CHAPTER XIX

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST

The corridor was a short, broad passage. It was adorned with Raeburn portraits, a Lely or two, and some small Sheraton cabinets laden with rare china--treasures dimly revealed by rays borrowed from the electric lamps in Miss Cazenove’s boudoir. The open door of her room permitted a bright panel of light to fall across the parquet floor. Beyond lay artistic gloom, bounded, as I knew, by the curtained entrance to the suite of apartments given over to the reception.

My eyes were fixed directly on Karl’s tall figure and on the magnificent creature, in some wonderful Paris gown worthy of her statuesque proportions, who clung so trustingly to his arm. My thoughts--well, my thoughts were busy enough, but I vouch for it that my mind was clear and my perceptiveness neither alert nor abstracted. Yet, no sooner did I step into the darker area than I saw distinctly a glow, or radiance, emanating from the girl’s bare neck, shoulders, and arms.

Imagination played me no trick, or, if I were indeed the victim of fancy, the delusion was extraordinarily accurate in detail, because it seemed that clothing, however slight its substance, choked the feeble gleam. Therefore, only the visible portions of her arms between the semi-diaphanous shoulder-straps and the ends of the long gloves were irradiated. The phosphorescent effect was indescribably beautiful. Of course, in sober reflection, I think phosphorescence a misnomer, being a sheer impossibility, and I am driven to adopt a natural simile in likening it to the pure, green, shining light emitted by the female glow-worm, so-called, to attract the male beetle of its species.

I would have voiced my amazement, notwithstanding the spell cast on me by the loveliness of this fascinating apparition, were it not that, even as I tried to find words, both Karl and his companion vanished from my sight, and I was confronted by a totally different scene. Instead of the half-visible corridor, I tenanted a large room, brilliantly illuminated. It is noteworthy, as testifying to my normal condition, that I believed, for an instant, that the communicating door had been opened to allow the pair in front to enter the music salon.

This impression quickly yielded to realities. Yes, I repeat, realities. No ambiguous phrase would describe the clear-cut recollection I have of that vast square chamber, with its low, Arabesque ceiling, its huge fireplace of Carrara marble, its deep Italian windows, its wealth of carved wainscoting and antique furniture. A log fire burned dully in the grate. Kneeling on a rug near the hearth, but in such a position that I could see her profile, was a slimly built girl, dressed in white, whom I recognized as Maggie Hutchinson.

Seemingly, she was alone. Tears were streaming from her eyes, and her lips quivered, yet I had a queer belief that her agitation arose from some unhappy combination of sorrow fraught with gladness, one of those tantalizing experiences sent to vex frail mortality, wherein, if only circumstances could be altered, abiding melancholy would forthwith become extravagant joy. Were I a painter, seeking inspiration to depict an angel tempted to rebel but faithful to an eternal vow, I should strive to place on canvas the expression of Maggie Hutchinson’s face caught in that transient glimpse.

And that was all.

The door leading to the heedless throng of guests was really flung open, I heard the cackle of conversation blending with a piano solo, my dazed eyes rested on Karl holding back the curtain with a questioning smile on his face, and I returned to solid earth again. Now, I had seen Nora Cazenove surrounded with a halo, and Maggie Hutchinson on her knees crying, within the space of six and seven short strides. Nevertheless, keen as my wits were to note these things, they were slow enough to return to a just appreciation of my surroundings.

Karl told me afterwards that I arranged to meet Nora at the Stanhope Gate, or call at her house, at 2.30 P.M., next day, and he said that I left it to the Meteorological Bureau to decide which rendezvous we would attend. Anyhow, I forget using any such phrase or even making the appointment, and I first regained my grasp of current events when we were seated in the brougham which Karl had caused to be summoned by telephone.

“What do you think of it all now?” he asked in the unemotional voice of a man who might be alluding to the singing and the fiddling and the scandal.

“Karl, I am worn out,” I answered. “I cannot center my ideas to-night.”

