MR. PETRE
[Illustration: _Mr. Petre wondering who or what he may have been._]
MR. PETRE
_A novel by_
HILAIRE BELLOC
_Illustrated by_
G. K. CHESTERTON
[Illustration]
Robert M. McBride & Company
NEW YORK MCMXXV
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED
AUGUST
1925
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
=Dedication=
To All Poor Gentlemen
ILLUSTRATIONS
Mr. Petre wondering who or what he may have
been _Frontispiece_
PAGE
“... As though he were a Unicorn” 11
“... And the two ex-Lord-Chancellors agreed” 27
Mrs. Cyril leaping to the telephone 37
His Grace the Proprietor of the “Messenger”
conferring the Order of the Boot on Mr. Batterby,
of Golder’s Green in the County of Middlesex 52
Sir Jeremiah Walton, God’s servant 57
Minatory but Patient Admonishment of the Ignoble
Algernon by Breeches of Bolter’s Club,
St. James’ (S.W.1) 62
“... Spectacles adorning a face like the full
moon” 69
“His forehead witnessed to a lifetime of profound
thought, his white beard to careful grooming” 72
The Partners 89
“Exactly. I quite understand” 99
Dada Beeston (Dorothea Madua, second and younger
daughter of Henry, 10th Baron Beeston, of Beeston
Abbey, Beeston, Rutlandshire; and of Desirée
Waldschwein, his wife) 131
“One had chosen Public Service, the other--Affairs” 138
“He used to think in three figures; he was now
thinking in five” 144
Young Mr. Cassleton, growing acquainted with
the World of Affairs 150
The Public discovering no small appetite for the
Debentures at 8% 173
“He had decided” 189
The Great Specialist wrote:--“Special circumstances:
A Bastard” 199
The second and more jovial Great Specialist, Sir
William Bland 208
Joyous recognition of Buffy Thomas 218
John Kosciusko protesting against the interference
of Peers in Judicial Procedure 267
Ermyntrude, First (and Last) Viscountess Boole:
Lord Chancellor of England 272
MR. PETRE
MR. PETRE
CHAPTER I
It was the 3rd of April, 1953. As the big rotor came up through the
Sound at the end of her ten days’ passage from New York, a passenger
standing alone forward upon her decks looked at the very shores of
Devon close at hand on either side, and delighted in the Spring.
It was nearly two years since he had seen his own country, and he
felt the eagerness of his return almost as though he were a boy
again. He was a short, rather stout man in later middle age, with
gray curling hair, clean shaven, and in his gesture and expression
most unmistakably English. His clothes and his boots were American,
and his hat; and what was more, when he spoke there was just that
trace of American accent and that habitual use of American locutions
which so often mark the man who has lived, though for no more than a
few months, in wholly American surroundings.
Everything was ready for his landing. He would not be troubled with
so much as a handbag. The blessed abolition of passports in 1933 as
for Englishmen landing in England saved him the trouble of even that
small encumbrance; and as he hated his pockets bulging with papers,
he had locked all, down to the least important notes, in a little
dispatch box and handed it to his steward. He had nothing on him
but one of the tickets under the new system, the ordinary railway
ticket for London which they exchange on board against the steamship
receipt; and a good wad of £63 in English notes, with a handful of
change; he had not even kept a nickel for remembrance. He could
recover what he required by the time he had taken his seat in the
train; and all this disembarrassment, coupled with the long vacuity
of the sea voyage, gave him an odd sense of freedom.
Odd ... and he knew that it was odd. It was a little too complete.
His mind seemed to be holding nothing but the scene before him: the
vigorous sky, the leaping water and the green above the gray of the
rocks with their white fringe of foam.
He felt unnaturally careless. And when his thoughts turned to his
luggage and its arrangement, to the petty incidents of that same
morning, they were blurred and faded. Nor did he concern himself with
their increasing faintness ... he enjoyed relief in it. But he knew
that the relief was strange.
His daily life in America had been too much preoccupied, and that
for a long time past. He had gone over to judge and help direct an
investment in land, which had not turned out too brilliantly. He
had not even been able to sell out as he wished; he was still held
to it and its mortgage. He had not put things right. He had found it
of no purpose to remain. He had turned back homewards--and yet he
suffered an uneasy fear that in his absence things might go worse.
