She had two advantages: she was partly prepared, and the assailant had not expected the dog-collar. She felt and heard the quick gasp in her face as the strong, cruel fingers fumbled on the stiff leather. As they shifted their hold, she had time to remember what she had been taught-to catch and jerk the wrists apart. But as her feet felt for the other’s feet, her high heels slipped on the parquet-and she was falling-they were falling together and she was undermost; they seemed to take years to fall; and all the time a stream of hoarse, filthy abuse was running into her ears. Then the world went black in fire and thunder.
Faces-swimming confusedly through crackling waves of pain-swelling and diminishing anxiously-then resolving themselves into one-Miss Hillyard’s face, enormous and close to her own. Then a voice, agonizingly loud, blaring unintelligibly like a fog-horn. Then, suddenly and quite clearly, like the lighted stage of a theatre, the room, with Miss de Vine, white as marble, on the couch and the Warden bending over her, and in between, on the floor, a white bowl filled with scarlet and the Dean kneeling beside it. Then the fog-horn boomed again, and she heard her own voice, incredibly far off and thin: “Tell Peter,”-Then nothing.
Somebody had a headache-a quite unbearably awful headache. The white bright room in the Infirmary would have been very pleasant, if it hadn’t been for the oppressive neighbourhood of the person with the headache, who was, moreover, groaning very disagreeably. It was an effort to pull one’s self together and find out what the tiresome person wanted. With an effort like that of a hippopotamus climbing out of a swamp, Harriet pulled herself together and discovered that the headache and the groans were her own, and that the Infirmarian had realized what she was about and was coming to lend a hand.
“What in the world-?” said Harriet.
“Ah!” said the Infirmarian, “that’s better. No-don’t try to sit up. You’ve had a nasty knock on the head, and the quieter you keep the better.”
“Oh, I see,” said Harriet. “I’ve got a beast of a headache.” A little thought located the worst part of the headache somewhere behind the right ear. She put up an exploratory hand and encountered a bandage. “What happened?”
“That’s what we’d all like to know,” said the Infirmarian.
“Well, I can’t remember a thing,” said Harriet.
“It doesn’t matter. Drink this.”
Like a book, thought Harriet. They always said, “Drink this.” The room wasn’t really so bright after all; the Venetian shutters were closed. It was her own eyes that were extraordinarily sensitive to light. Better shut them.
“Drink this” must have had something helpfully potent about it, because when she woke up again, the headache was better and she felt ravenously hungry. Also, she was beginning to remember things-the dog-collar and the lights that wouldn’t go on-and the hands that had come clutching out of the darkness. There, memory obstinately stopped short. How the headache had come into existence she had no idea. Then she saw again the picture of Miss de Vine stretched on the couch. She asked after her.
“She’s in the next room,” said the Infirmarian. “She’s had rather a nasty heart-attack, but she’s better now. She would try to do too much, and of course, finding you like that was a shock to her.”
It was not till the evening, when the Dean came in and found the patient fretting herself into a fever of curiosity, that Harriet got a complete story of the night’s adventures.
“Now, if you’ll keep quiet,” said the Dean, “I’ll tell you. If not, not. And your beautiful young man has sent you a young gardenful of flowers and will call again in the morning. Well, now! Poor Miss de Vine got here about 10 o’clock-her train was a bit late-and Mullins met her with a message to go and see the Warden at once. However, she thought she’d better take her hat off first, so she went along to her rooms-all in a hurry, so as not to keep Dr. Baring waiting. Well, of course, the first thing was that the lights wouldn’t go on; and then to her horror she heard you, my dear, snorting on the floor in the dark. So then she tried the table-lamp and that worked-and there you were, a nasty bluggy sight for a respectable female don to find in her sitting-room. You’ve got two beautiful stitches in you, by the way; it was the corner of the bookcase did that… So Miss de Vine rushed out calling for help, but there wasn’t a soul in the building, and then, my dear, she ran like fury over to Burleigh and some students tore out to see what was happening and then somebody fetched the Warden and somebody else fetched the Infirmarian and somebody else fetched Miss Stevens and Miss Hillyard and me who were having a quiet cup of tea in my room, and we rang up the doctor, and Miss de Vine’s groggy heart went back on her, what with shock and running about, and she went all blue on us-we had a lovely time.”
“You must have. One other gaudy night! I suppose you haven’t found who did it?”
“For quite a long time we hadn’t a moment to think about that part of it. And then, just as we were settling down, all the fuss started again about Annie.”
“Annie? What’s happened to her?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? We found her in the coal-hole, my dear, in such a state, what with coal-dust and hammering her fists on the door; and I wonder she wasn’t clean off her head, poor thing, locked up there all that time. And if it hadn’t been for Lord Peter we mightn’t even have begun to look for her till next morning, what with everything being in such an uproar.”
“Yes-he warned her she might be attacked…How did he-? Did you get him on the ’phone, or what?”
“Oh, yes. Well, after we’d got you and Miss de Vine to bed and had made up our minds you wouldn’t either of you peg out yet awhile, somebody brightly remembered that the first thing you said when we picked you up was ‘Tell Peter.’ So we rang up the Mitre and he wasn’t there; and then Miss Hillyard said she knew where he was and ’phoned through. That was after midnight. Fortunately, he hadn’t gone to bed. He said he’d come over at once, and then he asked what had happened to Annie Wilson. Miss Hillyard thought the shock had affected his wits, I think. However, he insisted that she ought to be kept an eye on, so we all started to look for her. Well, you know what a job it is tracking anybody down in this place, and we hunted and hunted and nobody had seen anything of her. And then, just before two, Lord Peter arrived, looking like death, and said we were to turn the place upside down if we didn’t want a corpse on our hands. Nice and reassuring that was!”
“I wish I hadn’t missed it all,” said Harriet. “He must have thought I was an awful ass to let myself be knocked out like that.”
“He didn’t say so,” said the Dean, drily. “He came in to see you, but of course you were well under the weather. And of course he explained about the dog-collar, which had puzzled us all dreadfully.”
“Yes. She went for my throat. I do remember that. I suppose she really meant to get Miss de Vine.”
“Obviously. And with her weak heart-and no dog-collar-she wouldn’t have had much chance, or so the doctor said. It was very lucky for her you happened to go in there. Or did you know?”
“I think,” said Harriet, her memory still rather confused, “I went to tell her about Peter’s warning and-oh, yes! there was something funny about the window-curtains. And the lights were all off.”
“The bulbs had been taken out. Well, anyway, somewhere about four o’clock, Padgett found Annie. She was locked up in the coal-cellar under the Hall Building, at the far end of the boiler-house. The key’d been taken away and Padgett had to break in the door. She was pounding and shouting-but of course, if we hadn’t been searching for her she might have yelled till Doomsday, especially as the radiators are off, and we’re not using the furnace. She was in what they call a state of collapse and couldn’t give us a coherent story for ever so long. But there’s nothing really the matter with her except shock and bruises where she was flung down on the coal-heap. And of course her hands and arms were pretty well skinned with battering on the door and trying to climb out of the ventilator.”