The Hunter and the Trapped Read Online Free Page B

you.”
    â€œLightly!”
    The shutter lifted for an instant and George had a glimpse of startled rage and a strange suffering. Then it fell again.
    Simon got up, thanked his friend politely and prepared to leave. George was aware that he had gone too far. He regretted it, since this would be Simon’s last visit for some time.
    â€œDon’t go yet,” he urged. “I shall be away now for three months. My firm’s sending me to the U. S.”
    â€œI hope you enjoy it,” Simon answered, still moving towards the door.
    â€œIt was the U. S., wasn’t it – or was it Canada – that boy went to?” George said, trying to force a conclusion that would leave Simon free to continue the evening with him in friendship.
    As there was no answer he finished, lamely, “I hope he found some peace of mind and friendship wherever he went.”
    â€œI think he may have done so,” Simon answered, gravely. He said goodbye to George and thanked him with a bright smile for an excellent evening.

Chapter Three
    William Allingham drew together the various papers on his desk and sat for a few minutes looking at the pile before pressing the bell for his secretary.
    He had just finished a session in his consulting room in Welmore Street. It had taken him three hours and consisted of six patients; two American business men, two elderly widows in need of occupation, two genuine chronic asthmatics.
    Dr. Allingham’s speciality was not an exacting one, though it provided him with an absorbing interest and used his undoubted ability, his keen brain, his abundant energy to the full. He was an endocrinologist, with a special interest as well in all forms of allergy, which took him rather outside his particular field into those of the chest and skin specialists. But it also kept him from being swamped by ageing women mistakenly set upon buying back a semblance of their youth. This might be and was, in some hands, a very profitable line, but not one that appealed to him. He preferred to work in general hospitals for the full number of sessions allowed and paid for by the National Health Service and to augment his income to the required figure with a private practice where each patient could have the maximum attention and investigation while being perfectly well able to pay for it.
    Having collected his papers into a heap Dr. Allingham went through them slowly, extracting a page here and there, putting together reports that had strayed apart, occasionally pulling out an irrelevancy to crumple it up and throw it in the waste-paper basket.
    Having finished this task he summoned his secretary and dictated to her a series of letters, most of them to the general practitioners who had passed on the patients to him, a few to experienced patients themselves who were waiting at home for the results of recent tests. After he had gone through the pile again in this way, the secretary left him to type out the letters and Dr. Allingham put away the notes and reports himself in their separate files in a large cabinet and locked them up. He then took the lift to his flat, knowing that Mrs. Stone would come up presently with the letters for him to sign. Though he shared her services with three other consultants and she acted as receptionist as well to all of them, she never seemed to be overwhelmed by her work. So now he had not even asked her to bring the letters up to the flat. He knew she would look into the consulting room first and then take the lift up.
    The flat was empty when he arrived there. This did not surprise him. The morning daily came at nine and left at two. On the days when they had people in to dine, another helper managed the meal. Otherwise Diana cooked it herself. Tonight they had nobody coming. He looked at his watch, saw that the time was just after six and decided that Diana would be home at any time now. He refused to let himself wonder in definite terms where she might be, but instead poured