“Can nothing be done?”
Gregg shook his head.
“She couldn’t be in the hands of a better man than Sir Victor, if that’s what you mean. No one in Europe can beat him in his own line. I know, because I worked under him at St. Swithin’s. He’ll do all that’s humanly possible. I must get back to the hospital. You can get me there or at home for the next few hours, but you probably won’t need me. With rest and care she should do all right now. I’ll drop in again this evening.”
He hurried away, leaving Fayre to make the most of the small comfort he had given him.
He proved right. By that evening Sybil Kean was noticeably better and Fayre was able to fix his mind once more on his own, or rather Leslie’s, affairs. As far as the tracing of the car was concerned, that was best left in Grey’s hands and, in default of a better job, he decided to turn his attention to Gregg. The doctor had mentioned St. Swithin’s and, for some reason he could not place, the name roused an illusive echo in his mind. For a long time he searched his memory in vain and it was not till he was in the act of getting into bed that he suddenly traced the connection. One Henderson, a man he had known well in his student days in London, had been at St. Swithin’s. He did not know Gregg’s age, but, from the look of him, they must have been contemporaries, more or less. It would do no harm to look the man up and ask him a few questions. In any case, he had been one of the many people he had meant to run to earth on his return to England and now, provided he was not in the Antipodes, would be as good a time as any. He made up his mind to get hold of a medical directory and write to Henderson at the first opportunity.
Chapter X
Next morning the report of Lady Kean was reassuring and Fayre felt at liberty to devote himself to his own business.
Immediately after breakfast he betook himself to the library in the vain hope of finding a medical directory. A brief survey of the rows of calf-bound volumes convinced him that his search was vain and he was obliged to fall back on the telephone-book. Here, rather, to his surprise, he found what he was looking for.
“L. S. P. Henderson, M.D. 24.a. Selkirk Road. Carlisle.”
He scribbled the address and telephone number on the back of an old envelope, reflecting that, once more, his luck was in. He had not only found his man, but found him at Carlisle, of all convenient places. Things could not have fallen better to his hand. There was nothing to prevent his running over to Carlisle that morning and it struck him that, while he was about it, he might call at one or two of the big garages and try to find out if they had housed a car answering to the description of the one seen near the farm. Given the London number, it was on the cards that the man had made a bolt for the south in his flight from the scene of the murder. Unless he made an all-night job of it he would probably break the journey at Carlisle. At any rate, it would be worth trying.