In the Teeth of Adversity Read Online Free PDF Page B

partially open eyes to know that Tyler Meredith wasn’t going to wake again.
    â€œBy God.” General Sir Malcolm Zayle turned to his son and slapped him on the back. “You’ve done it, at last! I’m proud of you, m’boy!”
    â€œFather, please!” Endicott Zayle seemed to shrivel. His head swivelled unbelievingly between the sight in the chair and the triumphant elder Zayle.
    â€œDon’t worry, Son, I’ll stand by you! We’ll get old Harry Stacey for the defence – very good on the Unwritten Law, old Harry.” He turned to Sir Geoffrey for agreement. “Hasn’t lost a case since Hector was a pup.”
    â€œLord Stacey’s dead, Malcolm,” Sir Geoffrey said.
    â€œWhat? Dead? What? Why wasn’t I told?” Sir Malcolm demanded. “What happened, eh? Shot by a jealous husband, was that it?”
    â€œHardening of the arteries, Malcolm,” Sir Geoffrey said sadly. “Life catches up with us all.”
    â€œEgad!” Sir Malcolm said. “I knew he was living too fast – but that! Why wasn’t I told?” he demanded again.
    â€œYou were away, Father,” Endicott said, a placating note I had never had occasion to hear before in his voice. “On active service. We sent word. Possibly, the post ...”
    â€œDamned post,” Sir Malcolm said. “A man slogging his guts out on the field of honour, and not one letter in five ever reaching him with news of home. No wonder they say war is hell!”
    â€œI’m sorry, Father,” Endicott said. Beads of sweat were gathering along his receding hairline. “I – we – had no idea messages weren’t reaching you.”
    I began to get a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. Sir Malcolm was talking as though war were a contemporary event. For him. As though he were home on leave from some battlefield and expected to return to it at any moment. As for the others, I could see that Sir Malcolm was quite a formidable character, but need they humour him to this extent? I began to wonder whose hand actually controlled the purse strings at Zayle, Zayle & Meredith.
    â€œNever mind.” Sir Malcolm brushed trivialities aside. “We’ll find the best man living to handle the defence. Then, I think, a spell in the service for you, m’boy. Enlist, that’s the ticket. Everybody loves a soldier. Volunteer for the front line. Get wounded, if you can. A medal or two will put a lot of things right in civilian life.”
    â€œBut, Father –” Endicott wailed. “It was suicide – it must have been.”
    â€œBe a man, m’boy,” his father encouraged. “And don’t worry – it will all be over by Christmas.”
    I’d stopped worrying about Sir Malcolm – he was Endicott’s problem – and had started worrying about my own. I could understand how Tyler Meredith had come to commit suicide: if he’d glanced into the adjoining surgery to see how the experiment with his new anaesthetic was going and found Morgana Fane, to all intents and purposes, a corpse in the chair, the failure of his formula and the resultant publicity might have seemed too much to bear.
    But how could I phrase a press release to that effect in such a way that Morgana Fane didn’t discover the worst about those paralysed moments she had described so graphically in the dental chair? If she were to realize that her own dentist had believed her dead, had abandoned her after using her as a guinea pig for a new anaesthetic, she would have grounds for the biggest, most sensational lawsuit to hit the Old Bailey in decades.
    â€œFather –” Endicott Zayle bleated again. “Tyler could only have committed suicide. Look at the way he has the mask – it’s strapped on. You know very well that we’re taught never to test a gas anaesthetic by strapping on the mask. And never to sit in the chair, either.