Quixtus received them in the museum, a long room mainly furnished with
specimen cases whose glass tops formed a double inclined plane, diagrams
of geological formations, and bookcases full of palæontological
literature—a cold, inhuman, inhospitable place. The three looked more
dilapidated than ever. Huckaby’s straggling whiskers had grown deeper
into his cheek; Vandermeer’s face had become foxier, Billiter’s more
pallid and puffy. No overcoats hung on the accustomed pegs, for the
cessation of the eleemosynary deposits had led, among other misfortunes,
to the pawning of these once indispensable articles of attire. The three
wore, therefore, the dismally apologetic appearance of the man who had
no wedding garment. The only one of them who put on a simulated
heartiness of address was Billiter. He thrust out a shaky hand—
“My dear Quixtus, how delightful——”
But the sight of his host’s unwelcoming face chilled his enthusiasm.
Quixtus bowed slightly and motioned them, with his grave courtesy, to
comfortless seats. He commanded the situation. So might a scholar prince
of the school of Machiavelli have received his chief poisoner,
strangler, and confidential abductor. They went down to dinner. It was
not an hilarious meal. The conversation which used to flow now fell in
spattering drops amid a dead silence.
“It’s a fine day,” said Quixtus.
“Very,” said Huckaby.
“Finer than yesterday,” said Vandermeer.
“It promises well for to-morrow,” said Billiter.
“It always breaks its promise,” said Quixtus.
“H’m,” said Huckaby.
They made up for the lacking feast of reason by material voracity. A
microscopic uplifting of Spriggs the butler’s eyebrows betokened wonder
at their Gargantuan helpings. Vandermeer, sitting at the foot of the
table opposite to Quixtus, bent his foxy face downwards till the
circumference of the plate became the horizon of his universe. Billiter
ate with stolid cynicism; Huckaby, with a faint air of bravado. Once he
said:
“I’m afraid Quixtus we got a bit merry the last time.”
“It’s to the memory of that,” replied Quixtus; “that I owe the pleasure
of your company to-night.”
“I’m beastly sorry—” began Billiter.
“Pray don’t mention it,” Quixtus interrupted blandly. “I hope the quails
are to your liking.”
“Fine,” said Vandermeer, without raising his eyes from his plate.
Once more reigned the spell of silence which oppressed even the three
outcast men; but Quixtus, hardened by his fixed idea, felt curiously at
his ease. He sat in his chair with the same sense of security and
confidence as he had done before delivering his Presidential Address at
the meeting of the Anthropological Society, while the secretary went
through the preliminary formal business. The preliminary business here
was the meal. As soon, however, as the port had been sent round and
Spriggs had retired, Quixtus addressed his guests.
“Gentlemen,” said he, and met in turns the three pairs of questioning
eyes. “You may wonder perhaps why I have invited you to dinner to-night,
and why, you being thus invited, the meal has not been warmed by its
accustomed glow of geniality. It is my duty and my pleasure now to tell
you. Hitherto at these dinners we have—let us say—worn the comic mask.
Beneath its rosy and smiling exterior we have dissimulated our own
individual sentiments. We have been actors, without realising it, in an
oft-repeated comedy. Only on the occasion of our last meeting did we put
aside the mask and show to each other what we were.”
“I’ve already apologised,” murmured Billiter.
“My dear fellow,” said Quixtus, raising his long thin hand, “that’s the
last thing I want you to do. In this world of fraud and deceit no man
ought to regret having bared his soul honestly to the world. Now,
gentlemen, I have not asked you here to insult you at my own table. I
have gathered you around me because I need your counsel and your
services for which I hope adequately to remunerate you.”
A quiver of animation passed over the three faces. “Remunerate” was a
magic word; the master-word of an incantation. It meant money, and money
meant food and drink—especially alcoholic drink.
“I know I am speaking for my two friends,” said Huckaby, “when I say
that our hearts are always at your service.”
