eyes, finished his cigarette and tossed the end into the fire-place. He
was still smiling a little; but the room was grown silent, and every one
was looking at him; the gaunt, narrow face before him, grimly serious,
discouraged levity, though it sharpened his desire to expose her as soon
as she began her tricks. And for that the easiest thing was obstinately
to answer none of her questions.
"You would that I explain?" The deliberate affectation of broken English
was the accepted convention of an English actress playing the part of a
Frenchwoman; every one in the room was conscious of the artificiality.
The voice was unmodulated and monotonous. "In all ages men have tried to
read the future. By the stars and by crystal balls and cards and numbers
and pools of ink.... What can a pool of ink tell you? The future lies in
yourselves. Within your bodies are seeds of new life--innumerable; and
each seed holds innumerable other seeds of new life--generation after
generation, seed within seed. He who put them there ordained that the
Future should lie buried in the Present, as the Present lay buried in
the Past--and as the Past lies buried in the Present! It is hard for Man
to unbury the Future. Man has not been ready to face the light, and I--I
who help you to see that light have never seen it myself. Even I do not
know how glaring is that light.... But, as the seeds of the Future lie
in you, so the knowledge of the Future lies there also. Man _knows_ all
the Future, as Man _holds_ all the Future within himself, but he has
forgotten. It is within his unconscious. _I_ do not know it, but I can
help you to remember. I can tell you nothing, not even your name, but
you can tell me everything about yourself, Past, Present and Future.
What is your name?"
Lady Barbara started with surprise when the abrupt question cut through
the sleepy drone of mock-mystic jargon. Summertown was trapped into
seriousness, for he answered promptly:
"John Antony Merivale-Farwell. I'm usually called Jack Summertown."
"Why are you called Jack Summertown?"
"Well, you see, Summertown's the guv'nor's second title. Thirty per
cent. on your bills, and not a dam' thing else."
He looked obediently into the unwavering eyes, but Lady Barbara felt
that his familiar colloquialism was a deliberate effort to break up the
atmosphere of pretentious mystery.
"And your father?"
"Well, he's rather at a loose end at present. He was Councillor of
Embassy at Paris, and they offered him Madrid, I believe; but he'd been
ill for some time and so he chucked in his hand. Oh, _who_ is he?
Marling. Earl of."
"You are married?"
"God, no!"
"You have been in love?"
Summertown hesitated and then answered quietly:
"Oh, well, yes, I suppose so."
"Tell me about it."
Lady Barbara, watching his face as he gazed into Madame Hilary's eyes,
became conscious of a change in expression; Summertown might have been
drunk. His eyes were glazed, his features set and his forehead moist; he
spoke cautiously, too, as though fearful of a trip in articulation.
"It sounds rather sordid," he began diffidently. "She was an awful
pretty girl--in a shop. Flower-shop. I palled up with her.... I expect
you'll think me an awful cad; I never meant to marry her. It would have
meant such a hell of a row at home.... To do myself justice, I told her
that. She knew who I was; she said that didn't matter.... The thing
lasted for a year--nearly. And most of the time I went through the agony
of the damned. Ask any one who thinks he knows me; you'll be told I
haven't a soul to save and I'm the village idiot and all that sort of
thing. All I know is--I wouldn't go through it again. I loved the girl;
and I always felt that she was all right till I came along--and then I
corrupted her; and though I sweated to get her to marry me, we both knew
it would be God's own failure.... And the end was the most sordid part
of the whole business. When I lay awake at night--I _did_,
honest--thinking I'd dragged her half-way to Hell, another feller turned
up. Number One. I was Number Two--or Ten--or Twenty.... That was
nineteen-eleven, but, if you sat up till midnight telling me how rotten
she was, you wouldn't be able to make me forget her. Wish to God you
could!... But we _were_ dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth."
He laughed jerkily and grew restless, as though he were looking for the
usual cigarette. Lady Barbara felt an overbalancing pull and discovered
that she had been making her fingers meet in the soft flesh of Sonia
Dainton's arm. Madame Hilary was triumphing. None of them could say when
Jack Summertown had passed under her influence; apart from his pallor
and glazed eyes, he had not changed; but there was a collective,
sympathetic shudder through the room, as he told his stunted romance in
characteristic colloquialisms. "Hell of a row at home.... A
year--nearly.... All I know is--I wouldn't go through it again.... And
then I corrupted her.... Dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth...."
