The little man with the closely-cropped beard and hair looked at her
keenly through his gold eye-glasses. He sat before a desk littered all
over with papers and official looking documents. The walls of the room
were lined with shelves, on which were glass jars, retorts, countless
bottles and many appliances of surgical science. A skeleton was
propped against the mantelpiece. The atmosphere seemed heavy with the
odour of drugs.
"You are Mademoiselle Pellissier?" he asked, without rising to his
feet.
Anna admitted the fact.
"We sent for you several hours ago," he remarked.
"I came directly I was disengaged," Anna answered. "In any case, there
is probably some mistake. I have very few friends in Paris."
He referred to a sheet of paper by his side.
"Your name and address were upon an envelope found in the pocket of an
Englishman who was brought here late last night suffering from serious
injuries," he said in a dry official tone. "As it is doubtful whether
the man will live, we should be glad if you would identify him."
"It is most unlikely that I shall be able to do so," Anna answered.
"To the best of my belief, I have not a single English acquaintance in
the city."
"My dear young lady," the official said irritably, "this man would not
have your name and address in his pocket without an object. You cannot
tell whether you know him or not until you have seen him. Be so good
as to come this way."
With a little shrug of the shoulders Anna followed him. They ascended
by a lift to one of the upper floors, passed through a long ward, and
finally came to a bed in the extreme corner, round which a screen had
been arranged. A nurse came hurrying up.
"He is quiet only this minute," she said to the official. "All the
time he is shouting and muttering. If this is the young lady, she can
perhaps calm him."
Anna stepped to the foot of the bed. An electric light flashed out
from the wall. The face of the man who lay there was clearly visible.
Anna merely glanced at the coarse, flushed features, and at once shook
her head.
"I have never seen him in my life," she said to the official. "I have
not the least idea who he is."
Just then the man's eyes opened. He saw the girl, and sprang up in
bed.
"Annabel at last," he shouted. "Where have you been? All these hours I
have been calling for you. Annabel, I was lying. Who says that I am
not Meysey Hill? I was trying to scare you. See, it is on my cards--M.
Hill, Meysey Hill. Don't touch the handle, Annabel! Curse the thing,
you've jammed it now. Do you want to kill us both? Stop the thing.
Stop it!"
Anna stepped back bewildered, but the man held out his arms to her.
"I tell you it was a lie!" he shouted wildly. "Can't you believe me? I
am Meysey Hill. I am the richest man in England. I am the richest man
in the world. You love money. You know you do, Annabel. Never mind,
I've got plenty. We'll go to the shops. Diamonds! You shall have all
that you can carry away, sacks full if you like. Pearls too! I mean
it. I tell you I'm Meysey Hill, the railway man. Don't leave me. Don't
leave me in this beastly thing. Annabel! Annabel!"
His voice became a shriek. In response to an almost imperative gesture
from the nurse, Anna laid her hand upon his. He fell back upon the
pillows with a little moan, clutching the slim white fingers fiercely.
In a moment his grasp grew weaker. The perspiration stood out upon his
forehead. His eyes closed.
Anna stepped back at once with a little gasp of relief. The hand which
the man had been holding hung limp and nerveless at her side. She held
it away from her with an instinctive repulsion, born of her
unconquerable antipathy to the touch of strangers. She began rubbing
it with her pocket-handkerchief. The man himself was not a pleasant
object. Part of his head was swathed in linen bandages. Such of his
features as were visible were of coarse mould. His eyes were set too
close together. Anna turned deliberately away from the bedside. She
followed the official back into his room.
"Well?" he asked her tersely.
"I can only repeat what I said before," she declared. "To the best of
my belief, I have never seen the man in my life."
"But he recognized you," the official objected.
"He fancied that he did," she corrected him coolly. "I suppose
delusions are not uncommon to patients in his condition."
The official frowned.
