y

down the ladder, when the sea 'it us. I 'appened to be watchin' you,

sir, though not 'andy enough to save you the fall, I'm sorry to s'y. But

per'aps you feel strong enough now to let me 'elp you to your berth and

fetch the doctor to give you a look over."

Lanyard in despair resigned himself: the world had gone stark staring

mad and he was the maddest madman in it. Weakly he suffered the steward

to take his arm in a respectful yet persuasive hold.

"Let me see, now, sir: what was the number of your stiteroom?"

In unbounded amazement Lanyard heard himself reply without any

hesitation: "Thirty-nine."

"Quite so, sir. This w'y, if you please, and lean on me as 'eavy as you

like: I won't let you tike another tumble, never fear."

A door in the after wall of the superstructure admitted to a passage by

way of which it was only a step to Stateroom 39. Here the steward

considerately removed the passenger's coat and shoes and made him

comfortable in a berth wedged with pillows, then hurried away to call

the ship's surgeon, leaving Lanyard to nurse a temper of dull

indignation, satisfied that he was being somehow sold by his ingrate

senses, but quite incapable of understanding how. His head still hurt

like hell--there was a cruel swelling above one ear--and seemed to be

utterly of no service other than as a container for pain-impregnated

cotton wool that stiffled every essay of his wits to seize the meaning

of his present plight. After a while he gave up trying to think and lay

looking round the room with resentful eyes; to move these in their

orbits made them ache intolerably, but there was nothing else to

do . . .

The stateroom had been designed and fitted to accomodate three people

without crowding. Nevertheless it had every appearance of dedication to

the uses of a single tenant. A solitary dressing-gown and one suit of

pyjamas hung on hooks behind the door. One collection of shaving

implements and other masculine toilet articles cluttered the shelves

above the washstand. A lonely kit-bag, obviously on its first voyage

out of the shop, displayed the monogram A. D. None of these was Lanyard

able to identify as property of his. If you asked him, he could swear he

had never laid eyes on them before. But neither was he on terms of

visual acquaintance with the coat which the steward had stripped from

his shoulders and which was now oscillating like some uncouth and

eccentric pendulum from a hook at the foot of the berth. A garment

fashioned of the smokiest of Scotch tweed but with an incurably American

accent, it gave circumstantial contradiction to the feeling that one had

no business to pose as the rightful tenant of that stateroom; for quite

as apparently one had had no business posing as the rightful tenant of

that coat.

But the affair as a whole was past puzzling out by a head whose buzzing

mocked every attempt at ordered thought; and with a sigh Lanyard gave it

up for the time being, and shut his eyes to screen out refracted

sun-glare wavering like a prismatic cobweb on the white paint

overhead . . .

Consciousness was on the point of lapsing when the door-latch rattled

and the inimitable cadences of a British public school voice hailed him

with an affectation of friendliness whose falsity was more elusive, and

yet somehow less successful, than it commonly is in the bedside

geniality of the general practitioner.

"Ah, Mr. Duchemin! been tryin' to butt a hole through the promenade

deck, have you?"

Disguising instinctive resentment, Lanyard smiled amiably up at a new

face that proved a good match for the voice, the sanguine face of a

young man, cleanly razored, set with hard blue eyes and an arrogant,

thin nose. "Monsieur . . ." he managed to say, rousing on an elbow; but

the movement caused agony to stab through his temples again and he

dropped back to his pillow, groaning.

"Bad as all that, eh?" the other commented in a tone that somehow

implied he wasn't being taken in. "Well! needn't punish yourself to

prove it to me: I'm not fussy about fine points of etiquette, I don't

insist on everybody risin' when I come into the room. Lie still now, and

let me have a look."

"You are the ship's surgeon, monsieur?" Lanyard enquired with

difficulty, because his teeth were set to stifle grunts as fingers deft

enough but none too gentle searched out the sore spot.

"Well: I leave it to you," their owner replied in ironic patience . . .

"Hmm! worse than I expected. Miracle you got off without a

fracture. . . . Do you think I've been pullin' your leg about my ratin'

these last few nights? Or d'you mean my luck at Bridge qualifies me in

your estimation as a card-sharp first and a sea-goin' sawbones

last? . . . Hold still, now, and don't try to answer: I'm goin' to

sponge this noble contusion and decorate it with a becoming patch."

