“What?”
“Not only that, she evoked vanishing litigants, phantom millions, a grand phantasmagoria that included a safe full of government bonds, a safe in which those bonds were officially attested to be, a safe before which guards patrolled, a safe with which she rooked the world and the ghetto and which contained precisely one collar button and a penny. Where are the great prestidigitators after that? Where are Poe, Collins, Gaboriau, and Conan Doyle? Madame Humbert invented the most picturesque fairy tale of the age. It is true she had to cut and run for it, but genius is seldom appreciated.”
Camille made another face.
“I don’t like that story.”
Revell got up, put his cigarette in an ash receiver, nodded at the girl, and sat down.
“Then you may prefer the Druce poem. Considered as pure poetry, the Tichborne case is drivel beside it. In the latter, an Australian butcher caused an English gentlewoman to recognize him as her son. In the Druce case, the daughter-in-law of a London tradesman recognized a dead duke as the grandfather of her child. She did not stop there, either, though, unlike Madame Humbert, she did not have to run for it. Besides, what is a wicked woman who takes to flight by comparison with a wickeder duke who takes to trade? For that is what this lady claimed he did. She claimed that the Duke of Portland, after murdering his brother, transformed himself into a furniture dealer, had himself die and be buried, and, reappearing, frightened his shop folk into fits. Madame Humbert had a safe in which there was a new penny. Mrs. Druce had a coffin in which there was old iron. But both had imagination. Both understood intensive living. Together, they added to the gayety of nations and, incidentally, to mine.”
Camille moved uneasily.
“Perhaps you have intensive adventures of your own to relate.”
Revell covered her with his eyes.
“Not yet.”
“You mean that you’ll tell them later?”
“If I ever go to jail.”
The room was warm, but Camille shivered.
“That’s rather a gruesome possibility, isn’t it?”
“Inspirational, I should call it. When Bunyan was under lock and key, he enjoyed every kind of temptation and every variety of danger, with no other inconvenience than that of putting them all down in black and white. He was not a prisoner; he was a pilgrim. When Cervantes was jailed, the walls parted, and through them cavalcaded Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, and that great lady whose name is Fame. From a prison at Mons, Paul Verlaine issued with a sheaf of verse that carried him to Parnassus, carried him to the top. That’s the life! Life behind the bars!”
“Don’t!” she cried at him.
With real concern, he considered her.
“But I am only jesting.”
Camille shrank.
“Then your jests are horrible! You frighten me with them. I can’t bear to have you praise cheats and prisons. Particularly as—”
“As what?” he asked, for visibly she hesitated.
“I can’t tell you. Yes, I will! I will tell you! Ever since you got here, Arthur Glendenning has said—No, I can’t say it.”
But Revell helped her.
“That I am an impostor? Isn’t that it?”
“Yes,” the girl slowly got out. “But I don’t and won’t believe it.”
Revell moved over to where she sat.
“Camille, you know I love you.”
She looked up at him.
“And I love you. I love you absolutely.”
“Then trust me.”
“There’s something that you don’t want me to know?”
“Yes. For the present.”
“And when I do know it?”
“You shall be judge and jury.”
“But you are Victor Revell?”
“In flesh and blood.”
“And Mike was your friend?”
“That I can swear to.”
“And you’ve done nothing that you wouldn’t wish me to know?”
For a second, before him passed a flying picture torn from the long cinematograph of time. A second only and he answered at once:
“Nothing whatever.”
“Then you need tell me nothing else, except—”
She hesitated and he repeated it:
“Except?”
“Except that you love me.”
He moved closer.
“I don’t need to tell you. You know it.”
“A girl likes to be told,” she smiled and replied. But the smile faded and she added: “Only I do wish that mysteries had not been made out of molehills. They give me the creeps.”
“You mean about Mike? But Mike is not a molehill. Though your Mr. Glendenning probably thinks I put him in one.”
“I don’t!” Camille hotly protested. “I never have! I never could!”
Revell laughed.
“But he does, and that is a trait of real genius. For it, he deserves a niche between Madame Humbert and Mrs. Druce.”
Camille turned from him. The portieres were parting. Through them Archibald appeared.
“Mr. Mike, mem, and will you see him?”
VIII
At the announcement, a whirlwind tossed her thoughts. Into them entered stretches of night. From Archibald, she turned to Revell. He had moved away. With an air of amused wonder, he was considering the servant. If, through the portieres, a giraffe had peered and spoken, he could not have seemed more pleasantly surprised.
Camille, turning again to the servant, agonizedly repeated:
“Mr. Mike?”
Archibald blinked.
“Mr. Mike, mem? I meant Mr. Glendenning.”
Camille, who had gasped and half risen, sighed and sank back and, not in relief, but in the abeyance of the shock, motioned that he was to come in.
Then, in a moment, as Glendenning appeared, affably Revell nodded.
“We were just talking about you.”
Icily Glendenning surveyed them both.
“You must have been very idle.”
“I could have screamed,” said Camille. “Did you hear Archibald announce you as Mike?”
Glendenning sat down.
“He’s crazy. Since my uncle died, he has not been the same at all.”
Camille, who had got her breath, replied:
“Mr. Revell says that no one is ever the same, that life is—I’ve forgotten what, but that you are here one minute and gone the next.”
Glendenning looked over at Revell.
“You must have been referring to Mike. Personally, I would give a red pippin—I would give two of them—to know where he did go.”
Revell, who was standing with his back to the mantel, smiled pleasantly, but exasperatingly.
“If I can tell you anything, command me.”
Glendenning glared.
“You