And then the jerky, cynical laugh. It was Jack Summertown's manner of
describing an unsuccessful meeting at Hawthorn Hill.
"You cannot forget her--but you will find some one else?" The
unmodulated voice was pitiless.
"Oh, generally speaking, yes. I mean, one wants to keep the jolly old
family going. But I've not got much time with this war."
"This war?"
"Well, the general bust-up. I'm in the army, you know, and I shall get
finished off as soon as it starts. Goodish early door for me. Hardly
seems worth it.... At least, I mean, if the girl cares for you, it's a
bit rough to leave her a widow at the end of a week."
"Then you are going to be killed quite soon?"
Lady Barbara held her breath until she felt that her heart must stop.
The others were doing the same. Only Madame Hilary ladled out her
questions with a voice as mechanical as her gestures.
"Oh, almost at once."
"Stop!"
Lady Barbara could not tell whence the cry had come. Had they conjured
up a spirit? Was God Himself cutting short their quest? But she did not
believe in God.... There was a bustle of confused movement, followed by
stupefied inertia. Lord Pennington, after flooding the room with light,
was seen to be propping himself against the door; Madame Hilary sat
blinking rapidly, so like a lone cat surrounded by reluctant terriers
that little imagination was required to see the arched back and to hear
the spitting tongue. Lady Barbara gripped her chair with both hands,
overcoming fear. Only Webster, who had seen the experiment before and
exulted in the sense of shocked terror around him, contrived to purge
his face of expression.
There was a long silence.
"Well, that's that," gulped Pennington, with an unconvincing laugh.
Lady Barbara's brain was working so quickly that she had time to see and
reflect on everything around her. These men who were always drinking
made a sorry mess of their nerves; Pennington was hardly less
incapacitated than Webster had been when they dashed into the jutting
grey angle of wall. And Sonia, who did not drink but lived on
excitement, was almost hysterical....
"Reached end of chapter," murmured Webster, glancing covertly at the
late medium. "What deuce want spoil everything?" he demanded, in a
hectoring aside, of Pennington's late giggling companion.... "Who'd like
go next?"
Summertown had been peering lazily in search of cigarettes, but his
host's question roused him to activity.
"Don't be in such a hurry, old son," he called out. And, turning to the
hypnotist, "You were talking about the jolly old seeds. Big fleas and
little fleas...."
Madame Hilary glanced at him and then, carelessly, at the group between
the fire-place and the door. She was too well-bred to shew triumph.
"You tell me you doubt. Good!" she answered Summertown. "I try to
explain just my theory. Now, in every man there are seeds of new life,
and each seed contains seeds of other new life, of the Future...."
Webster waited until he saw Summertown nodding intelligently; then he
joined the group by the door.
"What do you think of it?" he asked, like a conjuror.
The Baroness Kohnstadt shuddered.
"Ach, derrible!"
"It's the same old game," said Pennington, with newly recovered valour.
"She pinned herself down to something fairly definite, but, before
anything comes along to kill Summertown, she'll have vamoosed and set up
in Harrogate as a beauty specialist. Agree with me, Lady Barbara?"
"I don't know what to think--yet," she answered. "We mustn't let her
tell him, of course...."
As she stood up, her knees were trembling.
"But nobody believes in it _seriously_," protested Sonia Dainton with a
white face.
"_I_ do."
They had been joined by Lord Pennington's giggling companion of the
armchair. Her eyes were bigger, and fear had washed away the colour from
her cheeks.
"Let me try next, Fatty," she implored Webster.
"Why?"
"I want to."
"But why?"
She moved out of earshot and waited for him to join her.
"I want to," she repeated. "I won't say anything that I oughtn't to."
Webster laughed harshly. He did not want to hear the girl unfolding her
history before an audience.
"Keep out of it, Dolly; only make fool yourself," he advised. "You're
such little coward----"
"I know!" She seemed to take the sneer as a compliment. "But I'm
gingered up now. I _want_ to know! I want to know if I'm going to die.
They said I was, but they only did it to frighten me and get me away to
a sanatorium. I'm going to find out!"
While Webster was still sluggishly trying to make up his mind, she
darted past him and presented herself to Madame Hilary. Summertown
yielded place reluctantly and joined the group at the door. Before the
lights were lowered, the Master of the Ceremonies found time to whisper,
"Cut it short. Others want turn, too. Leave out Past and Present; it's
Future she's interested in."