An interlude of intense discomfort came to an end with the announcement:

"You'll do now, I fancy; but if I were you, my friend, I'd take it easy

and watch my step till this hatful of wind blows itself out--which it

ought to before long, goin' by the glass."

"Many thanks, monsieur . . ."

A rising inflection made that last word an open bid for the name of the

person addressed; who, however, chose coolly to ignore it.

"And now, if you don't mind ownin' up," he said with a clearer note of

sarcasm: "What the devil are you drivin' at? _Am_ I the ship's surgeon!

Tryin' to make out a triflin' crack on the head has knocked you silly?

Because it's no go, if you are: I may be the demon Bridge player of this

vessel, but I'm a good enough medico besides to know that, barrin' a

beautiful bump, you're as right as rain."

It was anything but easy to school oneself to stomach such

superciliousness; but it had to be done if one hoped to learn the reason

for it, or the inwardness of those several other matters which urgently

required elucidation.

"If you would be so good as to sit down one moment, monsieur," Lanyard

civilly suggested--"assuming, of course, your valuable time permits--I

would be most grateful for your professional advice."

"Right-O!" The surgeon drew up a chair and settled himself in it with

the manner of a man who didn't mind humouring a persistent child this

once. "What's on your mind, Mr. Duchemin--more than your casualty?"

"To begin with, I should be glad to know the time of day."

"Why not consult that pretty trinket strapped on your wrist? Or was

that, too, cracked by your fall?"

Indignation failed while Lanyard studied the time-piece to which his

attention had thus delicately been drawn, with the more interest

because, to the best of his knowledge, the watch, unmistakably a fine

one, was none of his.

Through the concert of the gale three double strokes of resonant

bell-metal sang and were followed by a single. "Seven bells of the

forenoon watch," the surgeon interpreted of his own accord. "Does yours

agree?"

"Precisely . . . Monsieur," Lanyard said earnestly: "I should like very

much to consult you concerning myself in strict confidence . . ."

"Let the oath of Hippocrates comfort your misgivin's--and fire away."

"Then let me tell you something." After a brief pause Lanyard announced

with a deal of true diffidence: "It is now some twelve hours, or little

more, by my best reckoning, since I figured unfortunately in a motor-car

accident on the Armonk Road, in Westchester County, thirty miles or so

north of the city of New York."

"That's interestin'," the Englishman commented with a skeptical twitch

of lips--"especially in view of the fact that we are now three days' run

south of New York."

"Monsieur is not making fun of me?"

"No, thanks: that sort of thing doesn't amuse me as it does you."

"But I am entirely serious, I assure you."

"Haven't the slightest doubt of it. All the same I'd give somethin' to

know what it is you're so serious about."

"Be patient with me another minute, monsieur," Lanyard devoted at least

that much time to anxious thought. "Yesterday," he at length submitted,

"was the third of November, Nineteen Twenty-two."

"You're going to have trouble, my friend, makin' that statement jibe

with the log, which calls today the fifth of June, Twenty-three."

Lanyard lifted a hand to beg for grace, and did the sum in his head

while the Englishman sat watching him with what all but insufferably

seemed to be contemptuous amusement. But one couldn't afford to resent

that yet.

A double line deepened between Lanyard's brows. His first guess had

evidently been a poor one: the elapsed time proved that Morphew hadn't

picked him up unconscious after the crash, hurried him in that condition

back to New York, and caused him forthwith to be shanghaied.

"Seven months to be accounted for," he mused aloud--"seven months lost

out of life!"

"Oh?"

None but a Briton could have infused so much cynic incredulity into one

lonely syllable. In spite of himself Lanyard flushed.

"Oblige me, monsieur, by believing that, between losing consciousness in

that motor crash of November fifth, and regaining it after being thrown

from a ladder half an hour ago, I remember nothing."

"Astonishin'."

"Even so, not--I believe--a case without precedent."

"Quite so."

"One is misled, then"--Lanyard's tone was as cold as his eye--"by an

impression you give--no doubt without intention--of disbelief in my

sincerity?"

