Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes

A LAPSE FROM AN IDEAL

'If you please, sir,' said Simon Shawn, when he brought Hugo's tea the next morning, 'I am informed that a man has secreted himself on the summit of the dome.'

Hugo, lying moveless on his back, and ignoring even the tea, made no reply to this speech. He was still repeating to himself the following words, which, by constant iteration, had assumed in his mind the force and emphasis of italics: 'So grateful for your sympathetic help. When next I see you, if there is opportunity, I will try to thank you. Meantime, all is well with me. Please trouble no more. And forget.' Such were the exact terms of the note from Camilla Payne delivered to him by Albert Shawn. Of course, he knew it by heart. It was scribbled very hastily in pencil on half a sheet of paper, and it bore no signature, not even a solitary initial. If it had not been handed to Albert by Camilla in person, Hugo might have doubted its genuineness, and might have spent the night in transgressing the law of trespass and other laws, in order to be assured of a woman's safety. But under the circumstances he could not doubt its genuineness. What he doubted was its exact import. And what he objected to in it was its lack of information. He wished ardently to know whether Ravengar and Tudor, or either of them, had been wounded, and if so, by whose revolver; for he could not be certain that it was Camilla who had fired. An examination of the revolver which he and she had passed from hand to hand had shown two chambers undischarged. He wished ardently to know how she had contrived to settle her account with Tudor, and yet get away in Tudor's brougham, unless it was by a wile worthy of the diplomacy of a Queen Elizabeth. And he wished ardently to understand a hundred and one other things concerning Camilla, Tudor, and Ravengar, and the permutations and combinations of these three, which offered apparently insoluble problems to his brain. Nevertheless, there was one assurance which seemed to him to emerge clearly from the note, and to atone for its vagueness—a vagueness, however, perfectly excusable, he reflected, having regard to the conditions in which it was written—namely, that Camilla intended to arrive, as usual, in Department 42 that morning. What significance could be attached to the phrase, 'When next I see you, if there is opportunity,' unless it signified that she anticipated seeing him next in the shop and in the course of business? Moreover, he felt that it would be just like Camilla to start by behaving to him as though nothing had occurred. (But he would soon alter that, he said masterfully.) He was, on the whole, happy as he lay in bed. She knew that he loved her. They had been intimate. In three hours at most he would see her again. And his expectations ran high. Indeed, she had already begun to exist in his mind as his life's companion.

Simon coughed politely but firmly.

'What's that you say?' Hugo demanded; and Simon repeated his item of news.

'Ha!' said Hugo; 'doubtless some enthusiast for sunrises.'

'He has been twice perceived in the little gallery by the men cleaning the roof garden,' Simon added.

'And who is it?'

'His identity has not been established,' said Simon.

'Can't you moderate your language a little, Shawn?' Hugo asked, staring always absently up into the dome.

'I beg pardon, sir. I have spent part of the night with Albert, and his loose speech always drives me to the other extreme,' Simon observed, repentant.

'Has Albert seen the burglar?'

'No, sir, if it is a burglar.'

'Well,' said Hugo, 'he's quite safe where he is. He can't get down except by that door, can he?' pointing to a masked door, which was painted to represent a complete set in sixty volumes of the 'Acts of the Saints.'

'No, sir.'

'And he could only have got up by that door?' Hugo pursued.

'Yes, sir.'

'Which means that you were away from your post last night, my son.'

'I was, sir,' Shawn admitted frankly. 'When you and Albert and the lady ran off so quickly, I followed, as far as I judged expedient—beg pardon, sir. The man must have slipped in during my absence. I remember I noticed the masked door was ajar on my return. I shut and locked it.'

'That explains everything,' said Hugo. 'You see how your sins find you out.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I say, Shawn,' Hugo cried, as he went to his bath, 'talking of that chap up above, play me the Captives' chorus from "Fidelio."'

'It is not in the répertoire, sir,' said Simon, after searching.

'Not in the répertoire! Impossible!'

'No, sir.'

'Ah well, then, let us have the Wedding March from "Lohengrin."'

'With pleasure, sir.'

But Simon was unfortunate that morning. The toilet completed, Hugo came towards him swinging the gold token, the bearer of which had the right to take whatever he chose from all the hundred and thirty-one departments of the stores in exchange for a simple receipt.

'I will interview the burglar,' said Hugo. 'But just run down first and get me a pair of handcuffs.'

In ten minutes Simon returned crestfallen.

'We do not keep handcuffs, sir,' he stammered.

'Not—keep—! What nonsense! First you tell me that "Fidelio" is not in the répertoire, and then you have the effrontery to add that we do not keep handcuffs. Shawn, are you not aware that the fundamental principle of this establishment is that we keep everything? If we received an order for a herd of white elephants—'

'No doubt our arrangement with Jamrach's would enable us to supply them, sir,' Simon put in rapidly. 'But handcuffs seem to be a monopoly of the State.'

'Evidently, Shawn, you are not familiar with the famous remark of Louis the Fourteenth.'

'I am not, sir.'

'He said, "L'état, c'est moi." Show me the catalogue.'

Simon, bearing on his shoulders at that moment the sins of ten managers, scurried to bring an immense tome, bound in crimson leather, and inscribed in gold, 'Hugo, General Catalogue.' It contained nearly two thousand large quarto pages, and above six thousand illustrations. Hugo turned solemnly to the exhaustive index, which alone occupied seventy pages of small type, and, running his finger down a column, he read out, Handbells, handbell-ringers, handbills, hand-embroidered sheets, handkerchiefs, handles, handsaws, hansoms, Hardemann's beetle powder, hares, haricot beans....'

'Lamentable!' he ejaculated—'lamentable! You will tell Mr.—Mr. Banbury this morning to procure some handcuffs, assorted sizes, at once, and to add them to the—the—Explorers' Outfit Department.'

'Precisely, sir.'

'In the meantime I shall have to ascend the dome, and face the burglar without this necessary of life. Give me the revolver instead.'

POSSIBLE ESCAPE OF SECRETS

The top of the dome was fashioned into a kind of belvedere, with a small circular gallery. Hugo emerged at the head of the stairs, and saw no living thing; but at the sound of his footstep a man sprang nervously into view round the curve of the gallery, and fronted him.

