With sudden resolution Sykes jammed the razor into the lump, but as she did so Amber moaned and the moan slid in crescendo to a quivering scream. Sykes let go of the razor and stepped back to stand staring at Amber who was struggling now to free herself, twisting frantically in an effort to escape the pain, shrieking again and again.

Bruce began to get out of bed. “Help me!”

Sykes came swiftly, put one arm around his back, the other beneath his elbow, and in an instant he had dropped on his knees beside the trundle and seized the razor.

“Hold her! Here! By the knees!”

Again Sykes did as she was told, though Amber continued to writhe, shrieking, her eyes rolling like a frenzied animal’s. With all the strength he had left Bruce forced the razor into the hard mass and twisted it to one side. As he pulled it out again the blood spurted, splattering onto his body, and Amber dropped back, unconscious. His head fell helplessly onto his fist; his own wound had opened once more and the bandage showed fresh and red.

Sykes was trying to help him get up. “Your Lordship! Ye must get back into bed! Your Lordship—please!”

She wrenched the razor from his hand and with her help he managed to crawl back onto the bed. She flung a blanket over him and turned immediately to Amber whose skin was now white and waxen. Her heart was beating, very faintly. Quantities of blood poured from the opening, but there was no pus and the poison was not draining.

Sykes worked furiously, at her own initiative now, for Bruce had lapsed into coma. She kept the blood sponged away; she heated bricks and every hot water bottle in the house and packed them about Amber; she laid hot cloths on her forehead. If there was any way she could be saved, Sykes intended to get her hundred pounds.

It was almost an hour before Bruce returned to consciousness and then, with a sudden start, he tried to sit up. “Where is she! You didn’t let them take her!”

“Hush, sir! I think she’s sleeping. She’s still alive and I think, sir, that she’s better.”

He leaned over to look at her. “Oh, thank God, thank God. I swear it, Sykes, if she lives you’ll get your hundred pound. I’ll make it two hundred for you.”

“Oh, thank you, sir! But now, sir—you’d better lie back there and rest yourself—or you might not fare so well, sir.”

“Yes, I will. Wake me if she gets any—” The words trailed off.

At last the pus began to seep up and the wound started to drain off its poison. Amber lay perfectly still again, drowned in coma, but the dark tinge was gone from her skin and though her cheeks had sunk against the bones and there were crape-like circles around her eyes, her pulse had a stronger, surer beat. The sound of tolling bells seemed suddenly to fill the room. Sykes gave a start, then relaxed; they would not toll tonight for her patient.


“I’ve worked hard for my money, sir,” Sykes said to him on the morning of the fourth day. “And I’m sure she’ll live now. Can I have it?”

Bruce smiled. “You have worked hard, Sykes. And I’m more grateful than I can tell you. But you’ll have to wait a while longer.” He would not give her any of the jewellery, partly because it was Amber’s personal property, partly because it might have encouraged her to outright thievery or some other mischief. Sykes had served her purpose, but he knew that it would be foolish to trust her. “There are only a few shillings in the house—and they’ve got to be spent for food. As soon as I can go out I’ll get it for you.”

He was able to sit up now, most of the day, and when it was necessary he could get out of bed, but never stayed more than a few minutes at a time. His persistent weakness seemed both to amuse and infuriate him. “I’ve been shot in the stomach and run through the shoulder,” he said one day to Sykes as he walked slowly back to the bed. “I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake and I’ve had a tropical fever—but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever felt like this before.”

Most of the time he spent reading, though there were only a few books in the apartment and he had already seen most of them. Some had been there as part of the furnishings and they were a respectable assortment, including the Bible, Hobbes’s “Leviathan,” Bacon’s “Novum Organum,” some of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Browne’s “Religio Medici.”

Amber’s collection, though small, was more lively. There was an almanac, thumbed and much scribbled in, the lucky and unlucky days starred, as well as those for purging or bloodletting, though so far as he knew she seldom did either. Her familiar scrawl was marked across the fly-leaf of half-a-dozen others: “L’École des Filles,” “The Crafty Whore,” “The Wandering Whore,” “Annotations upon Aretino’s Postures,” “Ars Amatoria,” and—evidently because it was currently fashionable —Butler’s “Hudibras.” All but the last had obviously been well read. He smiled to see them, for though the same volumes would doubtless have been found in the closet of almost any Court lady they were nevertheless amusingly typical of her.