The eyes of the Englishman winced, he coloured in his turn, but with

anger more than with mortification to find his unmannerly attitude so

directly challenged.

"My dear Mr. Duchemin!" he uncomfortably protested: "When you consider

that one has seen a good deal of you in the last few days, talked with

you, dined with you, played cards with you for hours at a time, and

found you always a man of entirely collected mind, no different from the

man one is conversin' with at this moment, perhaps you'll agree there's

some excuse for one's bogglin' at a pretty tall tale on the face of it."

"It makes me very happy to accept your apology, monsieur." Gravely

Lanyard watched the face of the surgeon burn a deeper red. "And on my

part I am truly sorry to think I have put too great a strain upon your

charity. Yet--you must let me assure you again--what I am telling you is

the simple truth about conditions which I find profoundly disconcerting.

I am afraid I shall need time to get my bearings, and I would be vastly

grateful for assistance."

"By all means," the other said in a stifled voice--"'m sure."

"It would help measurably to know what vessel this is . . ."

"The Port Royal--Monon Line."

"Ah! a fruit steamer, I take it?"

"Right: you took it for Nassau, Havana, Kingston, the Canal Zone, and

Costa Rica."

"I think you said we were three days out? Then we ought to be not far

from Nassau now."

"This gale has held us back a bit, but we ought to make port by daybreak

tomorrow."

"One can send a cable there, of course . . ."

Either a mistrustful mind deceived Lanyard or the Englishman wasn't

happy in his efforts to disguise a thrill of keen inquisitiveness.

"Of course; but why wait? Mean to say, there's our wireless at your

service if you're keen to get some message off your mind, Mr. Duchemin."

"How stupid of me to forget." Lanyard's smile could be as charming as he

chose, and he chose it to be entirely so just then, intent as he was on

disarming one whom he had reason enough to think curiously hostile to

him, in whose manner it was impossible to ignore an undercurrent of

inexplicable animus. "But then you will be indulgent, remembering the

circumstances. One question more, Doctor--?"

"Bright!" that person snapped curtly.

"Thank you. I am wondering . . . No doubt you saw me when or soon after

I embarked?"

"Happened to be standin' by the head of the gang-plank when you came

aboard, in point of fact."

"If you could tell me whether that event was marked by any unusual

circumstances, such as might possibly shed light upon the riddle of why

I came aboard at all--?"

"Sorry," the surgeon answered; "but you seemed to be quite peaceable."

"Nothing to lead you to suspect I wasn't in full command of my

faculties?"

"Rather not."

"I was--alone?"

"Quite."

"Nobody to bid me bon voyage?"

"At least, I saw nobody."

"And my subsequent behaviour has been, I trust, discreet?"

"To the letter of the word. If you mean your smokin'-room habits,

they've been above reproach--more than one can say of most Americans

since the 'greatest country on God's green footstool' dried up."

"But I am not an American--"

"Never thought you were, Mr. Duchemin." Dr. Bright's sprained

self-esteem was now convalescent. The eyes he bent on Lanyard were

lambent with secret satisfaction, as if he knew something that Lanyard

didn't, and found this proof of his superiority gratifying. "There's

your name, for one thing. And then no American ever spoke such French.

Saw enough service in France to know the true Parisian accent when I

hear it."

"Indeed? So I have found occasion to speak French about this vessel?"

"Rather. You've been at it daily, and a good part of every day, with the

attentions you've been payin' the pretty lady."

Lanyard's eyebrows went up alertly, and he didn't count the twinge that

form of comment cost him. "'Pretty lady'?"

"Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes. At all events, that's her style on the

passenger-list. Most fascinatin' and highly finished piece of work this

tub has ever carried."

"Good to look at, you mean, monsieur?"

"Good to look at is a feeble way to put it. Every unattached male on

board is balmy about her; and the attached ones aren't what one might

call unconscious when she's in sight. And every man-jack loathes you

like fun because the pretty lady has a hospitable eye and you haven't

given anybody else a ghost of a look in."

"Beautiful and--shall we say--not ingénue, eh?"

"Look here," the Englishman knowingly laughed: "if you keep on guessin'

so closely, I'll have to suspect your memory isn't as poor as you

claim."