Hugo, with his hands still on either rail of the staircase, took the top step, gazing the while at his burglar, first in wonder, and then with a capricious abandonment to what he considered the humour of the situation. He thought of Albert Shawn's account of the meeting between Francis Tudor and his visitor in Tudor's flat on the previous night, and some fantastic impulse, due to the strain of Welsh blood in him, caused him to address the man as Tudor had addressed him:

'Hullo, Louis!'

There was a pause, and then came the reply in a tone which might have been ferocious or facetious:

'Well, my young friend?'

It was indeed Louis Ravengar. Dishevelled, fatigued, and unstrung, he formed a sinister contrast to Hugo, fresh from repose, cold water and music, and also to the spirit of the beautiful summer morning itself, which at that unspoilt hour seemed always to sojourn for a space in the belvedere. The sun glinted joyously on the golden ornament of the dome, and on Hugo's smooth hair, but it revealed without pity the stains on Ravengar's flaccid collar and the disorder of his evening clothes and opera-hat.

He was a fairly tall man, with thin gray hair round the sides of his head, but none on the crown nor on his face, the chief characteristics of which were the square jaw, the extremely long upper lip, the flat nose, and the very small blue-gray eyes. He looked sixty, and was scarcely fifty. He looked one moment like a Nonconformist local preacher who had mistaken his vocation; but he was nothing of the kind. He looked the next moment like a good hater and a great scorner of scruples; and he was.

These two men had not exchanged a word, had not even seen each other, save at the rarest intervals, for nearly a quarter of a century. They were the principals in a quarrel of the most vivid, satanic, and incurable sort known to anthropological science—the family quarrel—and the existence of this feud was a proof of the indisputable truth that it sometimes takes less than two to make a quarrel. For, though Owen Hugo was not absolutely an angel, Ravengar had made it single-handed.

The circumstances of its origin were quite simple. When Louis Ravengar was nine years old, his father, a widower, married a widow with one child, aged six. That child was Hugo. The two lads, violently different in temperament—the one gloomy and secretive, the other buoyant and frank—with no tie of blood or of affection, were forced by destiny to grow up together in the same house, and by their parents even to sleep in the same room. They were never apart, and they loathed each other. Louis regarded young Owen as an interloper, and acted towards him as boys and tigers will towards interlopers weaker than themselves. The mischief was that Owen, in course of years, became a great favourite with his step-father. This roused Louis to a fury which was the more dangerous in that Owen had begun to overtake him in strength, and the fury could, therefore, find no outlet. Then Owen's mother died, and Ravengar, senior, married again—a girl this time, who soon discovered that the household in which she had planted herself was far too bellicose to be comfortable. She abandoned her husband, and sought consolation and sympathy with another widower, who also was blessed with offspring. Such is the foolishness of women. You cannot cure a woman of being one. But it must be said in favour of the third Mrs. Ravengar and her consoler that they conducted their affair with praiseworthy attention to outward decency. She went to America by one steamer, and purchased a divorce in Iowa for two hundred dollars. He followed in the next steamer, and they were duly united in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the Ravengar household, left to the ungoverned passions of three males, became more and more impossible, and at length old Ravengar expired. In his will he stated that it was only from a stern sense of justice that he divided his considerable fortune in equal shares between Louis and Owen. Had he consulted his inclination, he would have left one shilling to Louis, and the remainder to Owen, who alone had been a true son to him.

It was a too talkative will. Testators, like politicians, should never explain.

Louis, who got as a favour half the fortune of which the whole was, in his opinion, his by right, was naturally exasperated in the highest degree by the terms of the indiscreet testament, and on the day of the funeral he parted from the son of his step-mother, swearing, in a somewhat melodramatic manner, that he would be revenged. Hugo was then twenty-one, and for twenty-five years he had waited in vain for symptoms of the revenge.

And now they met again, in the truest sense strangers. And each had a reason for humouring the other, for each wanted to know what the other had to do with Camilla Payne.

'So you're determined, Louis,' said Hugo lightly, 'to bring me to my knees about the transfer of my business to a limited company, eh?'

'What on earth do you mean, man?' asked Ravengar, whose voice was always gruff.

'I refer to Polycarp's visit yesterday.'

'I know nothing of it,' said Ravengar slowly, looking across the wilderness of roofs.

'Then why are you here, Louis? Is your revenge at last matured?'

Ravengar controlled himself, and glanced round as if for unseen aid in a forlorn enterprise.

'Owen,' he said, moved, 'I'm here because I need your help. I won't say anything about the past. I know you were always good-natured. And you've worn better than I have. I need your help in a matter of supreme importance to me. I became aware last night that you and your men were interested in the proceedings at Tudor's flat. I ran here, meaning to see you. There was no one in the big circular room downstairs, and no one at the entrance. Then I saw your servant coming, and I retreated through the door. I wished my presence to be known only to you. The door was locked on me. I knocked in vain. Then I stumbled up the stairs, and found myself out here. I wanted to calm myself, and here I remained. I knew your habit of coming up here at early morning. That is the whole explanation of my presence.'

Hugo nodded.

'I guessed as much,' he said. 'I will help you if I can. But first tell me what happened in the flat last night after Miss Payne entered while you and Tudor were quarrelling. She fired on you?'

'No,' said Ravengar; 'I believe she would have done. It was Tudor who drew a revolver and fired. Had I had my own—But I had laid it on a table, like a fool, and it disappeared.'

'Is not this it?' asked Hugo, producing Camilla's weapon.

Ravengar nodded, amazed.

'I thought so,' Hugo said, and returned it to his pocket. 'Were you wounded?'

'It was nothing. A scratch on the wrist. See! But I left. She—she ordered me to. And I saw I had no chance. I came out by the principal door on the balcony while you were struggling with the servants' door.'

'Wait a moment,' Hugo put in. 'Tudor knew you were hiding in the flat?'

'Not much!' exclaimed Ravengar. 'I dropped on him like something out of the sky. It cost me some trouble to get in. I had a silly old housekeeper to dispose of.'

Hugo's heart fell.

'Great heavens!' he sighed.

'Why? What's the matter?'

'Nothing. But tell me what you wanted to get into the flat for at all. What is there between you and Tudor?'

'Man! he's taken Camilla from me!' The accents of rage and despair were in Ravengar's voice as he uttered these words. 'He's taken her from me! She was my typewriter, you know. I fell in love with her. We were engaged!'

