The answer to that question had been given that morning in an attic overlooking a wilderness of red chimney-pots at the back of a dingy house in Dean Street, Soho. Hospel Roussencq had given Mr. Ricardo five minutes’ grace before he himself departed from the Duke Street Garden. Thence, not without a good many devious turns and once or twice doubling upon his tracks, he made his way to Dean Street. About midway down the long street upon its eastern side stood a little French restaurant of the cheaper sort. Dingy white curtains of muslin hung across the windows, and over the door in fading letters was legible the name “Gaspard Roussencq.”
Gaspard, a stout, comfortable person of middle age, with a waxed black moustache and rosy cheeks, was sweeping the floor of his restaurant, an apron about his waist, when Hospel pushed open the door. He smiled cheerily at his younger brother.
“Well? It begins, eh?” he asked.
Hospel nodded.
“Soon we pay you back, Gaspard.”
Gaspard shrugged his shoulders.
“Oh, that? When the time comes — no doubt. But I am well content. I was thinking of you, little man.”
“I know,” returned Hospel. “I go upstairs for a moment. Then I come down and help you to lay the covers for the luncheon.”
Mr. Ricardo would hardly have recognised in the younger brother of Gaspard the Hospel Roussencq who had reduced him so lately to a thing of shivers and obedience. The two brothers had the tradition of the family. They were bound by it in a strong affection.
“And the big one?” asked Hospel.
Gaspard shook with laughter.
“He called to me for a half-bottle of red wine and I took it to him. What a prince! He is still upstairs reading his newspaper and smoking his cigarettes. Yes, indeed! What a prince!”
The prince was lying on an iron bedstead with his bed-clothes and a patchwork quilt still covering him. He was stretched out at his ease so far as his length of limbs would allow; his half-bottle of red wine and a yellow packet of Maryland cigarettes stood upon a broken cane-bottomed chair beside him.
“You are not up yet?” said Hospel in evident admiration. “Yes, indeed, what a prince!”
“There was once a bloke who retired from the army,” quoth the prince, “and every morning afterwards his servant went into his room at six o’clock and said, ‘Sir, the colonel sends word that you are late on parade.’...Upon which every morning the bloke replied,’ Tell the colonel with my compliments that he can go to hell, and that if he gives me any more of his lip I’ll come down and kick him on the rump.’ That,” Archie Clutter remarked sententiously as he took another pull at his vin ordinaire and snuggled down under his patchwork counterpane, “is about the wittiest story in the world.”
Hospel contemplated his hero all bunched up on account of the shortness of the bed.
“What a prince!” he said in a reverent voice.
The prince’s lazy good-humour did not last. His eyes narrowed.
“And that decayed old tooth which we didn’t extract last night? That old gossip?”
“He will hold his tongue,” said Hospel.
“He had better, or I shall hold his breath,” said the Prince.
There followed a rumbling at the back of Clutter’s throat prolonged and low, like the growl of an animal. Out from the bed suddenly stretched the arm of Hercules, the shapely, powerful hand open, the long, sinewy fingers apart. Slowly those fingers crooked like talons, whilst with his lips drawn back from his strong teeth and the wickedest grin upon his face, Archie Clutter watched them. Ever so slowly they closed upon the palm, tightening about some invisible hindrance, crunching and crumbling it. The narrowed eyes glittered; the rumbling became a hideous purr; and when with a final jerk the great hand clenched itself in a fist, little Hospel Roussencq fancied that he heard a neck snap.
“He won’t even whisper,” Hospel assured his friend. “I told him what an important person you were at Cayenne. He did not like that. No, he did not like it at all.”
Archie Clutter laughed. He had apparently some pleasant recollections of those days to amuse him after all. For he lay back for a little while smiling and inhaling deep into his lungs the smoke of his cigarette.
“Come,” he said at length, putting a leg out of his bed. “Let us count up our money.”
Hospel took from a cupboard a tin money-box and emptied it out upon the edge of the bed. There were twenty pounds in notes and two pounds three shillings in silver.