"Your name and address in his pocket was no delusion," he said
sharply. "I do not wish to make impertinent inquiries into your
private life. Nothing is of any concern of ours except the discovery
of the man's identity. He was picked up from amongst the wreckage of a
broken motor on the road to Versailles last night, and we have
information that a lady was with him only a few minutes before the
accident occurred."
"You are very unbelieving," Anna said coldly. "I hope you will not
compel me to say again that I do not know the man's name, nor, to the
best of my belief, have I ever seen him before in my life."
The official shrugged his shoulders.
"You decline to help us in any way, then," he said. "Remember that the
man will probably die. He had little money about him, and unless
friends come to his aid he must be treated as a pauper."
"I do not wish to seem unfeeling," Anna said, slowly, "but I can only
repeat that I am absolutely without concern in the matter. The man is
a stranger to me."
The official had no more to say. Only it was with a further and most
unbelieving shrug of the shoulders that he resumed his seat.
"You will be so good as to leave us your correct name and address,
mademoiselle," he said curtly.
"You have them both," Anna answered.
He opened the door for her with a faint disagreeable smile.
"It is possible, mademoiselle," he said, "that this affair is not yet
ended. It may bring us together again."
She passed out without reply. Yet she took with her an uneasy
consciousness that in this affair might lie the germs of future
trouble.
As she crossed the square, almost within a stone's throw of her
lodgings, she came face to face with Courtlaw. He stopped short with a
little exclamation of surprise.
"My dear friend," she laughed, "not so tragic, if you please."
He recovered himself.
"I was surprised, I admit," he said. "You did not tell me that you
were going out, or I would have offered my escort. Do you know how
late it is?"
She nodded.
"I heard the clock strike as I crossed the square," she answered. "I
was sent for to go to the Hospital St. Denis. But what are you doing
here?"
"Old Pere Runeval met me on your doorstep, and he would not let me go.
I have been sitting with him ever since. The Hospital St. Denis, did
you say? I hope that no one of our friends has met with an accident."
She shook her head.
"They wanted me to identify some one whom I had certainly never seen
before in my life, and to tell you the truth, they were positively
rude to me because I could not. Have you ever heard the name of Meysey
Hill?"
"Meysey Hill?" He repeated it after her, and she knew at once from his
tone and his quick glance into her face that the name possessed some
significance for him.
"Yes, I have heard of him, and I know him by sight," he admitted. "He
was a friend of your sister's, was he not?"
"I never heard her mention his name," she answered. "Still, of course,
it is possible. This man was apparently not sure whether he was Meysey
Hill or not."
"How long had he been in the hospital?" Courtlaw asked.
"Since last night."
"Then, whoever he may be, he is not Meysey Hill," Courtlaw said. "That
young man was giving a luncheon party to a dozen friends at the Cafe
de Paris to-day. I sat within a few feet of him. I feel almost
inclined to regret the fact."
"Why?" she asked.
"If one half of the stories about Meysey Hill are true," he answered,
"I would not stretch out my little finger to save his life."
"Isn't that a little extreme?"
"I am an extreme person at times. This man has an evil reputation. I
know of scandalous deeds which he has done."
Anna had reached the house where she lodged, but she hesitated on the
doorstep.
"Have you ever seen Annabel with him?" she asked.
"Never."
"It is odd that this man at the hospital should call himself Meysey
Hill," she remarked.
"If you wish," he said, "I will go there in the morning and see what
can be done for him."
"It would be very kind of you," she declared. "I am only sorry that I
did not ask you to go with me."
She rang the bell, and he waited by her side until she was admitted to
the tall, gloomy lodging-house. And ever after it struck him that her
backward smile as she disappeared was charged with some special
significance. The door closed upon her, and he moved reluctantly away.
When next he asked for her, some twelve hours later, he was told that
Mademoiselle had left. His most eager inquiries and most lavish bribes
could gain no further information than that she had left for England,
and that her address was--London.
_Chapter VII_