Hugo was startled for a moment; then he smiled bitterly and incredulously. It seemed too monstrous and absurd that Camilla should have betrothed herself to this forbidding, ugly, ageing, and terrible man.

'You were engaged? Never! Perhaps you aren't aware that she was engaged to Tudor?'

'I tell you we were engaged.'

'She accepted you?'

'Why not? I meant well by the girl.'

'And then she disappeared?'

Hugo spoke with a certain cynicism.

'How do you know?' Ravengar demanded angrily.

'I only guess.'

'Well, she did. I can't imagine why. I meant well by her. And the next thing is, I find her working in your shop, and in the arms of that scoundrel, Tudor.' He hesitated, and then, as he proceeded, his tones softened to an appeal. 'Owen, why were you watching last night? I must know. It's an affair of life or death to me.'

Hugo did not believe most of Ravengar's story, and he perceived the difficulty of his own position and the necessity for caution.

'I was watching because Miss Payne thought herself in some mysterious danger,' he said.

'She came to me, as you have done, to ask my help. And I won't hide from you that it was she herself who informed me definitely that Tudor had invited her to marry him, and that she had consented.'

'She shall not marry him!' cried Ravengar, exasperated.

'You are right,' said Hugo. 'She shall not. I have yet to be convinced even that he meant to marry her.'

'The rascal! He and I had business relations for several years before I discovered who he was. Of course, you know?'

'Indeed I don't,' said Hugo, 'if he isn't Francis Tudor.'

'He has as much right to the name of Tudor as you have to the name of Hugo,' Ravengar sneered. 'He is the son of the man who dishonoured my father's name by pretending to marry that woman in Minneapolis. Even if I hated my father, I've no cause to love that branch of our complicated family connections.'

Hugo whistled.

'I did not think there was so much money there,' he said at length.

'There wasn't. The fellow came into twenty thousand two years ago, and he has never earned a cent.'

'Yet he's living at the rate of five thousand a year at least.'

'It's like him!' Ravengar snorted. 'It's like him!'

'Perhaps he can't help it,' Hugo said queerly. 'Everyone isn't like you and me.'

'He can help robbing me of my future wife!'

'But she left you of her own accord.'

'Owen, she must marry me. It is essential. You must bring your influence to bear,' Ravengar burst out wildly. 'She must be my wife!'

'My dear fellow,' Hugo protested calmly, 'what are you dreaming of? I have no influence. You talk like a man at his wits' end.'

There was a silence.

'I am a man at his wits' end,' Ravengar murmured, half sadly. 'I trusted that girl. She knows all my secrets.'

'What secrets?' asked Hugo, struck by the phrase.

'My business secrets, of course. What else do you fancy?'

'My fancy is too active,' said Hugo, with careful casualness. 'It runs away with me. I was thinking of other sorts of secrets, and of that curious principle of English law that a wife can't give evidence against her husband.... You must pardon my fancy,' he added.

'Do you mean to insinuate that my eagerness to marry Camilla Payne is in order to prevent her from being able to—'

'No, Louis; I mean to insinuate nothing. Can't you see a joke?'

'I cannot,' said Ravengar. 'Not that variety of joke.'

'The appreciation of humour was never your strong point.'

Something in Hugo's manner made Ravengar spring forward; then he checked himself.

'Owen,' he entreated, 'don't let's quarrel again. I beg you to help me. Help me, and I'll promise never to interfere with you in your business—I'll swear it.'

'Then it was you, after all, that instructed Polycarp?'

Ravengar gave an affirmative sign.

'I meant either to get hold of this place or to ruin you. Remember what I suffered—in the old days.... You see I'm frank with you. Help me. We're neither of us growing younger. I'm mad for that girl, and I must have her.'

Hugo put his hands into his pockets, and consulted his toes. This semi-step-brother of his somehow aroused his compassion.

'No, Louis,' he said; 'I can't.'

'You hate me?'

'Not a bit.'

'Do you think I'm too old to marry, or what is it?'

'It's just like this, Louis, my friend: I have every intention of marrying Miss Payne myself.'

'You!... Ah!... Indeed!'

'I have so decided. And when I decide, the thing is as good as done.'

'And that's why you were watching last night! Good! Oh, good! Only I may as well inform you, Owen, that if Camilla Payne marries anyone but me, there will be murder. And no ordinary murder, either!'

Hugo took a turn in the gallery. He felt genuinely sorry for the gray and desperate man, driven by the intensity of emotion to utterances which were merely absurd.

'Louis,' he remarked, with a melancholy kindliness of tone, 'fate has a grudge against us two. It ruined our youth, and now it's embroiling us once more. Can't we both be philosophical? Can't we contrive to look at the thing in a—'

'Enough!' Ravengar almost yelled. 'You always talked that kind of d——d nonsense, you did! Unless you can arrange to say you'll give her up, you may as well hold your tongue.'

'Very well,' said Hugo, 'I'll hold my tongue.'

'That's all, then?'

'Quite all.'

'I suppose I can go? You'll let me pass? You'll not exercise your right to treat me as a burglar?'

'There are the stairs. Pass Shawn boldly. He is terrible, but he will not eat you.'

'Thanks.'

'And that is the unrivalled company promoter! And this is life!' Hugo meditated when he was alone on the dome.

He leaned over the railing of the gallery, and watched his legions gathering for the day's battle.

ORANGE-BLOSSOM

Some two hours later Hugo was in one of the common rooms devoted to the leisure and diversion of the legions in the upper basement: a large and bright apartment, ornamented with bookcases, wicker chairs, and reproductions of all that was most uplifting in graphic art. It was the domain of the ladies engaged in Departments 30 to 45, and was managed by an elected committee of their number. Affixed to the walls, in and out among the specimens of graphic art, were quite a lot of little red diamond squares, containing in white the words, 'Do it now,' in excessively readable letters. A staff notice about the early closing of the previous day had been pinned up near the door, and printed information relating to a trip to the Isle of Man, balloting for the use of motor-cars on Sundays, and a gratis book entitled 'Human Nature in Shoppers,' were also prominent. Above the fireplace was a fine mirror, and Hugo was personally engaged in pasting on the mirror a fine and effective poster, which ran as follows:

'Interesting. Last year the sales of the Children's Boot and Shoe Department surpassed the sales of the Ladies' Ditto by £558. In the first half of this year, on the contrary, the sales of the Ladies' Boot and Shoe Department have surpassed the sales of the Children's Ditto by £25. Great credit is due to the staff of the L.B. and S.D. But will the staff of the C.B. and S.D. allow themselves to be thus wiped out? That is the question, and Mr. Hugo will watch for the answer. Managers' Council, July 10th.'