“We want two pounds seventeen shillings more,” said Archie Clutter.
Hospel Roussencq consulted a little penny diary which he took from his pocket.
“We are at the Cannon Street Hotel for a luncheon, at the Whitehall Rooms for the dinner to-day. We have work every day. In a week we shall have the twenty-five pounds.”
“Yes,” said Archie Clutter as he sat in a nightgown on the side of the bed. “Let us say, then, the eighth day from now. We will keep that evening clear. We shall have enough besides the twenty-five pounds to dine ourselves in pleasant anticipations.” Archie Clutter began to hum a light tune of the day. “I will get up now and shave, if you’ll bring me some hot water.”
Hospel Roussencq hurried off upon his errand, and Archie Clutter sat on the edge of his bed with his feet crossed and rattled the money up and down in the money-box. “Seven more nights and then the eighth,” he said. He peered into the money-box and took out a little latch-key, own brother to the latchkey which a few hours later was to lie on the floor of Corinne’s parlour. “Little traveller,” he said, “we are coming to the end of our journey now.” He chuckled as he tossed the key back into the box, but a spectator would have been inclined to shudder rather than to share in the chuckling.
XVI. ONE TRAVELLER RETURNS
COLONEL STRICKLAND LOITERED in vain in the neighbourhood of the agency in Shaftesbury Avenue. Waiters came and waiters stood about the door and chattered on the kerb; many of them small with spiky shoes and pomaded hair, but not one of these was Hospel Roussencq; many of them tall and battered, but not one of them was Archie Clutter. Those two had their engagements booked for the moment. Nor did Strickland know the names by which they went so that he could ask for them. He drifted up and down the by-streets and came round again to the front; and the days passed and his anxiety deepened. The mere fact that these men no longer solicited employment frightened him. He had reached the mood which divined a dangerous plot in everything.
On one evening he dined at a great house in a square on the north side of Hyde Park. It was a large party of thirty people, and an entertainment at which Corinne was to dance and a supper were to follow. Ariadne Ferne and Julian Ransome were both at the dinner-party; and although it did not fall to Strickland to sit next to her at the table, he had a word or two with her in the drawing-room before dinner was announced.
“I am nervous,” she said. “I have been frightened of this party all the week.”
“Why?” Strickland asked in surprise.
“I so seldom go to big formal functions like this nowadays,” she answered.
Strickland glanced across the room to where Julian Ransome was talking to a couple of political ladies of the highest quality. He was in his element, contentedly pompous, archly mysterious.
“I wanted to sit next to you,” continued Ariadne regretfully; “but the table’s arranged, and I can’t.”
The regret which Strickland felt upon that score was almost counter-balanced by his delight in the assurance that Ariadne felt something of that regret too.
“But I shall see you after dinner,” he said. “You are staying, of course, to see Corinne dance?”
Ariadne Ferne shook her head.
“I am going down to the House of Commons. Julian is going to make an important speech. You have heard, of course?”
“No.”
“That he is likely to go as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade.”
“That’s splendid,” said Strickland.
“Yes, isn’t it?�
�� she replied.
But Lady Ariadne Ferne was a little out of spirits that evening and her assent a trifle listless in consequence.
“Have you any news of Archie Clutter?” she asked, dropping her voice a little.
“None,” Strickland answered, and he, too, was smitten with gloom. “He has disappeared. For good, I hope.”
“And don’t believe,” Ariadne added.
Dinner was announced at that moment, and he was separated from Ariadne. But she was seated at the one of the two round tables at which he sat himself; and almost opposite to him. She was certainly out of spirits. It might be, of course, that the whole ceremonious function was a trifle oppressive to her Bohemian soul. But her old gaiety was not there to enliven her corner. She did not ring like the true coin of gold she was. After dinner Strickland sought her out again.
“When do your rehearsals begin?”
She gave a little gasp. Then for the first time that evening her mirth seized hold of her. She rippled with laughter, deliciously, gleefully.
