His patient, rinsing her mouth ardently, burst into a fluent explanation: She was going away - so sorry - would have to cancel the next appointment.
Yes, she would let him know when she got back.
And she escaped hurriedly from the room.
"Well," said Gale, "that's all for today."
Miss Ross said: "Lady Higginson rang up to say she must give up her appointment next week. She wouldn't make another.
Oh, and Colonel Blunt can't come on Thursday."
Norman Gale nodded.
His face hardened.
Every day was the same.
People ringing up. Canceled appointments.
All varieties of excuses - going away, going abroad, got a cold, may not be here.
It didn't matter what reason they gave. The real reason Norman had just seen quite unmistakably in his last patient's eye as he reached for the drill. A look of sudden panic.
He could have written down the woman's thoughts on paper:
"Oh, dear. Of course, he was in that aeroplane when that woman was murdered... I wonder... You do hear of people going off their heads and doing the most senseless crimes. It really isn't safe.
The man might be a homicidal lunatic.
They look the same as other people, I've always heard.
I believe I always felt there was rather a peculiar look in his eye."
"Well," said Gale, "it looks like being a quiet week next week. Miss Ross."
"Yes, a lot of people have dropped out.
Oh, well, you can do with a rest.
You worked so hard earlier in the summer."
"It doesn't look as though I were going to have a chance of working very hard in the autumn, does it?"
Miss Ross did not reply.
She was saved from having to do so by the telephone ringing.
She went out of the room to answer it.
Norman dropped some instruments into the sterilizer, thinking hard.
"Let's see how we stand. No beating about the bush. This business has about done for me professionally.
Funny. It's done well for Jane. People come on purpose to gape at her. Come to think of it, that's what's wrong here.
They have to gape at me, and they don't like it!
Nasty, helpless feeling you have in a dentist's chair.
If the dentist were to run amuck -
"What a strange business murder is!
You'd think it was a perfectly straight-forward issue, and it isn't.
It affects all sorts of queer things you'd never think of... Come back to facts.
As a dentist, I seem to be about done for...
What would happen, I wonder, if they arrested the Horbury woman?
Would my patients come trooping back?
Hard to say.
Once the rot's set in... Oh, well, what does it matter?
I don't care.
Yes, I do, because of Jane... Jane's adorable.
I want her. And I can't have her yet... A damnable nuisance."
He smiled.
"I feel it's going to be all right.
She cares. She'll wait... Damn it, I shall go to Canada - yes, that's it - and make money there."
He laughed to himself.
Miss Ross came back into the room.
"That was Mrs Lorrie.
She's sorry -"
"- but she may be going to Timbuctoo," finished Norman. "Vive les rats! You'd better look out for another post, Miss Ross.