II

Calladine lodged in a corner house and upon the first floor. His

rooms, large and square and lofty, with Adams mantelpieces and a

delicate tracery upon their ceilings, breathed the grace of the

eighteenth century. Broad high windows, embrasured in thick walls,

overlooked the river and took in all the sunshine and the air which

the river had to give. And they were furnished fittingly. When the

three men entered the parlour, Mr. Ricardo was astounded. He had

expected the untidy litter of a man run to seed, the neglect and the

dust of the recluse. But the room was as clean as the deck of a yacht;

an Aubusson carpet made the floor luxurious underfoot; a few coloured

prints of real value decorated the walls; and the mahogany furniture

was polished so that a lady could have used it as a mirror. There was

even by the newspapers upon the round table a china bowl full of fresh

red roses. If Calladine had turned hermit, he was a hermit of an

unusually fastidious type. Indeed, as he stood with his two companions

in his dishevelled dress he seemed quite out of keeping with his

rooms.

"So you live here, Mr. Calladine?" said Hanaud, taking off his hat and

laying it down.

"Yes."

"With your servants, of course?"

"They come in during the day," said Calladine, and Hanaud looked at

him curiously.

"Do you mean that you sleep here alone?"

"Yes."

"But your valet?"

"I don't keep a valet," said Calladine; and again the curious look

came into Hanaud's eyes.

"Yet," he suggested gently, "there are rooms enough in your set of

chambers to house a family."

Calladine coloured and shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the

other.

"I prefer at night not to be disturbed," he said, stumbling a little

over the words. "I mean, I have a liking for quiet."

Gabriel Hanaud nodded his head with sympathy.

"Yes, yes. And it is a difficult thing to get--as difficult as

my holiday," he said ruefully, with a smile for Mr. Ricardo.

"However"--he turned towards Calladine--"no doubt, now that you are at

home, you would like a bath and a change of clothes. And when you are

dressed, perhaps you will telephone to the Semiramis and ask Miss

Carew to come round here. Meanwhile, we will read your newspapers and

smoke your cigarettes."

Hanaud shut the door upon Calladine, but he turned neither to the

papers nor the cigarettes. He crossed the room to Mr. Ricardo, who,

seated at the open window, was plunged deep in reflections.

"You have an idea, my friend," cried Hanaud. "It demands to express

itself. That sees itself in your face. Let me hear it, I pray."

Mr. Ricardo started out of an absorption which was altogether assumed.

"I was thinking," he said, with a faraway smile, "that you might

disappear in the forests of Africa, and at once everyone would be very

busy about your disappearance. You might leave your village in

Leicestershire and live in the fogs of Glasgow, and within a week the

whole village would know your postal address. But London--what a city!

How different! How indifferent! Turn out of St. James's into the

Adelphi Terrace and not a soul will say to you: 'Dr. Livingstone, I

presume?'"

"But why should they," asked Hanaud, "if your name isn't Dr.

Livingstone?"

Mr. Ricardo smiled indulgently.

"Scoffer!" he said. "You understand me very well," and he sought to

turn the tables on his companion. "And you--does this room suggest

nothing to you? Have you no ideas?" But he knew very well that Hanaud

had. Ever since Hanaud had crossed the threshold he had been like a

man stimulated by a drug. His eyes were bright and active, his body

alert.

"Yes," he said, "I have."

He was standing now by Ricardo's side with his hands in his pockets,

looking out at the trees on the Embankment and the barges swinging

down the river.

"You are thinking of the strange scene which took place in this room

such a very few hours ago," said Ricardo. "The girl in her masquerade

dress making her confession with the stolen chain about her

throat----"

Hanaud looked backwards carelessly. "No, I wasn't giving it a

thought," he said, and in a moment or two he began to walk about the

room with that curiously light step which Ricardo was never able to

reconcile with his cumbersome figure. With the heaviness of a bear he

still padded. He went from corner to corner, opened a cupboard here, a

drawer of the bureau there, and--stooped suddenly. He stood erect

again with a small box of morocco leather in his hand. His body from

head to foot seemed to Ricardo to be expressing the question, "Have I

found it?" He pressed a spring and the lid of the box flew open.

Hanaud emptied its contents into the palm of his hand. There were two

or three sticks of sealing-wax and a seal. With a shrug of the

shoulders he replaced them and shut the box.

"You are looking for something," Ricardo announced with sagacity.