“What a darling you are, Strickland! If you can say the wrong thing, you do, don’t you?”
“May the Lord help me to say it oftener if it makes you laugh like that, Ariadne,” he prayed piously.
She put her hand upon his arm and the laughter died out of her eyes.
“There’s a tug-of-war going on,” she said with a whimsical lift of her eyebrows. “The Parliamentary Secretaryship on one side and the Rubicon Theatre on the other, and heaven knows which will win!”
She got up as she spoke, in obedience to a signal from Ransome.
“I’ll come back if I am not too late,” she said, “so wait, my dear, will you?”
She went off with “her man,” as she had called him. There shot through Strickland’s mind a speculation whether she would use just those two words still. He thrust it back as a disloyalty. But he remembered a phrase of Julian Ransome’s, “All that has got to end.” He, Strickland, was apparently not the only relic of the days of Mr. Disraeli.
He saw Corinne dance, a creature of fire and swift grace. There was no trace of the tears which had coursed down her cheeks at her desertion by Battchilena; not a shadow of the terror which overhung her like a cloud; not a hint of the defiance with which she had stood at bay in the road-side garden before his questions. She was just the lovely plaything which Madame Chrestoff had termed her.
Strickland did not seek her out when her performance was over. His eyes were too constantly upon the doorway, searching for Ariadne Ferne, his thoughts too busy wondering whether the gallant scheme of life she had planned was already a thing of rags and tatters. But Ariadne did not return, and at one o’clock in the morning Strickland bade his hostess good night, and walked out into Great Cumberland Place.
He walked along in a muse, habit rather than any intention guiding his steps. Earlier in the evening a light shower of rain had fallen, and under the lamps the pavement of the side-walks had the sheen of black marble. The night now was clear though dark, and but for that undertone of breaking surf, which never ceased, very still. Strickland seemed to have the town to himself — reserved for an hour so that he might the more lucidly explore the hopes and destiny of Ariadne Ferne. Even the belated man far down upon the opposite side of the street, of whose white scarf and silk hat and evening shoes he caught a gleam, beneath the standards, appeared to approach with a noiseless tread, so that his thoughts might not be interrupted. Then the man turned into an opening upon his right, and Strickland, as he came opposite to the spot, awoke with a kind of shock to the knowledge that he was walking down South Audley Street and that the opening was the mouth of that blind alley at the bottom of which Corinne lived.
But there was no other house except Corinne’s in the alley. The man in evening dress, indeed, was already at her door. Evidently he had a latch-key. For the little black front door swung open without a sound, and the visitor melted in the doorway.
“So, after all, Battchilena has returned,” Strickland reflected, and he continued on his way towards Curzon Street.
But though his thoughts were still concentrated upon Ariadne and Julian Ransome, and still busily speculating how their gallant adventure was to culminate, a strange uneasiness sprang up in him and ran as an undercurrent to his speculations. Accompanying them, throbbing in unison to them — rather like that unceasing rumble and thunder of the town. Yet unlike it in this. The distant thunder, so continuous and regular, ceased in the end to be noticeable at all. The uneasiness made itself more and more felt, and finally forced itself into the very forefront of Strickland’s consciousness. He had turned to the left down the slope of Curzon Street before it brought him to a halt.
He stood still upon the pavement, trying to trace this inquietude to its source. Battchilena? Yes, but Battchilena had fled. Were these the causes of his anxiety? Strickland was able very quickly to answer “No.” Battchilena, hearing none of the ill news which he feared, might have secretly returned. And even if he had not, another might have taken his place. It is true that he had seen Corinne weeping over Battchilena’s desertion of her, like a second Dido.
“But the Corinnes of the world patch their broken hearts very quickly,” he reflected; and then the real cause smote him.