Too much of his small fortune had been locked up in that venture, and
the prospect before him, when he should reach his rooms in London,
was not over bright. He was not sure that he could keep up the modest
scale of living on which he had arranged his life for the last ten
years before this voyage to the States. The place he had inherited in
Dorsetshire, and which had been at his disposal since his mother’s
death fifteen years earlier, he had let; but there were heavy charges
upon it, and he could see little income in what remained of its
revenue.
Nevertheless, he did now feel that curious sense of lightness and of
carelessness. It was not connected with the returning home: it seemed
a new mood of a kind by itself. It came in deep successive waves,
each washing out, while it lasted, all responsibility and care; and
twice, as they neared the breakwater, he went through an abnormal
moment or two of complete freedom, like that of a man who has just
wakened from a profound sleep, and has not yet remembered the burdens
and details of life.
* * * * *
When he had landed with the other passengers that unknown mood
returned upon him with greatly increased force and with more
permanence. It enveloped him like a mist. It made him neglectful of
all appointment and watch. He forgot his steward altogether; and
his luggage, as though it had never been. He found himself doing
only that which he could do without any effort of recollection. His
empty-handedness, his neglect, made him the first to walk up the
platform along the train for London. He took no heed of the reserved
places. He chose out an empty seat in a first-class carriage at the
head of the train and took a corner looking forward. There he sat in
the same continued mood of content and vacuity.
The train filled, and the crush of porters hurrying and crossing
each other upon the platform made confusion all along its line. One
in particular, badly chivied by an anxious steward, who had implored
leave to land in search of a missing client, was asking what he
should do. That porter had put a dispatch box, a rug and a small
strapped packet upon a reserved place. He had noted the name. But no
one had come to claim them. The porter and the steward, looking back
to where a couple of belated men were running, saw no sign of the
expected figure. The glorious official to whom a clamorous appeal
was made refused to delay the train. The whistle sounded, the rotor
buzzed, the train drew out. The porter and the steward felt each in
his own degree that agony of loss which greater men know when they
open their paper of a morning and read of a slump. The one was
widowed of a sovereign. The other of half a crown.
Meanwhile the author of their misfortunes sat all alone in his
comfortable carriage, looking at the houses slipping by and the
beginning of the countryside. Then he grew drowsy and sank into his
corner and fell asleep. He half awoke at a hand tapping upon his
shoulder and a voice asking him for his ticket. He had it upon him;
he felt for it, found it in an inside pocket and handed it over, and
in a moment was asleep again.
When he woke it was but slowly, for evidently he had been more
fatigued than he knew, and the strain of a rough voyage had weighed
upon him. The express was already roaring past Newbury Race-course.
He recognized the place and suddenly connected it in his mind with a
name ... the name of some one living thereabouts.... Yes, ... it was
certainly some one connected with those trees and heaths beyond ...
but what was the name? He sought and sought, and nothing would come.
It was very aggravating, this little lapse. He remembered how often
of late he had had slight trouble of that kind. Then he set out to
try and recover the name by a chain. He had passed a race-course. He
knew it of old. He would connect things up link by link. First he
looked at his watch. It was just at 12.30. He had started from....
Where had he started from?
That really _was_ exasperating ... that was even serious.
He shook his head with the sharp gesture a man makes when he is
trying to be rid of some passing nervous affection, and he did what
the efficiency men call “concentrating.” But his concentration was
poor. Not a word would come.
Then overwhelmingly, in a flash, the truth broke upon him. He
had lost all conception of his past: every image of it. He knew
where he was. All about him, the landscape, the type of railway
carriage--everything was familiar, but of any name or place or action
or movement _in connection with himself_ prior to that sleep nothing
whatsoever remained.
He passed his hand across his forehead, and stared at the empty
cushions opposite him, waiting for this very unpleasant mental gap to
close up, and for his normal self to return. It did not return. What
was worse, he felt a sort of certitude within him that it had gone
for ever--that it was no good looking for it. It was as though he had
died.
Through all the remaining hour of the run into Paddington he was
seeking, seeking, seeking. The Thames, distant Windsor, Slough went
past, the first houses of London: he knew them all as well as he knew
his own voice; but of any link between these and himself, of any
action or emotion of his past identity, there was no trace at all. It
was not even blank. It was nothingness.
