“No, sir, it’s me,” came the answer.
“Oh, don’t trouble; I only wanted to speak to your mistress. It’s all right.”
“Mrs. Lawford has gone out, sir,” replied the voice.
“Gone out?”
“Yes, sir; she told me not to mention it; but I suppose as you asked—”
“Oh, that’s all right; never mind; I didn’t ring.” He stood with face uplifted, thinking.
“Can I do anything, sir?” came the faint, nervous question after a long pause.
“One moment, Ada,” he called in a loud voice. He took out his pocketbook, sat down, and scribbled a little note. He hardly noticed how changed his handwriting was—the clear round letters crabbed and irregular.
“Are you there, Ada?” he called. “I am slipping a note beneath the door; just draw back the mat; that’s it. Take it at once, please, to Mr. Critchett’s, and be sure to wait for an answer. Then come back direct to me, up here. I don’t think, Ada, your mistress believes much in Critchett; but I have fully explained what I want. He has made me up many prescriptions. Explain that to his assistant if he is not there. Go at once, and you will be back before she is. I should be so very much obliged, tell him. ‘Mr. Arthur Lawford.’ ”
The minutes slowly drifted by. He sat quite still in the clear untroubled light, waiting in the silence of the empty house. And for the first time he was confronted with the cold incredible horror of his ordeal. Who would believe, who could believe, that behind this strange and awful, yet how simple mask, lay himself? What test; what heaped-up evidence of identity would break it down? It was all a loathsome ignominy. It was utterly absurd. It was—
Suddenly, with a kind of apelike cunning, he deliberately raised a long lean forefinger and pointed it at the shadowy crystal of the looking-glass. Perhaps he was dead, was really and indeed changed in body, was fated really and indeed to change in soul, into That. “It’s that beastly voice again,” Lawford cried out loud, looking vacantly at his upstretched finger. And then, hand and arm, not too willingly, as it were, obeyed; relaxed and fell to his side. “You must keep a tight hold, old man,” he muttered to himself. “Once, once you lose yourself—the least symptom of that—the least symptom, and it’s all up!” And the fools, the heartless, preposterous fools had brought him one volume!
When on earth was Ada coming back? She was lagging on purpose. She was in the conspiracy too. Oh, it should be a lesson to Sheila! Oh, if only daylight would come! “What are you going to do—to do—to do?” He rose once more and paced his silent cage. To and fro, thinking no more; just using his eyes, compelling them to wander from picture to picture, bedpost to bedpost; now counting aloud his footsteps; now humming; only, only to keep himself from thinking. At last he took out a drawer and actually began arranging its medley of contents; ties, letters, studs, concert and theatre programmes—all higgledy-piggledy. And in the midst of this childish strategem he heard a faint sound, as of heavy water trickling from a height. He turned. A thief was in one of the candles. It was guttering out. He would be left in darkness. He turned hastily without a moment’s heed, to call for light, flung the door open and full in the flare of a lamp, illuminating her pale forehead and astonished face beneath her black straw hat, stood face to face with Ada.
With one swift dexterous movement he drew the door to after him, looking straight into her almost colourless steady eyes. “Ah,” he said instantly, in a high faint voice, “the powder, thank you; yes, Mr. Lawford’s powder; thank you, thank you. He must be kept absolutely quiet—absolutely. Mrs. Lawford is following. Please tell her that I am here, when she returns. Mr. Critchett was in, then? Thank you. Extreme, extreme silence, please.” Again that knotted, melodramatic finger raised itself on high; and within that lean, cadaverous body the soul of its lodger quailed at this spectral boldness. But it was triumphant. The maid at once left him and went downstairs. He heard faint voices in muffled consultation. And in a moment Sheila’s silks rustled once more on the staircase. Lawford put down the lamp, and watched her deliberately close the door.
“What does this mean?” she began swiftly, “I understand that—Ada tells me a stranger is here; giving orders, directions. Who is he? where is he? You bound yourself on your solemn promise not to stir till I returned. You … How can I, how can we get decently through this horrible business if you are so wretchedly indiscreet? You sent Ada to the chemist’s. What for? What for? I say.”
Lawford watched his wife with an almost extraneous interest. She was certainly extremely interesting from that point of view, that very novel point of view. “It’s quite useless,” he said, “to get in the least nervous or hysterical. I don’t care for the darkness just now. That was all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctor—Dr. Simon’s new partner. You are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said our patient must be kept quiet—I really think he must. That is all, so far as Ada is concerned. … What on earth else are we to say?” he broke out. “That, for the present to everybody, is our only possible story. It will give
