As Chester waited for an answer to his summons the thought of the
awkwardness of his position struck him, but he was strung up and
determined to go on with his quest at all hazards. At the end of a
minute there was no reply, and he knocked and rang again, with the hope
rising that he was on the right tack at last, for the silence accorded
with the mystery of the place he sought.
It was not until he had roused the echoes within the house for the third
time that he heard the rattle of a chain being taken down; then the door
was opened slowly, and Chester's heart sank as he found himself face to
face with a dim-eyed, sleepy-looking old man, thin, stooping, and untidy
of aspect, in his long, dusty dressing-gown and slippers. He was
wearing an old-fashioned pair of round glass, silver-rimmed spectacles,
whose ends were secured by a piece of black ribbon; and these he pushed
up on his forehead as he turned his head side-wise and peered at the
visitor.
"I'm afraid you knocked before, sir," he said in a quiet, dreamy tone.
"Yes--yes. I ought not to have come in this unceremonious way."
"Pray do not apologise," said the old gentleman, mildly. "I was busy
reading, and did not hear."
He pushed his glasses a little higher and smiled in a pleasant,
benevolent fashion, while at the first glance Chester saw that he was
quite off the scent. For he gazed past the old man into the great hall
whose walls were covered with book-shelves, while parcels and piles of
volumes were heaped up in every available corner.
"I see that I have made a mistake," said Chester, hastily.
"Indeed?"
"I have come to the wrong house. I am very sorry. I am trying to find
some people here."
"Yes? Well, houses are very much alike. Will you step in? I can
perhaps help you. I think I have a Directory somewhere--somewhere, if I
can lay my hand upon it, for I seldom use such a work, and I have so
many books."
The old gentleman, whose appearance branded him as a dreamy, absorbed
bookworm, drew back, and Chester involuntarily entered the hall, to note
that with the book-cases away it would be such a place as he had
visited; but while that was magnificently furnished, and pervaded by the
soft glow of electric light, here all was dust and mouldering knowledge,
the entrance suggesting that the rest of the house must be the same.
"Pray come in," said the old man, after closing the door; and he led the
way into what had been intended for a large dining-room, but had been
turned by its occupant into a library, packed with books from floor to
ceiling; piles were upon the tables and chairs, and heaps here and there
upon the dusty old Turkey carpet.
"Directory--Directory," said the old man, looking slowly round. "Books,
books, books, but not the one we want."
"You seem to have a large and valuable library," Chester ventured to
observe.
"Eh? Yes, I suppose so. The work of a long life, sir. But very dusty
all over the house. What did you say was the name of the people you
wanted?"
"I--that is," stammered Chester, confusedly, "I do not know their name.
Some patients whom I want to find out."
"Are you a doctor, sir?" said the old man, looking at his visitor with a
benevolent smile. "Grand profession. I should have liked to have been
a doctor. But is not that a very vague description? Names are so
useful for distinguishing one person, place, or thing, from another.
But it was in this street, you say?"
"Well--er--no, I am not sure," said Chester, hurriedly.
"Dear me! that is rather perplexing," said the old man, taking off his
spectacles and beginning to wipe them upon the tail of his
dressing-gown. "But," he added, as if relieved, "the Directory would be
of no use if you do not know the name."
"None whatever," said Chester, who was smarting with the thought that
this pleasant old gentleman must take him for a lunatic. "Pray forgive
me for troubling you in this unceremonious way."
"Oh, not at all, my dear sir, not at all. I have so few visitors,
though," he added, "as you see I am surrounded by old friends."
"The same style of house--the same sort of hall," thought Chester, as he
went out after a few more words had been exchanged. "Could it have been
in this street?"
He looked up sharply at a heavy-faced butler and a tall, smart,
powdered-headed footman, who were standing at the door of the next
house, doing nothing, with the air of two men whose employers were out.
Chester looked eagerly at them and passed by, but the door was nearly
closed, and he could not see inside.
His sharp look was returned with interest, the two men evidently
expecting him to come up the steps and address them, but he went on for
a short distance in an undecided way, thinking deeply, and trying hard
to see through the mental mist which shut him in. But a short time
before he had felt convinced that he had found the house and been
disappointed; now he felt quite as sure that the mansion where the two
servants were standing must be the place. He had no special reason for
coming to the conclusion, but all the same a curious feeling of
attraction made him slacken his pace, angry and annoyed the while that
he had not stopped and spoken to the men.
"Great heavens! What a vacillating moral coward I have grown," he said
to himself. "What would have been easier?"
He said this but felt that the task was terribly hard, for it seemed
such a childish thing to do--to go about asking folk if that was the
house where some people lived who had fetched him to attend a man who
had been shot, and kept him a prisoner for days and days before drugging
him and having him shut up in a cab to be driven about in the middle of
the night.
"Why, if I could explain all this to them," he said to himself at last,
"they'd think I was a harmless kind of madman, troubled with memories of
the Arabian Nights Entertainments, which I was trying to drag into
everyday life like a Barber's hundredth brother, or a one-eyed Calendar.
Come, come, old fellow," he continued, as he mentally apostrophised
himself; "go back home and prescribe for yourself, and then begin to
show someone that you have been suffering from a strange mental vagary,
brought about by over-excitement. She will believe it in time, and all
may come right again. Ah! how like."
He started and hurried after an open carriage in which two ladies were
seated. He only saw the profile of one of them very slightly, and her
back as she passed, but there was a turn of the figure--a particularly
graceful air, as she leaned forward to give some instruction to the
coachman--which struck him as being exactly similar to attitudes he had
seen Marion assume again and again when attending upon her brother.
He jumped into a cab and told the man to follow the victoria, with the
result that the latter came to a standstill in front of one of the
fashionable West-End drapery establishments.
Chester was close up as the lady alighted, and he sprang out excitedly
to go and speak to her.
There was every opportunity, for the carriage drove on with her
companion, and she crossed the pavement alone, to walk a few steps alone
in front of the great plate-glass window, gazing carelessly in at the
various costumes displayed.
"A woman after all," he said to himself, bitterly annoyed at what he
considered her frivolity in thinking of dress at a time when her brother
was in all probability suffering still.
"But it is their nature, or the result of their education," he said the
next minute, as he went close up behind her, and saw her face reflected
clearly in the long series of mirrors at the back.