Of course any feeling of security built upon so slight foundation, and
concerning a matter of such paramount and vital moment, could but be
transient. With the next daylight, dread and anxiety reasserted
themselves. And Pryde was again the victim of restlessness and
uncertainty.
Helen’s presence, her nearness to the library all the time, and her
actual occupation of it whenever she chose, disconcerted him. He hoped
that she would go back to Curzon Street almost at once. Anxious as he
was to go over his feverish searching again and still again, he would
eagerly have turned the key in the library door, and taken her back to
London, deferring for a few days what he again believed and hoped would
be the result and the reward of yet one more hunt. It had been great
relief to feel that the deadly document was already destroyed. It would
be a thousandfold more comfort to see it burn—and ten thousand times
more satisfactory. He should _know_ then. He could _never_ know else. He
should be free and unafraid then. In no other way could he ever attain
unalloyed freedom, in no other way escape the rough clutch of fear.
But Helen had come to Oxshott to stay—for the present. And on the
second day Pryde learned to his annoyance that she was expecting Dr.
Latham by an afternoon train.
Well, what would be would be, more especially if Helen had decreed it,
and he accepted the physician’s appearance with a patient shrug—as
patient a shrug as he could muster.
It naturally fell to him to act host to this man guest of Helen’s, and
he liked Latham more than he liked most men, and resented his intrusion
as little as he could any one’s, unless Angela Hilary might have come in
the doctor’s stead. Angela would have played the better into his hands,
by the shrill claim she would have made upon Helen with a chatter of
frocks and a running hither and thither. And, too, he had come to enjoy
Mrs. Hilary quite apart from any usefulness to be wrung from the vibrant
personality. He enjoyed the breeze of it, and often turned into her
hotel as other overworked and brain-fagged men run down to Brighton or
Folkestone for a day of relaxation, and the tonic sea-air. He had come
to find positive refreshment in occasional whiffs of her saline sparkle,
and no little diversion in speculating as to what she would say next,
and about what. And this of the woman of whom he had once said that she
and her inconsequent chatter of kaleidoscope nonsenses reminded him of
nothing but the wild fluttings and distraught flutterings of a hen in
front of a motor! Truly with him she was an acquired taste. But as truly
he had acquired it. He had come more nearly to know her—her as she was,
as well as her as she seemed. Many people acquired that taste—when they
came to more know the blithe alien—and not a few felt it instinctively
at the first of acquaintance.
But Angela Hilary was not here, and Horace Latham was—and Pryde did his
best to make the latter’s visit pleasant, but without the slightest
effort or wish to prolong it.
“Do you know, Pryde,” Latham said musingly, as they smoked together
after dinner—alone for the moment in the library—“it always puzzled
me——”
“Puzzled you?”
“I have so often wondered about it—it came so suddenly—Bransby’s
death. As a physician I could not just understand it then, and I have
never been quite able to understand it since. And as a physician—I’d
like to. It’s been rather like losing track of the end of a case you’ve
been at particular pains to diagnose. It’s unsatisfactory.”
“I don’t quite see——”
“It must have been a shock that killed him—a great shock.” Latham’s
voice and manner were the manner and voice of his consulting-room. He
was probing—kindly and easily—but probing skillfully. Pryde felt it
distinctly. “Did he, by any chance, know that your brother intended to
desert?”
“No—I don’t think so.” Stephen was well on his guard. “But he knew that
Hugh was in some trouble at the office. That was why Grant came here
that night.”
“Oh, yes,” Latham nodded. “I remember. No, it wasn’t that. His interview
with Grant disturbed him, I know—but it was something bigger that
killed him!”
“Why, how—how do you mean?” Stephen spoke as naturally as he could.
“You were the last person who saw him alive, were you not?” Latham
questioned for question.
“Yes.”
“How was he when you left him—when you said good-night?”
“He was all right,” Pryde spoke reflectingly.
“If my memory serves me,” the physician continued, “you had gone from
the house.”
“When he died? Yes—some time before he died. I was on my way to London.
There was something Uncle Dick wanted me to do for him in town—er it
was nothing important.”
“Then,” Latham added musingly, “it was after you left that this shock
occurred to him. It must have come from something in this room.”
“Something in this room?” Strive as he might, and he strove his utmost,
Stephen could not keep the sharp agitation he felt out of his voice.
But Latham did not notice it—or did not appear to. “Yes,” he said in
his same level voice, “a letter—some papers. Was anything of importance
found on his table?”
“Nothing.”
“Curious!”
Pryde, fascinated by his own device and his hope, the device born of the
hope, was lost in thought, and sat looking from table to fire, measuring
again with his trained eyes distance and angles. And, seeing the other’s
absorption, Latham was watching him openly now, with eyes also well
trained, and, because less anxious, probably shrewder. The physician was
diagnosing.
Stephen spoke first. Latham had intended that he should. “Latham?”
“Yes?”
“If you were right,” rising in his tense interest,—“if there had been
some papers that caused the shock that killed him—isn’t it
possible”—returning to his chair as suddenly as he had quit it—“isn’t
it probable that while he had it in his hand, sitting just here perhaps,
he tried to rise, he was faint and tried to reach the bell, and the
paper fell from his hand, fell into the fire and was destroyed?” As he
spoke he enacted, rising, turning ineffectually, convulsively toward the
bell, let an imaginary paper drift from his hand. Then he caught the
significance of his own excitement, ruled himself, and sauntered to the
fireplace.
But the diagnosis was completed. “I dare say that might have happened,”
Latham said consideringly.
“It’s the only way I can explain it,” Pryde’s voice vibrated with his
infinite relief.
“Explain what, Pryde?” Latham asked in his Harley Street voice. To the
insinuation of that deft tone many a patient had yielded a secret
unconsciously.
But Stephen recalled himself, and was on his guard again.
“Why—why—this sudden death.” A slight smile just flicked the
physician’s serene face. Pryde rose once more and stood again gazing,
half hypnotized by his own suggestion. “It was a great blow to me,
Latham, a great blow”—a sigh, so sharp that it seemed to shake him,
ended his sentence. “I torture myself trying to picture just what
happened after I left this room.”
Latham made no reply. Presently Pryde spoke again, repeating his own
words rather wildly. “Torture myself trying to picture just what
happened after I left this room.”
Still Latham said nothing. He was considering.