X
Just before lunch the next day Gernham was announced.
“Good morning,” he said, coming into the room close upon the heels of my man. “Can I lunch with you?”
“Certainly. Lunch for two, Bates.”
“Yes, Sir.”
The man went out and shut the door. Then I turned to Gernham.
“You’ve been to Wimpole Street?” I asked.
“Yes. Do you remember I told you yesterday that Kersteven had taken my punishment lying down?”
“Of course I do.”
“Well, since then he’s thought it over, and got up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday I declined to work with him. To-day, he’s declined to work with me. He’s refused me admittance to his house. See that!”
He put a note down on the table beside me. I took it and read as follows:
Dear Gernham—I don’t know whether you will come to-day; but should you do so, I’ve told Cragg to give you this. I did not care to quarrel with a man in my own house; and so yesterday, when you were impertinent to me, I did not appear to resent it. As you know, I admire your character and respect your enthusiasm, and it has been a great pleasure to me to be associated with you in a work which I love with my whole heart and soul. But I allow no man to criticise my conduct as you have chosen to criticise it. I am sorry, therefore, that unless you feel inclined to apologise, I cannot admit you to my house.—Believe me, faithfully,
Vernon Kersteven.
“What do you think of that, eh?” asked Gernham, when I finished reading the note. “Pretty blunt, isn’t it?”
“Vernon has decidedly got up,” I said.
I looked again at the note.
“Tell me just what you think,” Gernham said.
“Well,” I answered, with some hesitation, “it’s an abrupt change of front after his behaviour yesterday.”
“Too abrupt,” he said. “I don’t like it; I don’t like it at all. You were right, Luttrell; there is a mystery here—a mystery connected with that dog. But I haven’t got your opinion yet!”
He was a persistent man, and did not readily lose sight of his object.
“You want to know how I explain Vernon’s change of front.”
“Exactly.”
“It seems to me that he has thought things over since yesterday, and resolved to avail himself of this pretext to keep you out of his house.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Gernham. “I’ve given him his opportunity like a fool, and he’s taken it, like a clever man. But where an animal is concerned I’m not so easily dished. A good many people who’ve appeared in the London police-courts know that.”
“When you got this note, what did you do?”
“I tried to question Cragg.”
“And the result?”
“Nil. Directly I mentioned the dog, he looked as grim as death, and became monosyllabic. There’s something up, and Cragg has an inkling of it. But he’ll never tell it to me. You’ve got to go into this, Luttrell.”
At this moment lunch was announced, and the rest of the conversation took place in the dining-room. Directly after lunch Gernham hurried away, leaving me pledged to act where he could not act, pledged to probe to the bottom, and without delay, the mystery of the black spaniel.
My relation with Vernon was now almost exactly similar to his former relation with Deeming, and Gernham was to be the inactive watcher, the waiter on events engineered by others, that I had formerly been. But there was a difference in this new situation which had followed so strangely upon the death of Deeming. Vernon had never been Deeming’s friend. From the first moment when they met the two men had been instinctively hostile to one another. But I was Vernon’s friend. I cared for him. Till now I had believed in him. This fact complicated matters painfully. And yet I did not hesitate, did not feel that in my understanding with Gernham I was being treacherous, disloyal.
For the eyes of the black spaniel haunted me, summoned me, seemed to force me to go on, to investigate this mystery. By them I was driven to do as I did. By them I was told that in my friend a new man, a stranger, had arisen, and that in attacking this stranger—if attack were necessary—I should not be false to my friendship with the man who had lived in Rome, the quiet lover of pictures, the gentle, idle, cultivated Vernon of the Trinità dei Monti.
Vernon was generally at home after six in the evening. I resolved to seek him at that hour on the same day, and carried my resolution into effect. Cragg opened the door to me.
“Mr. Kersteven at home, Cragg?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Can I see him?”
“If you’ll wait a moment, Sir, I’ll ask.”
He paused, then added in explanation—
“I don’t think Mr. Kersteven is very well to-day, Sir. Perhaps he may not wish to be disturbed, even by you. You’ll excuse me, Sir.”
“Of course. Go and see. I’ll stay here.”
“Pray take a seat, Sir.”
He placed a chair for me in the little hall, and went discreetly away up the stairs.
I sat down and waited.