“I also am worn out,” he said. “I shall be even more weary to-morrow, but I must endure my weariness without complaint. Therefore, I wonder what you will say when you know the truth.”

“That light--on Nora--did you see it?”

“Yes. Oh, yes.”

“Was she conscious of it?”

“Not of the light. That is resistance. You saw Maggie, too?”

“Of course. You made me see her.”

“That is better. You are on the right track. Soon you will understand the magnitude of the task I am called on to accomplish during the next few weeks--until I crack up, in fact. Here is your hotel. _À demain!_ I shall dine with you, and then you can tell me what Nora says. I know what she thinks, but women are secretive.”

The drive through the cool night air restored my faculties, but I was physically exhausted. The long journey, the shock of seeing Karl’s father in a paroxysm of agonized fear, the change in Karl himself, and the quite extraordinary æsthetic manifestations I had received--these latter probably taking a good deal more out of me than I allowed for--were sufficient to weary any man. Nevertheless, my brain was active enough in a commonplace way, and the thought was borne in on me that I needed assistance if the fiend which threatened the very lives of several estimable persons were to be exorcised successfully.

To appeal to some distinguished alienist was out of the question. He would begin by assuming that Karl and Maggie and Nora, not to mention Grier _père_ and my eminent self, were mad. In my dilemma I remembered Hooper. Had he accepted that appointment at the Paris Embassy? There was no harm in trying. I wrote a telegram, which I left with the night porter for despatch early in the morning, and it was a real pleasure to read the typewritten slip brought to my bedroom about 9 A.M.:--

“Charing Cross seven this evening. Get Karl to ring off until I arrive--HOOPER.”

His was a cheerful soul. The careless badinage of his message was agreeable, and I ate my breakfast in good spirits.

It was a fine morning, with a summer sun beaming from a cloudless sky. It is taking a great risk to state this in cold print, because readers have good memories, and many a dubious eye will be cast on a narrative which records unbroken sunshine in London. Nevertheless, it is true, and, as shall be seen, the weather was an essential factor in the proceedings of that memorable time.

After prolonged absence from Britain, my hats, ties, gloves, and boots required to be Anglicized. Piccadilly and the Burlington absorbed the morning comfortably; half-past two o’clock found me loitering, like any young sprig awaiting his best girl, in front of the flower-beds at Stanhope Gate.

The minutes passed. Nora, like every other woman, was unpunctual. The notion did not occur to me at the time, but I am fairly sure now that the girl’s dilatoriness, adding a slight pique to the somewhat clandestine nature of the appointment, helped to chase from my mind the shadows of the previous night’s troubling experiences.

She came at last. A flower-garden hat, a veil, a fine lace dress and a pink parasol, were effective disguises after the candor of evening attire. I did not recognize this frilly young lady until she spoke to me.

“So you really are here?” she cried, with a little laugh, and looking, I fancied, a trifle embarrassed.

“Did you not expect me?” I countered.

“Oh, one never can tell. Things which look serious under the electric light are apt to assume less dragon-like proportions on such an afternoon as this, and in the Park, of all places.”

“I am glad you think so. Some such thought has winged its way to me, too.”

Rather a neat allusion to the object of our meeting, don’t you think?--a quiet reference to the sixth sense, without dragging it in by the scalp, so to speak--but Miss Cazenove shied off the topic.

“I chanced to remember that you said you would be here about this time,” she said lamely. “I fear I bored you with my silly confidences last night, even more than poor Mr. M---- with his poems.”

_Que diable!_ Was this the fiery beauty who regaled me at midnight with her tantrums because her lover was moistening with imaginary kisses the lips, the eyes, the very hair of a rival?

“Where a nice young woman is concerned I have neither memory nor conscience,” said I, gaily.

“If you keep the one unburthened I shall not trouble the other,” she retorted. And then, with an airy dismissing of the subject, she asked: “Which way are you going?”

