As quietly as some nocturnal creature he ascended the steps to the porch, and leaning between stone pilaster and wall, listened intently for any rumour of those within.
He heard a clear, rather languid and delicate voice quietly speak on until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when it fell silent by Sheila’s—rapid, rich, and low. The first speaker seemed to be standing. Probably, then, his evening visitors had only just come in, or were preparing to depart. He inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at the cumbersome door. It was locked against him. With not the faintest thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was visible but a narrow strip of the white table, on which lay a black cotton glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What made all these mute and inanimate things so coldly hostile?
An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of knocking for admission, of confronting Ada, possibly even Sheila, in the cold echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the first wild, almost metallic, flash of recognition. He swept softly down again, and paused at the open gate. Once before the voices of the night had called him: they would not summon him forever in vain. He raised his eyes again towards the window. Who were these visitors met together to drum the alien out? He narrowed his lids and smiled up at the vacuous unfriendly house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down the gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the long white window was ajar.
With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, and climbed in, and stood listening again in the black passage on the other side. When he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his heart was stilled, he trod on softly, till turning the corner he came in sight of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just enough, perhaps, to admit a cat; and as he softly approached, looking steadily in, he could see Ada sitting at the empty table, beneath the single whistling chandelier, in her black dress and black straw hat. She was reading apparently; but her back was turned to him and he could not distinguish her arm beyond the elbow. Then almost in an instant he discovered, as, drawn up and unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had covertly and instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on the table beneath, and was transfixedly listening too. He turned his eyes away and waited. When again he peered in she had apparently bent once more over her magazine, and he stole on.
One by one, with a thin remote exultation in his progress, he mounted the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping step the voices above him became more clearly audible. At last, in the darkness of the hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the chink of the dining-room door, he stood on the threshold of the drawing-room door and could hear with varying distinctness what those friendly voices were so absorbedly discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite as some contrivance of science, registering passively the least sound, the faintest syllable, and like it, in no sense meddling with the thought that speech conveyed. He simply stood listening, fixed and motionless, like some uncouth statue in the leafy hollow of a garden, stony, unspeculating.
“Oh, but you either refuse to believe, Bettie, or you won’t understand that it’s far worse than that.” Sheila seemed to be upbraiding, or at least reasoning with, the last speaker. “Ask Mr. Danton—he actually saw him.”
“ ‘Saw him,’ ” repeated a thick, still voice. “He stood there, in that very doorway, Mrs. Lovat, and positively railed at me. He stood there and streamed out all the names he could lay his tongue to. I wasn’t—unfriendly to the poor beggar. When Bethany let me into it I thought it was simply—I did indeed, Mrs. Lawford—a monstrous exaggeration. Flatly, I didn’t believe it; shall I say that? But when I stood face to face with him, I could have taken my oath that that was no more poor old Arthur Lawford than—well, I won’t repeat what particular word occurred to me. But there,” the corpulent shrug was almost audible, “we all know what old Bethany is. A sterling old chap, mind you, so far as mere character is concerned; the right man in the right place; but as gullible and as softhearted as a tomtit. I’ve said all this before, I know, Mrs. Lawford, and been properly snubbed for my pains. But if I had been Bethany I’d have sifted the whole story at the beginning, the moment he put his foot into the house. Look at that Tichborne fellow—went for months and months, just picking up one day what he floored old Hawkins—wasn’t it?—with the next. But of course,” he added gloomily, “now that’s all too late. He’s wormed himself into a tolerably tight corner. I’d just like to see, though, a British jury comparing this claimant with his photograph, ’pon my word I would. Where would he be then, do you think?”
“But my dear Mr. Danton,” went on the clear, languid voice Lawford had heard break so light-heartedly into laughter, “you don’t mean to tell me that a woman doesn’t know her own husband when she sees him—or, for the matter of that, when she doesn’t see him? If Tom came home from a ramble as handsome as Apollo tomorrow, I’d recognise him at the very first blush—literally! He’d go nuzzling off to get his slippers, or complain that the
