Lay Her Among The Lilies

she wants to run away and hide? Well, so she shall. She’ll be hidden all right, where no one

will ever find her, and that goes for you, too, my inquisitive friend.”

I was calculating the distance between us, wondering if I could get up and reach him before

he fired, when I heard the all too familiar swish of a descending cosh and the inside of my

head seemed to explode.

The last sound I heard was Maureen’s wild, terrified scream.

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James Hadley Chase – Lay Her Among The Lilies – Chapter IV

Chapter IV

I

The room was big and airy, and the walls and ceiling were a dead Chinese white. Cold,

white plastic curtains were drawn across the windows, and a shaded lamp made a pool of

light over the opposite bed.

There was a man sitting up in the bed. He was reading. His small-boned face with its high,

wide forehead gave the impression of a young student reading for an examination.

I watched him through half-closed eyes for some minutes, wondering in a vague, detached

sort of way who he was and what he was doing in this room with me. There was something

odd about the book he was reading. It was a big volume, and the print was close set and

small. It was only when he turned a page and I saw a chapter heading that I realized he was

holding the book upside down.

I wasn’t surprised to find myself in this room. I had a vague idea I had been in it for some

time: perhaps days, perhaps weeks. The feel of the narrow high bed I was lying in was

familiar: almost as familiar as the feel of my own bed in my beach cabin which now seemed

as remote as last year’s snow.

I knew in an instinctive kind of way—I was quite sure I hadn’t been told—that I was in

hospital, and I tried to remember if I had been knocked down by a car, but my mind was

working badly. It refused to concentrate, and kept jumping across the room to the man in the

opposite bed. Its only interest was to find out why he was holding his book the wrong way

up, for it seemed to me the book looked dry and complicated enough without adding to the

difficulty of reading it.

The man in the bed was young; not more than twenty-four or so, and his thick fair hair was

over long and silky-looking. He had very deep-set eyes, and the lamp cast shadows in them

so they seemed to be two dark holes in his face.

I suddenly became aware that he was also watching me, although he pretended to be

reading; watching furtively from under his eyelids; watching as he turned a page slowly with

a concentrated frown on his face.

“You’ll find it easier if you turn the book the right way up,” I said, and was surprised how

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LAY HER AMONG THE LILIES

far away my voice sounded, as if I were speaking in another room.

He glanced up and smiled. He was a nice-looking youngster : a typical collegian, more at

home with a baseball bat than a book.

“I always read books this way up,” he said; his voice was unexpectedly high pitched. “It’s

more fun, and it’s just as easy once you get the knack of it, but it does take a lot of practice.”

He laid the book down. “Well, how do you feel, Mr. Seabright? I’m afraid you have had a

pretty rotten time. How’s the head?”

It was a funny thing, but now he mentioned it I discovered my head ached and an artery

was pounding in my temple.

“It aches,” I said. “Is this a hospital?”

“Well, not exactly a hospital. I think they call it a sanitarium.”

“You mean a sanatorium, don’t you? A sanitarium is a nut foundry.”

He smiled and nodded his blond head.

“That’s it exactly: a nut foundry.”

I closed my eyes. Thinking was difficult, but I made the effort. It took me several minutes

to remember the swish of a descending cosh, the man in the scarlet sweatshirt, and

Maureen’s wild, terrified scream. A sanitarium. I felt a little prickle of apprehension run up

my spine like spider’s legs. A sanitarium!

I sat up abruptly. Something held my left wrist, pinning it to the bed. I turned to see what it

was. A bright nickle-plated, rubber-lined handcuff gripped my wrist. The other cuff was

fastened to the rail of the bed.

The blond man was watching me with mild interest.

“They think it’s safer for us to be chained up like that,” he said. “Ridiculous, really, but I

have no doubt they mean well.”

“Yes,” I said and lay back. More spider’s legs ran up my spine. “Who runs this place?”

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“Why, Dr. Salzer, of course. Haven’t you met him? He’s quite charming. You’ll like him.

Everyone does.”

Then I remembered the man in the scarlet sweatshirt had said he would hide me away

where no one would ever find me. An asylum, of course, was a pretty fool-proof hiding-place. But Salzer didn’t run an asylum. His place was a retreat for the over-fed: Nurse Gurney

had said so.

“But I thought Salzer ran a kind of Nature Cure racket,” I said carefully. “Not a nut

foundry.”

“So he does, but there’s a wing set aside for the mentally sick,” the blond man explained.

He walked two fingers along the edge of the night table. “It is not usually talked about.” He

walked his fingers back again. “It’s so much more pleasant for relatives to say you are having