There was a rustle of dresses and a squeak of castors, as the audience
settled into chairs and the lights were lowered. After the same initial
silence the same droning voice pronounced the elementals of the creed.
"Though men have tried by the stars and by crystal balls, by cards and
numbers and pools of ink, they have not hitherto looked for the Future
within themselves...."
"How long does this tripe go on?" Summertown enquired so audibly that
the girl started and turned towards the shadowy group by the fire.
Madame Hilary pushed back her chair and rose to her feet with dignity.
"Please! I cannot continue--like this." At a murmured apology she
consented to sit down again, and the momentarily human voice became lost
in the professional drone of the mystic. "Keep your eyes on mine--so! It
is all I ask. I like better that you resist, that you determine not to
answer my questions. But, if you look into my eyes, you will tell me all
that I ask you. You must. You are telling me now! You are telling me now
your name! It is--that name?"
"Dorothea Prilton. I'm called Dolly May on the stage."
"And you have been on the stage since long?"
"Three years."
"And how old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"And why did you go on to the stage?"
"Oh, I always loved it! It's everything in the world to me! And a
gentleman friend said he'd introduce me to the manager of the Pall
Mall."
There was a tinkle of broken glass, as Webster's elbow swept an ash tray
to the floor.
"And you expect to play great parts? What are you acting in now?"
"Well, I'm out of a shop at present. It's such killing work, you know. I
had to break one contract and go into a nursing-home; and I've never
really pulled up since. One doctor says it's lungs, and another says
it's heart. I was never very strong, and my friend had an awful time
with me. Sometimes at the end of the show, he had to give me an
injection in my arm to pull me round. Of course, it saved my life, but I
think it affected the heart, you know. The doctor was very angry, but I
said to him, 'It's all very well for you to talk, but you weren't there
at the time; I was just dying.' I shall be all right when I've had a bit
of a rest."
"And you expect to play great parts?" Madame Hilary repeated.
There was no answer. As the silence lengthened, the audience looked
critically at her; she had spoken hitherto with the prattling candour of
her class, and the question was hardly an assault on her professional
diffidence.
"And are you in love?" pursued Madame Hilary without pity.
The girl looked at her in silence but still without any expression of
resentment or confusion.
"Are you never afraid of meeting some man and having to retire from the
stage?"
At the third silence Summertown observed loudly:
"This is a blinking frost, you know. I _said_ it was, from the
beginning. She can't make you answer, if you don't want to."
The penetrating voice brought Madame Hilary to her feet a second time.
"Mr. Webster! Where is Mr. Webster?" she demanded. "Please! I cannot go
on--like this. You ask this gentleman to go away, and I continue.
Otherwise, no! I cannot."
"Oh, I say, no offence meant, you know," Summertown pleaded.
"I cannot," Madame Hilary repeated firmly. "Mr. Webster----"
The sense of the meeting, expressed in murmured protests, was against
Summertown.
"Oh, all right! I'll go," he sighed. "You goin' to break away, Babs?
It's an absolute frost," he whispered. "Anyone seen a goodish billycock
or bowler, not to mention a cane, a rich fur coat--Oh, my God!"
He had turned on the light to look for his belongings and, while the
others ringed themselves about Madame Hilary with speeches of condolence
and apology, he alone had leisure to see that Miss Dorothea Prilton,
known on Pall Mall programmes as "Dolly May," sat dead in the chair
which he had occupied ten minutes before.
CHAPTER SIX
THE SHADOW LINE
"A drunkard is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now
what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and
if a friend the better."
JOHN EARLE: "MICROCOSMOGRAPHIE."
"I knew it.... Yes.... Of course...."
Lady Barbara found herself repeating the words aloud, though no one
listened to her. Now that disaster had come, she remembered her
premonition; and it gave her a start over the others in recovering
self-possession, so that she remained motionless instead of pathetically
trying to charm the dead girl back to life. Only Webster and Summertown
were making any show of keeping their heads. Madame Hilary had become
hysterical; Lord Pennington, mottled and tremulous, was charging
distractedly to and fro with a decanter of brandy; and Sonia Dainton,
shrinking from the body, sobbed quietly to herself by the fire, while
Sir Adolf towered over her, gesticulating with plump, white hands.
