The Tower of Oblivion, Page 2

  PART II

  THE STERN CHASE

  I

  _Lost_: A man with a brass name-plate in his pocket, probably bent in wrenching. Personal appearance difficult to describe, because something has happened to him that does not happen to the generality of people. When last seen appeared to be about thirty-five, but may look younger. Was wearing dark blue suit and shirt with torn neckband.

  _Missing_: Derwent Rose, novelist, late of 120 _bis_, Cambridge Circus, W.C. Age forty-five, tall and very strongly built, eyes grey-blue, hair chestnut-brown, strikingly handsome features. In possession of money, as his banking account was closed the morning after his disappearance. Served with Second Battalion Royal Firthshire Fusiliers. Is thought not to have left the country.

  _For Disposal_: Quantity of black oak furniture, comprising Jacobean oval table with beaded edge (copy), six upright chairs, tallboy, chest; also large brass bedstead, drawers, two pairs heavy damask curtains, crockery, plate, etc., etc. Also several thousand volumes, including small collection medical works, and others Curious and Miscellaneous. The whole may be viewed at 120 _bis_, Cambridge Circus, W.C. Apply Caretaker.

  So the announcements might have run had there been any; but there werenone. I saw to that. The police are excellent people, but I consideredthis a little out of their line and did not call them in. As for thefurniture and effects, they remained for the present where they were, Ipaying his rent and putting his key into my pocket. As for Derwent Rose,novelist, aged forty-five, it might be months before anybody missed him,and it would be supposed that he had gone into retirement to write abook. As for the man with the torn neckband and the brass name-plate inhis pocket, a prudent person would be a little careful how he tried toidentify him. You see what I mean. Julia Oliphant and myself were in aclass apart; we should know him on sight, since we knew what hadhappened to him and what we might expect. But nobody else knew, nobodyin the whole wide world. Therefore they would be wise to look at himtwice before accosting him. Nobody wants to be certified and locked up,and that was what might conceivably happen if anybody insisted too muchon resemblance or identity in the case of a man who was obviouslyfifteen or twenty years younger than he could be proved to be. Muchsafer to call the fancied resemblance a coincidence and let it go atthat.

  Therefore--exit Derwent Rose, novelist, aged forty-five.

  And enter in his stead--who?

  Exactly. That was the whole point. He had not entered. He was somewhereon Life's stage, but behind, or in the wings, or up in the flies, ordown underneath the traps. He was his own understudy, but whatever lineshe spoke, whatever gestures he made, happened "off." The call-boy ranhither and thither calling his name, but in vain. Oblivion had takenhim. It had taken him so completely that he needed to dress no part, toalter himself with no make-up. He was as free to walk about in thelimelight as you or I. Freer--far freer----

  For where was the birth certificate of this man who had lost ten yearsin a few months and for all anybody knew might now have lost anotherten--twelve--twenty? Of what use was his _dossier_ in the MilitaryRecords Office? Of what value was his name on the register, his will ifhe had made one, his signed contracts, his insurance policy? Of whatvalidity was the photograph on his passport, or who could call him intoCourt as a witness? What clergyman or Justice of the Peace could certifythat he had known him for a number of years? What musty and mendaciousfile in Somerset House dare produce a record to show that a man who wasobviously so many years younger had been born in the year 1875? Free,this Apollo for beauty and Ajax for strength? As far as documents wereconcerned he was more than free. He had side-stepped them all, and wasthe only completely free man alive.

  But he was not free from Julia Oliphant and myself, for we knew allabout it. His own brother he might fool, had he had one; he might deludethe nurse who had rocked him as a child were she still alive; but us hecould not deceive. With us his unimaginable alibi would not serve norhis unique anonymity go down. If he wished to know us, he could come upto us (but to us only) with a proffered hand and an ordinary "How do youdo." But if he did not wish to know us he had us to fear. We knew hissecret.

  But nobody else--nobody in the whole round world else.

  II

  That, in its essence, and speaking very roughly, was the position; butit is worth examining a little more particularly. I will leave aside forthe moment such questions as why we wanted to find him, whether we oughtto try to find him, whether, if a man chose to expunge his identity likethat he had not a perfect right to do so. I will assume that he was tobe sought and found. On that assumption I reasoned as follows:

  Here--somewhere--was a man of unknown age and uncertain personalappearance. When last seen he was, and looked, thirty-five, but he maynow be, and look, any age up to, or rather down to, sixteen. Thatdepended entirely on the rate of those backward jerks of which hehimself had failed to find the ratio. But where begin to look for him?At what Charing Cross or Clapham Junction, where all the world passessooner or later, wait for him? What tube station watch? Round whatstreet corner lurk? Examine it, I say, a little more closely.

