“Do you think I’ll do?”
“Yes, you’ll do all right. If I hadn’t just seen him go out of the door, I might have been taken in myself. You needn’t be afraid—you’ll put it across all right. Of course, to anyone who knew him well, there’d be the sort of difference that you can’t put into words. What I mean is, I should think you weren’t really alike in your characters.”
“And what makes you think that?”
She laughed.
“Well, I can’t imagine anyone picking him out for the sort of job you’ve got in hand—he hasn’t the nerve.”
“Nerve or not, it was his job,” said Lindsay—“so I suppose someone did pick him for it.”
She laughed again.
“He picked himself. Didn’t they tell you? He told me all about it. When the last man threw up the job, he was in Paris, and he’d scraped some acquaintance with Restow. Well, he wrote on his own to the department, told them something he’d picked up, and offered to supply them with information. He’d done an odd job or two before, but nothing big. He knew the man who had just thrown the case over, and he fished for it—at least that’s what he told me.”
Lindsay was thinking that he ought to have met Trevor Fothering and picked his brains. He had said so to Miss Agnes, but she would not hear of it. He said so now to the nurse.
“Much too great a risk,” she said.
“I don’t see why.”
“He doesn’t know about you. He doesn’t know, and he isn’t to know.”
Lindsay was a little startled.
“What does he know?”
“Only that he’s being got out of the country. He’s in such a blue funk that’s all that interests him.”
“Do you know why he is in a blue funk?” he asked quickly.
“No, I don’t. He’d talk quite freely up to a point, and then he’d shut up like a clam.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“He liked talking about himself, and he liked talking about Restow up to a point, but he wouldn’t go beyond it. We shouldn’t know there was anything to know if he hadn’t talked in his sleep.” She hesitated for a second and then added, “I made notes. I suppose you’ve seen them?”
He had the notes in his pocket. Presently, when he was alone, he sat on the edge of the bed and read them over again.
“Midnight. F—muttering. Words here and there: ‘Restow—francs.’ Muttering: ‘I can’t!’ Muttering: “No—no—no!’ Screamed and woke. Held my wrist and kept on saying ‘I thought they’d got me!’ I said, ‘Who?’ He said, ‘Is that you, nurse? Give me something to drink.’ Dozed. Woke again screaming. Said the same thing: ‘I thought they’d got me!’ I asked, ‘Why should they want to get you?’ He said, ‘I know too much. They don’t trust me. I wish—’ Stopped. Presently dozed. Later, muttering again: ‘If she knows—she doesn’t know—she doesn’t know anything I swear she doesn’t—no!’ Louder: ‘No!’ Screaming: ‘No!’ Muttering again: ‘If you touch her—I haven’t—I tell you I haven’t—I’ll do anything.’ Muttering.”
It wasn’t very illuminating. He felt that he wanted to know who “She “was, and he thought that on the whole the disjointed sentences pointed to Froth having been got at. It looked as if “she,” whoever she might be, had been used to put the screw on him.
Lindsay learnt the notes by heart and destroyed them. He could not very well take them with him to Restow’s house.
He was not, after all, to go down to Rillbourne. One of the letters in the drawer was from Restow, telling his secretary to meet him at his town house. It wasn’t quite clear when Restow himself expected to arrive. The letter was typed, and signed with some thick black markings rather like cuneiform which did duty for “Algerius Restow “. Lindsay wondered what they had been written with—perhaps the butt end of the pen.
He slept in Froth’s bed, and did not dream at all. In the morning he put on Froth’s clothes—his own would go back to Miss Agnes—and in the evening he got into a taxi with Froth’s luggage and drove to No 1 Blenheim Square. He could have wished that he had been going to Rillbourne—he could not have said why. It was farther off; but that wasn’t exactly a reason.
He sat in the taxi, and would have given anything in the world to be out of the adventure. The whole thing was the purest madness. Within twenty-four hours he would be exposed as an impostor and, his identity once out, the laughing-stock of London. Like a jigging squib the thought racketed through his mind—“Oh, printer’s ink! What an advertisement for my book!”