Hugo, as the supreme head of Hugo's, had organized his establishment in such a manner as to leave no regular duties for himself, conformably to the maxim that a well-managed business is a business which runs smoothly and efficiently when the manager is not managing, and to that other maxim that the highest aim of the competent manager should be to make himself unnecessary. Hence he was perfectly at liberty to be wayward and freakish in his activities from time to time. And this happened to be one of his wayward and freakish mornings. There were, however, few young women in the common room to behold his aberration, for the hour was within two minutes of nine, and at nine o'clock the latest of the legionaries was supposed to be at her post. Three girls who were being hastily served with glasses of milk by a pink-aproned waitress politely feigned not to see him. Then another girl ran in, and she, too, had to pretend that the spectacle of Hugo pasting posters on mirrors was one of the most ordinary in life. Hugo glanced at this last comer in the mirror, and sighed a secret disappointment.

The interview with Louis Ravengar had left him less perturbed than might be imagined—at any rate, as regards Ravengar's own share in what had occurred and what was to occur. He was inclined to leave Ravengar out of the account, and to put the greater part of his hysterical appeals and threats down to the effect of a sleepless and highly unusual night. That Ravengar was absolutely sincere in his desire to marry Camilla he did not doubt, and he fully shared the frenzied man's determination that Camilla should not marry Francis Tudor. But beyond this Hugo did not go. He certainly did not go so far as to believe that Camilla had ever formally engaged herself to Ravengar. He thought it just possible that Ravengar might have committed a crime, or several crimes, and that Camilla might have knowledge of them, but the question whether Ravengar was or was not a criminal appeared to him to be a little off the point.

The unique point was his own prospects with Camilla. It may be said that he felt capable of shielding her from forty Ravengars.

He had torn prudence to shreds, and stamped on it, that morning, and had gone down boldly and directly to Department 42 at a quarter to nine, in order to meet Camilla. And she had not then arrived. He had then conceived the idea of, and the excuse for, a visit to the common room, through which every assistant was obliged to pass on her way to the receipt of custom. In the whole history of Hugo's a poster had never before been known to be posted on a mirror, which is utterly the wrong place for a poster, but Hugo had chosen the mirror as the field of his labours solely that he might surreptitiously observe every soul that entered the room.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck nine, and the last assistant had fled, and Hugo was left alone with the pink-aproned waitress, who was collecting glasses on a tray.

'Has Miss Payne come this morning?' he asked casually of the girl, patting the poster like an artist absorbed in his work.

It was a reckless question. He well knew that in half an hour the whole basement would be aware that Mr. Hugo had asked after Miss Payne, but he scorned the whole basement.

'Miss who, sir?'

'Miss Payne, of the millinery department.'

'A tall young lady, sir?'

'Yes.'

'With chestnut hair?'

'Now you have me,' he lied.

'I fancy I know who you mean, sir; and now I come to think of it, I don't think she has.'

The waitress spoke in an apologetic tone, and looked at the clock with an apologetic look. She was no fool, that waitress.

'Thank you.'

As he left the room Albert Shawn entered by the other door, and, perceiving nobody but the waitress, kissed the waitress, and was kissed by her heartily.

Hugo's deportment was debonnair, but his heart had seriously sunk. Just as he had before been quite sure that Camilla would come as usual, now he was quite sure that she would not come as usual. Ever since he had learnt from Ravengar that Tudor had been ignorant of Ravengar's presence in the flat, and that Ravengar had had to 'dispose of' the housekeeper, a horrid suspicion had lurked at the back of his mind, and now this suspicion sprang out upon his hopes of Camilla's arrival, and fairly strangled them. And the suspicion was that Camilla had misjudged Francis Tudor, that his intentions had throughout been perfectly honourable, and that on her return to the flat he had quickly convinced Camilla of this.

In which case, where did he, Hugo, come in?

As for the terms of the note, he perceived that he had interpreted them in a particular way because he wished to interpret them in a particular way.

He ascended in the direction of Department 42. Perhaps, after all, she had escaped his vigilance, and was at her duties.

On the way thither he was accosted by a manager.

'Mr. Hugo.'

'Well, Banbury?'

'I telephoned to New Scotland Yard, but they refused any information. However, I've got a pair from the nearest police-station. I shall order our blacksmiths to make a dozen pairs to pattern. They will be in next month's catalogue.'

'I congratulate you, Banbury.'

And he passed on. The early-rising customers were beginning to invade the galleries, the cashiers in their confessional-boxes were settling themselves in their seats, faultless shopwalkers were giving a final hitch to their lovely collars, and the rank-and-file were preparing to receive cavalry. The vast machine had started, slowly and deliberately, as an express engine starts. And already the heat, as yesterday, was formidable. But she would not suffer to-day; she was not in Department 42.

He went further and further, aimlessly penetrating to the very heart of the jungle of departments. He had glimpses of departments that he had not seen for weeks. At length he came to the verdant and delicious Flower Department (hot-house branch), and by chance he caught a word which brought him to a standstill.

'What's that?' he asked sharply, of a salesman in white.

'Order for orange-blossom, sir. A single sprig only. Rather a curious order, sir.'

'You can supply it?'

'Without doubt, sir.'

'Who is the customer?'

'Mr. Francis Tudor,' replied the salesman, looking at a paper. 'No. 7, the Flats.'

'Ah yes,' he said; and thought: 'My life is over.'

He gazed with unseeing eyes into the green and shady recesses of the palmarium, where water trickled and tinkled.

What was the power, the influence, the lever, which Francis Tudor was using to induce Camilla to marry him—him whom, on her own statement, she did not love? And could Louis Ravengar be in earnest, after all, with his savage threats?

'WHICH?'