  And take first his two scales of time. As a matter of incontrovertiblefact he was living in the year 1920. In the year 1920 a big andhandsome and athletic man was living a daily life, presumably somewherein London. But for him that year was 1910, and continually, day by dayand hour by hour, he must be struggling to reconcile those two periods.It could make no difference that he knew that he was living in bothyears simultaneously. A hundred times a day he might say to himself, "Iquite understand; this is both 1910 and 1920; I've got them perfectlyclear and separate in my head." But the hundred-and-first time wouldcatch him tripping. He would stumble over some sudden and unexpectedtrifle. Let me make this clear by means of a small incident thathappened to myself. Not long ago I walked into Charbonnel's for a cup oftea, and was passing through the shop on the ground floor and about tomount the stairs when I was politely fetched back. I was told, with asmile that might have been given to a man just returned from Auckland orMesopotamia, that the upper room had been closed for some time. I hadnot been in Charbonnel's since the early days of the war, and waslooking, in 1920, for a Charbonnel's that had ceased to exist.

  So Derwent Rose, however much he was on his guard, would once in a whilefind himself looking for something that no longer existed.

  Next, there was the question of money--common money, and how much of ithe had got. Obviously, and supposing he was to be found, it was no goodlooking for him in places where he could not possibly afford to be. Hewould be found in a cheaper place or a more expensive one according tothe state of his purse. I had no means of knowing how much money he hadwithdrawn from the bank. I had never known much about his financesexcept that sometimes he had been hard-up, at others comparatively"flush," but that he had never, as far as I knew, borrowed. Thus thevulgarest of all considerations had an important bearing on our veryfirst step: Where to look for him?

  Next there was to be considered a combination of these things--thefactor of money-plus-time. Say he had drawn one hundred pounds or fivehundred pounds from the bank--for all I knew it might have been either,or more, or less. Well, we all know that a sum that was sufficient for aman in 1910 does not go very far in 1920. There has been a war.... Sowas he haunting expensive places, having (as might have been said ofanybody but him) "a short life and a gay one," or would he be foundspinning out his Bradburys as long as possible on a modester scale? Nay,was he even living on his capital at all? Was it not possible that hehad found employment of some kind? If so, of what kind? They ask fewquestions about identity at the dock-gates; was that it, and was he tobe looked for in a workman's early-morning tram? Or had he, a manwithout a shred of paper to be his warranty, managed to talk somebodyinto something bigger, and was he one of these ephemeral BusinessBubbles, lording it for a few months in somebody else's car and floatingthe higher because of the hotness of the air inside him? I did
notthink, by the way, that either of these last two things was very likely;but nothing was more impossible than anything else, and I am merelytrying to show the size of the haystack in which we must hunt for ourneedle.

  The merest glance at the problem made it plain that the only startingpoint was his last actually-known age--thirty-five. All else was theblindest guesswork. And it was equally plain that the best likelihood offinding him lay in the chance that he would more or less repeat (or seekto repeat) his former experiences at that age. Past associations mightpull him, he might frequent some places rather than others, some personsor class of persons rather than others. The question was, could his lifeat thirty-five be so reconstructed that this hope should not be tooslender? That was my idea, and I began to ransack my memory in search ofindications that might further it.

  But almost from the start I despaired. Sketched thus airily the thinghad a deluding look of logic and simplicity; but the first contact withactuality scattered all to the winds again. For example, I have hintedat an echo of an earlier wildness that had for some reason or otherovertaken him again at thirty-five; but when I came to examine it Ifound that I knew almost nothing at all about it. He had always had thedecency to keep these things very much to himself. I had not the vaguestidea of who his companions had been, what his haunts. Added to this wasthe difficulty that I was approaching the question in reverse. He hadslept since I had last seen him, and, sleeping, had presumably once moreslipped back. But how far back? He might be (so to speak) at the crestof the wave, farther back still at the beginning of it, or even past italtogether--no longer the man of _An Ape in Hell_, but him of _TheVicarage of Bray_. It was even not impossible that he was sixteen anddead.... So all that I could do was to nail myself firmly down tothirty-five and as much of him at that time as I could remember orascertain.

  And instantly the question loomed up largely: "What about JuliaOliphant? Hadn't she better be left out of this, at any rate for thepresent?"

  Now my position in the world practically forces the conventionalattitude on me. All things considered, I think I should adopt thatattitude in any case, for I have only to look at any other one and myhesitation doesn't last long. But at the same time I do go to lectureson such subjects as Relative and Absolute Age, and in other things, as Ihave explained, I liked at that time to keep in step and abreast. I haveeven made an attempt to understand the mystery that is called theThermionic Valve.