The squib went out in a stench of sulphur. He would certainly never be able to show his face again. A desert island in the Caribbean and anonymity for life loomed towards him from the darkling future. He had colder feet than he had ever had before in his life.
When the taxi stopped he got out, beheld magnificent steps flanked by crouching lions, and, ascending, pressed a bell in the centre of a marble flower. Before he had time to draw his hand back the door opened and a couple of footmen appeared.
Lindsay remembered suddenly that he was not Lindsay at all but Froth—Froth! He had carroty hair and a codfish mouth.
He must keep his voice high.
He was Restow’s secretary.
He was Froth.
All these thoughts appeared simultaneously and with perfect distinctness.
He pitched his voice high and said,
“I am Mr Restow’s secretary, Mr Fothering. Has Mr Restow arrived?”
As soon as he had spoken, the worst moment was over. What to him was a plunge into adventure was to Restow’s household a mere unnoticed addition to its numbers. He heard that Restow had not arrived yet. His luggage was lifted out and brought in. He passed through a vestibule into Restow’s surprising hall.
CHAPTER IX
LINDSAY STARED ABOUT HIM incredulously. The hall was enormous; it did not seem as if a single house could contain it. And then he remembered that this was not a single house. Innumerable paragraphs had informed the public five years ago of Restow’s sensational purchase of a whole block of houses.
Lindsay searched his mind for details. Here and there one bobbed up to the surface. A fabulous sum of money had been spent. Restow had imported Italian workmen, had made a camp for them at Rillbourne, and run them up and down in a fleet of motor buses. Lindsay remembered the raging row that had broken out in the Labour press, and Restow’s extraordinary gesture in reply—for every pound paid to the Italians he would spend another in laying out a public park in Ledlington and endowing almshouses there.
Fragmentary echoes of the conflict beat against Lindsay’s mind as he looked about him. Lines of marble pillars rose from a marble floor to meet a golden roof. From the capitals gilded heads of dragons stared down with blazing electric eyes. Some of the eyes were red, and some were violet, and orange. All the marble was green—deep, smooth, polished green—floor, pillars and walls. High up on the wall was a frieze of rolling golden dragons intermixed with monstrous peacocks. The peacocks had golden feet and golden crests, and spreading tails in which every eye was a brilliant point of light. All the light in the hall came from these flaring tails and from the dragons’ eyes.
The hall seemed to grow larger as he looked at it. A wide double staircase of the same green marble rose from the far end. It had a massive gilded balustrade and newel posts wrought into golden nymphs. Lindsay found himself momentarily expecting the arrival of the corps-de-ballet. If this was not the Arabian Nights, it was the Russian Ballet. He felt that at any moment Karsavina might float down the stairs whilst a hundred damsels or so posed between the pillars. His imagination boggled at peopling this hall with ordinary human beings.
One of the footmen had passed him in the direction of the stair. Lindsay was just about to follow, when the door from the vestibule was thrown open. The footman stopped, turned, came back. Lindsay, who had begun to move, stopped and turned, a
nd through the open doors, large, fur-coated and vigorous, strode Algerius Restow. Lindsay was irresistibly reminded of a mammoth. The huge bulk (“Good Lord! I should think he was too fat for polo!”), the height, the bull shoulders, the hairy coat, the little shrewd pig eyes with their restless questing look, the heavy jaw with its effect of jutting molars, the sheer brute power, the swinging stride with which he came into that amazing hall of his—all made up the unforgettable impression of something immense, portentous, pre-historic.
Restow advanced upon him, stripping his fur coat and flinging it to a footman. He spoke as he came, and his voice was the voice of quite a different person, soft and slightly husky.
“Well, Fothering—all right again?”
It was something to have been hailed as Fothering. Restow’s enormous hand came down on his shoulder as he said, “All right again?”