'And when I decide, the thing is as good as done.' Those proud, vain words of his, spoken to Louis Ravengar with all the arrogance of a man who had never met Fate like a lion in the path, often recurred to Hugo's mind during the next few weeks. And their futility exasperated him. He had decided to win Camilla, and therefore Camilla was as good as won! Only, she had been married on the very morning of those boastful words by license at a registry-office to Francis Tudor. The strange admixture of orange-blossom and registry-office was not the only strange thing about the wedding. It was clear, for example, that Tudor must have arranged the preliminaries of the ceremony before the bride's consent had been obtained—unless, indeed, Camilla had garbled the truth to Hugo on the previous night; and Hugo did not believe this to be possible.

Albert Shawn had brought the news hour by hour to Hugo.

After the wedding, the pair drove to Mr. Tudor's flat, where Senior Polycarp paid them a brief visit.

Then Hugo received by messenger a note from Tudor formally regretting that his wife had left her employment without due notice, and enclosing a cheque for the amount of a month's wages in lieu thereof.

And then Mr. and Mrs. Tudor had departed for Paris by the two-twenty Folkstone-Boulogne service from Charing Cross. And the gorgeous flat was shut up.

Albert Shawn had respectfully inquired whether there remained anything else to be done in the affair, far more mysterious to Albert than it was even to Hugo.

'No,' Hugo had said shortly.

He was Hugo, with extraordinary resources at hand, but a quite ordinary circumstance, such as ten minutes spent in a registry-office, will sometimes outweigh all the resources in the world when the success of a scheme hangs in the balance.

What could he do, in London or in Paris, civilized and police-ridden cities?

Civilization left him but one thing to do—to acknowledge his defeat, and to mourn the incomparable beauty and the distinguished spirit which had escaped his passionate grasp. And to this acknowledgment and this mourning he was reduced, feeling that he was no longer Hugo.

It was perhaps natural, however, that his employés should have been made to feel that he was more Hugo than ever. For a month he worked as he had never worked before, and three thousand five hundred people, perspiring under his glance and under the sun of a London August, knew exactly the reason why. The intense dramatic and sentimental interest surrounding Camilla Payne's disappearance from Department 42 was the sole thing which atoned to the legionaries for the inconvenience of Hugo's mistimed activity.

Then suddenly he fell limp; he perceived the uselessness of this attempt to forget in Sloane Street, and he decided to try the banks of a certain trout-stream on Dartmoor. He knew that with all the sun-glare of that season, and the water doubtless running a great deal too fine, he would be as likely to catch trout on Dartmoor as on the Thames Embankment; but he determined to go, and he announced his determination, and the entire personnel, from the managers to the sweepers, murmured privily, 'Thank Heaven!'

The moment came for the illustrious departure. His electric coupé stood at his private door, and his own luggage and Simon Shawn's luggage—for Simon never entrusted his master to other hands—lay on the roof of the coupé. Simon, anxiously looking at his watch, chatted with the driver. Hugo had been stopped on emerging from the lift by the chief accountant concerning some technical question. At length he came out into the street.

'Shaving it close, aren't we, Simon?' he remarked, and sprang into the vehicle, and Simon banged the door and sprang on to the box, and they seemed to be actually off, much to the relief of Simon, who wanted a holiday badly.

But they were not actually off. At that very instant, as the driver pulled his lever, Albert Shawn came frantically into the scene from somewhere, and signalled the driver to wait. Simon cursed his brother.

'Mr. Hugo,' Albert whispered, as he put his head into the coupé.

'Well, my lad?'

'I suppose you've heard? They've turned up again at the flat. Yes, this morning.'

'Who have turned up again?'

'That's the point, sir. Some of 'em. And there's been a funeral ordered.'

'A funeral? Whose funeral? From us?

'Yes, sir; but whose—that's another point. You see, I've just run along to let you know how far I've got. Not that you gave me any instructions. But when I heard of a funeral—'

'Is it a man's or a woman's?' Hugo demanded, thinking to himself: 'I must keep calm. I must keep calm.'

'Don't know, sir.'

'But surely the order-book—'

'No order for coffin, sir. Merely the cortège; day after to-morrow; parties making their own arrangements at cemetery. Brompton.'

'And did none of the porters see who arrived at the flat this morning?'

'None of 'em knows enough to be sure, sir.'

'Well,' said Hugo, 'there isn't likely to be a funeral without a coffin, and no porter could be blind to a coffin going upstairs.'

'I can't get wind of any coffin, sir.'

'And that's all you've learnt?'

'That's the hang of it, sir—up to now. But I can wire you to-night or to-morrow, with further particulars.'

Hugo glanced at the carriage-clock in front of him, and thought of the famine of porters at Waterloo Station in August, and invented several other plausible excuses for a resolution which he foresaw that he was about to arrive at.

'You've made me miss my train,' he said, pretending to be annoyed.

'Sorry, sir. Simon, the governor isn't going.'

Simon descended from the box for confirmation, a fratricide in all but deed.

'Have the luggage taken upstairs,' Hugo commanded.

He sat for seven hours in the dome, scarcely moving.

At nine o'clock Albert was announced.

'Coffin just come up, sir,' he said, 'from railway-station.'

But that was the limit of his news.

Within an hour Hugo went to bed. He could not sleep; he had known that he could not sleep. The wild and savage threat of Louis Ravengar, and the question, 'Which?' haunted his brain. At one o'clock in the morning he switched on all the lights, rose out of bed, and walked aimlessly about the chamber. Something, some morbid impulse, prompted him to take up the General Catalogue, which lay next to a priceless copy of the 1603 edition of Florio's 'Montaigne.' There were pages and pages about funerals in the General Catalogue, and forty fine photographic specimens of tombstones and monuments.

'Funerals conducted in town or country.... Cremations and embalmments undertaken.... Special stress is laid on the appearance and efficiency of the attendants, and on the reverent manner in which they perform all their duties.... A shell finished with satin, with robe, etc.... All necessary service.... A hearse (or open car, as preferred) and four horses, three mourning coaches, with two horses each. Coachmen and attendants in mourning, with gloves. Superintendent, £38.... Estimates for cremation on application.... Broken column, in marble, £70. The same, with less carving, £48.' And so on, and so on; and at the top of every page: 'Hugo, Sloane Street, London. Telegraphic address: "Complete, London." Hugo, Sloane Street, London. Telegraphic address: "Complete, London." Hugo—'

Whom was he going to bury the day after to-morrow—he, Hugo, undertaker, with his reverent attendants of appearance guaranteed respectable?

The great catalogue slipped to the floor with a terrible noise, and Simon Shawn sprang out from his lair, and stopped at the sight of his master in pyjamas under the full-blazing electric chandelier.

