That night when, very late, Mr. Harding and Malling returned to the red
doll's house and let themselves into it with a latch-key, they found
lying upon the table in the little hall a brown envelop.
"A telegram!" said the rector.
He took it into his hand and read the name on the envelop.
"It's for me. Malling, do you know whom this telegram is from?"
"How can I, or you, for that matter?"
"It is from Henry Chichester, and it is to recall me to London."
"It may be so."
"It is so. Open it for me."
Malling took the telegram from him and tore it open, while he sat heavily
down by the table.
"_Please return if possible difficulties in the parish Benyon ill need
your presence Chichester._"
Malling looked down at the rector.
"You see!" Mr. Harding said slowly.
"What do you mean to do?"
Mr. Harding got up from his chair with an effort like that of a weary
man.
"I wonder where the railway-guide is?" he said. "Excuse me for a moment,
Mr. Malling."
He went away into the drawing-room, and returned with the railway-guide
open in his hand.
"Malling," he said, using the greater familiarity he had for a moment
discarded, "I am about to do a rude thing, but I ask you, I beg of
you, to acquit me of any rude intention toward yourself. I have been
looking up the Sunday trains. I find I can catch a good one at Faversham
to-morrow morning. There is a motor I can hire in the town to get there.
It stands just by the post-office, where the road branches." He paused,
looking into Malling's face as if in search of some sign of vexation or
irony. "With a large parish on my hands," he went on, "I have a great
responsibility. And if Benyon, my second curate, is ill, they will
be short-handed."
"I see."
"What distresses me greatly--greatly--is leaving you, my guest, at such
short notice. I cannot say how I regret it."
He stopped. Purposely, to test him, Malling said nothing, but waited with
an expressionless face.
"I cannot say. But how can I do otherwise? My duty to the parish must
come before all things."
"I see," said Malling again.
Looking greatly disturbed, Mr. Harding continued:
"I will ask you to do me a very great favor. Although I am obliged to go,
I hope you will stay, I entreat you to stay till Monday. The professor is
here. You will not be companionless. The servants will do everything to
make you comfortable. As to food, wine--everything is provided for. Will
you stay? I shall feel more at ease in going if I know my departure has
not shortened your visit."
"It is very good of you," Malling replied. "I'll accept your kind offer.
To tell the truth, I'm in no hurry to leave the Tankerton air."
"Thank you," said the rector, almost with fervor. "Thank you."
So, the next morning, Mr. Harding went away in the hired motor, and
Malling found himself alone in the red doll's house.
He was not sorry. The rector's revelation on the previous night had well
repaid him for his journey; then the air of Tankerton really rejoiced
him; and he would have speech of the professor.
"I shall lay it before Stepton," he had said to Mr. Harding the previous
night, after they had parted from the professor.
And he had spoken with authority. Mr. Harding's confidence, his
self-abasement, and his almost despairing appeal, had surely given
Malling certain rights. He intended to use them to the full. The
rector's abrupt relapse into reserve, his pitiful return to subterfuge,
after the receipt of that hypnotizing telegram, had not, in Malling's
view, abrogated those rights.
When the motor disappeared, he strolled across the grass with a towel
and had a dip in the brown sea, going in off the long shoal that the
Whitstable and Tankerton folk call "the Street." Then he set out to
find the professor.
His interview with Stepton on the previous night in the presence of
Mr. Harding had been rather brief. Stepton had been preoccupied and
monosyllabic. Agnes had been right as to his reason for honoring the
coast of Kent with his company, but wrong as to the haunted house's
location. It was not in Birchington, but lay inland, within easy reach
of Tankerton. When he met Malling and Harding, the professor was going
to his hotel, where a motor was waiting to convey him to the house, in
which he intended to pass the night. His mind was fixed tenaciously upon
the matter in hand. Malling had realized at once that it was not the
moment to disturb him by the introduction of any other affair, however
interesting. But his suggestion of a meeting the next morning was thus
welcomed:
"Right! I shall be at home at churchtime--as you're not preaching."
The second half of the sentence was directed to Mr. Harding, who said
nothing.
"And you might give me a cup of tea in the afternoon," the professor
had added, looking at the rector rather narrowly before shambling off
to his hotel to get the plaid shawl which he often wore at night.
"With the greatest pleasure. Minors is the name of the house," had been
Mr. Harding's reply.
Whereupon the professor had vanished, muttering to himself:
"Minors! And why not Majors, if you come to that? Perhaps too suggestive
of heart-breaking military men. Minors is safer in a respectable seaside
place."
The professor had been up all night, but looked much as usual, and was
eating a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs in the cheerful coffee-room
when Malling arrived. He scarcely ever ate at orthodox hours, and had
frequently been caught lunching at restaurants in London between four and
five in the afternoon.
"Where's the rector? At church?" was his greeting.
"The rector has gone back to London," replied Malling, sitting down by
the table.
"What about my cup of tea, then?" snapped Stepton.
"I will be your host. I'm here till to-morrow. Any interesting
manifestations?"
