No Escape by Josephine Bell

Author:Josephine Bell [Bell, Josephine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Chapter Ten

If Dr Milton was shocked by the film he did not show it, unless his very evident anger was a sign of outrage. He sat for several minutes quite still and silent, very pale, his mouth drawn in, his eyes blazing. Tim stood beside him, waiting for a rush of words that never came. All that did come from Dr Milton was a heavy sigh as he touched the buzzer on his desk and then spoke to his secretary in the next room.

“Get me Scotland Yard,” he said. “Say you want the Vice Squad.”

The secretary’s gasp was clearly audible. Tim nodded, to save himself from laughing, but Dr Milton paid no attention to him. When the call came through he simply asked that someone should be sent immediately to his department to receive information relating to the death of a former patient, Miss Sheila Burgess.

“Yes,” he repeated, “Sheila Burgess. No, I don’t want the divisional C.I.D. My information almost certainly concerns your outfit. If you don’t want to handle it, I shall go straight to M.I.5. I think it’s for you, but it might conceivably be for them. It’s international, anyway, I should think.”

Tim looked at the radiologist with admiration and Dr Milton smiled.

“They bought that” he said. “I’ll call you when they arrive. I expect you have work to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

At the door Tim paused.

“Would you really be able to get in touch with M.I.5, sir? Just like that? Or do you know someone?”

“Of course not. Neither. I haven’t a clue. But it worked, which is what matters. And I don’t expect they’ll be disappointed when they see that spool. I’d like to open it myself but I think that might be a little rash.”

Tim went up to the wards and was soon totally absorbed in his cases. The morning passed without any call for him from the X-ray Department. But going to lunch at one he met Dr Milton in a ground-floor corridor.

“Oh, Long,” he said. “Those chaps came and took the thing away. Only stayed five minutes. Collected Miss Burgess’s notes, Miss Wheelan’s name and home address, your name—I couldn’t give them your address other than the hospital—and pushed off. There was no point in getting you down. They’d better play it their own way.”

“Yes,” said Tim. He felt deflated, but knew he had no right to be. It really was none of his business, except that it did concern Jane Wheelan closely and perhaps, in a small way, she had become his business. Or not? He thought of the very pleasant meal they had had together the evening before. She ought to know what had happened. He determined to find her after lunch and give her the news.

But when, after some trouble, he found her in the records room, looking out some files for Miss Gleaning, he learned that Dr Milton had already spoken to her.

“I suppose we had to give him the film,” she said, unhappily. “For Sheila’s sake I’d have liked to drop it in the incinerator straight off.

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