'All serene,' said Hugo; 'I only dropped a book. Go to sleep. Perhaps we may reach Devonshire to-morrow,' he added kindly.

He sympathized with Simon.

'Yes, sir.'

He thought he would take a stroll on the roof; it might calm his nerves.... Foolishness! How much wiser to take a sedative!

Then he turned to the Montaigne, and after he had glanced at various pages, his eye encountered a sentence in italics: 'Wisdome hath hir excesses, and no lesse need of moderation, than follie.'

'True,' he murmured.

He dressed, and went out.

THE COFFIN

He was in that mental condition, familiar to every genuine man of action, in which, though the mind divides against itself, and there is an apparently even conflict between two impulses, the battle is lost and won before it is fought, and the fight is nothing but a sham fight. He wandered about the roofs; he went as far as the restaurant garden, and turned on all the electric festoons and standards by the secret switch, and sat down solitary at a table before an empty glass which a waiter had forgotten to remove. He extinguished the lights, wandered back to the dome, climbed to the topmost gallery, and saw the moon rising over St. Paul's Cathedral. He said he would go to bed again at once, well knowing that he would not go to bed again at once. He swore that he would conquer the overmastering impulse, well knowing that it would conquer him. He cursed, as men only curse themselves. And then, suddenly, he yielded, gladly, with relief.

He hastened out, and did not pause till he reached the balcony of flat No. 7 in the further quadrangle. He admitted frankly now that the dominant impulse which controlled his mind would force him to enter the flat during that night, by means lawful or unlawful, and he perceived with satisfaction that the great French window of the drawing-room was not quite shut. The blinds, however, had been carefully lowered, and nothing of the interior was revealed save the fact that a light burned within. In the entire quadrangle, round which, tier above tier, hundreds of people were silent in sleep or in vigil, this was the sole illumination. Hugo leaned over the balcony, and tried to pierce the depths of the vast pit below, and those thoughts came to him which come to watchers by night in the presence of sleeping armies, or on the high sea. The eternal and insoluble question troubled and teased him, and would not be put aside. In imagination, he felt the very swish of the planet as it whirled through space with its cargo of pitiful humanity. What, after all, were life, love, ambition, grief, death? What, in the incessant march of suns, could be the value of a few restless specks of vitality clinging with desperation to a minor orb?

And then he fancied he could hear a sound within the flat, and he forgot these transcendental speculations, and for him the secret of the universe lay behind the blinds of Francis Tudor's drawing-room. Yes, he could hear a sound. It was the distant sound of a man talking—loudly, slowly, and distinctly—but too far off for him to catch even one word. He guessed, as he pushed the window a little wider open, and bent his ear to the aperture, that the voice must be in a room beyond the drawing-room. It continued monotonously for a long time, with little breaks at rare intervals; it was rather like a parson reading a sermon in an empty church. Then it ceased. And there were footsteps, which approached the window, and retired. He noticed that the light within the room was being moved, but it cast no human shadow on the blind. The light came finally to a standstill, and then there followed sounds which Hugo could not diagnose—short, regular sounds, broken occasionally by a sharp clash, as of an instrument falling. And when these had come to an end, there were more footsteps—a precise, quick walking to and fro, which continued for ages of time. Lastly, the footsteps receded; something dropped, not heavily, but rather in a manner gently subsiding, and a groan (or was it a moan, a tired suspiration?) wakened in Hugo's spinal column a curious, strange thrill. Then silence, complete, definitive, terrifying.

By merely pushing the window against the blind, he could enter and know the secret of the universe.

'Why am I doing this?' he asked himself, while he pushed the window. 'Why have I done this?' he asked himself, as he stood within the immense and luxurious room.

He gazed round with a swift and timid glance, as a man would who expects to see that which ought not to be seen. To his left was the fireplace, with a magnificent mirror over it. On the mantelpiece burned a movable electric table—lamp, with twin branched lights. He observed the silk-covered cord lying across the mantelpiece and disappearing over the further edge; by the side of the lamp was a screwdriver. Exactly in front of the lamp, on a couple of trestles such as undertakers use, lay an elm coffin, its head towards the mantelpiece. At the opposite end of the room was another fireplace and another mirror, with the result that Hugo saw an endless succession of coffins and corpse-lights, repeated and repeated, till they were lost in a vague crystal blur, and by every pair of corpse-lights was a screwdriver.

He stood moveless, and listened, and could detect no faintest sound. Across the room from the principal window there was a doorway with a heavy portière; not a fold of the portière stirred. To his right, near the other window, was a door—the door by which Camilla had entered that night a month ago; it was shut. His glance searched among the rich confusion of furniture—fauteuils, occasional tables, sofas, statuary, vases, cabinets. He peered into every corner of the silent chamber, and saw nothing that gave a sign of life. He even gazed up guiltily at the decorated ceiling, as though some Freemason's Eye might be scanning him from above.

The coffin reigned in the room; all else was subservient to its massive and sinister presence, and the bright twin-lamps watched over its majesty with dazzling orbs.

Hugo went near the coffin, stepping on tip-toe over the thick-piled rugs, and examined it. There was no name-plate. He looked at himself in the mirror, and again he murmured a question: 'Why am I here?' Then he listened attentively, fearfully. No sound. His hands travelled to the screwdriver on the mantelpiece, and then fifty of his hands picked up fifty screwdrivers. And he listened once more. No sound.

'I must do it. I must,' he thought.

The next moment he was unscrewing the screws in the lid of the coffin, and scarcely had he begun the task when he realized that what he had heard from the balcony was the screwing of these same screws. There were twelve, and some of them were difficult to start, but in due course he had removed them all, and they stood in a row on their heads on the mantelpiece. He listened yet again. No sound. He had only to push the lid of the coffin to the left or to the right, or to lift it up. He spent several seconds in deciding whether he should push or lift, and then at length fifty Hugos lifted bodily the lids of fifty coffins. And after a dreadful hesitation he lowered his gaze and looked.

Yes, it was Camilla! He had known always that it would be Camilla.