"A rat or two and a hysterical kitchen-maid seem to be the responsible
agents in the building up of the reputation of the house I kept awake
in last night."
"I believe I have a more interesting problem for you."
The professor stretched out a sinewy hand.
"Cambridge marmalade! Most encouraging!" he muttered. "Have the reverend
gentlemen of St. Joseph's been at it again--successfully?"
"I want you to judge."
And thereupon Malling laid the case faithfully before the professor,
describing not only the dinner in Hornton Street and his interview with
Lady Sophia, but also the two sermons he had heard at St. Joseph's, and
the rector's lamentable outburst of the previous night. This last, having
a remarkably retentive memory, he reproduced in the main in Mr. Harding's
own words, omitting only the rector's reference to his moral lapses.
During the whole time he was speaking Stepton was closely engaged with
the Cambridge marmalade, and showed no symptoms of attention to anything
else. When he ceased, Stepton remarked:
"Really, clergymen are far more to be depended upon for valuable
manifestations than a rat or two and a hysterical kitchen-maid. Come
to my room, Malling."
The professor had a bedroom facing the sea. He led Malling to it, shut
the door, gave Malling a cane chair, sat down himself, in a peculiar,
crab-like posture, upon the bed, and said:
"Now give me as minute a psychological study of the former and actual
Henry Chichester as you can."
Malling complied with this request as lucidly and tersely as he could,
wasting no words.
"Any unusual change in his outward man since you knew him two years ago?"
asked the professor, when he had finished.
Malling mentioned the question as to the curate's eyes and mouth which
had risen in his mind, and added:
"But the character of the man is so changed that it may have suggestioned
me into feeling as if there were physical change in him, too."
"More than would be inevitable in any man in a couple of years. And now
as to his digestive organs."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Malling.
The apparent vagaries of his companion very seldom surprised him, but
this time he was completely taken aback.
"Are they what they were? Assuming, on your part, a knowledge of what
they were."
"I don't know either in what condition they are now, or in what condition
they were once."
"Ah! Now I must draw up a report about last night. I'll come for that cup
of tea to Minors--might almost as well have been Majors, even granting
the military flavor--about five."
Malling took his departure.
At a quarter to five he heard the click of the garden gate, and looking
out at the latticed window of the hall, he saw the professor walking
sidewise up the path, with a shawl round his shoulders. He went to let
him in, and took him into the tiny drawing-room.
"An odd shell for Harding!" observed the professor. "More suitable to a
bantam than to a Cochin-China!"
"It doesn't belong to him."
"Nor he to it. Very wise and right of him to go back to Onslow Gardens."
A maid brought in the tea, and the professor, spread strangely forth in a
small, chintz-covered arm-chair, enjoyed it while he talked about oysters
and oyster-beds. He was deeply interested in the oysters of Whitstable,
and held forth almost romantically on their birth and upbringing, the
fattening, the packing, the selling, and the eating of them--"with lemon,
not vinegar, mind! To eat vinegar with a Whitstable native is as vicious
as to offer a libation of catchup at the altar of a meadow mushroom just
picked up out of the dew."
Malling did not attempt to turn his mind from edibles. The professor had
to be let alone. When tea was finished and cleared away, he observed:
"And now, Malling, what is your view? Do you look upon it as a case of
transferred personality? I rather gathered from your general tone that
you were mentally drifting in that direction."
"But are there such cases? Of double transfer, I mean?"
"Personally I have never verified one. When you spoke of the reverend
gentlemen for the first time, I said, 'Study the link!' There will be
development in the link if--all the rest of it."
"There has been development, as I told you. The link is on his side now."
"That's remarkable, undoubtedly. Has it ever struck you that Harding was
almost too successful a clergyman to be a genuinely holy man?"
"What do you mean?"
"There's a modesty in holiness that is hardly adapted to catch smart
women."
"You used to go to hear Harding preach."
"And d'you know why I liked his sermons?"
"Why?"
"Because he understood doubt so well. That amused me. But the man who has
such a comprehensive understanding of skepticism, is very seldom a true
believer. One thing, though, Harding certainly does believe in, judging
by a sermon I once heard him preach."
"And that is?"
"Manicheism. Chichester, you say, was a saint?"
"He was, if a man can be a saint who has a certain amiable weakness of
character."
"And now? You think he would be a difficult customer to tackle now?"
"Harding finds him so."
"And Harding was an overwhelming chap, cocksure of himself. Chichester
must be difficult. Shall I tackle him?"
"I wish you would. But how? Do you wish me to introduce him to you?"
"Let me see."
The professor dropped his head and remained silent for a minute or two.
"Tell me something," he at length remarked, lifting his head and assuming
his most terrier-like aspect. "Do you think Harding a whited sepulcher?"
"Possibly."
"And do you think his saintly curate has found it out?"
"Do you think that would supply a natural explanation of the mystery?"
"Should you prefer to search for it in that malefic region which is the
abiding-place of nervous dyspepsia?"
