Two hours later I was in bed and asleep, and three hours later I
cautiously opened my bedroom door to see Terry standing, fully dressed
and very pale, in the corridor. We had been given adjacent rooms on the
top floor--furthest from the cockroaches--and I had been very tired and
sleepy. Heaven knows how long he had been knocking before I was
awakened. "You've not been to bed yet?" I exclaimed dazedly; and he
said: "It's not late--not much after one o'clock. Can I come in?"
Of course he could. I switched on the central light and closed the door
after him. "I hope you haven't been knocking for hours," I told him.
"But, as a matter of fact, I'm about as sleepy as I've ever been in my
life...." That was a hint, and when he didn't take it, I went on: "Is
everything all right?"
Then immediately I could see that everything _wasn't_ all right. He sat
down on a chair and clenched his hands between his knees. "I--I think
perhaps--I oughtn't to have wakened you," he said at length.
"Oh, not at all--if you want my help in any way. You don't look very
well, and I'm glad you came.... What's the matter?"
He didn't, or else he couldn't, tell me for a few moments. I lit a
cigarette and made myself as comfortable as I could; I guessed that
whatever he had to say would take some time. And then at last he began,
heavily: "I've been down to the bureau."
"The hotel bureau?"
"Yes."
"Well?"
"I wanted to .... You see .... I had an idea...." He stopped, as if
grappling with some central impossibility. Then he made another
beginning. "The clerk knows German--of course--and we had a talk."
"Yes?"
"A long talk. About Severn ... and that woman with him...."
And then it all came out torrentially. "The clerk didn't know he was
English. They came here last week--from Belgrade--rolling in money--took
the best rooms in the place.... And he--the clerk--showed me the names
in the register--not Severn, but some French name--with an address in
Paris.... And of course--you see what I mean--they're staying here
together--Monsieur and Madame, it says in the register--there's
absolutely no doubt about it.... So that...." And he shrugged his
shoulders to indicate the inexpressible.
X
Perhaps a seasoned man of the world would have jumped to the
incriminating conclusion the moment he had seen them. The idea had, as a
matter of fact, occurred to me, though I had at first managed to dismiss
it as something that was no concern of mine. Terry's statement convinced
me absolutely, yet an almost self-protective instinct made me dispute
it. I remember sitting on the bed and propounding a marvellous theory
that the man we had seen wasn't Severn at all, but his double--some
innocent Parisian whose _bona-fides_, if inquiry were made, would be
found perfectly correct. After all, Bentley had distinctly stated that
he hadn't _met_ him; he had only _seen_ him, just as we had. And even we
hadn't heard him speak a word of English.... All this, for some curious
reason, I expounded to Terry as if I meant it, and after a long pause he
squashed it utterly by saying that the handwriting in the register was
Severn's beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Even then I went on laboriously arguing. Subconsciously, perhaps, I was
gaining time to think. "A mere signature," I remember saying, absurdly,
"proves nothing." And I made some vague and platitudinous remark about
the necessity of having overwhelming evidence before drawing
conclusions.
And then there came a long silence, a silence full of small sounds and
murmurs--the creak of a floorboard somewhere, the scutter of a beetle,
the distant--the very distant--shouting of late revellers. I was
certain--_certain_ that the man was Severn, and that what Terry had said
was all perfectly true; yet the certainty was outweighed in my mind by
the far more momentous revelation that Terry was ill, and that his
staring eyes and the hard drive of his breathing could only point in one
ominous direction. He was, as Mizzi had said, on the verge of a
breakdown. What he wanted was rest and sleep and freedom from work and
worry, and he wasn't getting any of it. What an irony that we had come
to Buda-Pesth for a holiday! ... He _must_ sleep anyway.... I took him
by the arm and said, as firmly and calmly as I could: "Look here, Terry,
there's nothing to be gained by arguing this out at one o'clock in the
morning. We don't actually know for certain that the man is Severn, and
even if we did we could do nothing. So go to bed and try to sleep, and
then in the morning maybe----"
But he shook himself free and walked across the room to the window.
"Moonlight," he muttered; pulling aside the paper blind. He stared hard
for a moment at the pavements below, and then, swinging round suddenly,
exclaimed: "You say that if we _did_ know for certain, we could do
nothing?"
"Nothing at all, I assure you, and that's why it's all the more
important that we shouldn't discuss it at this hour. So come now...."
Again I led him towards the door, and this time, without further
protest, he allowed me to pilot him along the corridor to the door of
his own room. He was muttering to himself, as I bade him good-night: "Do
nothing.... That's what you say ... just nothing ... nothing at all...."