The Cheyne mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

Cheyne didn’t want to talk and he lay motionless, luxuriating in the complete cessation of effort. After a time a doctor came and looked at him, but it was too much trouble to be interested about the doctor, and in any case he soon disappeared. Sometimes when he opened his eyes the nurse was there and sometimes she wasn’t, and other people seemed to drift about for no very special reason. Then it was dark in the ward, evidently night again. The next day the same thing happened, and so for many days.

He had been troubled with the vague thoughts of his mother and sister, and on one occasion when he was feeling a little less tired than usual he had called the nurse and asked her to write to his sister, saying that he had met with a slight accident and was staying on in town for a few days. Miss Cheyne telegraphed to know if she could help, but the nurse, without troubling her patient, had replied: “Not at present.”

At last there came a time when Cheyne began to feel more his own man and able, without bringing on an intolerable headache, to think collectedly about his situation. And at once two points arose in his mind upon which he felt an immediate decision must be made.

The first was: What answer should he return to the inevitable questions he would be asked as to how he met with his injury? Should he lodge an information against Messrs. Dangle, Sime and Co., accuse them of attempted murder and put the machinery of the law in motion against them? Or should he stick to his tale that an accident had happened, and keep the affair of Hopefield Avenue to himself?

After anxious consideration he decided on the latter alternative. If he were to tell the police now he would find it hard to explain why he had not done so earlier. Moreover, with returning strength came back the desire which he had previously experienced, to meet these men on their own ground and himself defeat them. He remembered how exceedingly nearly he had done so on this occasion. Had it not been for the accident of something being required from the garden or outhouse he would have got clear away, and he hoped for better luck next time.

A third consideration also weighed with him. He was not sure how far he himself had broken the law. Housebreaking and burglary were serious crimes, and he had an uncomfortable feeling that others might not consider his excuse for these actions as valid as he did himself. In fact he was not sure how he stood legally. Under the circumstances would his proper course not have been to lodge an information against Dangle and Sime immediately on getting ashore from the Enid, and let the police with a search warrant recover Price’s letter? But he saw at once that that would have been useless. The men would have denied the theft, and he could not have proved it. His letter to his bank manager would have been evidence that he had handed it over to them of his own free will. No, to go to the police would not have got him anywhere. In his own eyes he had been right to act as he had, and his only course now was to pursue the same policy and keep the police out of it.

When, therefore, a couple of days later the doctor, who had been puzzled by the affair, questioned him on it, he made up a tale. He replied that he had for some time been looking for a house in the suburbs, that the outline of that in question had appealed to him, and that he had climbed in to see the internal accommodation. In the semidarkness he had fallen, striking his head on a heap of bricks. He had been unconscious for some time, but had then been able to crawl to the street, where the lady had been kind enough to have him taken to the hospital.

This brought him back to the second point which had been occupying his mind since he had regained the power of consecutive thought: the lady. What exactly had she done for him? How had she got him to the hospital and secured his admission? Had she taken a taxi, and if so, had she herself paid for it? Cheyne felt that he must see her to learn these particulars and to thank her for her kindness and help.

He broached the subject to the nurse, who laughed and said she had been expecting the question. Miss Merrill had brought him herself to the hospital and had since called up a couple of times to inquire for him. The nurse presumed the young lady had herself paid for the taxi, as no question about the matter had been raised.

This information seemed to Cheyne to involve communication with Miss Merrill at the earliest possible moment. The nurse would not let him write himself, but at his dictation she sent a line expressing his gratitude for the lady’s action and begging leave to call on his leaving the hospital.