“Speaking of bitumen,” said I, “reminds me of a question that has occurred to me. You know that this substance has been used a good deal by modern painters and that it has a very dangerous peculiarity; I mean its tendency to liquefy, without any obvious reason, long after it has dried.”
“Yes, I know. Isn’t there some story about a picture of Reynolds’s in which bitumen had been used? A portrait of a lady, I think. The bitumen softened, and one of the lady’s eyes slipped down on to her cheek; and they had to hang the portrait upside down and keep it warm until the eye slipped back again into its place. But what was your question?”
“I was wondering whether the bitumen used by the Egyptian artists has ever been known to soften after this great lapse of time.”
“Yes, I think it has. I have heard of instances in which the bitumen coatings have softened under certain circumstances and become quite ‘tacky.’ But, bless my soul! here am I gossiping with you and wasting your time, and it is nearly a quarter to nine!”
My guest rose hastily, and I, with many apologies for having detained him, proceeded to fulfil my promise to guide him to his destination. As we sallied forth together the glamour of Egypt faded by degrees, and when he shook my hand stiffly at the gate of the Bellinghams’ house, all his vivacity and enthusiasm had vanished, leaving the taciturn lawyer, dry, uncommunicative, and not a little suspicious.
X
The New Alliance
The “Great Lexicographer”—tutelary deity of my adopted habitat—has handed down to shuddering posterity a definition of the act of eating which might have been framed by a dyspeptic ghoul. “Eat: to devour with the mouth.” It is a shocking view to take of so genial a function: cynical, indelicate, and finally unforgivable by reason of its very accuracy. For, after all, that is what eating amounts to, if one must needs express it with such crude brutality. But if “the ingestion of alimentary substances”—to ring a modern change upon the older formula—is in itself a process material even unto carnality, it is undeniable that it forms a highly agreeable accompaniment to more psychic manifestations.
And so, as the lamplight, reinforced by accessory candles, falls on the little table in the first-floor room looking on Fetter Lane—only now the curtains are drawn—the conversation is not the less friendly and bright for a running accompaniment executed with knives and forks, for clink of goblet, and jovial gurgle of wine-flask. On the contrary, to one of us, at least—to wit, Godfrey Bellingham—the occasion is one of uncommon festivity, and his boyish enjoyment of the simple feast makes pathetic suggestions of hard times, faced uncomplainingly, but keenly felt nevertheless.
The talk flitted from topic to topic, mainly concerning itself with matters artistic, and never for one moment approaching the critical subject of John Bellingham’s will. From the stepped pyramid of Sakkara with its encaustic tiles to medieval church floors; from Elizabethan woodwork to Mycenean pottery, and thence to the industrial arts of the Stone Age and the civilization of the Aztecs. I began to suspect that my two legal friends were so carried away by the interest of the conversation that they had forgotten the secret purpose of the meeting, for the dessert had been placed on the table (by Mrs. Gummer with the manner of a bereaved dependent dispensing funeral bakemeats), and still no reference had been made to the “case.” But it seemed that Thorndyke was but playing a waiting game; was only allowing the intimacy to ripen while he watched for the opportunity. And that opportunity came, even as Mrs. Gummer vanished spectrally with a tray of plates and glasses.
“So you had a visitor last night, Doctor,” said Mr. Bellingham. “I mean my friend Jellicoe. He told us he had seen you, and mighty curious he was about you. I have never known Jellicoe to be so inquisitive before. What did you think of him?”
“A quaint old cock. I found him highly amusing. We entertained one another for quite a long time with cross-questions and crooked answers; I affecting eager curiosity, he replying with a defensive attitude of universal ignorance. It was a most diverting encounter.”
“He needn’t have been so close,” Miss Bellingham remarked, “seeing that all the world will be regaled with our affairs before long.”
“They are proposing to take the case into Court, then?” said Thorndyke.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bellingham. “Jellicoe came to tell me that my cousin, Hurst, has instructed his solicitors to make the application and to invite me to join him. Actually he came to deliver an ultimatum from Hurst—but I mustn’t disturb the harmony of this festive gathering with litigious discords.”
“Now, why mustn’t you?” asked Thorndyke. “Why is a subject in which we are all keenly interested to be taboo? You don’t mind telling us about it, do you?”
“No, of course not. But what do you think of a man who buttonholes a doctor at a dinner-party to retail a list of ailments?”
“It depends on what his ailments are,” replied Thorndyke. “If he is a chronic dyspeptic and wishes to expound the virtues of Doctor Snaffler’s Purple
