“I’m a doctor. Someone sent for me about an accident here.”

The stout man turned a casual eye. “Accident?” Then, into space: “Hey, Jim! Know anything about an accident?”

“To one of your dancers,” David added, recollecting.

A voice answered: “We ain’t got only one dancer. She slipped as she came off, if you call that an accident.”

The stout man jerked his hand. “Maybe it’s her. You’ll find her along there.”

“Thank you.”

David walked between cliffs of slowly swaying canvas till he came to a group of girls wiping grease paint from their faces. They took no notice of him and after a moment he asked: “Is there a girl here who dances?”

“Oh, you mean What’s-her-name? Try the door right at the end.”

He walked farther till a closed door stopped him; he tapped on the panel, but there was no answer; then he turned the handle and found the room empty. He went back to the girls.

“There’s nobody in.”

“No? Then she must have gone home.”

“But — well, I’m a doctor — I was sent for to see this girl — or to see someone, at any rate — about an accident.”

“An accident?”

“Hasn’t there been an accident? Didn’t she slip and hurt herself?”

“Don’t know, I’m sure. We weren’t on during her turn.”

Had they been less casual, had they been able to confirm or deny or explain anything, he would probably have concluded that since the girl had been well enough to go home she could not have been very badly hurt. And he would probably have gone home then himself, assuming his summons to have been a thing done hastily and afterwards regretted. But that air of casualness, so foreign to the routine of his own profession, stiffened his conscientiousness to the point of obstinacy; even if the whole thing were a hoax or a false alarm, he could not now be satisfied till he had definitely established it so. After some trouble he extracted the girl’s temporary address from the stage doorkeeper: Number 24, Harcourt Row.

He walked there in a drizzling mist; the wind had calmed suddenly, and the bare trees hung tired and still and heavy with raindrops. One might have noticed then that he wasn’t really little at all, merely that his well-proportioned figure marked a difference from the common identification of size and strength. There was something resolute in his stride along the pavements, and a look of quiet challenge in the way he turned the corner of the Row and glanced up at the dark facade.

At Number 24 an elderly woman answered his continued ringing; she had to unlock the door. He knew her by sight; she knew him in the same way; and only this prevented the voicing of her resentment at being dragged out of bed at such an hour. Even as it was, her manner was far from cordial. When David had stated his business she muttered truculently: “Well, so far as I know she’s in bed and asleep by now. She had her key. I never wait up. It’s bad enough to let to theatricals without having to keep their hours.”