The pale repose of death only emphasized the proud and splendid beauty of that head, with its shut eyes, its mouth firmly closed in a faint smile, and its glorious hair surrounded by all the white frippery of the shroud. Here lay the mortal part of the incomparable creature who had been coveted by three men and won by one—for a few brief days' possession. Here lay the repository of Ravengar's secrets, the grave of Hugo's happiness, the dead mate of Tudor's desire. Here lay the eternal woman, symbol of all beauty and all charm, victimized by her own loveliness. For if she had not been lovely, thought Hugo, if the curves of her cheek and her nostrils and the colour of her skin had been ever so slightly different, the world might have contained one widower, one ruined heart, and one murderer the less that night.

He did not doubt, he could not doubt, after Ravengar's threats, that she had been murdered. And yet he was not angry then. He did not feel a great grief. He was conscious of no sensation save a numbed and desolate awe. He had not begun to feel. Ledging the lid crossways on the coffin, he placed his hand gently upon Camilla's brow. It was colder than he had expected, and it had the peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient decay—that touch which communicates a shudder even to the most impassive.

'I must go,' he whispered, staring spell-bound at her face.

He was surprised to find drops of moisture falling on the shroud. They were his tears, and yet he had not known that he was crying.

He hid her again beneath the elm plank, and, taking the screws one by one from the mantel-piece, shut her up for ever from any human gaze. And then, nearly collapsing under a nervous tension such as he had never before experienced, he turned to leave the apartment as he had entered it, like a thief. But the mystery of the heavy velvet portière invincibly attracted him. His steps wavered towards it. He fancied he saw something dark protruding under the curtain, and he pulled the curtain aside with a movement almost hysteric. A man lay extended at full length on his chest in the passage beyond—what Hugo had noticed was his boot.

'Tudor!' he exclaimed, kneeling to examine the half-concealed face.

At the same moment a figure came quietly down the passage. Hugo looked up, and saw a sallow-featured man of about thirty-five in a tourist suit, with light beard and hair, and long thin hands.

'What is this?' asked the stranger evenly. 'Who are you?'

'My name is Hugo,' Hugo answered with assurance. 'I was walking along the balconies, as I do sometimes at night, and I heard strange sounds here, and as the window was open I stepped in and found this. Are you a friend of Mr. Tudor's?'

The other bent in his turn, and after examining the prone body said:

'I was. He has no friends now.'

'You mean he is dead?'

'He must have died within the last quarter of an hour or so.'

'And nothing can be done?'

'Nothing can be done with death!'

'I take it you are a doctor?' said Hugo.

'My name is Darcy,' the other replied. 'Besides being Tudor's friend, I was his physician.'

'Yet even for a physician,' Hugo pursued, 'it seems to me that you have been able to decide very quickly that your friend and patient is dead. I have always understood that to say with assurance that death has taken place means a very careful and thorough examination.'

'You are right,' Darcy agreed, stroking his short, bright, silky beard. 'There is only one absolute proof of death.'

'And that is?'

'Putrefaction. Nevertheless, the inquest will show whether or not I have been in error.'

'There will have to be an inquest?'

'Certainly. In such a case as this no doctor in his senses would give his certificate without a post-mortem, and though I am an enthusiast, I am in my senses, Mr. Hugo.'

'An enthusiast?'

'Let me explain. My friend Tudor was suffering from one of the rarest of all maladies—malignant disease of the heart. The text-books will tell you that malignant disease of the heart has probably never been diagnosed. It is a disease of which there are no symptoms, in which the patient generally suffers no pain, and for which there is no treatment. Nevertheless, in my enthusiasm, I have diagnosed in this case that a very considerable extent of the cardiac wall was affected by epithelioma. We shall see. Not long since I condemned Tudor to an early and sudden death—a death which might be hastened by circumstances.'

'Poor chap!' Hugo murmured.

The dead man looked so young, artless, and content.

'Why "poor"?' Darcy turned on him sharply but coldly. 'Is not a sudden death the best? Would you not wish it for yourself, for your friends?'

'Yes,' said Hugo; 'but when one is dead one is dead. That's all I meant.'

'I have heard much of you, Mr. Hugo,' said the other. 'And, if I may be excused a certain bluntness, it is very obvious that, though you say little, you are no ordinary man. Can it be possible that you have lived so long and so fully and are yet capable of pitying the dead? Have you not learnt that it is only they who are happy?' He vaguely indicated the corpse. 'If you will be so good as to assist me—'

'Willingly,' said Hugo, who could find nothing else to say. 'I suppose we must call the servants?'

'Why call the servants? To begin with, there is only one here, a somewhat antique housekeeper. Let her sleep. She has been through sufficient to-day. Morning will be time enough for the futile formalities which civilization has invented to protect itself. Night, which is the season of death, should not be disturbed by them.'

'As you think best,' Hugo concurred.

'And now,' Darcy began, in a somewhat relieved tone, when he had finished his task, and the remains of Francis Tudor lay decently covered on a sofa in the drawing-room, that mortuary chamber, 'will you oblige me by coming into the study for a while? I am not in the mood for sleep, and perhaps you are not. And I will admit frankly that I should prefer not to be alone at present. Yes,' he added, with a faint deprecatory smile, 'my theories about death are thoroughly philosophical, but one cannot always act up to one's theories.'

And in the study, at the other end of the flat, far from the relics of humanity, he began to roll cigarettes with marvellous swiftness in his long thin fingers.

Hugo surmised that under his singular and almost glacial calm the man concealed a temperament highly nervous and sensitive.

'You do not inquire about the—the coffin?' said Darcy at length, when they had smoked for a few moments in silence.

As a fact, Hugo had determined that, at no matter what cost to his feelings, he would not be the first to mention the other fatality.

The two men looked at each other, and each blew out a lance of smoke.

'What did she die of?' Hugo demanded curtly.

'You are aware, then, who it is?'

'Naturally, I guessed.'

'Ah! she died of typhoid fever. You knew her?'

'I knew her.'

'Of course; I remember. She was in your employ. Yes,' he sighed; 'she contracted typhoid fever in Paris. It's always more or less endemic there. And what with this hot summer and their water-supply and their drainage, it's been more rife than usual lately. Tudor called me in at once. I am qualified both in England and France, but I practise in Paris. It was a fairly ordinary case, except that she suffered from severe and persistent headaches at the beginning. But in typhoid the danger is seldom in the fever; it is in the complications. She had a hæmorrhage. I—I failed. A hæmorrhage in typhoid is not necessarily fatal, but it often proves so. She died from exhaustion.'