  But neither valve nor age theory is newer or stranger to me than thechange that seems to have come over the sex-relationship during theselast years. I trust that on the whole I manage to maintain a happymedium--it is the dickens of a thing to have sprung on one latish inlife--but I only know that I myself, old-fashioned as I am, sometimesfind myself discussing with the nicest women, and as freely as I shoulddiscuss them with a man, the--may I say the "rummest" subjects? And asfor Julia Oliphant's attitude to all this newness, I will only say thatwhile she might have been ten years behind Madge Aird in matters ofdress, she was not ten minutes behind her in anything else.

  But discussions "in the air" with her were one thing, but discussions ofan actual Derwent Rose at thirty-five quite another. "Oh, I knowperfectly well the sort of thing it _might_ have been, so don't let thatworry you," she had said, and for once, just once, I had had to beprecise. But once was enough. Call it the old fossil in me if you will,but it makes a very great difference when a woman has said, as simply asJulia had spoken, "Of course; all my life; not that he ever gave me athought, but that doesn't matter."

  For those few words had placed us, instantly and beyond all recall, on afooting of the last intimacy. They had revealed her once for all, andthe matter need never be referred to between us again. And as to aswimmer the wavelet that slaps his face and fills his mouth with salt isof more importance than all the immensities below, so we kept to thelevel of the trifles of life. Often, at a word or a look, we were readyto quarrel. Perhaps, in view of those still depths beneath, ourbickering was a necessity and a refuge.

  III

  That there was much of my search that I should have to conduct withouther was definitely brought home to me on the very first evening when Itook a stroll through the region of the West End theatres, still wearingthe suit I had worn all day. I ought to say that as I was paying hisrent for him I had allowed myself the use of his rooms, and for thepresent 120 _bis_, Cambridge Circus, was one of my addresses. There wasalways the chance that he might have forgotten something in 1920 ofwhich he had need in 1910, and that he might steal in, if only for amoment, any dark night when things were quiet.

  It was a beautiful London evening, not quite twilight. A tenderafter-glow lay over the Circus, and, if jewels can grow, the lamps mighthave been jewels a few moments after their birth. It was one of thoseevenings when you delay even to dine, knowing that when you come outagain the glamour will have gone and you will have seen a loved andfamiliar thing once more and once less. So I strolled, scanning faces,sometimes remembering what I was scanning them for, sometimes forgettingagain. It might happen that I should find myself suddenly looking intohis face. Of course the chances were millions to one that I should not.

  I walked as far as the Hippodrome, and then turned and crossed the road.Even in those few minutes the sky was no longer the same. It wasmysteriously bluer, and the soft crocus-quality of the lamps had gone. Ifound myself opposite a doorway with a coronet of lights over it and atall commissionaire beneath them. A man had just gone in. He was not inthe least like Rose, and there was no reason why I should have followedhim more than any other man; but I did follow him, not into the brightand crowded and smoky ground-floor room of which I had a glimpse, but upa staircase with brass-edged treads and the word "Lounge" at the bottomof it. I found myself in an empty upper room with leather-covered sofasset deeply into the walls, numerous little tables with green-tiled tops,and a small quadrant of a bar in one corner. The man I had followed wasalready at this bar, and the young woman behind it was preparing hisdrink.

  "Bit quiet, isn't it?" I heard him say. He had rather a pleasing sort offace, of the kind that a year or two ago one associated with the brimmedhat of an Australian trooper. "Say, is this the best London can do for aman nowadays?"

  "London nowadays!" the young woman declared with contempt. "_I_ shouldsay so! Where've _you_ been this long time? Where the bluebottles go toin the winter I suppose. Don't you know this is a tea-room now?"

  "Go on!"

  "A tea-room, I tell you. Ladies not admitted after five. The new sign'llbe up to-morrow. Oh, you can bring your old grannie here now!"

  "Bit different from Stiff Brown's time then!"

  "Different!----"

  The conversation continued, in the same sense. It was precisely myCharbonnel's experience over again. Whatever notoriety the place mightonce have possessed, it was now a perfectly reputable resort, a tea-roomin the afternoons, and in the evenings to all intents and purposes theequivalent of my own Club. The woman behind the bar wore a wedding ring,and I distinctly liked the look of her companion. And yet, with dramaticsuddenness, the whole prospect before me seemed to be all at onceillimitably enlarged.

  For if a normal man like my friend at the counter was struck by thechanges of the past five years, how must they strike a man who had gonethrough an experience so utterly abnormal as that of Derwent Rose?Change is the normal condition of all things; the human mind ismarvellously able to adapt itself to altered circumstances in a week, aday, an hour; memories lose their fresh edge, novelties amuse and giveway to newer novelties still. But all this is only for men who marchforward with their fellows. For the man who marches backwards all isturned round. The memories stir and revive and bloom again, theforgotten is re-remembered, laid ghosts begin to walk. The dulled brassedges of staircases become bright again with the rubbing of light andfrail and vanished feet, recessed sofas in upper rooms thrill and rustlewith whispers and frou-frou and laughter again. Doubtless the living,1920 successors of those ghosts were to be found elsewhere, but unless Isought Derry
in 1910 I knew not where to begin to look for him. MusinglyI descended the stairs and walked slowly back towards the Criterionagain. I no longer watched faces. The whole thing seemed hopeless. I hadabout as much chance of finding Derwent Rose in London as I had ofcatching one given drop of a summer shower.

