When she left the room he went into the laboratory and took his watch off the skeleton"s fingers. His face wore a troubled expression, but after a moment"s thought it cleared again. His memory was a complete blank.
"I suppose I left it on the writing-table when I went out to take the air," he said. And there was no one present to contradict him.
He crossed to the window and blew carelessly some ashes of burned paper from the sill, and stood watching them as they floated away lazily over the tops of the trees.
XI
THE EMPTY SLEEVE
1
The Gilmer brothers were a couple of fussy and pernickety old bachelors of a rather retiring, not to say timid, disposition. There was grey in the pointed beard of John, the elder, and if any hair had remained to William it would also certainly have been of the same shade. They had private means. Their main interest in life was the collection of violins, for which they had the instinctive _flair_ of true connoisseurs. Neither John nor William, however, could play a single note. They could only pluck the open strings. The production of tone, so necessary before purchase, was done vicariously for them by another.
The only objection they had to the big building in which they occupied the roomy top floor was that Morgan, liftman and caretaker, insisted on wearing a billyc.o.c.k with his uniform after six o"clock in the evening, with a result disastrous to the beauty of the universe. For "Mr.
Morgan," as they called him between themselves, had a round and pasty face on the top of a round and conical body. In view, however, of the man"s other rare qualities--including his devotion to themselves--this objection was not serious.
He had another peculiarity that amused them. On being found fault with, he explained nothing, but merely repeated the words of the complaint.
"Water in the bath wasn"t really hot this morning, Morgan!"
"Water in the bath not reely "ot, wasn"t it, sir?"
Or, from William, who was something of a faddist:
"My jar of sour milk came up late yesterday, Morgan."
"Your jar sour milk come up late, sir, yesterday?"
Since, however, the statement of a complaint invariably resulted in its remedy, the brothers had learned to look for no further explanation.
Next morning the bath _was_ hot, the sour milk _was_ "brortup"
punctually. The uniform and billyc.o.c.k hat, though, remained an eyesore and source of oppression.
On this particular night John Gilmer, the elder, returning from a Masonic rehearsal, stepped into the lift and found Mr. Morgan with his hand ready on the iron rope.
"Fog"s very thick outside," said Mr. John pleasantly; and the lift was a third of the way up before Morgan had completed his customary repet.i.tion: "Fog very thick outside, yes, sir." And Gilmer then asked casually if his brother were alone, and received the reply that Mr.
Hyman had called and had not yet gone away.
Now this Mr. Hyman was a Hebrew, and, like themselves, a connoisseur in violins, but, unlike themselves, who only kept their specimens to look at, he was a skilful and exquisite player. He was the only person they ever permitted to handle their pedigree instruments, to take them from the gla.s.s cases where they reposed in silent splendour, and to draw the sound out of their wondrous painted hearts of golden varnish. The brothers loathed to see his fingers touch them, yet loved to hear their singing voices in the room, for the latter confirmed their sound judgment as collectors, and made them certain their money had been well spent. Hyman, however, made no attempt to conceal his contempt and hatred for the mere collector. The atmosphere of the room fairly pulsed with these opposing forces of silent emotion when Hyman played and the Gilmers, alternately writhing and admiring, listened. The occasions, however, were not frequent. The Hebrew only came by invitation, and both brothers made a point of being in. It was a very formal proceeding--something of a sacred rite almost.
John Gilmer, therefore, was considerably surprised by the information Morgan had supplied. For one thing, Hyman, he had understood, was away on the Continent.
"Still in there, you say?" he repeated, after a moment"s reflection.
"Still in there, Mr. John, sir." Then, concealing his surprise from the liftman, he fell back upon his usual mild habit of complaining about the billyc.o.c.k hat and the uniform.
"You really should try and remember, Morgan," he said, though kindly.
"That hat does _not_ go well with that uniform!"
