A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [87]
Rutledge said, “The motorcar is in the hotel yard. This way.” He took her through the kitchen passages, where he himself had just walked moments before, and out through the small flagstoned entry that led to the back gardens and sheds.
She sat huddled in the car as he drove fast down the High Street, and he glanced at her once or twice to see if she was all right. As they pulled up in the drive beside her house, she was out and running before he could stop the engine. Swearing under his breath, he followed her.
She came to a halt at the main door, bending over something on the front steps. Rutledge was beside her in time to see a man’s face lift up from the cradle of his arms, the features twisted with pain. Even in the faint light of the stars, the face seemed unnaturally pale. The man’s hair was dark with sweat, and it was hard to judge its normal color.
“Who is he?” Rutledge asked Elizabeth. “How did he get here?”
“I had gone to Lydia Hamilton’s for a women’s committee meeting, and when Lawrence brought me home—he was here! Oh, please, do something!”
“Did Lawrence see him?”
“No! No, I told him I could find my own way—”
Rutledge knelt down beside the figure. “Are you hurt? Tell me where.”
Elizabeth said, “His shoulder. His chest. I don’t know. When I tried to help him to his feet, there was blood everywhere. It was horrible!”
“Knife,” the man managed to say. One hand groped toward his left side.
Rutledge pulled away the heavy cloth of the man’s coat and felt the hot warmth on the sweater under it. His hand came away black with blood.
“We’ve got to get him inside, and send for a doctor,” he said.
“No—” The injured man’s voice was firm as he spoke the single word, echoed almost immediately by Elizabeth’s breathless “No!”
“Nonsense,” Rutledge responded briskly, and held out his hand. “Your key, Elizabeth.”
She hesitated. Then she gave it to him, torn between worry and what seemed to be a fear of bringing the stranger inside.
Rutledge was already heaving the man to his feet, noting with relief that he seemed to have both arms and both legs. And there was no wine on his breath—
There was a small lamp burning in the entrance hall, left for Elizabeth’s return. Beyond that table was an ornate Jacobean chair, and Rutledge got his burden lowered into it just as Henrietta, the spaniel, began to bark ferociously from behind the closed door of the sitting room. Distractedly Elizabeth called to the dog to hush.
“Go to her, or you’ll have every servant in the house down here to see what’s happening,” Rutledge commanded. And Elizabeth hurried off, calling the dog’s name and shushing her.
The man slumped in the chair seemed to be slipping in and out of consciousness, his head rolling on his shoulders. Rutledge, working swiftly, managed to get the coat off and was just lifting the sweater to rip it and clear the wound when his eyes met those of his patient. He froze, staring.
Gentle God! It was the face from the bonfire—it was the German!
In the poor light of the stars, with the grimace of pain distorting the man’s features, Rutledge had failed to notice any resemblance.
And even as he stepped back in alarm, the pain-filled blue eyes stared back at him, recognition—and resignation—in them.
THE MAN STARTED to say something, shook his head, and then found the words in English.
“A long way from France.” His voice was quiet, pitched so that Elizabeth couldn’t hear him. Her soothing words to the spaniel had roused the puppies, and they were whimpering.
Rutledge, with Hamish hammering at the back of his mind, asked harshly, “Who the hell are you?” A dozen images pressed and overlapped and faded with such speed that he was unable to sort through them or comprehend their significance. He was on a road—a road filled with figures, men he didn’t know—there were caissons and lorries, abandoned where they stood—voices he couldn’t understand—confusion, and a blank, impenetrable haze. . . .
“Don’t you know? I’ve come—” The man winced, caught his breath,