I
It is told by a decayed gentleman at the sign of _The Leather Butler_,
which is in Shepherd’s Market, which is in Mayfair, how one night three
men behaved in a most peculiar way; and one of them was left for dead.
Towards twelve o’clock on a night in the month of November some years
ago, three men were ascending the noble stairway of a mansion in
Grosvenor Square. The mansion, although appointed in every detail--to
suit, however, a severe taste--had yet a sour and sensitive atmosphere,
as of a house long untenanted but by caretakers.
The first of the men, for they ascended in single file, held aloft a
kitchen candlestick: whilst his companions made the best progress they
could among the deep shadows that the faulty light cast on the oaken
stairway. He who went last, the youngest of the three, said gaily:
“Mean old bird, my aunt! Cutting off the electric-light just because she
is away.”
“Fur goodness’ sake!” said the other.
The leader, whose face the candle-light revealed as thin almost to
asceticism, a face white and tired, finely moulded but soiled in texture
by the dissipations of a man of the world, contented himself with a
curt request to his young friend not to speak so loud.
It was, however, the gentleman in between the two whom it will advantage
the reader to consider. This was an unusually tall and strongly built
man. Yet it was not his giant stature, but rather the assurance of his
bearing, which was remarkable. His very clothes sat on his huge frame
with an air of firmness, of finality, that, as even a glance at his two
companions would show, is deprecated by English tailors, whose
inflexible formula it is that the elegance of the casual is the only
possible elegance for gentlemen of the mode. While his face had that
weathered, yet untired and eager, look which is the enviable possession
of many Americans, and is commonly considered to denote, for reasons not
very clearly defined, the quality known as poise. Not, however, that
this untired and eager look is, as some have supposed, the outward sign
of a lack of interest in dissipation, but rather of an enthusiastic and
naïve curiosity as to the varieties of the same. The gentleman from
America looked, in fine, to be a proper man; and one who, in his early
thirties, had established a philosophy of which his comfort and his
assurance of retaining it were the two poles, his easy perception of
humbug the pivot, and his fearlessness the latitude and longitude.
It was on the second landing that the leader, whose name was Quillier,
and on whom the dignity of an ancient baronetcy seemed to have an almost
intolerably tiring effect, flung open a door. He did not pass into the
room, but held the candlestick towards the gentleman from America. And
his manner was so impersonal as to be almost rude, which is a fault of
breeding when it is bored.
“The terms of the bet,” said Quillier, “are that this candle must
suffice you for the night. That is understood?”
“Sure, why not?” smiled the gentleman from America. “It’s a bum bet, and
it looks to me like a bum candle. But do I care? No, sir!”
“Further,” continued the impersonal, pleasant voice, “that you are
allowed no matches, and therefore cannot relight the candle when it has
gone out. That if you can pass the night in that room, Kerr-Anderson and
I pay you five hundred pounds. And _vice versa_.”
“That’s all right, Quillier. We’ve got all that.” The gentleman from
America took the candle from Quillier’s hand and looked into the room,
but with no more than faint interest. In that faulty light little could
be seen but the oak panelling, the heavy hangings about the great bed,
and a steel engraving of a Meissonier duellist lunging at them from a
wall nearby.
“Seldom,” said he, “have I seen a room look less haunted----”
“Ah,” vaguely said Sir Cyril Quillier.
“But,” said the gentleman from America, “since you and Kerr-Anderson
insist on presenting me with five hundred pounds for passing the night
in it, do I complain? No, sir!”
“Got your revolver?” queried young Kerr-Anderson, a chubby youth whose
profession was dining out.
“That is so,” said the gentleman from America.
Quillier said: “Well, Puce; I don’t mind telling you that I had just as
soon this silly business was over. I have been betting all my life, but
I have always had a preference for those bets which did not turn on a
man’s life or death----”
“Say, listen, Quillier, you can’t frighten me with that junk!” snapped
Mr. Puce.
“My aunt,” said young Kerr-Anderson, “will be very annoyed if anything
happens and she gets to hear of it. She hates a corpse in her house more
than anyone I know. You’re sure you are going on with it, Puce?”
“Boy, if Abraham Lincoln was to come up this moment and tell me Queen
Anne was dead I’d be as sure he was speaking the truth as that I’m going
to spend this night in this old haunted room of your aunt’s. Yes, sir!
And now I’ll give you good-night, boys. Warn your mothers to be ready to
give you five hundred pounds to hand on to Howard Cornelius Puce.”
“I like Americans,” said Quillier vaguely. “They are so enthusiastic.
Good-night, Puce, and God bless you. I hope you have better luck than
the last man who spent a night in that room. He was strangled.
Good-night, my friend.”
“Aw, have a heart!” growled Mr. Puce. “You get a guy so low with your
talk that I feel I could put on a tall hat and crawl under a snake.”