The train drew up, the herd of passengers bundled out, and he,
at the head of the train, among the first. He went uncertainly
sauntering down the platform. He was half inclined to ask some one
where the train had come from. He even found himself listening to one
or two groups of people in the hope that he should hear its name; but
he was ashamed to listen too long, and still more ashamed to put the
question which had at first occurred to him. It was a pity. If he
had acted there and then he would have saved himself a great deal of
coming trouble. But he had already begun to feel a mixture of shame
and fear lest his humiliation should be discovered. That dangerous
mood was to grow.
Mechanically he hailed one of the new rotor taxis--he recognized
them, though he could not tell where or how (they had just been
coming in the year before he left England; but of that year there was
nothing now in his mind). It suddenly broke upon him that he could
not tell the taxi where to drive.
Now the man who drove the taxi judged tips by wealth and wealth by
external signs. So he said, with simple judgment, “The Splendide?”
His fare nodded hastily and got in. Anywhere would do. Here again the
name was perfectly familiar to him. The picture of the big hotel in
his mind was quite clear. He could have told you exactly where it was
in London. But for the soul of him he couldn’t have told you _how_ he
knew. He nodded, and the rotor cab jerked and plunged and pulled up
sharp and jerked forward again for its half-hour to the Splendide,
with the stricken man inside concentrating away for dear life and
getting nowhere.
During the Berkeley Street block, and to the whirring of the mighty
little engine and the shaking of the cab, he suddenly shouted PETRE
at the top of his voice. The driver opened the door sharply and
barked at him, “What say?”
“Nothing,” said the greatly relieved man, sighing deeply. “I was
talking to myself.”
The taxi driver slammed the door, looked at the policeman whose hand
still barred the traffic, jerked his thumb towards the inside of his
cab, touched his forehead and smiled. The policeman also deigned to
smile. Then the flood was released and they jerked off again.
Petre, that was it ... Petre.... That was his name! But what
Petre? He could not tell. The sound was perfectly clear and
perfectly familiar.... Petre. Petre it was: he was quite certain of
that.--Thank God, he was certain of that!... And during the next
three blocks in the traffic his certitude grew firmer and firmer. He
clung to the protection of that word Petre as does a drowning man to
a deck chair. That was something to go on, anyhow.... He could not
see it as P-e-t-e-r or P-e-t-r-e. It was only the sound he was sure
of. But when he came to think of it, it must be Petre, for he had
not in his mind any savor, not even the slightest, of a grotesque
connotation, and if it had been “Peter,” however familiar to him,
it would have sounded a little silly in his ears.... No, it must
certainly be Petre. It was a good name.... There was--he had a vague
idea--a Lord Petre. He did not think he was--or had been--a lord. He
would have remembered that at least, though all the rest had gone.
No, it was Mr. Petre all right.... Mr. something Petre, as Mr. J.
Petre.... But what was that Christian name, or those Christian names?
He had reached the Splendide. Mr. Petre (for he could now securely
call himself by his right name, an anchor-hold in such an awful tide)
got out and vastly overpaid the cab. The new rotor cabs had the fare
marked up in large red ticking figures inside. It was a rule brought
in by Jessie Anderson when she was at the Home Office in the last
Administration. It had always annoyed her to peer through the glass,
and she was no longer young. Mr. Petre quite understood the meaning
of those figures; shillings and pence were familiar to him and the
connection of their symbols with the coins in his hand was part of
himself, though he could not have told you where or when he had last
handled such coins.
Now and then he would hesitate over a detail. He had puzzled a minute
before getting the name of Oxford Street as they crossed it. But the
run of London life was as common to him as to any of the myriads
around. It was only the bond between them and his past self that had
snapped.
He knew the Splendide. He knew the ritual of registration. He even
knew the liveries with their absurd gold crowns. He knew it was
strange to take a room without luggage. He feared resentment. Yet he
rightly judged such eccentricity stood a better chance at the more
expensive hotels than the less.
He was full of the ordeal before him, and he approached it rather
nervously. But he put on as bold a front as he could, and gave the
name “Petre” in rather a loud voice, and with that slight American
intonation which was his though he knew it not.
He was surprised at a certain note in the clerk’s reply, something
between the tone in which a man addresses a great lady advanced in
years and that in which he would address (were addresses paid to such
things) a unicorn or any other apparition; and the voice using these
tones said quite low, so that no one around should hear, and with a
certain thrill of reverence displayed and of astonishment controlled:
“Mr. John K. Petre?”
Mr. Petre nodded rapidly. It was no good seeking for the real
Christian names: these would do as well as any other for the time
being.
