The Dawn of Reckoning by James Hilton

chair and scratched his head with an expression of bewilderment that was
increased rather than decreased by further reflection.
    “I certainly haven’t. He never mentioned any thing of the kind to me.
Though I must confess—it’s just the sort of thing he would do.”
    “ Is it?— Is it?” Her query was almost plaintive.
    Philip went on: “He’s keen on danger and excitement. Personally I question
whether information about the Pole is worth the expenditure of human life and
energy.”
    “Life?—But you don’t necessarily die, do you?”
    “Many men have died. I—yes, I question whether it’s worth it. It was
different in the days of Frobisher and Magellan when—”
    She replied a trifle impatiently: “My dear Philip, it’s not a bit of use
talking like that to me—you know I’ve never heard of Frobisher
and—and the other fellow.”
    “Really?—Well, I can soon explain. Frobisher was—”
    “Oh, don’t—not now,” she said hastily. “Some other time,
Philip—when I’m more in the mood for learning things.”
    He glanced at her oddly and resumed his books.
VI
    Gradually she formed a plan of action. It was Wednesday, and
Wednesday was Doctor Challis’s day for giving consultations. She was a great
favourite of his, and he, moreover, was the sort of doctor to whom you could
go and complain very vaguely of being just “not quite up to the mark,”
whereupon he would be immediately sympathetic, and would dismiss you with a
pontifical blessing and a battle of iron and quinine. And at a hint about his
young assistant’s plans for the future he would most probably tell the
complete story.
    Hence Stella’s visit that afternoon. Over an hour she sat in the gloomy
waiting-room of the surgery, endeavouring to extract a forlorn interest from
the two-year-old Graphics that lay in a tumbled and dog-eared heap on
the table. She had not reckoned on having to wait. Usually Doctor Challis was
avail able straightaway, but this afternoon the waiting-room was full when
she entered it; there were women with children and babies, and one or two
rather shabbily-dressed men, not at all the kind of clientêle that she had
expected Doctor Challis to possess.
    She sat down on the edge of the table, since none of the chairs were
vacant. The room was fearfully depressing. It seemed to her that there was a
hostility to her in the room; that the people in it were all disliking her.
She knew that many of them were politically opposed to Philip; and she knew
also that during the election campaign a good deal of play had been made out
of the fact that she was a “foreigner.” She dangled her legs nonchalantly,
not caring about the dour looks that she received. These people seemed to
think that a surgery waiting-room was like a church—a sacred edifice.
After she had waited half an hour she wished fervently that she hadn’t come.
But she thought that, having waited so long, she might as well stay on.
    At last it came her turn, and the trimly-dressed maid conducted her along
devious corridors of the doctor’s old house, and finally to the glass door of
what looked like a conservatory. The door was opened for her and she stepped
inside.
    The man facing her was not Doctor Challis, but Ward himself.
VII
    “Good afternoon,” he began, in the abrupt voice that was so
wildly different from Doctor Challis’s suave mellifluous tones.
    His grey eyes narrowed till he seemed almost to be closing them tightly.
She noticed little insignificant things about him—that he wore a brown
suit (not the one that had been drenched the day before), that he had had his
hair cut shorter than ever, and that his teeth as he showed them momentarily
were white as chalk.
    “I—I thought it was Doctor Challis’s day,” she said, hardly
conquering her surprise.
    “Doctor Challis has given up seeing patients. Have you any objection to
seeing me instead?”
    “Oh no, not at all.”
    “Very well, please sit