Will you believe it, I escorted her across the Park, by the diagonal path to Albert Gate, where she parted from me on some shopping pretext, without another word being spoken which referred in any way to Karl or her somewhat strenuous _fiançailles_! I was puzzled, annoyed, elaborately sarcastic with myself, for how was I to know that this youthful goddess’ veins were filled with a new ichor, her passions soothed and her doubts dispelled by the wonder-working force which her own heart-broken appeal for help had set loose?

A thrice fortunate chance kept Karl and me apart in that hour. Nothing could have restrained me from pooh-poohing the elaborate make-believe in which he and the two girls were living. Had it been so, I tremble now to picture the probable outcome. I can see Karl waving me aside in his quiet way, disdaining to reclaim the pervert by compulsion, and refusing me any further trust. I believe the sequel would have killed me with grief.

As it was, after some hours of undisturbed reflection, I saw the stupidity of my reasoning. Nora Cazenove was natural in her boudoir, artificial in the Park. Once launched on this new stream of logic, I was carried along with a rapidity that left me gasping. Why should I, in a mere pet induced by a woman’s vagary (as I fancied it), be so ready to deny that which I had affirmed during several years? Was there aught outrageous in Karl’s telegnomic equipment? He, a man--mentally and physically almost perfect according to the precise enough laws which govern human perfection in its ideality--might well possess additional sense-activities when the lowest forms of creation are similarly gifted. There is hardly a vertebrate fish in the sea which has not, on both sides of its body, a mucous canal bristling with nerves to enable it to perceive changes in water pressure, or other unknown properties of the element in which it lives--unknown, that is, to us, but quite thoroughly known to the fish. Even man’s legitimate sense-organs are inferior to the specialized functions of certain animals. How would Nimrod’s nose compare, in the sense of smell, with the fine scent of his favorite hound, or the range of my lady’s vision with that of the very much smaller eye of a vulture? As for hearing, ask some friend, learned in anatomy, to discourse to you upon the higher sensitiveness and comparative size of the cochlea, or snail-shell, formation in the internal ear of a desert-bred animal as contrasted with the same appliance in the _genus homo_. This branch of research chastens and humbles the mere man.

While dressing early for dinner, so as to reach the vestibule in good time to welcome Hooper, I wondered how Karl had passed the day. “Worn out” last night, he expected to be “even more weary” when next we met. And then an explanation of his words suggested itself which caused a sudden nerve-shock similar, in some respects, to that felt by the man who, in a crowded house, slept on a made-up bed over the bath, and, awaking drowsily, pulled the string of the shower-bath when he wanted hot water in the morning.

“By Jove!” I yelled, “I have it!”

“Qu’ est-ce que vous avez trouvé, m’sieu’?” demanded the startled valet who was arranging my studs.

I suppose the civil young Frenchman thought I was ill, but I reassured him, though my excitement must have made him believe that I was on the verge of lunacy. Karl was using his magnetic force continuously in order to preserve Nora from the torturing consequences of her love for him. That explained her attitude in the Park. He had beaten down in her what he termed “resistance.” She was quite passive, utterly permeated with his influence. And Maggie? In all probability she, too, was unconsciously benefiting by her affinity to this human loadstone, while he was wearing himself out, actually consuming himself, in the fierce persistence of the effort to spare them further suffering.

This theory--I might almost term it a positive knowledge so thoroughly did it hold me--explained nearly every feature of the strange events of the preceding twenty-four hours. It fitted in with and amplified my views on the happenings of earlier years, and it gave me the first satisfactory clue to the emotions exhibited by two such contradictory personalities as Nora Cazenove and Maggie Hutchinson.

I am sure the valet was glad to see the back of me. I jammed my right foot into the left boot, tried to put on my waistcoat inside out, and fumbled with my tie until he volunteered to arrange it, being prepared (I could see it in his eye) to fight for his life if I grappled with him.

