The Mind of Mr Soames Read Free Page B

dining-room, and it was there that he had his own small but comfortable bed-sitter. He entered the building by the rear door and made his way downstairs to the dining-room in search of coffee, which was available on request any time after ten-thirty. Already there were a dozen or more people dispersed among the circular tables making the most of morning refreshment facilities. He collected his coffee from the counter, which was arranged on serve-yourself lines, and looked around for an empty table, feeling, if anything, just a little unsociable and not really in a conversational mood. Unexpectedly he found himself looking straight at Ann Henderson at an isolated table near the window. She smiled, and with that his feeling of insularity evaporated. He went over and joined her.
    Ann was odd-woman-out in the general medical establishment of the Institute, an honour she shared with Pauline Stanton of the Radiography Department, but whereas Pauline was middle-aged and thick-set and wore horn-rimmed glasses, Ann was personable and shapely, and her features, if not exactly pretty, were certainly interesting. She had smooth black hair, cut relatively short but frequently untidy, and brown eyes, and she used negligible cosmetics. A curious liaison existed between Conway and the girl; they were precisely the same age, sharing the same birth date (and, in consequence, the same sign of the zodiac and the same astrological forecasts as promulgated in the evening papers—a device which had provided a useful conversational opening gambit on past occasions). Ann was not a doctor, but she held an engineering degree in electronics, and her particular responsibility was the E.E.G. Department where she supervised the use of the electroencephalograph. McCabe’s fascinating bitch, Conway thought ironically.
    ‘Hello, Dave,’ she said. ‘You look tired.’
    ‘Night duty,’ he remarked briefly.
    ‘In that case you ought to be catching up with your sleep.’
    ‘I am, but it doesn’t show.’
    ‘What does show is a Soames complex,’ she observed. ‘Most of the staff seem to be suffering from it this morning.’
    He shrugged. ‘Medical history in the making—or does that sound pontifical? One has a duty to be present, I suppose, if only to make obeisances and scraping and bowing noises in the direction of Dr Takaito.’
    ‘You sound as if you dislike Dr Takaito.’
    ‘My dear Ann, I love the man. It’s so kind of him to drop by on his way to New York in order to help us out on this baffling Soames case. What, I ask myself, should we have done without Japanese intervention?’
    ‘You sound like McCabe,’ she accused. ‘He’s got a thing about the Japs. Apparently his father died on the Burma railway during the last war.’
    He regarded her with raised eyebrows. ‘You seem to know a great deal more about McCabe’s background than I do.’
    ‘Now I begin to understand,’ she said, smiling. ‘It’s not Takaito who’s made you feel sour.’
    ‘How could he? I don’t even know the man.’
    She hesitated for a moment, as if uncertain what to say. ‘As a matter of fact, Dave, I saw Andy McCabe a few minutes ago. He asked me to have dinner with him this evening and he’s got tickets for a show afterwards.’
    Conway remained silent.
    ‘That new American musical,’ she went on. ‘ “What are Little Girls made of?”—it’s had very good reviews.’
    ‘When I saw Andy in the theatre about half an hour ago he didn’t seem in a fit state to know even what little boys are made of,’ he commented dryly.
    ‘Morry’s party, I suppose.’
    ‘Something, like that.’
    ‘Well, he’s washed and shaved since then and he looks reasonably civilised.’
    He finished his coffee and stood up wearily. ‘Well, have fun, Ann.’
    ‘I’ll try,’ she said, eyeing him reflectively. ‘I can’t help wishing it was you, rather than Andy. You know what I mean, don’t you, Dave?’
    ‘Yes, I know what you mean. Some other time, perhaps.