Page 88 of The Other Lady Vanishes

“That’s certainly where she belongs. She is a very fragile patient. She never recovered from the shock of her parents’ deaths.”

“You told me back at the start that she was unstable. She needs help.”

Somehow that had made the scheme seem almost all right, he thought. Gill had succeeded in making him believe that he would be doing Adelaide a favor by marrying her and then sending her to Rushbrook for treatment.

When he realized that she was going to refuse his offer of marriage, he had panicked. The plan had been to slip just enough Daydream into her champagne to make her highly suggestible. Gill had assured him that the stuff had strong hypnotic properties and that once she was under its influence he could convince her to marry him.

But everything had gone wrong. In hindsight he wondered whether Gill had deliberately miscalculated the dose or if the drug was inherently unpredictable. Maybe a little of both. Whatever the case, after drinking the drugged champagne, Adelaide had plunged into a delirium. Gill and Ormsby had taken charge of her that night.

“As her doctor, I can tell you that she’s liable to suffer another nervous breakdown at any moment,” Gill said. “But I doubt very much that you’re going to get another shot at trying to convince her you are passionately in love with her. Truett would be a fool to let her out of his sight now that he knows you’re in the picture. Adelaide is worth a lot of money.”

“I know.” Conrad snorted in disgust. “Truett doesn’t need her inheritance. I’m the one facing bankruptcy.”

“I understand,” Gill said. He lowered his voice. “There may be another way to rescue poor Adelaide from Truett’s clutches and return her to the sanitarium where she belongs.”

One last chance to save Massey Shipping, Conrad thought. He downed the last of his martini and lowered the glass.

“I’m listening,” he said. “How do we get Adelaide back to Rushbrook?”

Chapter 42

“Are you crazy?” Adelaide said. “It’s a trap. You can’t possibly be serious about meeting Conrad alone. He told you it was a matter of national security? Surely you don’t believe that.”

It was nearing midnight. The phone had rung a short time ago. When Adelaide had answered, she was at first startled and then outraged to hear Conrad’s voice. He had pleaded with her to let him speak to Jake. She was about to hang up but Jake had taken the phone out of her hand.

Now she and Jake were in the middle of her kitchen, arguing. She was dressed in a robe and slippers. Jake had pulled on a pair of trousers.

“I’m starting to wonder if Massey is right,” he said. “This may be an issue of national security.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You said Gill and Ormsby were determined to make Daydream work as a truth serum and a hypnotic. A drug with those properties would be worth a lot to certain people in the government. Hell, it would be worth a lot to foreign governments, too.”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can trust Conrad.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t trust him.”

“He’s a desperate man. I wouldn’t put it past him to try to murder you.”

“Give me some credit,” Jake said. “I do realize he sees me as an obstacle in his path and that he would very much like to get me out of the way. But he does have information we need—it may be information that he isn’t even aware he possesses.”

Adelaide had been pacing the kitchen. She paused at the far end and whipped around to face Jake.

“You said the spy game was always about information,” she said. “That nothing else mattered. But you are no longer a secret agent.”

“Sometimes you need information in order to survive. I think this may be one of those times. I’ve got a feeling that whatever is going on at Rushbrook, it involves something much larger and potentially more dangerous than a scheme to market drugs to celebrities and gain control of your inheritance.”

“Excuse me?” Adelaide folded her arms and narrowed her eyes. “You make it sound like I simply got conned out of my money. That’s not what happened. I was deceived, kidnapped, and used in a drug experiment. And to top things off, someone tried to murder me. I didn’t just get fleeced by a fast-talking con man, damn it.”

“That’s my point,” Jake said in his infuriatingly unruffled manner. “It’s clear that the drug, Daydream, is at the core of this situation—not your inheritance. I think that was just a bonus for Gill—something he could offer Massey to get him to cooperate with the scheme. I doubt that Massey knows much, if anything, about the drug and probably couldn’t care less.”

“He just saw an easy way to get his hands on my money.”

“Yes.”

Adelaide drummed her fingers on her forearms. “I agree that the drug is the key here. But it’s Conrad you’re planning to see tonight, andhe’s dangerous because he’s desperate. I’m telling you, he will do anything to save Massey Shipping. It’s an obsession with him.”

“Trust me, I understand the nature of obsession,” Jake said. “It’s obvious Massey did a deal with Gill in order to get his hands on your inheritance. But he may know something about Gill’s plans for Daydream.”

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