The hall was quiet and dim. Somewhere a large clock was ticking. Now and then I heard a carriage roll by outside. As I sat there I fell into deep thought. What was I going to do? I had come to the house without making any plan. I could not make any plan till I had seen Vernon. His demeanour, his action, must guide me. Would he see me? I thought it probable. There was evidently no one with him. Had there been, Cragg would have told me; and, if I saw him, should I find the black spaniel with him? I glanced round me. On the opposite side of the hall, close to where I was sitting, opened the short corridor, or passage, which linked the two houses in one. I could see the darkness of what had been Deeming’s house where the passage stretched away beyond the door of Vernon’s workroom. Poor Deeming! Gone, with all his fine abilities, his energy, his persistence, his ambition—his cruelty, perhaps! Had he been cruel? Possibly Vernon knew. If he had, he was perhaps now being punished in that other mysterious world of which we know nothing, of which we seldom think in health, but which seems to loom near us when we are ill, or weary, or in trouble of mind—to loom as a great vault before whose entrance we stand, gazing but seeing naught. As I stared down the corridor into the dimness of the other house, the thought of Deeming haunted me, came to me vividly, till I almost fancied that something of him, some thrown-out essence of his personality, of his strong soul, still remained in the dwelling that had been his, still knew what went on there, still watched the coming and going of the man who governed where he had governed once.
I fancied, did I say? It was more than that. I felt as if he were near me, as if he were even intent upon me.
Then from the thought of him, and still with that sensation of his nearness, of his attention, upon me, my mind travelled to the black spaniel. His dog, that mysterious creature never seen by me, had pattered in the dimness towards which I was gazing. And now, as Deeming’s place was taken by Vernon, its place was taken by the black spaniel Vernon had first seen in the Park cowering down against the earth, its ears laid back, its body trembling, its eyes full of a message of voiceless fear. Perhaps it was close to me now, this successor of Deeming’s pet or victim. Perhaps it was shut up in the room in which I had seen it lying against the red curtain. I could see the door of the room. It was shut. A few steps would bring me to it. I glanced towards the staircase. Cragg was not coming down. I got up. Again I had the sensation that Deeming was near me, was intent upon me, wanted something of me, and with this sensation was mysteriously linked my consciousness of the nearness of the black spaniel, till—till the two sensations seemed to merge the one into the other, to become one, in some indefinable, fantastic way. I can hardly explain exactly what I felt at this moment, but my feeling was connected with Vernon’s workroom. It was as if—as if I almost knew that, did I but take those few steps to the shut door, did I but open that door, I should find awaiting me within the room not only the black spaniel, but the dead man, Deeming, with it. It was as if—as if—
I moved across the hall, walking softly, reached the corridor, gained the door, stood by it, listening for the uneasy movement, for the whimper of a dog, for the stir, for the murmur of a dead man. But there was no sound within. There was no sound, and yet I felt positive that the spaniel was inside the room, separated from me only by a piece of wood. Once, twice, I put my fingers upon the handle of the door, yet refrained from turning it. I felt a strong desire to open the door, yet at the critical moment I was held back from doing so by an imperious reluctance which seemed to me to be physical, as if my body sickened and protested against what my mind told it to do.
How long I stood thus uncertainly before the door I do not know. It seemed to me a very long time. At last—in the struggle between mind and body, if it were that—the body conquered. I turned to move away without opening the door. I even took a step towards the hall. But I was arrested by a sound that startled me, that sent—I could not tell why—a chill through me.
I heard the scratching of a dog against the inside of the door.
I stood still, held my breath, and listened. The scratching was repeated, prolonged. It was gentle, surreptitious almost, yet insistent, a summons to me to return.
Again my body sickened. I was physically afflicted. Nausea seized me. But now my mind rose up and protested against the condition, against the domination of my body, like a thing angry and ashamed. Suddenly I took a resolution. I would open the door without delay in answer to the appeal of the black spaniel. Swiftly I went back to the door, grasped the handle, turned it, pushed. The door resisted me. It was locked. As I realised this I heard from within the desolate whining of a dog imprisoned.
“Luttrell! Luttrell!”
Vernon’s voice called to me from above, and at the same time I heard a footstep. Cragg was coming down. I moved swiftly back into the hall and met him. He glanced at me inquiringly, looked down the passage, then at me again. His face for an instant was eloquent with inquiry—with—was it sympathy? Then he was once more the discreet servant, saying in a formal voice—
“Please come up, Sir; Mr. Kersteven will be very glad to see you.”
Vernon met me on the landing by the drawing-room door. I saw at once that he was not well. His face was very pale, and had a peculiar look, as if the skin were drawn upward towards the wrinkled forehead, which I had sometimes noticed in people suffering from prolonged insomnia. It gave a horribly strained appearance to his countenance, in which the eyes looked unnaturally eager and full of curious observation.