“The heart,” replied Quixtus, “is a physiological organ and a
sentimental delusion. There are no hearts in that sense. You know as
well as I do, my dear fellow, that there are no such things as love,
affection, honour, loyalty in the world. Self-interest and
self-indulgence are the guiding principles of conduct. Governed by a
morbid and futile tradition, we refuse to regard the world in the
malevolent light of day, but see it artificially through the
hypocritical coloured glasses of benevolence.”
Huckaby and Vandermeer, who retained the rudiments of an intellect,
looked at their once simple-minded and tender-hearted host in blank
bewilderment. They hardly knew whether to wince under a highly educated
gentleman’s cutting irony, or to accept these remarkable propositions as
honest statements of opinion. But the ironical note was not perceptible.
Quixtus spoke in the same gentle tone of assurance as he would have used
when entering on a dissertation upon the dolichocephalic skulls in his
collection which had been found in a long barrow in Yorkshire. He was
the master of a subject laying down incontrovertible facts. So Huckaby
and Vandermeer, marvelling greatly, stared at him out of speculative
eyes. Billiter, before whom the incautious decanter of port had halted,
lost the drift of his host’s philosophic utterances.
“The time has now come,” continued Quixtus, relighting (unsophisticated
soul!) the cigar which he had allowed to go out—“the time has now come
for us four to be honest with one another. Up to a recent date I was a
slave to this optical delusion of tradition. But things have happened to
clear my eyes, and to make me frankly confess myself no better than
yourselves—an entirely unscrupulous man.”
“Pray remember that I’m a sometime Fellow—” began Huckaby.
“I’m a gentleman of good family—” began Billiter, who had understood
the last sentence.
“Yes. Yes,” replied Quixtus, interrupting them. “I know. That’s why your
assistance will be valuable. I need the counsels of men of breeding and
education. I find from my reading that the vulgar criminal would be
useless for my purpose. Now, you all have trusted men who have failed
you. So have I. You have felt the cowardly blows of Fortune. So have I.
You have no vestige of faith in your fellow man—you even believed me to
be a party to my late partner’s frauds—you can have, I say, no faith
left in humanity. Neither have I. You are Ishmaels, your hand against
every man. So am I. You would like to be revenged upon your fellow
creatures. So would I. You have passed your lives in pursuing evil
rather than good. You, in a word, are entirely unscrupulous. If you will
acknowledge this we can proceed to business. If not; we will part
finally as soon as this agreeable evening is at an end. Gentlemen what
do you say?”
Billiter, looking upon the wine while it was red—there was not much
left to show the colour—laughed wheezily and shortly.
“I suppose we’re wrong ‘uns,” said he. “At least I am. I own up.”
Vandermeer said bitterly: “When a man is hunted by poverty he can’t run
straight, for at the end of the straight path is death.”
“And you, Huckaby?”
“I also have bolted into a drain or two in my time.”
“Good,” said Quixtus. “Now we understand one another.”
“You may understand us,” said Huckaby, tugging at his untidy beard, “but
I’m hanged, drawn, and quartered if we understand you.”
“I thought I had made myself particularly clear,” said Quixtus.
“For my part,” said Billiter, “I can’t make out what you’re getting at
except to make us confess that we’re wrong ‘uns.”
“Dear, dear,” said Quixtus.
“I can’t understand it,” said Vandermeer, looking intently at him across
the table out of his little sharp eyes. “I can’t understand it, unless
it is that you have some big scoop on and want us to come into it, so as
to do the dirty work. If that’s so I’m on, so long as it’s safe. But
I’ve steered clear of the law up to now and have no desire to run the
risk of penal servitude.”
“Oh Lord no!” cried Billiter with a shiver.
Quixtus pressed the burning stump of his cigar against his plate and
looked up with a smile.
“Please make your minds easy on that score. I have been reading
criminology lately with considerable interest, and I have gone through a
volume or two of ‘The Newgate Calendar,’ and the result of my reading is
the conviction that crime is folly. It is a disease. It is also vulgar.
No, I have no desire to increase my personal possessions in any way;
neither do I contemplate the commission of acts of violence against the
person or the destruction of property. Anything therefore that comes
within the category of crime may be dismissed from our consideration.”
“Then in the name of Gehenna,” exclaimed Huckaby, “what is it that you
want us to do?”