  And then, in that very moment, I saw him.

  * * * * *

  Or rather it was the hansom that I saw first. It had just startedforward with the release of the traffic opposite Drew's, at the top ofLower Regent Street.

  Now a hansom in Piccadilly Circus to-day is perhaps not the rarity thata sedan-chair would be; nevertheless hansoms are comparatively few, andtherefore conspicuous. The padded leaves of this one were thrown back,and before I saw him I had already seen a white-sheathed ankle and awhite satin slipper.

  Then he leaned forward for a moment.

  It was unmistakably he.

  The hansom passed along with the stream.

  Unmistakably he--and yet, mingled with the perfect familiarity, therewas a change that I could not immediately analyse. Then (I am tellingyou what flashed instantaneously through my mind in that fraction oftime before I had dashed after him)--then I had it! Familiar, yet notaltogether familiar! Of course!----

  _His beard!_

  At one time in the past Derwent Rose had worn a beard, the softestsprouting of curling golden-brown. In certain lights it had been littlemore than a glint that had scarcely hid the contours beneath, and it hadmade him the living image of Du Maurier's drawings of Peter Ibbetson. Henow had that young beard again, and he and it and the hansom with thewhite satin slippers in it had disappeared behind a bus opposite Swanand Edgar's.

  I dashed across to the island and dodged in front of the nose of ahorse; but I could not see the hansom. There were four directions inwhich it could have gone: up Regent Street, Glasshouse Street,Shaftesbury Avenue, or east past the Pavilion. Then a taxi slowed downimmediately in front of me, and I found myself standing on the step ofit, holding the door open with one hand and with the other pointing pastthe driver's head.

  "That hansom in front--follow that hansom----"

  We tried Regent Street first, for I remember seeing the revolving doorsof the Piccadilly; but no hansom was to be seen. I thrust my head out ofthe window again.

  "Quick--turn--try Shaftesbury Avenue," I cried.

  He turned, but not quickly. It was a good two minutes before we reachedthe Grill Room entrance of the Monico. Then I lost my temper.

  "A _hansom_, man--damn it, a _hansom_! Can't you follow the only hansomleft in London? Ask that man on point-duty----"

  But I got the impression that the police do not look with too muchfavour on roving orders to follow other vehicles to unspecifiedaddresses. The constable was curt.

  "There was a hansom a minute ago. If you've got his number try ScotlandYard. Come along, you can't stop here----"

  I sank back cursing. In the very moment when pure chance had given himto me I had lost him again. By this time he was probably half a mileaway. There was nothing whatever to be done.

  "Where to now?" grunted the driver.

  Nothing to be done--nothing whatever.

  "Cambridge Circus, 120," I said.

  As well there as anywhere else. He might just possibly be on his waythere. He still had a key the duplicate of which was in my own pocket.

  I descended at Cambridge Circus, let myself in and mounted to his rooms.He was not there, for no light showed under the door. I switched on,hung up my hat in his little recess, and sat down on his sofa. Then,mortified, but trying to tell myself that I was not actually any worseoff, I sought to dissect that momentary impression of him that was allthat remained to me.

  A hansom, and his beard again! That antiquated black-mutton-chop-shapebalanced on two spidery wheels, and that fair and tender sprouting! Bothwere anachronistic, and yet there was a certain suitability about both.Comparatively few young Englishmen have beards nowadays, but thencomparatively few young Englishmen are in their forties and theirthirties at the same time. He had always looked handsome in his beard,rather like something from a Greek or Roman gallery come to life again,and so he was right to have let it grow. As for the hansom, he mighthave taken it merely because it was the last vehicle left on the rank,refused by everybody, else, or there might have been a subtler reasonfor his choice. A browny-gold beard and a hansom! Yes, both were "in thepicture."

  But neither beard nor hansom helped me to what I most anxiously wantedto know--how far back in years he had now gone. In the ordinary way abeard may make a young man look older; but then Rose was paradoxicallyyounger than he was. He might now be twenty-five who looked thirty-fivebecause of the beard, or he might be thirty-five looking precisely thatage.

  I would have given fifty pounds at that moment for one long, steady lookat him in a good light.

  However, certain things were in their way reassuring. He was in London,and apparently he was not avoiding its most central places. He had worna hat of soft grey velours that I had not seen before, and anew-looking, well-cut jacket of grey cheviot. As he had disappeared innavy-blue, he thus had money to spend on clothes. He had further lookedin magnificent health, and a man who has health, money, youth and apretty satin-slippered foot near his own has a number of very goodthings indeed. I might therefore dismiss the workmen's-tram anddock-gates side of the affair. If Derwent Rose was not having a goodtime he ought to have been.

