"In the Marine? All the time?"
"Since Thursday night. How long is that? I just walked in at the service door late at night. Rain like stair rods. You could have walked the length of the town in your birthday suit, and there wouldn't have been anyone to see. I knew about the little attic place because I saw it when workmen were here one day. No one's ever there but workmen. I come out at night to get food from the larder. I expect someone's in trouble about that food. Or perhaps they never missed it? Do you think?"
His unnaturally bright eyes scanned Grant anxiously. He had begun to shiver. It did not need much guesswork to place his probable temperature.
Grant pushed him gently down to a sitting position on the bed, took a pair of pajamas from the drawer, and handed them over.
"Here. Get into these and into bed at once. I suppose you were soaking when you arrived at the hotel?"
"Yes. My clothes weighed so much I could hardly walk. But it's dry up in the roof. Warm, too. Too warm in the daytime. You have a n-n-nice taste in n-n-night wear." His teeth were chattering; reaction was flooding him.
Grant helped him with the pajamas and covered him up. He rang for the porter and ordered hot soup and the presence of a doctor. Then he sat down at the telephone and told the good news to the Yard, Tisdall's overbright eyes watching him, quizzically. When he had finished he came over to the bed and said: "I can't tell you how sorry I am about all this. I'd give a lot to undo it."
"Blankets!" said Tisdall. "Sheets! Pillows! Eiderdown! Gosh!" He grinned as far as his chattering teeth and his week's growth of beard would let him. "Say 'Now I Lay Me' for me," he said. And fell abruptly asleep.
Chapter 25
In the morning, because the doctor said that "there was a certain congestion which in the subject's weakened condition might at any moment develop into pneumonia," Grant summoned Tisdall's Aunt Muriel, whom the Yard obligingly found, Tisdall having refused to consider the presence of any aunts. Williams was sent to Canterbury to arrest Brother Aloysius, and Grant planned to go back to town after lunch to interview Champneis. He had telephoned the good news of Tisdall's reappearance to Colonel Burgoyne, and the telephone had been answered by Erica.