“It is very simple,” said Quixtus. “I may plot out an attractive scheme
of wickedness, but the circumstances of my early training have left me
without the power to execute it. I should like to call on any one of you
for guidance, perhaps practical assistance. I may want to see and hear
of wickedness going on around me. I would count on you to gratify my
curiosity. Lastly, not having an inventive mind, it being rather
analytic than synthetic, I should welcome any suggestions that you might
bring me.”
“It’s a rum go,” said Billiter, “but I’m on, so long as there’s money in
it.”
“There will be money in it,” said Quixtus.
“Then I’m on too,” said Vandermeer.
“You will find us, my dear Quixtus,” said Huckaby, “your very devoted
Familiars—your Oliviers le Daim, your Eminences Grises, your _âmes
damnées_. We’ll be your ministering evil spirits, your genii from Eblis.
It’s a new occupation for a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,
but it’s not unalluring. And now, as Billiter has finished the decanter,
may I take the liberty of asking for another bottle, so that Vandermeer
and I can drink to the health of our chief.”
“With all the pleasure in life,” said Quixtus.
* * * * *
As soon as the three newly constituted Evil Genii were out of earshot of
the house, they stopped on the pavement with one accord and burst into
unseemly laughter.
“Did you ever hear anything like it?” cried Billiter.
“He’s as mad as Bedlam,” said Vandermeer.
“A sort of inverted Knight of the Round Table,” said Huckaby. “He yearns
to ride abroad committing human wrongs.”
“Are we to call for orders every day like the butcher, the baker, and
the greengrocer?” said Vandermeer.
“He was so sane at first,” said Vandermeer, “that I really thought he
had some definite scoop in view. But it all turns out to be utter
moonshine.”
“If he doesn’t want to thieve or murder or paint the town red,” said
Billiter, “what the blazes in the way of wickedness is left for him to
do?”
“It’s moonshine,” repeated Vandermeer.
“If it wasn’t,” said Huckaby, “none of us would touch it. We can’t take
the matter seriously. We’re just lending ourselves to a farce, that’s
all.”
“Naturally,” Billiter agreed. “We must humour him.”
They walked on slowly, discussing the unprecedented situation. They were
unanimous in the opinion that the poor gentleman had gone distraught.
They had all noticed signs of his affliction on the last occasion of
their dining at his table. If he had been in his right senses then, he
would surely not have behaved with such discourtesy. They agreed to
forgive him for turning them out of doors.
“It’s lucky for him,” said Huckaby, “that he has three old friends like
ourselves. He might have got into other hands, and then—God help him.
My only reason for falling in with his mood was in order to protect him
from himself—and from sharks and blood-suckers.”
Billiter and Vandermeer declared that they, too, had acted only out of a
sense of loyalty to their old and distracted friend. They protested so
hard that their tongues clave to the roofs of their mouths, and each
acknowledged his thirst. They turned into the bar-parlour of the first
public-house, where they called for whisky, and, each man having found a
hat as good a substitute for the sacks of Joseph’s brethren as an
overcoat, they continued to call for whisky, and to drink it until the
tavern closed for the night. By that time they glowed with conscious
virtue. Huckaby swore that he would permit no ruddy lobsters to dig
their claws into Quixtus’s sacred person.
“Here’s poor dear old chap’s health, drunk in very last drop,” cried
Billiter, enthusiastically draining his last glass.
The tragedy of Quixtus’s loss of reason reduced Vandermeer to tears. He
was sorrowful in his cups. He, Vandermeer, had no one to love him; but
Quixtus should never find himself in that desolate predicament, as he,
Vandermeer, would love him like a friend, a brother, like a
silver-haired maiden aunt.
“I’ve had a silver-haired maiden aunt myself,” he wailed.
While Billiter comforted him, Huckaby again warned them against ruddy
lobsters. If they would swear to join him in a league to defend their
patron and benefactor, he would accept their comradeship. If they
preferred to be ruddy lobsters, he would wash his hands of them. They
repudiated the crustacean suggestion. They were more Quixtus’s friends
than he. A quarrel nearly broke out, each claiming to be the most loyal
and disinterested friend Quixtus ever had in his life. Finally they were
reconciled and wrung each other warmly by the hand. The barman called
closing time and pushed them gently into the street. They staggered
deviously to their several garrets and went to bed, each certain that he
had convinced the two others of his beauty and nobility of soul.
