Captain Grey was enchanted with the idea of Lexy’s spending a week with
his sister. He was going, too. Indeed, Lexy felt sure that Mrs. Quelton
had wanted him to go there some time ago, and that he had refused simply
on her own account. He didn’t like to leave her alone at Mrs. Royce’s,
and after her nervous breakdown that afternoon nothing could have
induced him to do so. He was anxious about her. He tried, with what he
believed was great tact, to find out her plans for the future. He was
genuinely troubled by the loneliness and uncertainty of her life.
Lexy appreciated all this, and she liked the young man very
much--perhaps as much as he liked her; but the sympathetic understanding
which had promised to develop on the night when they talked together in
the firelight had never developed. Something had checked it. They were
the best of friends, but Captain Grey never again referred to what Lexy
had told him about Caroline Enderby, and about her reason for coming to
Wyngate; and Lexy said nothing, either. Evidently he thought that it had
been a far-fetched, romantic notion of hers, and hoped that she had
forgotten all about it.
Lexy did not try to undeceive him. Her story would be too fantastic for
him to believe. Nobody would believe it, except a person with absolute
faith not only in her honesty but in her intelligence and
clear-sightedness; and there was no such person. She was not resentful
or grieved over this. She accepted it quietly, and prepared to go
forward alone.
It had occurred to her lately that perhaps Mr. Houseman had been right,
and that Caroline had gone away of her own free will; but she meant to
_know_. She had seen the missing girl in Dr. Quelton’s house. Whatever
the doctor might say about the false evidence of the senses, Lexy’s
confidence in her own clear gray eyes was not in the least shaken. She
had seen Caroline once, and she was going to see her again. That was why
she was going to the Tower.
“It’ll do Muriel no end of good,” said Captain Grey, when they were in
the taxi. “She’s--to tell you the truth, Miss Moran, I don’t feel
altogether easy about her.”
“Why?” asked Lexy, very curious to know what he thought.
“Well,” he said, “it’s hard to put it into words; but that’s not a
wholesome sort of life for a young woman, shut away like that. The
doctor says her health’s not good, but it’s my opinion that if she got
about more--saw more people, you know--”
Lexy felt a great pity for him. Apparently he did not even suspect what
she was now sure of--that the unfortunate Muriel was hopelessly addicted
to some drug, which her husband himself gave to her.
“And I hope he’ll go back to India before he does find out,” she
thought. “It’s too horrible--he worships her so!”
“I’ve tried, you know,” he went on. “I wanted to take her into the city,
to a concert. Seems confoundedly queer, doesn’t it, the way she’s lost
interest in her music? She didn’t want to go. Then about the emerald--”
“Oh!” said Lexy, who had forgotten about the emerald.
“Chap I know designed a setting for it. It’s unset now, you know, and I
thought I’d like to do that for her while I was here; but she doesn’t
seem interested. I can’t even get her to let me see the thing. I’ve
asked her two or three times, but she always puts me off. Do you think
it bores her?”
“Perhaps it does,” replied Lexy.
“Well,” said the young man, “when a woman’s bored by a jewel like that,
she’s in a bad way. I wish you could see it!”
“I wish I could,” said Lexy, and added to herself: “But I don’t think I
ever shall. Probably her husband’s got it.”
They had now reached the Tower. The parlor maid opened the door for
them, and at once conducted Lexy upstairs to her room.
It was a big room, with four windows, and very comfortably furnished;
but even a fire burning in the grate and two or three shaded electric
lamps could not give it a homelike air. There was a musty smell about
it, and there was an amazing amount of dust. It was neat, but it wasn’t
clean. Dust rose from the carpet when she walked, and from the chair
cushions when she sat down. She saw fluff under the bed and under the
bureau.
“Not much of a housekeeper, poor soul!” thought Lexy. “It’s a pity. One
could do almost anything with a house like this, and all this beautiful
old furniture!”
But this, after all, was a minor matter. She took off her hat, washed
her hands and face, brushed her hair, and left the room, closing the
door quietly behind her.
“The house is strange to me,” she said to herself, with a grin. “I
shouldn’t wonder if I turned the wrong way, and got lost!”
That was what she intended to do. She did not expect to make any
sensational discoveries, for Dr. Quelton did not seem to be the sort of
person who would leave clews lying about for her to pick up; but she did
hope that she might see or hear something--Heaven knows what--that might
bring her nearer to Caroline.
So, instead of walking toward the stairs, she turned in the opposite
direction, along a hall lined with doors, all of them shut. At the end
there was a grimy window, through which the sun shone in upon the dusty
carpet and the faded wall paper. There was a forlorn and neglected air
about the place, a stillness which made it impossible for her to believe
that there was any living creature behind those closed doors.
“I wish I had cheek enough to open some of them,” she thought; “but I’m
afraid I haven’t. I shouldn’t know what to say if there was some one in
the room. After all, I’m supposed to be a guest. I’ve got to be a little
discreet about my prying.”
She went softly along the hall to the window, to see what was out there.
When she reached it, she was surprised to see that the last door was a
little ajar. She looked through the crack. It wasn’t a room in there,
but another hall, only a few feet long, ending at a narrow staircase.
“That must be the way to the cupola,” she thought. “I suppose a guest
might go up there, to see the view.”
So she pushed the door open and went on tiptoe to the stairs; and then
she heard a voice which she had no trouble in recognizing. It was Dr.
Quelton’s.