"How could--"
"Acute nervous dyspepsia, complicated by a series of sittings under the
rose, might eat away the most brazen self-confidence. That's as certain
as that I wear whiskers and you don't. Shall we do an addition sum? Shall
we add Chichester's discovery of secret lapses in his worshiped rector's
life, to the nervous dyspepsia and the sittings? Shall we do that?"
"And Lady Sophia?"
"There's a sunflower type of woman. The rising sun can't escape her
inevitable worship."
"The change in Harding may be a natural one. But there is something
portentous in the change in Chichester," said Malling. "You know I'm
a rather cool hand, and certainly not inclined to easy credulity. But
there's something about Chichester which--well, Professor, I'll make a
confession to you that isn't a pleasant one for any man to make. There's
something about Chichester which shakes my nerves."
"And you haven't got nervous dyspepsia?"
"Should I be even a meliorist--as I am--if I had?"
"I must know Chichester. It's a pity I didn't know him formerly."
"I don't believe that matters," said Malling, with intense conviction.
"There is that in him which must strike you and affect you, whether you
knew him as he was or not."
"So long as I don't turn tail and run from him, all's well. I will
tackle Chichester. In the interests of science I will face this curate.
But how shall I approach him? As in golf, the approach is much, if not
everything."
He sat thinking for some minutes, with his eyebrows twitching. Then he
said:
"The question is, Should the approach be casual or direct? Shall I
describe a curve, or come to him as the crow comes when making for a
given point--or is said to come, for I've never investigated that
matter? What do you say?"
"It's very difficult to say. On the day I dined in Hornton Street,
Chichester certainly wanted to tell me something. He asked me to dine,
I am almost sure, in order that he might tell it to me."
"About the sittings with Harding, no doubt."
"That, perhaps, and something more."
"But he told you nothing."
"Directly."
"Do you think he would be more or less likely to unbosom himself now than
he was then?"
"Less likely."
"You might give me his address."
Malling did so. The professor wrote the address down on a slip of paper,
pinned the slip carefully to the yellow lining of his jacket, and then
got up to go.
But Malling detained him.
"Professor," he said, speaking with an unusual hesitation, "you know why
I told you all this."
"In the interests of science?"
"No, in the interest of that miserable man, Marcus Harding. I want you
to break the link that binds him to Henry Chichester--if there is one.
I want you to effect his release."
"I'm afraid you've come to the wrong man," returned Stepton, dryly. "My
object in entering into this matter is merely to increase my knowledge,
not to destroy my chance of increasing it."
"But surely--"
"We shall never get forward if we move in the midst of a fog of pity and
sentiment."
Malling said no more; but as he watched the professor shambling to the
garden gate, he felt as if he had betrayed Marcus Harding.
X
Soon after Malling had returned to London, he received the following note
from Mr. Harding:
_Onslow Gardens_, June --th.
_Dear Mr. Malling:_
I seem to have some remembrance of your saying to me at Tankerton that
you wished to speak to Professor Stepton with regard to a certain matter.
I may be wrong in my recollection. If, however, I am right, I now beg
you not to speak to the professor. I have, of course, the very highest
regard for his discretion; nevertheless, one must not be selfish. One
must not think only of one's self. I have obligations to others, and I
fear, when we were together at Tankerton, I forgot them. A word of
assurance from you that Professor Stepton knows nothing of our
conversation will set at rest the mind of
Yours sincerely,
_Marcus Harding._
As soon as he had read this communication, Malling realized that he
had been right in his supposition that a new reserve was growing up
in Henry Chichester. He was aware of Chichester's reserve in the letter
of the rector. He was aware, too, of the latter's situation as he had
never been aware of it before. Often a trifle illuminates a life, as a
search-light brings some distant place from the darkness into a fierce
radiance that makes it seem near. So it was now.
"Poor Harding!" thought Malling, with an unusual softness. "But this
letter comes too late."
What answer should he return to the rector? He hated insincerity, but on
this occasion he stooped to it. He had not only the fear of Stepton upon
him; he had also the desire not to add to the deep misery of Marcus
Harding. This was his answer:
_Cadogan Square_, June --.
_Dear Mr. Harding:_
In reply to your letter, I will not now repeat our conversation of the
other evening to Professor Stepton. He is, as you say, a man of the
highest discretion, and should you feel inclined yourself to take him
into your confidence at any time, I think you will not regret it.
Yours sincerely,
_Evelyn Malling_.
As he put this note into an envelope, Malling said to himself:
"Some day I'll let him know I deceived him; I'll let him know I had
already told the professor."
Two or three days later Malling heard of the professor having been at a
party in Piccadilly at which Lady Sophia was a guest.
"And do you know, really,"--Malling's informant, a lively married woman,
concluded,--"those old scientific men are quite as bad as any of the boys
who only want to have a good time. The professor sat in Lady Sophia's
pocket the whole evening! Literally in her pocket!"
"I didn't know modern women had pockets," returned Malling.
"They don't, of course; but you know what I mean."