He was relieved to see the right spelling coming out from the tip
of the clerk’s pen in the register: “John K. Petre.” No place of
residence followed. The clerk knew too much for that. He made an
inclination that was nearly a bow as he sent for the boy in buttons,
and begged Mr. Petre in a still lower voice to let him know if the
suite he had chosen would do: it had only three rooms, he said,
but it was the best unoccupied and over the garden. Two hundred
dollars--forty pounds.
[Illustration: “_... As though he were a Unicorn._”]
Mr. Petre recollected the £63 he had upon him and the very strange
condition under which he was attacking this stronghold. He firmly
refused anything but a plain bedroom and bathroom. He would not even
have a sitting-room, and the clerk this time really did bow, as a
worshiper might incline to a saint who was beyond the pale of mortal
kind. He whispered rather than spoke the number “44,” and Mr. Petre,
before going to the lift, said:
“One moment, I have no luggage.” He said it in the over-emphatic tone
which men use to say anything startling that has to be forced down;
he repeated it in that same firm voice in which the slight American
accent was emphasised: “I have no luggage.”
The clerk showed no surprise at all. If Mr. John K. Petre chose to
travel without luggage, it seemed to be in the clerk’s eyes but one
more evidence of more than human greatness.
“I shall go out and buy what I need,” continued Mr. Petre, still
firmly, “when I have washed, in a few minutes.”
“Can we----” insinuated the clerk.
“No,” said Mr. Petre yet more firmly, and almost readily. “I always
do these things myself.”
But when and where he had done these things himself he could not
possibly have told, for Mr. Petre had no idea what things he did and
what things he did not do. His new life had begun less than a couple
of hours before, and the old one was lost.
He followed the boy to the lift, and as he went he was reassured.
For he said to himself, “I am some one of consequence. I am known.”
But on that thought followed its terrifying successors--The more
imperative his need for caution (the lift was taking him up to No.
44); the worse the ridicule if his secret were discovered before he
had found himself (the lift had reached the landing); the deeper his
humiliation and (the door of 44 was opened for him--no, he needed
nothing; it shut upon him and he was seated alone in despair) the
more intolerable his lot. What if that unknown life of his had been
passed in some great household, a grandeur of spouse and children and
domestics; lived for years with intimates who should know what had
befallen him? He would be marked. A diminished man. One who had “had
an accident.” Pitied, despised, his relapse awaited. He recoiled at
the thought!...
No! There must be no discovery by others. With infinite caution,
catching and comparing every word, he would pick up piece by
piece the truth about himself. He would secretly effect his own
restoration. But what of questions? How should he answer _them_?
* * * * *
While Mr. Petre was moving towards the lift, magnificently waved
forward by dazzling liveries and piloted in procession by the boy
in buttons, a young fellow who had been sitting in the lounge of
the hotel talking to an older man got up and sauntered towards the
registration counter.
He had heard a name--and that name was gold. For though the clerk had
whispered Mr. Petre had spoken loudly and without discretion.
The young man dug his hands into his trousers pockets, looked for a
moment through the windows toward the street, and then turned sharply
beyond the register book to the office where inquiries were made.
As he did so he kept his head well to the left, outwards from the
counter; but his eyes shot furtively to the right, and he spotted
the name upon the open page. It was John K. Petre all right. He had
thought as much.
At the Inquiry he asked whether there was a telegram for Gadget, and
was not surprised to hear that there was none; indeed, he had only
that moment made up the name. But such is the spell of association
over even the sharpest crook that he could not help saying, “John K.
Gadget”; so much was the famous name of John K. Petre now branded
upon his brain.
He sauntered back again to his chair, sank down, and took up speech
again with his companion.
The young man himself was tall, just an inch or two overdressed, with
black hair, greased, brushed back over a high narrow forehead and
thin face, of the bony sort, which is also called “distinguished,”
the long narrow chin and the high narrow forehead were each a long
way from the advanced cape of the squeezed nose. He made delicate
gestures with his right hand. He spoke leisurely and high.
His companion was of no such exalted station. He was squat,
round-headed, double-chinned, with a thick, frowsy, gray mustache;
short, ill-combed hair; and dressed in clothes so loose and creased
that they disgraced that cavern of the rich. His boots were shameful,
and even his collar was dubious.
“Well, Arthur?” said he to the young man.
“Well, Batterby, he’s come here.”