“My dear young man,” he was saying. “I am not a psychologist. It has
always seemed to me the greatest folly to devote serious study to the
workings of so erratic and incalculable a machine as the human brain. It
is a study in which there are, practically speaking, no general rules,
no trustworthy data. It is, in my opinion, not a science at all, but a
philosophy; and philosophy makes no appeal to me. I frankly admit that I
am entirely materialistic. I care little for causes, but much for
effects. Consequently, I have devoted myself to medicine, in which I can
produce certain effects according to established rules.”
“But I meant more particularly the effect of--of things on the mind--the
brain, you know,” said Captain Grey’s voice.
Again Lexy felt a great pity for him. He sounded very, very young in
contrast to the doctor--so young and earnest, and so helpless!
“Exactly!” said the doctor. “You were, I believe, trying to lead to a
suggestion that psychology might be of help to Muriel. Am I right?”
There was a moment’s pause, during which Lexy very cautiously went
halfway up the stairs.
“I did think of that,” said the young man valiantly. “It seems to me
she’s a bit--well, morbid, you know; and I’ve heard about those
chaps--those psychoanalysts, you know. Simply occurred to me that one of
them--merely a suggestion, you know. I’m not trying to be officious.”
“A psychoanalyst,” said Dr. Quelton, “is a man who analyzes the psyche,
who solemnly and expensively analyzes something of whose existence he
has no proof whatever.”
There was another silence.
By this time Lexy had reached the head of the stairs. Beside her was an
open door, through which she could look, while she herself was hidden
from view. Beyond it was, as she had thought, the cupola--a small
octagonal room with windows on every side, through which the sun poured
in a dazzling flood. There was nothing in the room except a white enamel
table, a stool, a porcelain sink, and an open cabinet, upon the shelves
of which stood rows and rows of bottles, each one labeled. Facing this
cabinet, and with their backs toward the door, stood the two men--the
doctor with his shoulders hunched and his hands clasped behind him, and
Captain Grey, tall, slender, straight as a wand.
“Materia medica--that is my art,” said the doctor. “I have devoted my
life to it, and I have learned--a little. I have made experiments. A
psychologist will offer to tell you why a man has murdered his
grandmother. I can’t pretend to do that, but I can give that man a
tablet which will make it practically certain that he _will_ kill his
grandmother if they are left alone together for ten minutes.”
“But, I say!” protested Captain Grey.
“I can assure you that I have never made the experiment,” said Dr.
Quelton, with a laugh; “but I could do it. I have learned that certain
states of mind can be produced by certain drugs.”
Captain Grey turned his head, so that Lexy could see his handsome,
sensitive face in profile.
“That seems to me a pretty risky thing to do,” he said, with a trace of
sternness. “I hope, sir, that you don’t--”
“Don’t give Muriel drugs that make her disposed to murder her
grandmother?” interrupted the doctor, with another laugh; but he must
have noticed that his companion was unresponsive, for he at once changed
his tone. “No,” he said gravely. “I have made a particular study of
Muriel’s case. She seriously overtaxed herself in her musical studies.
Don’t be alarmed, my dear fellow--there is no permanent injury. It is
simply a profound mental and nervous lassitude--obviously a case where
artificial stimulation is required, until the tone of the lethargic
brain is restored. I am able to do for her what, I feel certain, no one
else now living could do. In this bottle”--he tapped one of them with
his forefinger--“I have a preparation which would make my fortune, if I
had the least ambition in that direction. Five drops of that, in a glass
of water, and her depression and apathy are immediately dispelled. There
is an instantaneous improvement in--”
Lexy waited to hear no more. She slipped down the stairs as quietly as
she had come up, hurried along the hall, and went into her own room
again. Her knees gave way and she collapsed into a chair, staring ahead
of her with the most singular expression on her face.
She was, in fact, looking at a new idea, and it was not a welcome one.
“No!” she said to herself. “It’s out of the question. It’s too
dangerous. I can’t do it!”
But the idea remained solidly before her; and the more she contemplated
it, the more was her honest heart obliged to admit the possibilities in
it.
“It can’t do any real harm,” she said; “and it might do good--so much
good! All right, I’m going to do it!”
Half an hour before dinner she went down into the library, a polite and
quiet young guest, even a little subdued. Dr. Quelton took Captain Grey
out for a stroll on the beach. He asked Lexy to go with them, but she
said she would prefer to stay with Mrs. Quelton.
It was very peaceful and pleasant there in the library. The late
afternoon sun shone in through the long window, touching with a benign
light the shabby and graceful old furniture, picking out a glitter of
gold on the binding of a book, a dull gleam of silver or copper in a
corner. A mild breeze blew in, fluttering the curtains and bringing a
wholesome breath of the salt air.
Mrs. Quelton was at her best. To be sure, she was not very interesting.
She talked about rather banal things--about the weather, about a kitten
that had run away, about the flowers in the conservatory; but Lexy, as
she watched her and listened to her, could understand better than ever
before what it was in Captain Grey’s sister that had so seized upon his
heart. Languid and aloof as she was, there was nevertheless an
undeniable charm about her, something sweet and kindly and lovable. She
said, more than once, how very glad she was to have Lexy with her, and
Lexy believed she meant it.
The two men had strolled out of sight.
“I must have left my handkerchief upstairs,” said Lexy. “Excuse me just
a minute, please!”
But she was gone more than a minute, and when she returned her face was
curiously white.