That belated visitor had not made a sound. It was not merely that he himself had been sunk deep in his own reveries, but the man had actually walked soundlessly; and on a still, dark night of empty streets, each one of them a sounding-board, a canyon for echoes. Strickland was sure of it; and the certainty brought with it a curiously eerie sensation, which made him lift his shoulders with a thrill of discomfort and look about him for an enemy. It was as though he had passed with an undiscerning eye the man without a shadow upon a sunlit day, and only afterwards had realised with a shock the ghostly thing which he had passed.
Strickland’s memory, now stimulated into activity, acquainted him with another detail. The man had moved with extraordinary speed and — still more — with an extraordinary smoothness. For all the while he had seemed to stroll. There had not been a sign of flurry or haste. Yet Strickland had been quite close to the mouth of the blind alley when the visitor turned into it, and the door of the Doll’s House was already open when it had come into his view. Strickland turned and retraced his steps, whilst alarm suddenly rang all its bells within his breast.
They rang the louder when he came in sight of the blind alley and saw the little house glimmering white at the bottom of it. For, from the roof to the ground, not a light shone in any window. It faced the night silent and blind, guarding its secrets. What Strickland expected he could not have told. A wild scream, perhaps, tearing the night; a red flash and the sound of a report. Something of horror and shame was to leap from behind the screen of the house. And then, whilst he stood with his heart racing, a light did shine in a room upon the first floor — not a swift glare, as swiftly extinguished, but the ordinary steady light of an electric globe. And it burned in Corinne’s bedroom, the room with all the dainty artillery of the toilet.
In a revulsion of his feelings, Strickland laughed aloud. Battchilena or a later lover — who cared? Probably Corinne as little as anyone.
But he was inclined to see the end of this sordid episode if he could. If there was a new lover he had better know. If Battchilena had mustered up enough courage to return, he had better know that too. But he could not stand and wait in front of the house. Sooner or later a constable would come along and ask him his business. He walked accordingly northwards to Grosvenor Square, cast to the left along Grosvenor Street, cast again to the left down Park Street, and once more into South Audley Street. A hundred yards or so and he was at the corner. South Audley Street stretched to his left hand and his right, as empty as an omnibus in the middle of the day. He walked slowly up the street again. A little way ahead of him, but on the opposite side of the road, gaped the mouth of the alley. When the Doll’s House came within his view, he saw that the light was still burning in Corinne’s room.
But as he passed the alley it seemed to him that there was a movement at the bottom of it. The door was once more opening. This time he heard the slight jar as it was closed again. Corinne’s belated visitor was going home. Strickland did not pause or slacken in his walk. But he crossed the road as though he was making for Mount Street, and as he crossed he looked down the street. The visitor was walking northwards too, but with the swift, noiseless stride he had used before, and the same easy smoothness, as if he strolled. At the corner of Mount Street the two men met and crossed. For a moment Strickland’s blood ran cold. Corinne’s visitor towered over him. Strickland saw his face and the glitter of his eyes. It was the tiger-man of the jungle, the waiter of the Semiramis Hotel — Archie Clutter.
Strickland let him go by, and as soon as he was out of sight, he raced back down the street to the house. What horrible catastrophe had happened there? During those minutes when he had been pacing the neighbouring streets, what dreadful thing? And done how silently? As he reached the mouth of the alley, a change had come over the aspect of the house. Behind the curtains of every window now the lights were burning. Strickland stopped in amazement. There was no outcry, no disturbance. Yet in the house the inhabitants — some of them, at all events — were awake. He acted upon an impulse. He walked straight to the door and knocked. In a moment or two the metal flap of the letter-box was lifted.
“Who is it?”
It was the voice of a woman which asked the question, but not Corinne’s.
“John Strickland.”
He heard a whispered colloquy and the door was opened. Corinne’s maid had opened it. She had thrown a cloak over her shoulders and her bare feet were thrust into slippers. In the doorway of the parlour stood Corinne. She was wrapped about in a dressing-gown of blue silk, brocaded with gold and lined with swansdown. Her feet, bare like her maid’s, were shod with satin mules; and she stood quite silent, very pale, and gazing at him with the strangest inscrutable eyes he had ever seen.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 72