“Were you in the hall?” he said, taking my hand for the fraction of an instant, and then dropping it as if with relief.
“I waited in the hall,” I replied evasively.
“You were there then while Cragg was up here?”
“He asked me to wait there,” I said. “While he went to see if you were well enough to receive me. I’m sorry to hear you’re seedy.”
“Oh, it’s of no consequence. Come in.”
We went into the drawing-room.
“What’s been the matter?” I asked, as we sat down.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been overworking, I suppose.”
“With Gernham?” I said.
“Gernham!”—he looked at me narrowly. “You—have you seen Gernham to-day?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
He sat silent for a moment. I could see that he was hesitating whether to tell me about his breach with Gernham or not.
“How d’you like Gernham?” he said at length. “He likes you. He told me so.”
“I know him very slightly, but one can’t help respecting such a genuine fellow,” I replied.
“Genuine—yes, he’s that.”
“If he undertook a thing, nothing would stop him from going through with it.”
“You think so?”
He slightly smiled.
“But suppose he were to encounter an opposition as thorough as his own attack? What then?”
I knew at once that he was thinking of Gernham and himself.
“Then,” I said, “there would be a battle royal.”
“A battle royal, would there? Yes, no doubt.”
With the last words his interest seemed to fail suddenly. He slightly drooped his head, and sat like one listening for some distant sound. I watched him closely. Gernham’s declaration that if Vernon were maltreating the spaniel he must be mentally diseased was present in my mind. I was looking for symptoms that would guide me to a conclusion one way or the other. I saw a great change in Vernon—a painful change. He looked like a man suffering under some terrible distress, which had altered, for the time, his whole outlook upon life. But I felt that I was with a perfectly sane man. As I regarded him he seemed to recover his consciousness of my presence, glanced up, and met my scrutiny.
“What is it?” he said. “Why do you look at me like that?”
I felt embarrassed.
“What’s Gernham been saying to you?” he added sharply.
“Gernham—oh, you know him,” I answered. “You know where his heart is, with the animals. What an enthusiast he is!”
“He’s been talking to you about his work then. Well, did he tell you that we’ve had a quarrel, he and I?”
“He said your work together had come to a stop, for the moment. Why should it?”
“Why? Oh, well, sometimes Gernham is too blunt, says more than he, than any man ought to say to another. There is a limit to frankness; occasionally he oversteps it. He overstepped it with me, and I resented it. Don’t you think I was right?”
I felt that he was being strangely insincere with me as he had been insincere with Gernham, trying to raise a cloud which would obscure the reality of his mind, the true scope of his intentions.
“I see no reason why two such men as you should quarrel,” I answered. “Especially if it interrupts, and perhaps, to some extent, cripples a splendid work. You should sink your little differences, and go on together, hand in hand, to further the noble cause you love.”
He had been trying to play me. I was now trying to play him. Yet, as I finished, a genuine warmth came, I think, into my voice. It moved him. I could see that, for he looked up at me as if demanding my sympathy. Suddenly I felt a profound pity for him, a profound desire to help him. But how? Against what?
“Perhaps we shall be friends again,” he said. “But he misunderstands me, and you, Luttrell, perhaps you misunderstand me too.”
“I!”
“Yes—you. Are you sure that, in these last days, you have never had any cruel suspicions of me? Are you sure you have not any cruel suspicions of me now?”
“If I had, if I have, you could easily clear them up,” I answered. “By the way, how’s the dog getting on? All right?”
His face changed at once, hardened.
“Oh, yes!” he said.
“I should like to have another look at him,” I said. “Where is he?”
“He’s downstairs in the study. Didn’t you know it?”
“I—I did think I heard something scratching and whining. Why do you keep him shut up?”
“He hasn’t got accustomed to being with me yet. If I let him out he might bolt.”
“Oh!”
“I don’t want to have spent my twelve pounds for nothing,” he added.
His face had hardened. Now his voice was hard too—hard and fatal.
“May I have a look at him?” I said.
The sense of mystery was returning upon me. I tried to combat it by speaking bluntly, expressing my desire plainly. At least, I would no longer deal in subterfuge. Instead of answering my question he said, throwing a curious, wavering glance upon me, “Are you engaged to-night?”
I was, but I said at once, “I’m entirely at your service, Vernon.”
“Dine with me, then.”
“Here?”
“Yes, here.”
“Certainly.”
“That’s right. And now let’s have some music. I’ve got a new piano since last year.”
We spent the next hour with Richard Strauss and Saint-Saëns.