"I am," replied Hanaud; and it seemed that in a second or two he found

it. Yet--yet--he found it with his hands in his pockets, if he had

found it. Mr. Ricardo saw him stop in that attitude in front of the

mantelshelf, and heard him utter a long, low whistle. Upon the

mantelshelf some photographs were arranged, a box of cigars stood at

one end, a book or two lay between some delicate ornaments of china,

and a small engraving in a thin gilt frame was propped at the back

against the wall. Ricardo surveyed the shelf from his seat in the

window, but he could not imagine which it was of these objects that so

drew and held Hanaud's eyes.

Hanaud, however, stepped forward. He looked into a vase and turned it

upside down. Then he removed the lid of a porcelain cup, and from the

very look of his great shoulders Ricardo knew that he had discovered

what he sought. He was holding something in his hands, turning it

over, examining it. When he was satisfied he moved swiftly to the door

and opened it cautiously. Both men could hear the splashing of water

in a bath. Hanaud closed the door again with a nod of contentment and

crossed once more to the window.

"Yes, it is all very strange and curious," he said, "and I do not

regret that you dragged me into the affair. You were quite right, my

friend, this morning. It is the personality of your young Mr.

Calladine which is the interesting thing. For instance, here we are in

London in the early summer. The trees out, freshly green, lilac and

flowers in the gardens, and I don't know what tingle of hope and

expectation in the sunlight and the air. I am middle-aged--yet there's

a riot in my blood, a recapture of youth, a belief that just round the

corner, beyond the reach of my eyes, wonders wait for me. Don't you,

too, feel something like that? Well, then--" and he heaved his

shoulders in astonishment.

"Can you understand a young man with money, with fastidious tastes,

good-looking, hiding himself in a corner at such a time--except for

some overpowering reason? No. Nor can I. There is another thing--I put

a question or two to Calladine."

"Yes," said Ricardo.

"He has no servants here at night. He is quite alone and--here is what

I find interesting--he has no valet. That seems a small thing to you?"

Hanaud asked at a movement from Ricardo. "Well, it is no doubt a

trifle, but it's a significant trifle in the case of a young rich man.

It is generally a sign that there is something strange, perhaps even

something sinister, in his life. Mr. Calladine, some months ago,

turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi. Can you tell me why?"

"No," replied Mr. Ricardo. "Can you?"

Hanaud stretched out a hand. In his open palm lay a small round hairy

bulb about the size of a big button and of a colour between green and

brown.

"Look!" he said. "What is that?"

Mr. Ricardo took the bulb wonderingly.

"It looks to me like the fruit of some kind of cactus."

Hanaud nodded.

"It is. You will see some pots of it in the hothouses of any really

good botanical gardens. Kew has them, I have no doubt. Paris certainly

has. They are labelled. 'Anhalonium Luinii.' But amongst the Indians

of Yucatan the plant has a simpler name."

"What name?" asked Ricardo.

"Mescal."

Mr. Ricardo repeated the name. It conveyed nothing to him whatever.

"There are a good many bulbs just like that in the cup upon the

mantelshelf," said Hanaud.

Ricardo looked quickly up.

"Why?" he asked.

"Mescal is a drug."

Ricardo started.

"Yes, you are beginning to understand now," Hanaud continued, "why

your young friend Calladine turned out of St. James's into the Adelphi

Terrace."

Ricardo turned the little bulb over in his fingers.

"You make a decoction of it, I suppose?" he said.

"Or you can use it as the Indians do in Yucatan," replied Hanaud.

"Mescal enters into their religious ceremonies. They sit at night in a

circle about a fire built in the forest and chew it, whilst one of

their number beats perpetually upon a drum."

Hanaud looked round the room and took notes of its luxurious carpet,

its delicate appointments. Outside the window there was a thunder in

the streets, a clamour of voices. Boats went swiftly down the river on

the ebb. Beyond the mass of the Semiramis rose the great grey-white

dome of St. Paul's. Opposite, upon the Southwark bank, the giant

sky-signs, the big Highlander drinking whisky, and the rest of them

waited, gaunt skeletons, for the night to limn them in fire and give

them life. Below the trees in the gardens rustled and waved. In the

air were the uplift and the sparkle of the young summer.

"It's a long way from the forests of Yucatan to the Adelphi Terrace of

London," said Hanaud. "Yet here, I think, in these rooms, when the

servants are all gone and the house is very quiet, there is a little

corner of wild Mexico."

A look of pity came into Mr. Ricardo's face. He had seen more than one

young man of great promise slacken his hold and let go, just for this

reason. Calladine, it seemed, was another.

"It's like bhang and kieff and the rest of the devilish things, I

suppose," he said, indignantly tossing the button upon the table.

Hanaud picked it up.

