Feathers would not have knocked down the sturdy Lexy, however. On the
contrary, she was pleased and interested by this utterly unexpected
visit. The sinister doctor here, in this house, and asking for her! She
started promptly toward the stairs.
“Miss Moran!” cautioned the landlady, in a whisper. “Don’t tell him
nothing!”
“Tell him!” said Lexy. “But I haven’t anything to tell!”
“Well, you’d best be very careful!” said Mrs. Royce.
With this solemn warning in her ears, Lexy descended the stairs. She saw
Dr. Quelton standing in the hall, hat in hand, waiting for her. The
doctor was rather a disappointment. He was not the dark, sinister figure
he should have been. He was a big man, powerfully built, with a clumsy
stoop to his tremendous shoulders. His heavy, clean-shaven face would
have been an agreeable one if it had not been for its expression, but
that expression was not at all an alarming or dangerous one. It was an
expression of the most utter and hopeless boredom.
He came toward her.
“Miss Moran?” he asked.
Even his voice was listless, and his glance was without a spark of
interest.
“Yes,” said she.
“My brother-in-law, Captain Grey, told us you were here, and I did
myself the honor of calling,” he went on.
“You certainly were quick about it!” thought Lexy. “Captain Grey
couldn’t have reached his sister’s house an hour ago, and it’s three
miles from here. Won’t you come into the sitting room?” she asked
aloud.
“Thank you,” he replied, and followed Lexy into the decorous and dismal
room.
He sat down opposite her in a small chair that cracked under his weight,
and he smiled a bored and extinguished smile.
“A writer, I believe?” he said.
“Well, yes, in a way,” answered Lexy, growing a little red.
“My wife and I were very much interested,” he went on, with as little
interest as a human being may well display. “We don’t have many
newcomers here. It’s a very quiet place.”
His apathetic manner exasperated Lexy.
“But I don’t care how quiet it is,” she observed.
“My wife and I like a quiet life,” he said. “My wife asked me to
explain, Miss Moran, that she is something of a recluse. Her health
prevents her from calling upon you; but she wished me to say that she
would be very happy to see you at the Tower, whenever it may be
convenient for you to call, any afternoon after four o’clock.”
“Thank you,” replied Lexy. “Please thank Mrs. Quelton. I shall be very
pleased to come.”
And now why didn’t he go away? This visit was apparently a painful duty
for him. He had delivered his message, and yet he lingered.
“A very quiet place,” he repeated; “but perhaps you are not sociably
inclined?”
“Oh, I’m sociable enough--at times,” said Lexy.
“But at the present time you prefer solitude? For the purposes of your
work? As a change from the stimulating atmosphere of the city?”
Any mention of her work made Lexy uncomfortable.
“Well, yes,” she answered in a dubious tone.
“I lived in New York myself for a number of years,” he went on. “I
wonder if you--may I ask what part of the city you lived in, Miss
Moran?”
Lexy hesitated, and she meant him to see that she hesitated. After all,
however, it was not an unnatural or impertinent question, and she
couldn’t very well refuse to answer it.
“In the East Sixties, near the park,” she said. “It wasn’t my own home,
though--I was a companion,” she added.
She always liked people to know that. She was far from being cynical,
but she was aware that this information made a difference--to some
people.
She was astonished to see the difference it made in Dr. Quelton. He
raised his black, weary eyes to her face and stared at her with
unmistakable insolence.
“Ah!” he said. “I see! I thought so!”
There was a moment’s silence.
“And you’ve come to Wyngate to--er--to write?” he went on. “Very
interesting--very!”
Lexy felt her cheeks grow hot. She wished with all her heart that she
had not involved herself in that stupid falsehood. It humiliated her so
much that she couldn’t answer Dr. Quelton with her usual spirit. He
noticed her confusion--no doubt about that.
“Poetry, perhaps?” he suggested.
“No!” said Lexy vehemently. “Not poetry!”
He leaned forward a little, looking directly into her face.