At last, I raced to the elevator. I wanted to telephone to the Griers’ house and ask Karl to come at once. But he saved me that period of suspense. He was standing in the atrium, smoking a cigarette. He strolled towards me, and not even my tensely nervous condition--all the more soul-devouring in that I was forced to appear outwardly calm--prevented me from seeing the discreet admiration he won from such ladies as were seated there.

“Ah! there you are!” he cried in his frankly pleasant way. “The papers report another fiasco in the yacht race. Is there ever any wind in New York Bay?”

“Heaps,” I said, “or so many hoodlums would not have blown into the States.”

We were near enough to shake hands.

“How is Nora?” he asked.

“Just about the same as Maggie.”

He winced. In the absorption of my new discovery I had forgotten that any flippant allusion to the woman for whose sake he was ready to lay down his life must be painful. Yet, with a single keen glance into my face, he read my true feelings, which, goodness knows, were far removed from the pert words of my lips.

“Forgive me,” I said. “I am unnerved by reaching what you described last night as the ‘right track!’”

“It must be disturbing.”

“If my conclusions are justified,” I went on, surveying him with as much coolness as I was capable of, “you ought not to have that appearance of abounding vitality which you undoubtedly possess.”

“That is because the weather is clear,” he answered lightly. “If it were cloudy, I should be a mere wreck. When the sun shines, or the stars are visible, I have five times the potentiality of a dull day. But you must eat, man alive. Why are we discoursing here? Shall I telephone Jules?”

“No. Wait a few minutes. Hooper is coming.”

“Hooper? Frank E. of that ilk?”

“Yes. Luckily, I located him in Paris and wired him. He is due here any moment.”

“Well, I shall be delighted to meet him. But I cannot allow my affairs to travel outside a very small circle.”

“And I cannot allow you to wither away on my own responsibility.”

“My dear fellow, don’t be vexed with me. I am so eaten up with the mad helplessness of it all that I resent the least prying by sceptical outsiders. But if Hooper, or any other man on God’s earth, can save me and others from the doom which awaits one or all of us, lay me on the dissecting table before him. I am ready.”

Knowledge on his part, and a simple imitative action on mine, turned our eyes simultaneously towards the revolving door of the hotel. Mr. Frank E. Hooper entered, spick and span as if a troubled channel and grimy railway were not. He was followed by a rotund personage, olive-green in complexion, bearing all the outward and visible signs of an inward Jewishness. The sight of this stranger gave me an indefinable thrill, a compound of surprise and fear, with, perhaps, a touch of bewilderment. Why, I cannot tell, but I knew him instantly. I was so taken aback that I found myself staring stupidly at Hooper, who advanced with a cheery cry:

“Well now, who’d have thought to find you both here, and lookin’ so fine and dandy, too. This is real good.”

He winked at us portentously.

“That’s Steindal!” he muttered in a stage aside. “Met him in the Gare du Nord, and talked him into comin’ to this hotel. Guessed you’d like to see him.”

“We are delighted,” said Karl, gently. “Won’t you introduce us?”

“Eh? Oh, this is great. Mr. Steindal! lend me thine ear a moment. I want to make you and my good friends known to one another. Mr. Karl Grier--”

No sooner did Steindal hear Karl’s name than he flushed uncomfortably and backed away. He was perturbed so greatly that Hooper’s flow of language stopped abruptly.

But Karl advanced a pace, and there was a steady dominance in his glance which seemed to fascinate while it disconcerted the Jew.

“It is, indeed, a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Come and dine with us. Come just as you are; and you, too, Hooper. It is too late to change.”

Without another spoken word he wheeled towards the restaurant, walking across the vestibule with head erect and hands clasped behind his back.

And we three followed, Steindal with the sulkiness of a stricken dog, Hooper somewhat awed by the unexpected outcome of the surprise he had planned, and I--well, I felt as though some wizard had converted me into an electric eel.