"No," he replied. "It's not quite like any other drug. It has a

quality of its own which just now is of particular importance to you

and me. Yes, my friend"--and he nodded his head very seriously--"we

must watch that we do not make the big fools of ourselves in this

affair."

"There," Mr. Ricardo agreed with an ineffable air of wisdom, "I am

entirely with you."

"Now, why?" Hanaud asked. Mr. Ricardo was at a loss for a reason, but

Hanaud did not wait. "I will tell you. Mescal intoxicates, yes--but it

does more--it gives to the man who eats of it colour-dreams."

"Colour-dreams?" Mr. Ricardo repeated in a wondering voice.

"Yes, strange heated charms, in which violent things happen vividly

amongst bright colours. Colour is the gift of this little prosaic

brown button." He spun the bulb in the air like a coin, and catching

it again, took it over to the mantelpiece and dropped it into the

porcelain cup.

"Are you sure of this?" Ricardo cried excitedly, and Hanaud raised his

hand in warning. He went to the door, opened it for an inch or so, and

closed it again.

"I am quite sure," he returned. "I have for a friend a very learned

chemist in the College de France. He is one of those enthusiasts who

must experiment upon themselves. He tried this drug."

"Yes," Ricardo said in a quieter voice. "And what did he see?"

"He had a vision of a wonderful garden bathed in sunlight, an old

garden of gorgeous flowers and emerald lawns, ponds with golden lilies

and thick yew hedges--a garden where peacocks stepped indolently and

groups of gay people fantastically dressed quarrelled and fought with

swords. That is what he saw. And he saw it so vividly that, when the

vapours of the drug passed from his brain and he waked, he seemed to

be coming out of the real world into a world of shifting illusions."

Hanaud's strong quiet voice stopped, and for a while there was a

complete silence in the room. Neither of the two men stirred so much

as a finger. Mr. Ricardo once more was conscious of the thrill of

strange sensations. He looked round the room. He could hardly believe

that a room which had been--nay was--the home and shrine of mysteries

in the dark hours could wear so bright and innocent a freshness in the

sunlight of the morning. There should be something sinister which

leaped to the eyes as you crossed the threshold.

"Out of the real world," Mr. Ricardo quoted. "I begin to see."

"Yes, you begin to see, my friend, that we must be very careful not to

make the big fools of ourselves. My friend of the College de France

saw a garden. But had he been sitting alone in the window-seat where

you are, listening through a summer night to the music of the

masquerade at the Semiramis, might he not have seen the ballroom, the

dancers, the scarlet cloak, and the rest of this story?"

"You mean," cried Ricardo, now fairly startled, "that Calladine came

to us with the fumes of mescal still working in his brain, that the

false world was the real one still for him."

"I do not know," said Hanaud. "At present I only put questions. I ask

them of you. I wish to hear how they sound. Let us reason this problem

out. Calladine, let us say, takes a great deal more of the drug than

my professor. It will have on him a more powerful effect while it

lasts, and it will last longer. Fancy dress balls are familiar things

to Calladine. The music floating from the Semiramis will revive old

memories. He sits here, the pageant takes shape before him, he sees

himself taking his part in it. Oh, he is happier here sitting quietly

in his window-seat than if he was actually at the Semiramis. For he is

there more intensely, more vividly, more really, than if he had

actually descended this staircase. He lives his story through, the

story of a heated brain, the scene of it changes in the way dreams

have, it becomes tragic and sinister, it oppresses him with horror,

and in the morning, so obsessed with it that he does not think to

change his clothes, he is knocking at your door."

Mr. Ricardo raised his eyebrows and moved.

"Ah! You see a flaw in my argument," said Hanaud. But Mr. Ricardo was

wary. Too often in other days he had been leaped upon and trounced for

a careless remark.

"Let me hear the end of your argument," he said. "There was then to

your thinking no temptation of jewels, no theft, no murder--in a word,

no Celymene? She was born of recollections and the music of the

Semiramis."

"No!" cried Hanaud. "Come with me, my friend. I am not so sure that

there was no Celymene."

With a smile upon his face, Hanaud led the way across the room. He had

the dramatic instinct, and rejoiced in it. He was going to produce a

surprise for his companion and, savouring the moment in advance, he

managed his effects. He walked towards the mantelpiece and stopped a

few paces away from it.

"Look!"

Mr. Ricardo looked and saw a broad Adams mantelpiece. He turned a

bewildered face to his friend.

"You see nothing?" Hanaud asked.

"Nothing!"

"Look again! I am not sure--but is it not that Celymene is posing

before you?"