"Lock door," whispered Webster. "Tell 'em not s'much dam' row."
He felt the girl's pulse, hurried lumberingly into his bedroom and
returned with a shaving-mirror, which he held before her lips. Then he
closed the staring eyes and covered the face with a handkerchief.
"Heart failure," he pronounced. "Always had weak heart. Excitement. I
tried stop her, you _heard_ me try stop her!"
At the note of pleading in his voice, Madame Hilary's lamentations
redoubled in vigour, this time in the unmistakable accent of Essex.
"Before get doctor, better decide story put up," Webster went on more
collectedly. "Short and simple, _I_ suggest. All having tea here----Said
she was feeling tired----Went pale----Suddenly stopped middle
sentence.... Less said about Madame Hilary, better. Best of all, send
her away now. Know what coroners are."
At sound of the formidable word Lady Barbara clutched frantically at
Summertown's elbow.
"Will there be an _inquest_?" she whispered.
"Can't help it. That's bad enough, but, if there's anything of a _post
mortem_, we may find ourselves in the soup. 'Deceased died as result of
sudden shock.' _What_ shock? _Why_ shock? I don't at all know that we
can afford to let this woman go." He wrinkled his snub nose; and his
cheerful, rather dissipated young face was grave. "Don't at _all_ know,"
he repeated.
The ink-and-whitewash smell of the court came to life again in Lady
Barbara's nostrils; and she heard the coroner once more urging the
reporters like hounds on to their quarry. She would again appear side by
side with Webster to explain away another gratuitous death. Twice in one
year.... And it was not her fault.
"I can't stand it, Jack," she whispered. "I can't! I can't!"
He looked at her in surprise, for it was generally accepted that she
could never lose her nerve.
"Jove! yes. I'd forgotten," he answered. "Here, Fatty!" Webster hurried
to them anxiously, and Summertown became elaborately calm and practical.
"Look here, old son, _you've_ got to go through with this; the body's on
your premises. And Madame must go through with it, because they may find
all sorts of funny things at the _post mortem_. When all's said and
done, you and I didn't kill her, and there's no reason why we should get
the credit of it. _I'm_ in with you to the end. I think Pennington and
Sir Adolf and the Baroness ought to stay to make a quorum, but we'll
talk about that later. Point is--Babs must clear out before the vet.
comes; she's never been here, we know nothing about her; we must stick
to that and, if need be, swear to it. And there's no need to drag Sonia
into the business."
Webster reflected with slow mind, rubbing his fingers against the pad of
his thumb, as though they still felt the dead eye-lids of the girl who
had at last escaped him.
"Woman's tough customer," he warned them. "Blackmail you quick as
thought. And looks bad--much worse--, if any one stays away inquest."
"We'll trust that she's too much rattled," Summertown answered. "And she
doesn't even know who Babs is."
"Bet your life she does," Webster answered. Seeing Lady Barbara's
undisguised fear, he deliberately played on it, as his price for
allowing her to escape the inquest. "If she don't, dam' soon find out."
Future blackmail seemed a less evil than present exposure; and Lady
Barbara only wanted to break away from the sweet-smelling, hot room and
to avoid the sour-smelling, hot court. Summertown looked to her for an
answer; but her eyes were blinking quickly, and two tears rolled
unchecked down her cheeks.
"Here, if _you_ break down, you'll do us all in," he said, glancing
furtively round the room. "Sonia's no more use than a sick headache;
you've got to take charge of her and clear out before any one lodges an
objection. Make certain that you've got _everything_ before you go--no
incriminating muffs or gloves. Now remember! It doesn't matter a damn
where you've been, but you've not--been--here. I'll explain to the
others. Get home or somewhere and establish a good fat alibi; we'll give
you a start before we send for the vet."
With the shrill moans of Madame Hilary still pulsating through their
heads, he pushed them out on to the landing and locked the door. Sonia
ran headlong down the passage until she was caught and schooled to a
careless saunter down the stairs and through the hall.
"Come home with me," Barbara ordered. "Jack's quite right about the
alibi."
"But, Babs----"
"If you start talking, I shall scream!"