* * * * *
Vandermeer was the first of the Evil Genii to be summoned. Quixtus laid
before him the case of Tommy and the failure of his diabolical project.
Vandermeer listened attentively. There was method after all in his
patron’s madness. He wished to do some hurt to his nephew for the sheer
sake of evil-doing. As far as the intention went he was seriously trying
to carry out his malevolent principles. It was not all moonshine.
Vandermeer thought quickly. He was the craftiest of the three, and that
perhaps was why Quixtus had instinctively chosen him for the first
adventure. He saw profit in humouring the misanthrope, though he smiled
inwardly at the simplicity of his idea.
“There’s nothing particularly diabolical in telling a young fellow with
a brilliant career before him that you’re going to cut him out of your
will.”
“Isn’t there?” said Quixtus, with an air of disappointment. “What then
would you suggest?”
“First,” answered Vandermeer, “what do you think would be a fair price
for a suggestion?” He regarded him with greedy eyes. “Would twenty
pounds be out of the way?”
“I’ll give you twenty pounds,” said Quixtus.
Vandermeer drew in his breath quickly, as a man does who wins a bet at
long odds.
“There are all sorts of things you can do. The obvious one would be to
stop his allowance. But I take it you want something more artistic and
subtle. Wait—let me think—” He covered his eyes with his hand for a
moment. “Look. How will this do? It strikes me as infernally wicked. You
say he is devoted to his art. Well, make him give it up——”
“Excellent! Excellent!” cried Quixtus. “But how?”
“Can you get him into any business office in the City?”
“Yes. My friend Griffiths of the Anthropological Society is secretary of
the Star Assurance Coy. A word from me would get the boy into the
office.”
“Good. Then tell him that unless he accepts this position within a month
and promises never to touch a paint-brush again, he will not receive a
penny from you either during your lifetime or after your death. In this
way you will bring him up against an infernal temptation, and whichever
way he decides he’ll be wretched. I call that a pretty scheme.”
“It’s an inspiration of genius,” exclaimed Quixtus excitedly. “I’ll
write the cheque now.” He sat down to his desk and pulled out his
cheque-book. “And you will go at once to my nephew—I’ll give you a card
of introduction—and acquaint him with my decision.”
“What?” cried Vandermeer.
Quixtus calmly repeated the last sentence. Vandermeer’s face went a
shade paler. He wrung his hands, which were naturally damp, until they
grew as bloodless as putty. He had never done any wanton harm in his
life. All the meanness and sharp-dealing he had practised were but a
poor devil’s shifts to fill an empty belly. Quixtus’s behest covered him
with dismay. It was unexpected. It is one thing to suggest to a crazy
and unpractical patron a theoretical fantasia of wickedness, and another
to be commanded to put it oneself into execution. It was less moonshine
than ever.
“Don’t you want to do it?” asked Quixtus, unwittingly balancing
temptation, in the form of a fat cheque-book, in his hand.
Vandermeer fell. What wolf-eyed son of Hagar would have resisted?
“I think,” said he, with a catch in his throat, “that if the suggestion
alone is worth twenty pounds, the carrying out of it is worth—say—ten
more?”
“Very well,” said Quixtus; “but,” he added drily, “the next time I hope
you’ll give an estimate to cover the whole operation.”
The second of the three to receive a summons from the Master was
Billiter.
“You know something about horse-racing,” remarked Quixtus.
“What I don’t isn’t worth knowing. I’ve chucked away a fortune in
acquiring the knowledge.”
“I want you to accompany me to race-meetings and show me the wickedness
of the turf,” said Quixtus.
“So that’s my little job is it?”
“That’s your little job.”
“I think I can give you a run for your money,” remarked Billiter, a pale
sunshine of intelligence overspreading his puffy features. “But—” he
paused.
