The Silent Cry Page 0,8

as he admired her. And she despised the hardness she thought she saw in him, the arrogance and disregard for others. And yet when he had faced the worst crisis in his life it had been she who had stood beside him, she who had refused to let him give in, had fought for him when it looked as if he could not win, and worst of all, did not deserve to.

How she rebelled against rolling bandages, sweeping floors and carrying coals when she was capable of so much more, and had done it in the field surgeons' tents when all the doctors were already doing all they could. She had wanted to reform so much, and the eagerness had got in her way.

They were at the end of the ward now and Riley had stopped by a bed where a young man lay, white-faced, motionless. Only the clouding of his breath on a glass could have told if he was still alive. There was nothing for the eye to see.

Evan recognised him from the alley. The features were the same, the curve of eyelid, the almost black hair, rather long nose, sensitive mouth. The bruising did not hide that, and the blood had been cleared away. Evan found himself willing him to live, aching with the tension in his own body as if by strength of his feeling he could make it happen, and yet at the same time, terrified of the pain of it when he woke and felt his broken body, and his memory returned.

Who was he R. Duff? Was the older man related to him? And what had happened in that alley? Why had they been there? What appetite had taken them to such a place on a January night?

"Give me the trousers," Evan whispered, a wave of horror and revulsion returning to him. "I'll take them to the tailor."

"You'd be better with the coat," Riley replied. "It's got the label on it, and there's less blood."

"Less blood? The other man's coat was soaked in it!"

"I know." Riley shrugged his thin shoulders. "With this one it's the trousers. Maybe they all went down together in a scrum But if you want the tailor to be fit for anything, take the jacket. No need to give the poor man a turn."

Evan took it after he had examined them both. Like the dead man's, they were torn in several places, filthy with mud and effluent from the gutter, and stained with blood on coat sleeves and tails, and the trousers were sodden.

Evan left the hospital horrified, exhausted in mind and spirit as well as body, and now so cold he could not stop shivering. He took a hansom home to his rooms. He would not get in an omnibus with that dreadful jacket and he had no wish to sit among other people, decent people at the end of their day's work, who had no idea of what he had seen and felt and of the young man who lay invisible in St. Thomas's, and who might or might not awaken again.

He found the tailor at nine o'clock. He spoke personally to Mr.

Jiggs of Jiggs & Muldrew, a rotund man who needed all his own art to disguise his ample stomach and rather short legs.

"What may I do for you, sir?" he said with some distaste as he saw the parcel under Evan's arm. He disapproved of gentlemen who bundled up clothes. It was no way to treat a highly skilled piece of workmanship.

Evan had no time or mood for catering to anyone's sensitivities.

"Do you have a client by the name of R. Duff, Mr. Jiggs?" he asked bluntly.

"My client list is a matter of confidence, sir..."

"This is a case of murder," Evan snapped, sounding more like Monk than his own usually soft-spoken manner. "The owner of this suit is lying at death's door in St. Thomas's. Another man, also wearing a suit with your label in it, is in the morgue. I do not know who they are... other than this..." He ignored Jiggs's pasty face and wide eyes.

"If you can tell me, then I demand that you do so." He spilled out the jacket on to the tailor's table.

Jiggs started backwards as if it had been alive and dangerous.

"Will you look at it, please," Evan commanded.

"Oh my God!" Mr. Jiggs put a clammy hand to his brow. "Whatever happened?"

"I don't know yet," Evan answered a trifle more gently. "Will you please look at that jacket and