“Oh, he has, has he? I told you so!” said Batterby, not without pride.
“Yep,” answered the more elegant Arthur. “There’s the name right
enough. John K. Petre. But you know what I told you. He makes it a
point to keep low and dark. I’d use it--but I wouldn’t print it. I’ve
heard what he does when he’s given away. Oh! He’s savage! The clerks
are paid in all these places to keep it quiet whenever he _does_
come over. Once they did get hold of him in the _Howl_, when he came
over four years ago, and they printed a story about him. Then they
found he controlled half the poison ads.: Rodney’s Cure, and the
Pain-killer and Voler’s Pills--and he made ’em print a denial too,
displayed. And then he broke ’em! Oh! he’s savage.”
“It was I tracked him to that boat on my own risk,” said Batterby
doggedly. “I paid the clerk at this end out of my own pocket, and
he said John K. would be on it, as sure as one can be of him. He’d
booked as Carroll, so’s not to be pestered on board. If I liked to
take the trouble I could find out that he’d landed and what train he
took. It’s a cruel shame if I can’t make a story for the _Messenger_
out of it! His Grace’ll want it too,” he added plaintively. “It’s for
him to print or not as he likes. He knows his way about, does the
Duke.”
Arthur shrugged his shoulders. “You can tell your gang if you like,
Batterby, but it’s at your own risk. He’ll ferret you out and he’ll
never let go of you. He bites to the bone: specially newspaper men.
That’s what he hates most. You know what he is. If they print they’ll
get hell, and even if they only talk _you’ll_ get hell. I’ve told you
all I know about him. He comes to London, Paris, Naples, anywhere.
Nobody to know when he passed, except his men. And what’s more, he’ll
get plenty of people to swear to his being somewhere else. If he
makes a row, it isn’t my fault. At any rate, he’s here.... I’ve got
to be off. Will you wait while I get my hat and coat?”
Batterby, who had his hat in his hand and his coat on his back,
looked uneasy and said, “Yes, if you like.” Arthur sauntered off
at his slow pace, and the older, heavier, less consequent man
watched him slyly well round the corner, and then lumbered up to the
Registration Desk. The book was shut. He leaned with a foolish grin
of cunning over the desk, winked, and said to the clerk: “Any one o’
the name o’ Petre registered to-day?”
The clerk said curtly, “No.”
“Nothing like it?” said Batterby, taking out a case with cigarettes
upon the one side and notes prominently showing upon the other.
“Nothing,” said the clerk icily.
Batterby tapped the thick red leather binding with a square, short
forefinger, and winked again. For answer the clerk put the big book
on one side and turned away. His questioner waddled back again to
the easy chair and wished _he_ could earn money so easily. He
looked at his watch, and wondered that Arthur was so long. Yet there
was nothing wonderful in the delay. Arthur was telephoning. He was
telephoning to Mrs. Cyril.
Before he had returned to the lounge and to the impatient Batterby
a stout, rather bewildered man, middle-aged and gray, but active in
his step, had passed by him, and had gone rapidly through the great
turning doors into the street. It was Mr. Petre, seeking a Gladstone
bag and linen and hair brushes, and all that might be necessary to
restore him to citizenship. Had Batterby known what presence it was
that thus passed he would have been a changed man. But Batterby did
not know. Arthur rejoined him, the two went out into the street in
their turn.
The Strand is not a good place for conversation in these days, but
Batterby was anxious and eager. It was a scoop, if he could bring
it off; and poor Batterby lived and kept an unhappy household in
Golder’s Green upon scoops; and Arthur was his informant on the
great world, in return for services rendered before Arthur had
climbed--through a knowledge of Arthur’s earlier days. Arthur knew
every one now, and yet could still be squeezed. The shorter and older
man looked up at his young companion as they jostled eastward towards
Fleet Street.
“Don’t you think I could risk it, Arthur?”
“Oh! I’ve told you,” said Arthur impatiently. “It’s at your risk.
But mind you, if he is here he’ll have it denied, and if he isn’t,
it comes to the same thing. You’ll get hell. You can’t fight fifty
million pound.”