“Oh yes—quite.” Lindsay hoped his voice was high enough.
The hand on his shoulder gripped him, spun him round. The little pig eyes fixed themselves on his face.
“You look a bit dicky—how shall I say—off the colour.” He spoke with a strong accent, but it was impossible to tell what the accent was. “Tell me now—you had not any bones smashed? Oh no”—as Lindsay shook his head—“I remember—no bone-smash, no dislocation, no cut, or gash, or scratch to spoil my Fothering’s beauty.” He took his hand off Lindsay’s shoulder to make a schoolboy gesture, while his mouth stretched into a wide smile. “That would be a thing to weep over—nicht? And we have not to weep—aré! It is only a shock, a nerve—the fine susceptibilities of my Fothering jangled like sweet bells in a tune—or out of a tune. … Now—which? I have read it somewhere and I don’t know which.” He beat his brow, unwound an immensely long scarf of crimson silk from about his neck, and flung it passionately over his left “I do not know which!” he reiterated. “Bells jangled in a tune—or out of a tune? Which is it, my Fothering—which?”
Lindsay felt perfectly certain that Froth had never read Hamlet or heard of sweet bells jangled out of tune. He hung his mouth down on one side and said,
“I don’t know.”
Restow had him by the lapel in a moment. He had a great pale hand with black hairs on it. The blunt fingers jerked at Lindsay’s coat.
“What is the good of a secretary who does not know? Hein? You have a most inferior education. It is your public schools which teach nothing, not even how to tell lies. And that is why the English politician makes his score. He looks down his English nose and he tells the truth—aha—yes!—but secretly—but as if he is ashamed of it—oh yes, and as if he is practising all those concealments which the other politicians think that he is practising. It is a great art to tell the truth in such a way that everyone must think you are telling a lie. Hein?”
He let go just as Lindsay was wondering if his lapel would bear the strain.
“Bon!” he said. “Bon! Your nerves are recovering—I see that for myself. And for your education—it is not past praying for. You shall go and pray for it with my good Drayton in my good library. It is a very good library, and it has all the works of Mr William Shakespeare, and you shall read in them until you find my jangled bells—because, though I am an ignoramus, I know they come from Shakespeare. For myself, I had no time to be educated—I had to fight day and night and every hour to keep myself from starving.” He made an expansive gesture. “I have starved in all the capitals of Europe. And that”—his voice deepened and swelled—“that, my Fothering, is a very liberal education.”
Lindsay followed a footman to his room. The marble stairs led to the first floor, on which the principal rooms were situated. He himself was shot up in a lift to the third floor, and found himself very comfortable, with a suite comprising bedroom, sitting-room and bathroom. The windows looked out at the back over what had been a courtyard. It was glazed in now to the height of the second floor with opaque glass tiles which allowed him to learn nothing of what was beneath. The house lay in a square on the four sides of this glazed-in court. Lindsay wondered how long it would take him to learn his way about it.
He thought about Restow. He had passed muster—yes, even with Restow’s hand shaking him. The man had the strength of a bull. He would be a bad enemy. But he wouldn’t be dull—life under Restow’s roof was not going to be dull.
He turned from the window with a laugh.
CHAPTER X
HE WAS NOT, HE found, expected to dine with Restow; his meals would be served in his own sitting-room. This was a great relief, but he wondered how Froth would have liked it. Never very fond of his own society, Froth—
When he had dined, he asked the way to the library. Whether Restow’s recommendation was seriously meant or not, it provided him with a perfectly good excuse for finding his way there. He emerged from a lift screened by a gilded grating at the point where a corridor left the green marble hall. It turned at right angles and brought him through a massive carved doorway into a vast hushed room with more books in it than he had ever seen in one place before.
He had been wandering round looking at a book here and there for perhaps ten minutes, when a shadow crossed the page which he was turning. He looked over his shoulder, and very nearly collided with a thin man in shabby black. He was tall as well as thin, and what with his height and his thinness and the forward stoop which had brought him so near, Lindsay was irresistibly reminded of a bird of prey. The man had been hovering, positively hovering. He had not heard him come. He was glad that the book in his hand was one at which Froth might have been glancing.