Morgan"s pasty countenance betrayed no vestige of expression. ""At don"t go well with the yewniform, sir," he repeated, hanging up the disreputable bowler and replacing it with a gold-braided cap from the peg. "No, sir, it don"t, do it?" he added cryptically, smiling at the transformation thus effected.
And the lift then halted with an abrupt jerk at the top floor. By somebody"s carelessness the landing was in darkness, and, to make things worse, Morgan, clumsily pulling the iron rope, happened to knock the billyc.o.c.k from its peg so that his sleeve, as he stooped to catch it, struck the switch and plunged the scene in a moment"s complete obscurity.
And it was then, in the act of stepping out before the light was turned on again, that John Gilmer stumbled against something that shot along the landing past the open door. First he thought it must be a child, then a man, then--an animal. Its movement was rapid yet stealthy.
Starting backwards instinctively to allow it room to pa.s.s, Gilmer collided in the darkness with Morgan, and Morgan incontinently screamed.
There was a moment of stupid confusion. The heavy framework of the lift shook a little, as though something had stepped into it and then as quickly jumped out again. A rushing sound followed that resembled footsteps, yet at the same time was more like gliding--someone in soft slippers or stockinged feet, greatly hurrying. Then came silence again.
Morgan sprang to the landing and turned up the electric light. Mr.
Gilmer, at the same moment, did likewise to the switch in the lift.
Light flooded the scene. Nothing was visible.
"Dog or cat, or something, I suppose, wasn"t it?" exclaimed Gilmer, following the man out and looking round with bewildered amazement upon a deserted landing. He knew quite well, even while he spoke, that the words were foolish.
"Dog or cat, yes, sir, or--something," echoed Morgan, his eyes narrowed to pin-points, then growing large, but his face stolid.
"The light should have been on." Mr. Gilmer spoke with a touch of severity. The little occurrence had curiously disturbed his equanimity.
He felt annoyed, upset, uneasy.
For a perceptible pause the liftman made no reply, and his employer, looking up, saw that, besides being fl.u.s.tered, he was white about the jaws. His voice, when he spoke, was without its normal a.s.surance. This time he did not merely repeat. He explained.
"The light _was_ on, sir, when last _I_ come up!" he said, with emphasis, obviously speaking the truth. "Only a moment ago," he added.
Mr. Gilmer, for some reason, felt disinclined to press for explanations.
He decided to ignore the matter.
Then the lift plunged down again into the depths like a diving-bell into water; and John Gilmer, pausing a moment first to reflect, let himself in softly with his latch-key, and, after hanging up hat and coat in the hall, entered the big sitting-room he and his brother shared in common.
The December fog that covered London like a dirty blanket had penetrated, he saw, into the room. The objects in it were half shrouded in the familiar yellowish haze.
2
In dressing-gown and slippers, William Gilmer, almost invisible in his armchair by the gas-stove across the room, spoke at once. Through the thick atmosphere his face gleamed, showing an extinguished pipe hanging from his lips. His tone of voice conveyed emotion, an emotion he sought to suppress, of a quality, however, not easy to define.
"Hyman"s been here," he announced abruptly. "You must have met him. He"s this very instant gone out."
It was quite easy to see that something had happened, for "scenes" leave disturbance behind them in the atmosphere. But John made no immediate reference to this. He replied that he had seen no one--which was strictly true--and his brother thereupon, sitting bolt upright in the chair, turned quickly and faced him. His skin, in the foggy air, seemed paler than before.
"That"s odd," he said nervously.
"What"s odd?" asked John.
"That you didn"t see--anything. You ought to have run into one another on the doorstep." His eyes went peering about the room. He was distinctly ill at ease. "You"re positive you saw no one? Did Morgan take him down before you came? Did Morgan see him?" He asked several questions at once.
"On the contrary, Morgan told me he was still here with you. Hyman probably walked down, and didn"t take the lift at all," he replied.
"That accounts for neither of us seeing him." He decided to say nothing about the occurrence in the lift, for his brother"s nerves, he saw plainly, were on edge.