“But what?”
“I can’t go racing with you in this kit.”
“I will provide you,” said Quixtus, “with whatever costume you think
necessary for the purpose.”
Billiter went his way exulting and spent the remainder of the afternoon
in tracking a man down from his office in Soho, his house in Peckham,
several taverns on the Surrey side of the river, to a quiet café in
Regent Street. The man was a red-faced, thick-necked, hard, fishy-eyed
villain with a mouth like the slit of a letter-box, and went by the name
(which he wore inscribed on his hat at race-meetings) of Old Joe Jenks.
Billiter drew him into a corner and whispered gleeful tidings into his
ear. After which Old Joe Jenks drew Billiter to a table and filled him
up with the most seductive drinks the café could provide.
Before the lessons in horse-racing under Billiter’s auspices began—for
gorgeous raiment, appropriate to Sandown and Kempton, like Rome, is not
built in a day—Quixtus sent for the remaining Evil Genius.
“What have you to suggest?” he asked after some preliminary and
explanatory conversation.
A humorous twinkle came into Huckaby’s eye, and a smile played round his
lips beneath the straggling brushwood of hair.
“I have a great idea,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Break a woman’s heart,” said Huckaby.
Quixtus reflected gravely. It would indeed be a charming, enticing piece
of wickedness.
“I shouldn’t have to marry her?” he asked in some concern.
“Heaven forbid.”
“I like it,” said Quixtus, leaning back in his chair and smoothing his
scrappy moustache with his lean fingers. “I like it very much. The only
difficulty is: where can I find the woman whose heart I can break?”
“Take a tour abroad,” said Huckaby. “On the Continent of Europe there
are thousands of English women only waiting to have their hearts
broken.”
“That may be true,” said Quixtus; “but how shall I obtain the necessary
introductions?”
“I,” cried Huckaby raising a bony hand that protruded through a very
frayed and dirty shirt-cuff. “I, Eustace Huckaby, will reassume my air
of academical distinction and will accompany you into the _pays du
tendre_ and introduce you to any woman you like. In other words, my dear
Quixtus, although I may not look like a Lothario at the present moment,
I have had considerable experience in amatory adventures—and I’m sure
you would find my assistance valuable.”
Quixtus reflected again. Aware of his limitations he recognised the
futility of going alone on a heart-breaking expedition among strange
even though expectant females. But would Huckaby be an ideal companion?
Huckaby was self-assertive, not to say impudent, in manner; and Huckaby
had certain shocking habits. On the other hand, perhaps the impudence
was the very quality needed in the quest; and as for the habits—He
decided.
“Very well. I accept your proposal—on one condition. What that is you
doubtless can guess.”
“I can,” said Huckaby. “I give you my word of honour that you will never
see me otherwise than sober.”
An undertaking which would not preclude him from taking a bottle of
whisky to bed whenever he felt so inclined.
“We had better start at once,” said Huckaby, after some necessary
discussion of the question of wardrobe.
“I must wait,” replied Quixtus, “until I’ve attended some race-meetings
with Billiter.”
Huckaby frowned. He was not aware that to Billiter had already been
assigned a sphere of action.
“I don’t want to say anything unfriendly. But if I were you I shouldn’t
trust Billiter too implicitly. He’s a—” he paused—being sober and
serious he rejected the scarlet epithet which, when used in allusion to
his friends, had given colour to his gayer speech—“He’s a man who knows
too much of the game.”
“My dear Huckaby,” said Quixtus. “I shall never trust another human
being as long as I live.”
That evening, somewhat wondering that he had heard no news of Tommy or
of Vandermeer, he unlocked the iron safe in his museum and took out his
will. He lit a candle and set it by the hearth. Now was the time to
destroy the benevolent document. He put it near the flame; then drew it
back. A new thought occurred to him. To practise on his nephew the same
trick as his uncle had played upon him was mere unintelligent
plagiarism. He felt a sudden disdain for the merely mimetic in
wickedness.
“I will be original,” said he. “Yes, original.” He repeated the word as
a formula both of consolation and incentive, and blowing out the candle,
put the will back into the safe.