  And yet at the same time I was uneasy. I will not put on any airs aboutthe reason for my uneasiness. White satin slippers in hansoms had verylittle to do with it, and tearooms that had once been something elseeven less. These are ordinary everyday things, and there must besomething wrong with the eyes of a man who does not see them at everyturn--I had almost added something wrong with the mind of a man whomagnifies these beyond their proper importance. But when you propose tofind a friend by a process of reconstruction of the past phases of hislife, you must be prepared for a shock or two; and what I did now beginextraordinarily to resent, among these vulgar and everyday things, wasRose's not being a vulgar everyday man.

  For what had the author of _The Hands of Esau_ and _The Vicarage ofBray_ to do with all this? True, he had been in it, whether of it ornot, as we can none of us shake off the trammels of the flesh until wedo so once for all; but the only Derwent Rose with whom properly I hadany concern was the man who, into whatever suspect place he hadpenetrated, had kept something fair and secret and unsullied all thetime.

  Yet here I was, proposing to look for what was precious and enduring inhim, yet prepared to set (as it were) my trap with the grossest possiblebait. I was going to catch the best of him by means of the worst, andwas deliberately and cold-bloodedly laying my plans to that end.

  I flushed at the thought; and then I found myself growing angry with himalso. Suddenly I resented the fact that he was alive at all. Why,instead of having contracted this nightmare of a thing that he hadcontracted, couldn't he have died? Why couldn't he have got himselfkilled in the war? We respect the decency of the dead; why must Iviolate his, who had chosen this extraordinary alternative to death? Wasthis the way to write a friend's epitaph? Must immortelles of thiscommon and saddening mortality be laid on his unlocated grave? Why notwrite him off--treat him as dead--give up a search that honoured neitherhim nor me--go back to Julia and tell her that the thing simply couldn'tbe done?

  It seems to me, knitting my brows there that night in his room, that Icould do nothing better than that.

  But precisely there was the dickens of it. He was _not_ dead. How regarda man as dead whom you have seen in the flesh not an hour before? Dead?He was alive, well-dressed, driving a woman somewhere in a hansom, andcertainly looking as if he ate four square meals a day and enjoyed them._Had_ he been dead, well and good; but since he was about as alive as aman could be, the tombstone virtues I was concocting to his memorylooked unpleasantly like a sentimental shirking of the whole question.They reminded me of hypocrite mourning, with a drop of something
warmwith sugar to take the edge off the grief. They looked as if I wanted tohave him off my mind, to feel luxuriously about him, to be able to sayto myself, "This friend of mine was a good and exemplary man"--and thenperhaps at any moment to hear his step behind me, that of a man not goodor exemplary in this sense at all. I seemed to hear him softly laughingat me: "So _that's_ the yarn you're going to put about, is it: that Iwas all barley-sugar and noble prose? But let me tell you thatShakespeare and I hit on some of our best notions with a mug of beer inour hands! Great stuff, beer; nearly as good as music.... Don't be ahumbug, George."

  So it looked as if I was for seeking him only in the politer places,knowing all the time that I should not find him there; and I reflected alittle bitterly that had the boot been on the other leg he would haveknown where to look for me. He would have walked straight into the firstplace where easygoing people take the softest way with one another, givepraise for praise, and by and by get knighthoods for it. He would havelooked for me there. And he would have had an excellent chance offinding me.

  I hope I have not wearied you with these quasi-heroics about friendship.They were dispelled quickly enough. Suddenly there happened somethingthat arrested the beating of my heart.

  I heard the sound of feet on the stairs outside. They were accompaniedby a woman's soft laugh and a man's deeper muttering.

  My skin turned crisp with fright. I am afraid I lost my head ascompletely as ever I lost it in my life. Friendship or no friendship, Igave him the benefit of not one single doubt. If he was coming in therewas one thing to do and one only--to make a dash and get away out of it.

  Again I heard the laugh. It came from the landing immediately below. Astep or two higher, and----

  I sprang to the electric light and switched it off.

  The little curtained hat-and-coat recess stood just within the door. Imade a tiptoe leap for it. As I did so I remembered with thankfulnessone of the recess's peculiarities. It abutted so close up to thedoor-frame on the side where the lock and handle were that Rose had hadthe switch moved to the other side. The opening door would therefore bebetween him and the switch. That would be my moment. He would see mythings scattered about his room the moment he turned on the light, butthat could be explained later. To get away was the urgent thing.

  Violently agitated, the curtains grasped in my hand, I stood prepared tomake my spring. The feet had stopped outside the door. I heard thestriking of a match. I waited for the touch of the key on the lock.

