In the Teeth of Adversity Read Online Free PDF

didn’t know what game Zayle was playing now, but it wasn’t the one we’d started out with, and I was getting dizzier by the minute. It wouldn’t take long before I was as dizzy as Zayle himself. I hoped it wouldn’t affect me the same way – I had enough problems without imagining corpses.
    â€œOh, by the way.” Reminded, I freed myself from Zayle’s grip and turned to the healthiest corpse I’d ever seen. “I came up with a message for you, Miss Fane. Your business manager is getting anxious – something about being due at Vogue. ”
    â€œOverdue is more like it.” She glanced at her watch with a coo of dismay. “We’re shooting a feature on my honeymoon. All the clothes I’ve chosen for my trousseau, out of all the fashion garments I’ve modelled recently.”
    I nodded admiringly. For the past several years she had been constantly in the company of the Title she was about to sweep in triumph to the Registrar’s Office. And now she was going to cash in on honeymoon features. It was a masterpiece of the public relations art that any interest could be drummed up in such a fait accompli.
    â€œWell, that does it,” she said. “I can’t waste time here any longer. If ” – she gave Zayle a dismissive frown – “you find the time, you might make another appointment for me.”
    â€œAnytime at all, Miss Fane,” he babbled. “I’m terribly sorry about this. Just come when you can – I’ll fit you in. It’s the least –”
    I jabbed him sharply in the ribs and he had the sense to shut up.
    We all watched her leave, but the others couldn’t have appreciated her exit as much as I did. I was never so relieved in my life to see someone going out on their own two feet, instead of being carried out. Now all I had to worry about was ridding Zayle of this new idea that I needed instant and immediate dental treatment. If necessary, I was prepared to discourage it with a straight left to the jaw.
    While the others were staring after Morgana Fane, still bemused, the intercom buzzed. Since no one else seemed inclined to answer it, I picked up the phone myself and listened to the receptionist’s urgent question.
    â€œNo,” I said. “Both Zayles are here, but Meredith isn’t.”
    â€œHe’ll be in his own surgery,” Endicott Zayle said. “The stupid girl has been here long enough to know that.”
    â€œShe says he isn’t,” I told him. “She says she’s been ringing and there’s no answer. His next patient has just arrived, and he hasn’t taken the previous one yet. She thought he might have been in conference with you.”
    More likely, she’d thought he must have been drawn in by the raised voices. They must have been audible downstairs, let alone in the next-door surgery. I began to feel a faint disquiet. Why hadn’t Tyler Meredith come in to see what all the commotion was about? It was his new anaesthetic that was being tested, after all.
    â€œHis line may be out of order,” Sir Geoffrey suggested. “Why not just pop in and sound the alert?”
    En bloc, we moved toward the interconnecting door below the level of the small intersecting X-ray room. Endicott Zayle, I noticed, seemed unworried, but faintly distracted, as though recent events had been slightly beyond his grasp. Not that he was alone; it was all beyond my grasp, too.
    It was the senior Zayle who took the doorknob with the same no-nonsense grip he might have used on a pair of forceps and swung the door open. “Wakey, wakey in there,” he roared.
    There was no response from the figure stretched out in the dental chair. As we advanced farther into the room, we could see the mask – like an oxygen mask – strapped over his face; hear the hissing of the tank hooked into the wheeled stand. I didn’t need to see the faint glitter of the