Mr. Ricardo looked again. There was nothing to fix his eyes. He saw a

book or two, a cup, a vase or two, and nothing else really expect a

very pretty and apparently valuable piece of--and suddenly Mr. Ricardo

understood. Straight in front of him, in the very centre of the

mantelpiece, a figure in painted china was leaning against a china

stile. It was the figure of a perfectly impossible courtier, feminine

and exquisite as could be, and apparelled also even to the scarlet

heels exactly as Calladine had described Joan Carew.

Hanaud chuckled with satisfaction when he saw the expression upon Mr.

Ricardo's face.

"Ah, you understand," he said. "Do you dream, my friend? At

times--yes, like the rest of us. Then recollect your dreams? Things,

people, which you have seen perhaps that day, perhaps months ago, pop

in and out of them without making themselves prayed for. You cannot

understand why. Yet sometimes they cut their strange capers there,

logically, too, through subtle associations which the dreamer, once

awake, does not apprehend. Thus, our friend here sits in the window,

intoxicated by his drug, the music plays in the Semiramis, the curtain

goes up in the heated theatre of his brain. He sees himself step upon

the stage, and who else meets him but the china figure from his

mantelpiece?"

Mr. Ricardo for a moment was all enthusiasm. Then his doubt returned

to him.

"What you say, my dear Hanaud, is very ingenious. The figure upon the

mantelpiece is also extremely convincing. And I should be absolutely

convinced but for one thing."

"Yes?" said Hanaud, watching his friend closely.

"I am--I may say it, I think, a man of the world. And I ask

myself"--Mr. Ricardo never could ask himself anything without assuming

a manner of extreme pomposity--"I ask myself, whether a young man who

has given up his social ties, who has become a hermit, and still more

who has become the slave of a drug, would retain that scrupulous

carefulness of his body which is indicated by dressing for dinner when

alone?"

Hanaud struck the table with the palm of his hand and sat down in a

chair.

"Yes. That is the weak point in my theory. You have hit it. I knew it

was there--that weak point, and I wondered whether you would seize it.

Yes, the consumers of drugs are careless, untidy--even unclean as a

rule. But not always. We must be careful. We must wait."

"For what?" asked Ricardo, beaming with pride.

"For the answer to a telephone message," replied Hanaud, with a nod

towards the door.

Both men waited impatiently until Calladine came into the room. He

wore now a suit of blue serge, he had a clearer eye, his skin a

healthier look; he was altogether a more reputable person. But he was

plainly very ill at ease. He offered his visitors cigarettes, he

proposed refreshments, he avoided entirely and awkwardly the object of

their visit. Hanaud smiled. His theory was working out. Sobered by his

bath, Calladine had realised the foolishness of which he had been

guilty.

"You telephone, to the Semiramis, of course?" said Hanaud cheerfully.

Calladine grew red.

"Yes," he stammered.

"Yet I did not hear that volume of 'Hallos' which precedes telephonic

connection in your country of leisure," Hanaud continued.

"I telephoned from my bedroom. You would not hear anything in this

room."

"Yes, yes; the walls of these old houses are solid." Hanaud was

playing with his victim. "And when may we expect Miss Carew?"

"I can't say," replied Calladine. "It's very strange. She is not in

the hotel. I am afraid that she has gone away, fled."

Mr. Ricardo and Hanaud exchanged a look. They were both satisfied now.

There was no word of truth in Calladine's story.

"Then there is no reason for us to wait," said Hanaud. "I shall have

my holiday after all." And while he was yet speaking the voice of a

newsboy calling out the first edition of an evening paper became

distantly audible. Hanaud broke off his farewell. For a moment he

listened, with his head bent. Then the voice was heard again,

confused, indistinct; Hanaud picked up his hat and cane and, without

another word to Calladine, raced down the stairs. Mr. Ricardo followed

him, but when he reached the pavement, Hanaud was half down the little

street. At the corner, however, he stopped, and Ricardo joined him,

coughing and out of breath.

"What's the matter?" he gasped.

"Listen," said Hanaud.

At the bottom of Duke Street, by Charing Cross Station, the newsboy

was shouting his wares. Both men listened, and now the words came to

them mispronounced but decipherable.

"Mysterious crime at the Semiramis Hotel."

Ricardo stared at his companion.

"You were wrong then!" he cried. "Calladine's story was true."

For once in a way Hanaud was quite disconcerted.

"I don't know yet," he said. "We will buy a paper."

But before he could move a step a taxi-cab turned into the Adelphi

from the Strand, and wheeling in front of their faces, stopped at

Calladine's door. From the cab a girl descended.

"Let us go back," said Hanaud.