Hangmans Holiday by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online Page B

to the pitiful woman and to himself. Her seat was directly beneath the Sargent portrait, and his eyes went helplessly from the one to the other.
    “Yes,” said Wetherall, following his glance. “There is a difference, isn’t there?” He himself was eating heartily and apparently enjoying his dinner. “Nature plays sad tricks upon us.”
    “Is it always like this?”
    “No; this is one of her bad days. At times she will be—almost human. Of course these people here don’t know what to think of it all. They have their own explanation of a very simple medical phenomenon.”
    “Is there any hope of recovery?”
    “I’m afraid not—not of a permanent cure. You are not eating anything.”
    “I—well, Wetherall, this has been a shock to me.”
    “Of course. Try a glass of burgundy. I ought not to have asked you to come, but the idea of talking to an educated fellow-creature once again tempted me, I must confess.”
    “It must be terrible for you.”
    “I have become resigned. Ah, naughty, naughty!” The idiot had flung half the contents of her bowl upon the table. Wetherall patiently remedied the disaster, and went on:
    “I can bear it better here, in this wild place where everything seems possible and nothing unnatural. My people are all dead, so there was nothing to prevent me from doing as I liked about it.”
    “No. What about your property in the States?”
    “Oh, I run over from time to time to keep an eye on things. In fact, I am due to sail next month. I’m glad you caught me. Nobody over there knows how we’re fixed, of course. They just know we’re living in Europe.”
    “Did you consult no American doctor?”
    “No. We were in Paris when the first symptoms declared themselves. That was shortly after that visit you paid to us.” A flash of some emotion to which Langley could not put a name made the doctor’s eyes for a moment sinister. “The best men on this side confirmed my own diagnosis. So we came here.”
    He rang for Martha, who removed the salmis and put on a kind of sweet pudding.
    “Martha is my right hand,” observed Wetherall. “I don’t know what we shall do without her. When I am away, she looks after Alice like a mother. Not that there’s much one can do for her, except to keep her fed and warm and clean—and the last is something of a task.”
    There was a note in his voice which jarred on Langley. Wetherall noticed his recoil and said:
    “I won’t disguise from you that it gets on my nerves sometimes. But it can’t be helped. Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing lately?”
    Langley replied with as much vivacity as he could assume, and they talked of indifferent subjects till the deplorable being which had once been Alice Wetherall began to mumble and whine fretfully and scramble down from her chair.
    “She’s cold,” said Wetherall. “Go back to the fire, my dear.”
    He propelled her briskly towards the hearth, and she sank back into the armchair, crouching and complaining and thrusting out her hands towards the blaze. Wetherall brought out brandy and a box of cigars.
    “I contrive just to keep in touch with the world, you see,” he said. “They send me these from London. And I get the latest medical journals and reports. I’m writing a book, you know, on my own subject; so I don’t vegetate. I can experiment, too—plenty of room for a laboratory, and no Vivisection Acts to bother one. It’s a good country to work in. Are you staying here long?”
    “I think not very.”
    “Oh! If you had thought of stopping on, I would have offered you the use of this house while I was away. You would find it more comfortable than the posada, and I should have no qualms, you know, about leaving you alone in the place with my wife—under the peculiar circumstances.”
    He stressed the last words and laughed. Langley hardly knew what to say.
    “Really, Wetherall—”
    “Though, in the old days, you might have liked the prospect more and I might have liked