  Then, "What, up again?" I heard the man's voice say....

  The feet passed on to the floor above. I never knew who lived there.Rose's bell was the third of four, counting from the bottom.

  IV

  I have not told you the foregoing because I am proud of it. At the bestI had behaved childishly, at the worst--but we will come to thatpresently. Had it really been he I should probably not have had theremotest chance of ever getting past him. He would have vaulted ahandrail in the dark, taken a flight in two bounds, and would have hadhis hand--that hand that tore books in two--on my neck. Had herecognised me he would have wanted to know what the devil I was doing inhis rooms. Had he failed to recognise me I should as likely as not havegone through the window. One takes risks when one intrudes on the lovesof the giants.

  At the same time, I will do myself the justice to say that physicalrisks were not my first consideration. Vast as his strength was, it wasthe part of him I least feared. What I did fear, what I was nowbeginning to think I had not nearly sufficiently allowed for, was theenormous spiritual and mental range of the man.

  Up to that moment in his life when he had become so mysteriously turnedround, this very width and range had resulted in a state of balance, asthe tightrope-walker is balanced by the length of his pole. But toconsider either of his extremes separately was to have a cold shiver.Often I had thought, "I'm thankful I haven't your burden of personalityto bear, my friend. Much better to be the millionth man and takeeverything on trust. The way to be happy on this earth is to be just ashell of useful and comfortable and middling habits. Stick to thesecond-hand things of life and let the new ones alone. Any kind ofsingularity is a curse, and your life is one dreadful yawning question.You've no business to have the first dawn in your eyes and the lasttrump in your ears like that. The world has no need of that kind of man.What you need is another world somewhere else."

  And he had marvellously contrived to find this other world, and had itall, all to himself.

  And here was I proposing to dig him out of it.

  Can you guess now what it was that I had begun to fear more than hisphysical strength? It was the whole ungauged pressure of hispersonality. In behaving as foolishly as I had just behaved I had wishedto spare both myself and him the humiliation of an intrusion on a vulgaramour. Now it occurred to be, Why a "vulgar" one at all? Vulgarity isfor us smaller people, who are vulgar enough to think that anything thatis created is vulgar. But Derwent Rose had so striven that every dawnwas the first dawn of creation for him. He had no habits, had dailysought to see the world as if it had never been seen before. Abyssesmust open for him every time he passed a huddle on a park bench,protoplasmic re-beginnings stare out at him from every chance glance ofa street-walker's eyes.... Oh, I am far from envying him. I shouldblench to have a mind like that. To no possession that I have do I clinghalf so dearly as I do to my narrowness and to my prejudice. I _am_ themillionth man, and I thank God on my knees for it. One of the other kindhas been my friend....

  Suppose then that one day I should surprise him in some act, stupid andmeaningless to myself, but as fraught with tremendousness for him as wasthat first command, "Let there be Light!" What would happen then? Yousee what I am driving at. Up to now my idea had been, quite simply, tofind him. I had sought him much as I might have sought a truantschoolboy, who would consent to be scolded and brought back to ordinarylife again. Small practical difficulties, mostly in connection with hisaltered appearance, I had anticipated, but these I had intended to dealwith as they arose. In a word, I had assumed his willingness, his also,to be the millionth man.

  But how if he should refuse with scorn? What was the state of hisbalance, not in my eyes, but in his? When I had last seen him he hadtrembled in equilibrium, and to his fluctuations I had off-handedlyapplied the terms "worse" and "better." But what were such terms tohim?... I will do as I did before--try to set it out in parallelcolumns. Here was a missing man, a man of unusual range and powers, towhose state of poise something had happened. It was this man's dailyendeavour to accept nothing at second-hand, to disregard all names,labels, customs, tags, appearances, verdicts, records, precedents. Hislife was one long probing into the essential nature of things. I might,therefore, expect to find:

  The Derwent Rose who _or_ The Derwent Rose who might have had said, when I had replied, "Whisky? Well, it has offered him the whisky, interesting effects sometimes. "No, no--blast it, Somebody once called it a short no--water!" cut to a psychic experience. If a psychic experience is what you are after, why take the roundabout way? Let's try it."

  The Derwent Rose who _or_ The Derwent Rose who might have had torn off his collar, growled, "Well, what is there but who had also cried, extraordinary about that? "Good God, man, I'm Perhaps it isn't anything to not bragging of my make a song about, but don't conquests--don't think pretend you've never heard of I'm not ashamed!" such a thing before. It happens every night, you know."

  The Derwent Rose who had _or_ The Derwent Rose who might sat in a hansom with a have said, "Men are men and white satin slipper as women are women. This is also openly and innocently as Piccadilly Circus. Look round. I might have sat to Can't _you_ find anything Julia Oliphant for my
better to do than to hunt for portrait. a man who is--not at home to anybody this evening?"