He stepped back, subdued a sharp feeling of annoyance, and said,
“Mr Drayton—”
The man inclined his head. He had untidy grey hair and dull eyes. His right forefinger was splashed with ink and deeply stained with nicotine.
Lindsay produced a laugh.
“Mr Restow told me to come and read Shakespeare. He wants me to look up a quotation.”
Drayton blinked his eyes. He looked more like a bird of prey than ever. He had the long sinewy neck too, and a feathering of hair behind his ears longer than the untidy rest of it. He moved down the room and indicated a shelf.
“You will find most of the editions there, but I would recommend the moderns for reading.” He ran the stained fingers along the backs of the books. “Any of these.” Then in the same voice, a singularly dreary and monotonous one, “Have you quite got over your accident?”
Lindsay’s pulse jumped. Did Drayton know Froth? Ought he to have known Drayton? Had he betrayed the fact that he didn’t know Drayton? He wasn’t sure. He said,
“Oh yes, thanks.”
Drayton went on speaking. A desperately dreary fellow.
“It was a shock—”
“Yes, it was a bit.”
The man had an odd way of putting things. He was still fingering the books. His nails were none too clean.
“A shock—a fright. It wouldn’t do to have another.”
What was the man getting at? Was he getting at something? Lindsay pulled out one of the big bound Shakespeares.
“Oh, it was nothing really,” he said.
Mr Drayton continued to talk in his creaking voice.
“One never knows how a shock will affect one. It should make one more careful—for another time.”
Lindsay opened the cover of the book he was holding and shut it again. If Mr Drayton meant anything by these rather odd remarks, Lindsay thought that Froth would be liable to show signs of nervousness. The clapping book cover might do duty for a guilty start.
“For another time,” repeated Mr Drayton.
Lindsay fumbled with the book. Froth was most undoubtedly being warned.
“Er—yes,” he said, and was pleased to observe that his voice wavered.
Mr Drayton began to move away.
“A good memory is a very good thing,” he said.
“O
h, undoubtedly,” murmured Lindsay. He wondered what he was being invited to remember.
Mr Drayton looked over his shoulder. Just so had Lindsay seen a vulture turn its head.
“If the right things are remembered,” said the creaking voice.
“Er—of course.”
Mr Drayton moved further away. He turned again with that forward stoop that gave him the air of hovering.
“It is as dangerous to remember what you ought to forget as it is to forget what you ought to remember.”
He walked away, reached a part of the wall covered with books, and opened a masked door. It swung inwards, showing volumes set sideways on wooden shelves. There was a room beyond. The corner of a writing-table showed, and a leather chair.
Drayton turned on the threshold, pulling at the door to close it.
“Don’t remember the wrong things, Fothering,” he said, and shut the door rather quickly.
Lindsay looked at the backs of the books that masked it. Froth had undoubtedly been got at. He, as Froth, was being warned by Drayton. There were things he was not to remember, and there were things he was not to forget. He saw the razor edge of danger stretching before him. He had to walk upon that edge without falling off it on the one side or on the other, and he had to walk it in the dark.
When and where had Froth encountered Drayton? Had he encountered him? Lindsay thought he had. Froth had crossed from France and gone straight to Rillbourne. Had he? He was on his way to Rillbourne when he had his smash. That much was certain. But had he stayed in town on his way? Had he stayed here?
Lindsay turned away frowning, and saw Algerius Restow, huge in evening dress, watching him with a dozen yards of Persian carpet between them. The little grey eyes brooded on him. The forehead above them frowned deeply.
“That was Drayton who went away?”
Lindsay said, “Yes.”
“Why?” said Restow.
“I don’t know.”
“I open my door—he shuts his. I enter—he departs. I ask why—and you say that you do not know.”
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