Batterby sighed. It would mean a great scoop.... And he might have
had the interview given him. His Grace had given him just that job
when he had spotted the secret visit of the French Prime Minister six
months before. But French Prime Ministers are small game compared
with Americans on the scale of John K. Petre.... Then again, if
things went wrong, and he could not make the news good, that meant
the sack. His Lordship could be terribly firm; and Batterby thought
of the little house in Golder’s Green and the nagging, dissatisfied
wife, and inwardly trembled.... No, he couldn’t risk it.... At least,
not unless Arthur would guarantee him, and Arthur wouldn’t. Arthur
had sworn he would know nothing about it.... So there was an end of
it. But it was astonishing how full Batterby’s mind was of John K.
Petre; almost as though he had him there by his side, arm in arm.
It is said that very great men thus permeate the air of the cities
through which they pass. It may be so. Arthur and Batterby melted
into the crowd.
* * * * *
Mr. Petre was a full two hours in making his purchases. One very good
reason for such delay was that he had no idea of his measurements.
Another, that his recent, his overwhelming misfortune had made him
mistrustful of himself. He kept on wondering whether he had filled
up a sufficient list. At last he had fully packed his newly-purchased
bag; he had brought it back to the hotel; he had followed it up to
No. 44. He sat down beside it, counted out what remained of his
capital and found fifty-two pounds and a few shillings left. He
plunged again into that depth of thought wherein he groped like a
diver in dim water to find some recollection or some clew--and he
found none. The enormous loneliness of the position was upon him: it
appalled him even more than the approaching end of his resources. He
felt all the millions of London round about him, aloof and hostile:
dumb ... when the telephone on the table in his room rang suddenly,
and he took it up.
A woman’s voice, very clearly articulate, rather too high, asked if
that were Mr. Petre, and announced itself as Celia Cyril. It then
cleared its throat, but in a very ladylike manner, and Mr. Petre
boldly answered “Yes” and waited; concluding, as he waited, that he
ought certainly to have answered “No.” The voice told him it knew he
_hated_ being fussed, but he had always made an exception of dear
Leonard, hadn’t he? So the voice had taken the liberty to send a
note which would explain; but the voice had thought (it said) that
it seemed better first to ring up before the note would get to him;
because the voice knew that he _hated_ being fussed. And then thought
that perhaps it ought not perhaps to have rung up after all. But it
did hope he didn’t mind. All of which clear-headed and decisive
stuff Mr. Petre received in a complete confusion.
“My only excuse,” the voice went on, “is that you were _so_ good to
dear Leonard, to my dear husband when he was in the States two years
ago. You know all that has happened since. You don’t mind my asking?
_Do_ you? You remember my Leonard?”
Now at this moment--I write it down without comment, for all that
follows is a commentary upon it, but I think it excusable in a man
so hungry to know and so dazed as was Mr. Petre--at this moment, I
say, Mr. Petre again answered “Yes.” The clearly articulate voice
continued in a tone of relief.
“Ah, I _am_ so glad. I knew it was a liberty. I know you _hate_ to be
fussed. But I do hope you will be able to come, and you will get my
note. It ought to be with you any time now. I sent the car with it.”
Then the voice said “_Good_-by” in a fashion which oddly reminded
Mr. Petre of pink sugar--but after his great catastrophe he dared
not guess whether it were because the late Mr. Cyril or Sir Leonard
Cyril, or Lord Leonard Cyril or Leonard Lord Cyril had been connected
with sugar, or whether it was only the tone of the voice.
But the recitation of such names suggested to him rather suddenly a
book the name of which he perfectly remembered, and he telephoned
down at once for the year’s _Who’s Who_. Now he would make a serious
search. He was on a clew.
The first thing he did was to look out Cyril. He found nobody,
and in good time it was to be made very clear why he had found
nobody of that name. Leonard Cyril was dead. Then he looked out
Petre--brilliant thought, and he found many Petres, and read all
that was to be read of them closely; but not one suggested anything
to his knowledge. He was certainly John K. The clerk had made that
clear. There was no John K. in _Who’s Who_. He sighed. It was a
heart-breaking business. Then, the processes of his mind working
more fully, but his sense of personality as blank as ever, he tried
the telephone book of London. There was a Mrs. Cyril right enough,
and she seemed to be well-to-do, for what she had said about her
car corresponded with her address. But when he turned to the Petres
he was baulked again: there were too many, and not a John K. in the
bunch ... and after all, why hadn’t he thought of it? The States!...
Was he not an American?... There was evidence that he had been in
America. That would make it less incomprehensible--but more difficult
to trace through London.... And he didn’t _feel_ American somehow....