“Perhaps,” he said, “you write detective stories?”
“Yes!” said Lexy.
The doctor rose.
“The solving of mysteries!” he said, with his unpleasant smile. “That
makes very interesting fiction!”
Lexy rose, too. His tone, his manner, exasperated her almost beyond
endurance. She felt an ardent desire to contradict everything he said.
What is more, she was in no humor to hear mystery stories made light of.
She had had enough of that--first Mrs. Enderby pretending there was no
mystery, and then Mr. Houseman going off and pretending it was solved,
so that she was left alone to do the best she could. Wasn’t she in a
mystery story at this very minute, and without a single promising clew
to guide her?
“There are plenty of mysteries that aren’t fiction,” she observed
curtly.
“But they are never solved,” said Dr. Quelton.
“Never solved?” said Lexy. “But lots of them are! You can read in the
newspapers all the time about crimes that--”
“The mystery of a crime is never solved,” the doctor blandly proceeded.
“Never! Let us say, for example, that a murder is committed. The police
investigate, they arrest some one. There is a trial, the jury finds that
the suspect is guilty, the judge sentences him, and he is executed.
Public opinion is satisfied; but as a matter of fact, nothing whatever
has been solved. It is all guesswork. Not one living soul, not one
member of the jury, not the judge, not the executioner, really _knows_
that the accused man was guilty. They think so--that is all. What you
call a ‘solution’ is merely a guess, based upon probabilities.”
Lexy considered this with an earnest frown.
“Well,” she said at last, “quite often criminals confess.”
“In the days of witchcraft trials,” said he, “it was not uncommon for
women to come forward voluntarily and confess to being witches. In the
course of my own practice I have known people to confess things they
could not possibly have done. No!” He shook his head and smiled faintly.
“An acquaintance with the psychology of the diseased mind makes one very
skeptical about confessions, Miss Moran.”
This idea, too, Lexy took into her mind and considered for a few
minutes.
“Even an eyewitness,” Dr. Quelton went on, “is entirely unreliable. Any
lawyer can tell you how completely the senses deceive one. Three persons
can see the same occurrence, and each one of the three will swear to a
quite different impression. Each one may be entirely honest, entirely
convinced that he saw or heard what never took place.”
“Do you mean that you think it’s never possible to find out who’s
guilty?”
“Never,” he replied agreeably. “It can never be anything but a guess, as
I said, based upon probabilities. Human senses, human judgment, human
reason, are all pitifully liable to error.”
Lexy was silent for a time, thinking over this.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said slowly, “about the senses, and judgment,
and reason. Perhaps their evidence isn’t always to be trusted; but
there’s something else.”
“Something else?” he repeated. “Something else? And what may that be?”
Lexy looked up at him. There was a smile on his heavy, pallid face,
aloof and contemptuous; but she was chiefly concerned just then in
trying to put into words her own firm conviction, more for her own
benefit than for his. It was not reason that had brought her here to
look for Caroline, it was not reason that sustained her.
“There’s something else,” she said again, with a frown. “There’s a way
of knowing things without reason. It’s--I don’t know just how to put it,
but it’s a thing beyond reason.”
He laughed, and she thought she had never heard a more unpleasant laugh.
“Certainly!” he said. “Beyond reason lies--unreason.”
“I don’t mean that,” said Lexy. “I mean--”
She stopped, because he had abruptly turned away and was walking toward
the door. She stood where she was, amazed by this unique rudeness; but
in the doorway he turned.
“The thing beyond reason!” he said, almost in a whisper. Then, with a
sudden and complete change of manner, he went on: “It has been very
interesting to meet you, Miss Moran. My wife will enjoy a visit from
you. Any afternoon, after four o’clock!” He bowed politely. “After four
o’clock,” he repeated, and off he went.
Lexy stood looking at the closed door.
“Crazy?” she said to herself. “No--that’s not the word for him at all.
He’s--he’s just horrible!”