At a quarter past five that day I started for Wimpole Street, filled
with a sensation of strong curiosity, for which, in mental debate
with myself, I could not quite satisfactorily account. It was a very
ordinary matter, surely, this selling and buying of a dog. Why,
then, did it seem to me an affair of importance? I asked myself that
question while I waited. The only answer I could find was that the
dog was a black spaniel, and that before the sad death of my friend
Deeming a black spaniel, the creature that had caused the tragedy, had
mysteriously complicated, and indeed altered, my pleasant relations
both with him and with Vernon. But all that was a year ago. The past
does not return, and therefore it was absurd to be—to be—what? What
was really the exact nature of the emotion that now beset me? Had I
been strictly truthful with myself I should, perhaps, have called
it apprehension. But we are not always strictly truthful even with
ourselves. I think that day I named it nervousness. I was nervous, out
of sorts, a little bit depressed. Vernon’s _volte-face_ had surprised
me. The dog’s cringing fear had made an unpleasant impression upon me.
And so, now, as I drew near to Wimpole Street I was slightly strung
up. That was the long and short of it.
In some such fashion I think I spoke to myself, explanatorily, falsely.
When I turned into Wimpole Street the image of poor Deeming was very
present in my mind, and I could scarcely believe that he did not still
inhabit the house to which I had come that Sunday morning. I wondered
who lived there now, who was Vernon’s neighbour; and when I reached
the house I looked towards it with a sad curiosity, which quickly
changed to surprise. The house was transformed. Where once had been a
doorstep there was now an area railing. The front door had vanished. In
its place was a window, with a box in which roses and geraniums were
blooming. In a moment I realised what had happened. Formerly the two
houses—Nos. 300 and 301—had been one house. Since I had been there they
had once more been thrown together. Vernon, then, was living now in the
house that had been Deeming’s. As I grasped this fact, Vernon appeared
at a window of what had been the second house. Seeing me, he smiled and
waved his hand. Before I could ring, the door was opened by Cragg, his
faithful man.
“Glad to see you again, Sir,” said Cragg, with a respectful bow which
he had learnt, I think, in Italy.
He had several little foreign ways, but was extremely English in
appearance—calm, solid, neat, and closely shaven.