What a business!
Then came the note. A young child, dressed in yet another uniform
and with bright, active eyes brought it in. It was but an expansion
of the telephone message he had had before. Mrs. Cyril had only just
heard of him from a friend who had caught sight of him (he trembled!)
in the hotel. She was taking a great liberty, but her late husband
had spoken so warmly of him and of the kindness Mr. Petre had shown
him when he visited the United States, that she presumed upon that
acquaintance and asked him whether he could not lunch with her next
Wednesday?
Mr. Petre delved down again into the depths of his mind. Whatever
he may have been in that past life of his, he had evidently been
courteous, for he felt the necessity of answering by writing and by
messenger, and not by telephone. The more he thought of the affair,
the more he discovered at once its possibilities and its dangers.
In the last few hours the shrinking from humiliation had become an
obsession. He was now fixed in a mood such that he would rather have
died than admit his hidden trouble. All around him, perhaps, would be
people who would know who he was; some perhaps would have met him;
his hostess at least would have heard much of him. He would have to
play up to all that he could hear, to glean everything that he could,
and yet not give away his secret.
For some little time he hesitated. Then he considered that if he
never took the plunge he might be lost. Either he must recover his
past by clews or by inferences, and these could only be had from
witnesses; or else live on a few weeks to the end of his money, and
then--what?
Evidently he had been--whatever he was--not only a courteous man, but
a man of decision. He took up his pen and wrote a rapid note to Mrs.
Cyril, saying how pleased he would be to lunch. He rang at once and
sent it off by the messenger. He was a little alarmed to learn that
her car had been waiting all the time to take that answer back. Mr.
Petre might be a man of decision, but he could not compare with Mrs.
Cyril. Whoever he (Mr. Petre) might be, and whoever she (Mrs. Cyril)
might be, she (Mrs. Cyril) gave points to him (Mr. Petre). And Mr.
Petre drew another deep sigh as he considered the peculiar misfortune
of his life, and wondered why he had been pitched upon to suffer so
extraordinary a fate.
He could not tell. But I know and I will tell the reader. It was
holiday in heaven and a Dæmon, genial, ironic, had been given Mr.
Petre for a toy to play with a little while.
He glanced again at the letter, turned over the sheet and found a
postscript. “You know how discreet I shall be and how familiar I am
with your rules. The Press shall not hear a word of it. It was by the
merest _accident_ that I heard of your presence in London myself, and
even if you send an answer that you are not there at all, I shall
_quite_ understand.--C.C.”
Mr. Petre held those words before him and stared. Then he began to
put everything together in a sort of summary. He had been in the
States; perhaps he was a native of the States. He didn’t think so;
he felt it in his bones that he was not an American. Yet ... at any
rate, he had been in the States.
There was another point. The man he had been had some reason or other
for keeping very secret; the clerk’s manner had proved that. It made
him feel anxious. Had he committed a crime?... No! On reflection, no.
If he had Mrs. Cyril would not be so keen to have him to lunch with
her. He must have had the power to do some good to the late Cyril; he
must have had some great position out there in America.... What?
For a moment he was on the point of drafting an advertisement to
sundry American papers, and then that shame came upon him and he
put down his pen. He gave it up; he trusted to chance; he awaited
Wednesday; and having been apparently in that past of his a naturally
hopeful man, he took it for granted that at Mrs. Cyril’s table some
light might break. Then he went down to dinner.
He sat there at his lonely table, perfectly clear upon the roof
under which he was (it was familiar to him), upon the date, upon
the meaning of all that he read in the paper (he was consecutive
upon this, not only for the news of the last twenty-four hours, but
also, after a gap of about a fortnight, with many older allusions).
Oddly enough, certain dull fragments of American news, meaningless
to an Englishman, struck him with particular familiarity; and the
name of one town in which a bishop in the middle west had denied his
Saviour struck him with a feeling of home; but of himself and of who
he was--nothing. It was like standing in a well-lit room and looking
through the window at a dense fog outside pressing against the panes.
Then he went upstairs again to No. 44 and took off all his clothes
and looked on every edge of shirt and collar and vest and drawers and
socks for initials. He found a New York price ticket on his shirt,
the word “Paramount” on his collar and “Zenith” woven into his socks,
but of initials not a sign, and as for his night-shirt, he had just
bought it--not pajamas; was that instinct a clew? He was tired out.
He put it on and went to bed.