He always sat near the edge of the bed where he could watch her, and she made no movement or slightest sound which he did not notice. She was, very slowly, getting better, though the constant sloughing of the wound worried him, for it continued to open wider and deeper until it had spread over an area with a two-inch diameter. But both he and Sykes were convinced that if the incision had not been made she would have died.

Sometimes, to his horror, she would suddenly put up her hands as though to ward off a blow, and cry out in a piteous voice. “Don’t! No! Please! Don’t cut me!” And the cry would slide off in a shuddering moan that turned him cold and wet. After that she always lapsed again into unconsciousness, though sometimes even in coma she twitched and squirmed and made soft whimpering sounds.

It was the seventh day before she saw and recognized him. He had come in from the parlour and found her propped against Sykes’s arm swallowing some beef-broth, languidly and without interest. He had a blanket flung over his shoulders and now he knelt beside the trundle to watch her.

She seemed to sense him there and her head turned slowly. For a long moment she looked at him, and then at last she whispered softly: “Bruce?”

He took her hand in both of his. “Yes, darling. I’m here.”

She forced a little smile to her face and started to speak again, but the words would not come, and he moved away to save her the effort. But the next morning, early, while Sykes was combing out her hair she spoke to him again, though her voice was so thin and weak that he had to lean close to hear it.

“How long ’ve I been here?”

“This is the eighth day, Amber.”

“Aren’t you well yet?”

“Almost. In a few days I’ll be able to take care of you.”

She closed her eyes then and breathed a long tired sigh. Her head rolled over sideways on the pillow. Her hair, lank and oily with most of the curl gone, lay in thick skeins about her head. Her collar-bones showed sharply beneath the taut-stretched skin, and it was possible to see her ribs.

That same day Mrs. Sykes fell sick, and though she protested for several hours that it was nothing at all, merely a slight indisposition from something she had eaten, Bruce knew better. He did not want her taking care of Amber and suggested that she lie down in the nursery and rest, which she did immediately. Then, wrapping himself in a blanket, he went out to the kitchen.

Sykes had had neither the time nor the inclination and probably not even the knowledge for good housekeeping and all the rooms were littered and untidy. Puffs of dust moved about on the floors, the furniture was thickly coated, stubs of burnt-down candles lay wherever she had tossed them. In the kitchen there were stacks of dirty pans and plates, great pails full of soaking bloody rags or towels, and the food had not been put away but left out on the table or even set on the floor.

Everything spoiled rapidly in the heat and she had been negligent about reordering from the guard; so he found that the butter had turned rancid, the milk was beginning to sour, and some of the eggs stank when opened. He ladled out a bowl of soup—Sykes’s concoction and by no means so palatable as Amber’s had been—and ate it himself, and then he took the best of what he could find in on a tray to Amber.

As he was feeding her, slowly, spoonful by spoonful, Sykes suddenly began to rave and scream in delirium. Amber grabbed his wrist, her eyes full of terror.

“What’s that!”

“It’s nothing, darling. Someone in the street. Here—that’s enough for now. You must lie down again.”

She did so but her eyes watched him as he went to the nursery door, turned the key in the lock and taking it out tossed it upon the table.

“There’s someone in there,” she said softly. “Someone who’s sick.”

He came back and sat beside her again. “It’s the nurse—but she can’t get out. You’re safe here, darling, and you must go back to sleep again—”

“But what if she dies, Bruce—how’ll you get her out of the house?” The expression in her eyes showed what she was thinking: of Spong, of dragging her down the stairs, of the dead-cart.

“Don’t worry about it. Don’t even think about it. I’ll do it someway. Now you must sleep, darling—sleep and get well.”

For two or three hours Sykes continued to rave intermittently. She beat on the door, shrieking at him to let her out, demanding the money he had promised her, but he made no answer at all. The windows in the nursery overlooked the courtyard and the back alley and sometime in the middle of the night he heard her smashing them and screaming wildly. And then he heard a yowl as she leaped out and went crashing down two stories below. When the dead-cart came by he opened the window to tell the guard where they would find her.