They found a taxi in the Strand and drove to Berkeley Square. Barbara
ostentatiously ordered tea, and they subsided into chairs without
speaking. The shock of death was spent and could not be repeated. Dolly
May--if that was her name--was dead; surprisingly, horribly dead, but
there was no more to be said about it, and Barbara could now recall
without a shudder the still face and staring eyes.... She wondered what
they were all doing now, whether the doctor had come.... And what had
really happened--not only to the girl, but to Summertown? Even death was
not so terrific as the power which Madame Hilary seemed to exert.
"Have some tea, Sonia, and try not to think about it," said Lady
Barbara, hoping to restore her own tranquillity.
There would be days of agony, while she waited to see whether she would
be called as a witness and required to explain her flight. Madame Hilary
was not the woman to drown alone; and, though the men had shewn
magnanimity and _esprit de corps_, one never knew what would come out in
court, one never knew how far to trust people whom the tolerant
Summertown himself always described colloquially as "a bit hairy about
the heel." Lord Pennington ... the upward-striving baroness ... Sir
Adolf ... Webster, who was an unplumbed pool of iniquity. She would
always be a little at their mercy; and, without trying to injure her,
people always gossiped.
Sonia Dainton abruptly set down her cup and buried her face in a
cushion.
"It was--Fatty closing her eyes," she explained with a gulp; and Lady
Barbara, in trying to comfort her, found herself crying in sympathy.
They were steadied by the bell of the telephone and a crisp voice, which
for once was refreshing in its self-assurance.
"Mr. Waring," it announced. "My clerk told me you were expecting me to
ring you up. Didn't you get my letter? I said I'd meet you by the
box-office at five to two."
Lady Barbara looked in bewilderment at her watch; less than three hours
had passed since her altercation with the Cockney clerk.
"I'm afraid I lost your letter," she answered, almost humbly. "Five to
two. I'll try not to be late."
"I warn you that I never wait for any one," Jack laughed. "Was that all
you wanted to talk to me about?"
In the first reaction from severe fright, she was prepared for an
outburst of anger against the first victim--Sonia, for breaking down
like a little fool; the Cockney clerk for his impertinence; and Waring
himself as the mainspring of all evil. She had only gone to the flat
because she felt that she was scoring a point against him. No one had
ever behaved with his indifference--which was more galling than blunt
rudeness; no one had ever equalled him in aloofness and
self-sufficiency. His stubborn unquestioning faith in himself won her
reluctant admiration. It was a new experience to find a man whom she
could not twist round her finger at first meeting; if _he_ had attended
the _séance_, she felt that Dolly May would still be alive; he
would--somehow--have intervened; perhaps he would even have persuaded
her to stay at home. She would give five years of her life to have met
any one with authority to stop her....
Sonia had ceased crying and was sniffing miserably at her handkerchief.
The sound irritated Lady Barbara to the verge of hysteria; if the little
fool could see what she looked like with pink eyes and a red nose....
"What are you doing?" she asked Jack.
"To-night? I'm dining at the club," he answered with the same crisp
assurance.
"You wouldn't like to dine here?" It was an impulse which she had no
time to examine, but Jack's voice, which she had never noticed before,
destroyed hysterical images and brought her in contact with reality.
"I'd promised to go to a play, but I'm not in the mood for it," she
added.
With her disengaged hand she wrote down "Gaymer" to remind herself that
she must be excused going to the theatre with him. If her name were
mentioned at the inquest, she did not want to hear the coroner
explaining to the reporters that she was in her stall before the doctor
had finished his examination of Dolly May's dead body; even if her name
went unpublished, she did not want Summertown to feel that he had stayed
at his post while she pusillanimously escaped and ran off to amuse
herself.
"Thanks very much," Jack answered, "but I don't think I will. You know,
I hardly ever dine out. And I couldn't talk up to your level for three
minutes."
"Well, shall I do the talking? I want somebody to talk to; I shall be
all alone."
There was a perceptible pause; and Sonia, finding the one-sided dialogue
uninteresting, looked at her watch and began collecting her furs.
"Well, I don't think I very well can, you know," said Jack, "if you're
all alone."
"Not in my own house? I must say, you are the most extraordinary person!
There _are_ men--strange as it may seem--who would give a good deal for
the chance of having me to themselves at dinner."
"I'm sure of it. You're wasted on me."
Candour and conceit were so nicely matched in Jack Waring that Lady
Barbara could not tell from his voice whether he was laughing at her.