"It is true," Lanyard admitted with an air of perplexity, "that name, de

Lorgnes, seems not unfamiliar. One wonders where, or when, one has heard

it before, if possibly this lady is some friend of younger years . . ."

"Not this Comtesse de Lorgnes," Dr. Bright asserted in another turn of

impertinence--"that is, unless the two of you have been playin' a game

with me."

"Impossible, monsieur."

"Then you'll have to take my word for it--just as I took yours--you

never met the lady before the first day out, when I had the honour of

presentin' you--at her request."

"It must be an echo," Lanyard speculated--"that name--from some

forgotten yesterday. I recall now--it is odd, I think--the number of

this stateroom fell spontaneously from my lips when the steward who

picked me up asked for it."

"Not really?" The surgeon had the laugh of one hugely entertained.

"There's another point you've overlooked, I fancy--your name, Duchemin.

Feel quite at home with that, don't you? You answer to it readily

enough."

"But naturally," Lanyard returned with the utmost naïveté. "Why should I

not, seeing it is my name?"

"Well! there you are. Cases of submerged identity always go by another

name while their first personality is under the cloud. But you came

aboard as André Duchemin, you admit you're André Duchemin now; and I

daresay you were André Duchemin at the time of that motor crash, what?"

"Monsieur is quite right."

"That settles it, as I see it." Conceit restored encouraged anew an

attitude of exasperating patronage. "You'll find it will all come back

to you, everythin' you've forgotten, bit by bit as the shock of your

tumble wears off. It would be a damned interestin' thing from a

professional view point if this should turn out to be a true case of

mislaid identity; but I'm afraid you needn't hope for that."

"Hope, monsieur!"

"Mean to say, you'll find it's somethin' much more simple and elementary

with you. You've had a bad fall and a rap on the head that recalls a

similar mishap several months old, and for the time being everythin'

that happened in between seems to have been wiped out. But I'll go bail

it will all come back to you inside of twenty-four hours."

"Why twenty-four hours?"

"As soon as you've had a sound sleep, that is--same thing. Let me send

you in a powder, and by dinner time you'll be ready to apologize for

tryin' to take advantage of my innocent and trustin' nature. What do you

say?"

Lanyard said that monsieur was too kind . . . "But a favour, my dear

doctor," he added with a tolerably crest-fallen air. "We won't find it

necessary to tell our fellow passengers what a sorry fraud I am, will

we?"

"Oh! I won't be the one to expose you," Bright replied with vast

pleasure in his ambiguity. "And you won't have a chance to tell on

yourself before the sea goes down a bit. Meanin' to say, madam la

comtesse is a poor sailor. But, you see, your anxiety not to be made a

laughin' stock to her proves that your memory is improvin' every

minute."

"One wastes time trying to deceive you," Lanyard admitted with humility.

"But there is one thing, I believe, that might aid my recovery: a look

at the passenger-list. Do you think you could by any chance find a copy

for me?"

Contentment with his great cunning sustained this shock with poor grace:

the surgeon frowned a frown of impatience mixed with mystification. Was

it possible this chap still imagined he had found an easy dupe? However,

one had to be diplomatic . . .

"Oh! very well," the surgeon said shortly. "I'll have the steward bring

you one with your sleeping powder. Though I must admit I don't quite

see . . ."

Lanyard forgot to offer any explanation; and when the passenger-list had

duly been delivered and scrutinized was obliged to confess that he had

exerted himself to no purpose. "Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes" was much

too transparent an incognita for Liane Delorme; and the discovery that

she was a fellow passenger had been excuse enough for the surmise that

others of their common acquaintance might be keeping them company en

voyage. But if such were the case, the printed list gave no clue, no

other name that figured in it proved in the least degree stimulating,

none suggested a likely alias for Morphew, or Pagan, or Mallison,

or . . . Mrs. Folliott McFee . . .

Neither did anything reward his eager search for a name whose music was

like an old song singing in one's heart.

The list slipped from his grasp and joined the surgeon's rejected

sleeping powder on the floor. Lanyard lay with a face that mirrored pain

more real than that which racked his head, blindly studying the play of

rainbow gleams upon the painted ceiling.

Seven months lost beyond recall . . .

And Eve?