  The Derwent Rose who _or_ The Derwent Rose who cared loved beauty and hated nothing for the name of ugliness. anything, destroyed stale and outworn canons of beauty with a laugh, and sought a fresher loveliness in a world where nothing is common or unclean.

  But once more I had to give it up. That baffling down of golden beardhad obliterated every physical indication. He might be in a church--foran assignation. He might be in a drinking-hell--lost in images of beautyand sweetness and power.

  And what kind of a _Salle des Pas Perdus_ is London in which to look fora man like that? The whole thing became an illimitable phantasmagoria ofvirtue and vice, nobility and degradation, expressed in terms of bricksand stones and buildings and streets. Sitting brooding among his blackoak furniture, I tried to envisage even that merest fragment of it allthat was being enacted within a quarter of a mile at that moment.Whitfield's Tabernacle--and for all I knew an opium den within abiscuit's toss of it; the Synagogue--and the lady upstairs. I picturedthe tenements behind the Shaftesbury with their iron balconies andemergency-ladders; and I saw young lovers in their stalls at the Palace.I saw the bright Hampstead buses, and the masked covertness of theflitting taxis. I heard the slap and thump of beer-pumps, children'ssimple prayers. Images floated before me of the gloom ofcinema-interiors, the green-shaded glow-lamps of orchestras, therippling of incandescent advertisements, the blackness of the jamfactory yard. There were pockets with money in them, money to buy allthe world has to sell; and there were pockets empty of the price of acup of coffee at the back-street barrows. There were hearts with love inthem, love as boundless as heaven's blue, and there were hearts fromwhich love had passed, hearts as musty as the graves that waited forthem. All but Infinity itself was to be found within a few hundred yardsof where I sat.

  And flitting uniquely through it all was this man whose privacy was sopublic, whose publicness was so unutterably private. He might be met atany step, and yet, of all the millions living, there was not one hecould call contemporary. For he was the only man in the world who wasgrowing younger instead of older. He of all men alone was passing fromexperience to innocence, through the murk of his former sins to theperfection of his own maximum and the unimpaired godhead of his prime.

  * * * * *

  "But you mightn't see him again for another twenty years!" Juliaprotested, shaking out her napkin and laughing for the sheerbewilderment of it.

  I had chosen the small restaurant in Jermyn Street because it had noband to distract us.

  "I know all that," I retorted. "But if you think that just sitting thereloving him is going to produce him, your way may take even longer thanmine."

  "Pooh!" she said, breaking her roll. "You're wasting your time."

  "Don't be irritating, Julia." It irritated me because it was so true."It's my time anyway."

  "No it isn't, not all of it. What about my sittings?" (There had not yetbeen any, by the way.) "The canvas is ready as soon as you are."

  "I'll grow a beard, and then you won't want to paint me," I replied.

  Her eyes had sparkled when I had told her about Derry's beard; I hadthought she was going to clap her hands. Except for Derry's golden one(she had said) she had never seen a beard that wasn't nasty. I myself(she had informed me) should look a perfect horror in one, and unless Iremained clean-shaven she refused to be seen about with me.... So ourcustomary quarrel blew up. We wrangled about one trifle and anotherhalf-way through dinner. It probably did us good, for underneath we wereboth badly on edge. Then along the edge of the table she slid a bentlittle finger. It was her way of making up. The finger rested in minefor a moment.

  "Well," I sighed, "I told you all I saw. I'm afraid that beard threw mequite out of my reckoning."

  She mused. "I once drew him with his beard, from memory. In armour. Helooked just like King Arthur come to life again. I've got it yet.... Butlet's look at the thing reasonably, George. I admit there's something tobe said for having a _pied-a-terre_ in his rooms. He might just possiblyturn up there. It might also be--hm!--awkward if he did.... But therest, all this hunting for him, that's a wash-out. You know it is."

  I was silent. Then again I saw in her eyes what I had seen before--thebeginning of a soft deep shining, as if some diver's lamp moved beneaththe waters at night.

  "No, I prefer my way," she said, suddenly sitting straight up.

  "Doing nothing at all?"

  "Fiddlesticks! _I'm_ supposed to sit and listen respectfully when _you_talk, but _you_ never listen to what _I've_ got to say. I told you whatmy way was. I'll tell you again. I had tea at Daphne Bassett's flat thisafternoon."

  "I hope you found Puppetty well," I remarked.

  The kindling eyes were steadily on mine.

  "Puppetty," she said slowly, "is in the greatest favour. Puppetty haswing-portions for dinner and bovril to go to bed with. Puppetty's tohave a new quilt for being a good little doggles and protecting hismummie----"

  "What on earth----" I began.

  Then I sat up as suddenly as if I had been galvanised.

  "Julia! You don't mean----?"

