Free The Man from the Sea by Michael Innes Page A

again?”
    “I’ve no doubt Mother is asleep – ankle and all.” Sally put down the bowl and basket composedly. “Alex.”
    “Alex!” He was startled.
    “I thought your friend would at least be dressed.” She turned to Day. “You’re not a doctor – or anything like that? You have no special knowledge of what to do? The water’s warm, and with boracic. I’d simply try opening your eyes in it. And I’ve brought some of the dark stuff – argyrol, isn’t it? – and a dropper. Will you come over here?”
    She was as impersonal as a nurse, and Day submitted to her. Cranston watched from a corner. There was still no more than a pale grey light in the summerhouse, but objects and actions could be distinguished. Certainly there could now be no question of getting away under cover of any approximation to darkness.
    “Sally,” he said, “you mean that Sir Alex knows?”
    “Knows what, Dick?”
    The cool question seemed to him like a flash of lightning on what Sally herself must now know. But he went through with answering steadily. “About this chap – and what we’re up to.”
    “I’ll empty out this water. And then you can try again. Do you want a towel?” Sally made various dispositions at the table before she turned again to Cranston. “I’d just got into the house when there was – Alex. He was up and prowling. I can’t think why.”
    “The shots, perhaps. If he heard them he’d know at once it wasn’t aircraft practising.”
    “No doubt. It was awkward.”
    “I’m frightfully sorry, Sally.”
    “Really?” For a second she was rather coldly mocking. “It was one of those occasions on which one has to risk a great deal of the truth in order not to give away the whole of it.”
    There was a little silence. The words, quietly uttered in the fresh young voice, seemed to hang oddly in the air. It was Day who spoke. “Did you feel that you had so much truth at your disposal?”
    She made no reply to this. It was as if she was determined to have only the most businesslike relations with him. Instead she turned again to Cranston. “I told him that it was you – here in the summerhouse, Dick. I told him that you had wakened me by throwing gravel at my window, and that it was a question of some poaching exploit gone wrong. You and a friend had been guddling Lord Urquhart’s trout – and had lost nearly all your clothes and come by a great many scratches. Of course I’m sorry to have represented you in rather a juvenile light. You’re the last person I’d really think of as – getting into mischief. But I had to consider what would amuse Alex – amuse him without really interesting him. I gather you don’t want him out here.”
    “I don’t think we do.”
    “If he does come out it will be in the most good-natured way in the world – a matter of what he calls jollying you up.” She spoke with her flicker of fastidious disdain. “But you can bank on his laziness, no doubt.”
    Day raised his head from the big bowl. “Is Sir Alex Blair so very lazy?”
    “If he weren’t wealthy and lazy he’d be in the very top flight of British scientists today. And he knows it, I imagine.” Her voice was indifferent. “Has all this helped?”
    “It has made me much more comfortable. But I still can’t really see.”
    “Hadn’t we better get a doctor?”
    Day shook his head. “My guess is that time, and only time, will clear it up. A doctor would do no more than produce reassuring talk and a roll of bandages.”
    “I haven’t any talk. But I can produce dark glasses. I slipped some into the basket. Also a flask of brandy, a packet of biscuits and a block of chocolate. And, Dick, here’s the pullover. Canary, I’m afraid – but it won’t go too badly with your tan. I shall go in now – and leave you to evolve whatever further adventure you have a mind to.”
    She was gone – before Cranston could speak. But he strode after her and caught her on the verandah. “Sally–” He broke off,