'I thought,' said Hugo, in a low, unnatural voice, 'that typhoid marked the patient—spots on the face.'

'Not invariably. Oh no; but why do you say that?'

'I only meant that I hope her face was not marked.'

'It was not. You mean that you hope her face was not marked because she was so beautiful?'

'Exactly,' said Hugo. 'And so Tudor brought the body over to England for burial?'

'Yes; he insisted on that. And he insisted on my coming with him. I could not refuse.'

'And now he, too, is gone! Tell me, was he expecting it—his own death?'

Darcy lighted another cigarette.

'Who can say?' he observed to the ceiling. 'Who can say what premonitions such a man may not have had?'

'I heard talking before I came into the flat from the balcony,' said Hugo abruptly. 'It went on for a long time. Was it you and he?'

'No,' the doctor replied; 'I was in here, writing.' He pointed to some papers on a desk. 'I did not even hear him fall.'

'Yet you heard me?'

'No, I didn't. I was just coming to find out what Tudor was doing when I saw you.'

'It is curious that I heard talking, and walking about, too.'

'Possibly he was talking to himself. Did you hear two voices?'

'Perhaps I heard only one.'

'Then no doubt he was talking to himself. You won't be surprised to learn that he had been in an excessively emotional condition all day.... It is all very sad. Only a month ago, and Tudor was—but what am I saying? Who knows what perils and misfortunes he—they—may not have escaped? For my part, I envy—yes, I envy Tudor.'

'But not her? You do not envy her? In your quality of philosophy, you regret her death?'

'Do not ask me to be consistent,' said the philosopher, after a long pause.

Hugo rose and approached Darcy.

'Are you acquainted with a man named Louis Ravengar?' he demanded in a rather loud tone.

The doctor scanned his face.

'I have heard Tudor mention the name, but I do not know him.'

'And upon my soul I believe you,' cried Hugo. 'Nevertheless—'

'Nevertheless what?'

Darcy seemed startled. Hugo's strange outburst was indeed startling.

'Oh, nothing!' Hugo muttered. 'Nothing.' He walked to the window, which looked out on Blair Street. The first heralds of the dawn were in the eastern sky, and the moon overhead was paling. 'It will be daylight in a minute,' he said. 'I must go. Come with me first to the drawing-room, will you?'

And they passed together along the passage to the drawing-room, where the electric lamp was still keeping watch. Hugo stood by the side of the coffin.

'What is it?' Darcy quietly asked.

'Have you ever been in love?' Hugo questioned him.

'Yes,' said Darcy.

'Then I will tell you. You will understand. I must tell someone. I loved her.'

He touched the elm-wood gently, and hurried out of the room by the French window.

Four days later Mr. Senior Polycarp called on Hugo in his central office.

In the meantime the inquest had proved the correctness of Mr. Darcy's diagnosis. Francis Tudor was buried, and Francis Tudor's wife was buried. Hugo, who had accompanied the funerals disguised as one of his own 'respectful attendants,' saw scarcely anyone. He had to recover the command of his own soul, and to adopt some definite attitude towards the army of suspicions which naturally had assailed him. Could he believe Darcy? He decided that he could, and that he must. Darcy had inspired him with confidence, and there was no doubt that the man had an extensive practice in Paris, and was well known at the British Embassy. Camilla, then, had really died of typhoid fever on her honeymoon, and hence Ravengar had not murderously compassed her death. And people did die of typhoid fever, and people did die on their honeymoons.

Either Ravengar's threats had been idle, or Fate had mercifully robbed him of the opportunity to execute them. Hugo remembered that he had begun by regarding the threats as idle, and that it was only later, in presence of Camilla's corpse, that he had thought otherwise of them. So he drove back the army of suspicions, and settled down to accustom himself to the eternal companionship of a profound and irremediable grief.

Then it was that Polycarp called.

'I come to you,' said the white-moustached solicitor, 'on behalf of my late client, Mr. Tudor. He made his will after his marriage, and before starting for Paris, and it contains a peculiar clause. Mr. Tudor had the flat on a three years' agreement, renewable at his option for a further period of two years. Over two years of the three are expired.'

'That is so,' said Hugo. 'You want to get rid of the tenancy at once? Well, I don't mind. I can easily—'

'No,' Polycarp interrupted him, 'I wish to give notice of renewal. The will provides that if the testator should die within two months of the date of it the flat shall be sealed up exactly as it stands for twelve months after his death, and that the estate shall be held by me, as executor and trustee, for that period, and then dealt with according to instructions deposited in the testator's private safe in the vault which I rent from you in your Safe Deposit.'

'But—'

'I have just sealed up the flat—doors, windows, ventilators, everything.'

'Mr. Polycarp, this is impossible.'

'Not at all. It is done.'

'But the reason?'

'I know no more than yourself. As executor, I have carried out the terms of the will. I thought that you, as landlord, were entitled to the information which I have given you.'

'As landlord,' said Hugo, 'I object. And I shall demand entrance.'

'On what ground?'

'Under the clause which in all tenancy agreements gives the landlord the right to enter at reasonable times in order to inspect the condition of the premises,' Hugo answered defiantly to the lawyer.

'I had considered that. But I shall dispute the right. You may bring an action. What then? No court will give you leave to force an entrance. An Englishman's furnished flat, just as much as his house, is his castle. I could certainly keep you out for a year.'

'And may I ask why you are so anxious to keep me out, Mr. Polycarp?'

'I am anxious merely to fulfil my duties. May I ask why you are so anxious to get in? Why do you want to thwart the wishes of a dead man?'

'I could not permit that mystery to remain for a whole year in the very middle of my block of flats.'

'What mystery?' Polycarp suavely inquired.

During this brief conversation all Hugo's suspicions had hurriedly returned, and he had examined them anew and more favourably. Polycarp? Was it not curious that Polycarp should be acting for both Ravengar and Tudor?... Darcy? Were there not very strange features in the behaviour of this English doctor who preferred to practise in Paris?... And the hæmorrhage? And, lastly, this monstrous, unaccountable, inexplicable shutting-up of the flat?

He felt already that those empty rooms, dark, silent, sealed, guarding in some recess he knew not what dreadful secret, were getting on his nerves. And was he to suffer for a year?

'Come, Mr. Hugo,' said Polycarp; 'I may count on your goodwill?'

'I don't know,' Hugo replied—'I don't know.'