Air Ticket (2 page)

CHAPTER THREE

It
was unusually warm
for a late-spring afternoon. The lake was like a sea of shimmering cobalt, and around it the mountains soared sharp and splendid against the sky.

Fraulein Neiger, in her office in Oberlaken, frowned as she realized that Dr. Andreas was growing impatient, and that his buzzer was sounding again.

Dr. Andreas, in a dark professional suit, looked like a caged and very impatient panther.

“The countess is already ten minutes late,” he said, whirling on his secretary. “I shall wait no longer!”

“Barely
ten minutes, doctor,” she said in her soft voice. “And the countess is so seldom late. Something must have kept her—”

The front doorbell pealed, and Fraulein Neiger flew in a relieved fashion to open it. Another half minute and the doctor would have departed, she knew, and she would have been left to face the wrath of the countess alone. This one was a famous beauty, a ballet dancer before her marriage, and she swept into the room where Dr. Lucien Andreas awaited her with her arms outstretched toward him in apology.

“
I
am so sorry, doctor!” Her magnificent eyes were sparkling and penitent at the same time. “It was all the fault of my maid! The stupid girl forgot to arouse me in time from my afternoon rest. And you
are so insistent that I rest in the afternoons
—
”

“That’s quite all right,
contessa
,” the doctor cut her short, perfectly politely. He took a seat behind his desk, and the
contessa
began on her various new symptoms. While she described them she kept her eyes fixed on him languishingly, and it was only by drawing on his experience that he managed to deal with her in as short a space of time as the size of the fee he would draw later on from her made practicable. And he was still trying to get rid of her perfume by flinging open all his windows as soon as she had departed when Fraulein Neiger returned to the room.

“Why am
I
forced to waste my time, Liesel, on women like that when there are genuinely sick people in the world?”

Liesel made a small expressive movement with her shoulders. She had extraordinarily attractive large brown eyes, and she was, in fact, an extraordinarily attractive young woman who had served him faithfully for more than three years; but it was not within her province to explain to him why his women patients outnumbered those of his own sex by as much as three to one. She did not blame the women patients. But she did wonder sometimes whether he was altogether human, for brought into contact with so much charm and allure he remained astonishingly impervious to it, and as for herself she was no more than a cog in the wheel of his daily life.

“One of these days,” he told her, “
I
shall give up this life and devote myself to the clinic. There, at least, I shall be doing a rewarding job!”

Liesel had heard this so many times before that she merely smiled down politely at the notebook in her hand and informed him that he would be seeing the countess again the following week.

“And you are flying to Vienna next weekend,” she reminded him, “for the medical congress.”

He looked bored.

“Oh, yes, I’d forgotten that! But I’ve only just returned from London.” He stared down at the carpet below his feet, and suddenly she thought he looked amused. “Do you know, Liesel, there was a woman on the plane who said she was running away from something—and I keep wondering what it was she was running away from!”

“Oh!” Liesel exclaimed, and studied him more shrewdly.

“She was an Englishwoman. She looked
...
very English!”

“Oh, really?” Liesel murmured.

He started to pace up and down again, because at moments when he remembered the past he began to feel restless and anxious to do something extremely active that would cause him to forget it again. Those gray eyes in his past had been the focus of his world until the light had died out of them altogether.

It had been one case for which he could do nothing, and she had been snatched away from him. She had come to him from England, with a chest weakness, having been sent out by her father, a wealthy man. She was naturally fragile and far lovelier than her countrywoman who had said she was running away. He had adored her from the first, and he had determined to get her quite well again. And he did get her well—well enough to marry her, and for nearly a year they had been utterly, deliriously happy. And then, just before the birth of their child was due, she died. And it didn’t seem to matter to him that he lost his child—a daughter—too, for once Barbara was
gone he was not interested in anything at all
—

It was his work, of course, that had finally got him over it. Now patients were sent him from all four corners of the world, and despite the fact that he was still held to be very young for one who had climbed so far, the name of Dr. Lucien Andreas was a name older colleagues breathed with the greatest respect.

He felt unreasonably irritated because it had been necessary for him to pay that visit to London, and on the return journey he had met the w
o
man with the eyes that reminded him of his dead wife’s. He felt even a little resentful, because no other woman ought to have eyes like that.

He strode out into the hall and almost snatched up his gloves and his hat.

“
I
must go,” he said. “
I
promised to look in on the Ferenza child, and I’m dining out tonight. Don’t hang about, Liesel—there’s no reason you shouldn’t pack up early.”

Outside his house his long cream car was waiting for him, with the well-trained chauffeur at the wheel. Dr. Andreas lay back and tried to force his thoughts back into normal channels. The Ferenza child had been critically ill when she was admitted to his clinic, but already she was showing signs of improvement, and he had every hope of saving her. She was the daughter of Italian peasants, people who could pay him nothing, but the case of little Maria had preoccupied him more than any other case for days.

Then he found his thoughts drifting to Olga Spiro, with whom he was having dinner that night. Olga was the most soothing woman he knew, and he always looked forward to seeing her. With her he never had to pretend, and without being beautiful, she was sufficiently pleasing to look at to make her a thoroughly enjoyable companion at all times. There had even been one or two occasions when he had thought— well, if he ever
could
bring himself to the thought of marriage again, Olga was a woman who would make him a perfect wife.

The car had come to a halt in a solid block of traffic, and idly he observed a woman emerge from a shop— one of those gift shops filled with embroidered muslin blouses, lovely lawn handkerchiefs and gossamer underwear with which Oberlaken abounds—and, hugging her parcels, start to cross the road.

She was a very slender woman—almost a slight slip of a girl she appeared to him at that distance, wearing a summery dress, a white belt and shoes.

And then the traffic started to move on, and he hoped she was not going to attempt to dart through a gap when she saw one. He leaned a little forward as if he had been forewarned, and the harsh squealing of brakes did not surprise him at all. He saw someone leap forward—it looked like an errand boy—and catch the woman by the shoulder and drag her back, but only just in time. And even so the wing of the car caught her a glancing blow as it passed, and she seemed to crumple up into the arms of the errand boy.

Dr. Andreas’s chauffeur did not need the imperative tap on the glass partition that separated them to cause him to slow and draw in toward the curb. He had already anticipated the tap and deserted the stream of traffic.

Caro had a confused impression of people coming at her from all sides. She had lost all her parcels, and her lovely hand-embroidered muslin blouse was being trampled underfoot.

A lot of voices chattered around her in a language she could not understand, and then someone addressed her in her own tongue.

“Did the car touch you? Are you all right?”

“Perfectly all right, thank you,” she answered
automatically. “It just grazed my leg. I
t
hink. I
—
”

And then she realized that she was looking up into the face of the man with the cream car. “Oh!” she exclaimed.

He bent swiftly to examine her leg. A fairly steady stream of blood was finding its way down into her white sandal. As he straightened he said quietly, “It’s quite a nasty graze, but fortunately my car is near. We’ll have to do something about that leg
—
”

“Oh, but I’m quite all right,” she assured him. “I really am! If only someone would pick up my parcels
—
”

The parcels had already been picked up and Dr. Andreas’s chauffeur stowed them away in the car. Dr. Andreas picked up Caro, and as he placed her on the back seat of his car she realized that she was feeling violently sick. She put a hand up to her mouth
and gasped, “I don’t think I do feel very—very
—
”

She was not in the least sure what happened after that, but when she did begin to be aware of things she recognized the taste of brandy on her lips. Dr. Andreas had his arm around her, and her head seemed to be somewhere down on his shoulder.

Caro whispered, “I’m terribly sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” the man replied comfortably. “In another few minutes we’ll have arrived at my clinic, and then we’ll soon have you feeling much better.”

“Your
...
clinic?” she echoed. “Then you are
... you are
a doctor?”

“Yes, I’m a doctor.”

“I thought
...
I somehow thought you—might be!”

After that it seemed no time at all before she was in a quiet room and an efficient young woman in a crisp cap and uniform was handing her a cup of very English-looking tea. Caro’s leg had been attended to, and she had received an antitetanus injection, and she had the slightly bewildered feeling that none of this was real, especially when she looked up and caught the dark eyes of the man who had flown with her across the gray English Channel.

“Feeling a bit more like yourself?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you.”

“By the way,” he said, “my name is Andreas— Lucien Andreas. I’m glad I ran into you again today at a time when you badly needed some assistance.”

“It wasn’t you who ran into me,” she answered.

“But you did ask for it, you know,” he told her quietly. “You darted across the road at a time of day when you might very easily have been killed.”

“I’m afraid,” she admitted, “that I don’t see awfully well without my glasses, and I was a little confused by the sun. It was in my eyes.”

“Yes, I noticed that,” he said. “But why weren’t you wearing glasses if it’s really essential that you should wear them?”

She explained that she had left them behind in her London flat. She hastened to add that she was an artist, and her eyes had been a bit strained lately. And her name was Caro Yorke.

“Short for Caroline?” he inquired with a faint smile in his eyes.

“No. My mother was Caroline, but she declined to pass the name on and called me Caro.”

“And you, too, have a daughter?”

“Yes. She was married very recently.”

“You don’t look as if you could possibly be old enough to have a married daughter,” he told her.

“All the same, I have. But I was married when I was very young—I was barely eighteen.”

“And you were running away from something when I met you on the plane,” he reminded her
.

“
Oh
...
yes!”

“I hope it wasn’t your husband,” he said quietly.

For an instant she looked both surprised and
shocked. Then, in a flat and rather colorless voice, she informed him, “My husband is dead. He died sixteen years ago, in a submarine at sea.”

“I
...
see,” he answered, as if she had taken him aback. “I’m very sorry,” he added with a warm note of apology in his voice.

She smiled rather wanly. “That’s all right. You couldn’t know.”

He rose and walked over to the window, and when he turned his voice was cool and professional.

“Mrs. Yorke, I’d like you to stay here for a night. A room is being prepared for you, and I think you’d feel happier if you went to bed. That leg is bound to be somewhat painful, and then you’ve had a bit of a sho
c
k, as well. Are you staying in Oberlaken?”

“Yes.” She felt herself coloring in a manner that annoyed her as his eyes rested once more on her face.
“
I
...
I
thought I’d like to see it after you mentioned it, and a fellow guest in the hotel at Zurich gave me the name of a hotel that she recommended. I’ve been here only a couple of days.”

His expression remained quite grave as he suggested, “If you like to give me the name of the hotel I’ll slip along and get a chambermaid to put a few things for the night into a suitcase for you. You must have a few things of your own.”

“But won’t that be troubling you?”

“Not at all.”