  She nodded, darkling devils of mischief under that cool smooth brow.

  "What, that _he's_ still looking for _her_?"

  "He's found her. He spoke to her a couple of days ago."

  "And she recognised him?"

  "I didn't say that."

  "Didn't she recognise him?"

  "Didn't know him from Adam."

  "Then how do you know it was he?"

  I cannot convey the lightness of her disdain. "How do I know!----"

  I leaned back in my chair. To think that I had not thought of this, theoldest of all stratagems! _Guettez la femme!_ Runaways are caught by itevery day, and always will be. They are released from custody and placedunder observation so that they may walk straight into the trap. That iswhy the trick is old--it never fails. And I had not thought of it!

  She wore her triumph with such present moderation that I knew I had notheard the last of it.

  "Yes," she continued, "she told me all about it. It was on Mondayevening, about seven o'clock, and she was coming up the little street bySt. James's Church, where the Post Office is. She fancied she'd noticeda man following her, a very big handsome man with a golden beard."

  "Is that her description of him?" I interrupted.

  "Yes. That's why I wasn't much surprised when you told me about hisbeard. Then outside the Post Office the outrage happened. He spoke toher. Spoke to her, George. Try to realise it."

  "Well, if she'd no idea who he was it wasn't a pleasant thing to havehappen."

  She gave a soft laugh. "He's very good-looking," she said brazenly.

  "Julia, if you were naturally a catty sort of woman----"

  "Don't interrupt, George. I am artificially then. If you don't want tohear go out and look for hansoms. And whatever else you're sententiousabout don't be sententious about women. Now I've forgotten what I wasgoing to say."

  "You said he spoke to her outside the Post Office."

  "Behave yourself then. He did speak to her, and she set Puppetty athim."

  "_What!_" I cried.

  "Quite so, dear George. _As_ you say. Fearfully pleased and excitedreally. Quite a romance. And of course she'd have given anything _not_to set Puppetty at him."

  "Then why in the name of goodness did she?"

  Julia gave an exhausted sigh. "If ever you marry, George, heaven helpLady Coverham!... Why did she? Because she had to. She's that sort.They've got to do certain things because that sort does, but they _do_so wish they needn't! Virtue's a funny thing. If you don't want that icemay I have it?"

  "But look here," I said presently. "If he'd said str
aight out, as anyman in his position would have done, 'I say, I know this is a bitunusual, but my name's Derwent Rose, and there's something I want toexplain'--and so on--you see what I mean. Then she'd have known who hewas."

  "Well, I'm afraid I'm not responsible for what he didn't say."

  "What exactly did he say?"

  She gave a shrug. "What do men say? They don't stop _me_ outside postoffices. You never did; if all this hadn't happened I don't suppose Ishould ever have known you one scrap better. I dare say he was a bitrattled too. Anyway she didn't stop to think. She just set the dog athim, legged it, and she's as pleased as Punch still."

  "You're quite sure she didn't recognise him?"

  "Oh, quite. She'd tell me in a minute. She'd love to be able to sayshe'd had Derwent Rose at her feet."

  "I suppose so," I sighed. "Did you ask her what aged manthis--marauder--looked?"

  "What do you think? Of course I did. Doesn't everything turn on that?But she could only tell me, 'Oh, about thirty-three or four--thirty-fiveperhaps.' The very thing we want to know ... but she was in such a hurryto be virtuous...."

  Her brow was no longer smooth. Her voice rose a little and then droppedagain.

  "You see how much turns on which it is--thirty-five or thirty-three. Yousay he was struggling with himself that night, sweating with funk,wanting to hang on. And yet the moment you turned your back he bolted,and he's riding about with ladies in hansoms."

  "Come, my dear!" I protested. "There's nothing in that! All men driveabout with women. For that matter I drove you part of the way here."

  But she cut me impatiently short.

  "Oh, I don't mean that at all! That's nothing to me! I don't care who hetakes in hansoms; I've nothing to gain and nothing to lose. I want himto have just whatever he wants. But I told you he knew nothing aboutwomen. He's never been in love in his life. Oh, I'm explaining badly,but what I mean is that if you're going to find him by going throughLondon with a dustman's besom and scraper, that's as much as to say thathe isn't happy. That's what hurts me. He was miserable at thirty-fivebefore--miserable and ashamed. _But the moment he's thirty-threeagain_----"

  I watched the long white fingers that tapped softly for a minute on thetable before she resumed.

  "_Then_ he's all right," she said in a low and moved voice. "He waswriting the _Vicarage_ then. I saw--oh, quite lots of him. He used to'blow in,' as he called it, with a 'Hallo, Julia! I'm having rather adevil of a good time these days; writing a book that will make some of'em sit up and take notice; I've done a quarter of it in three weeks;how's that for a little gentle occupation?' Yes, I saw quite a lot ofhim at thirty-three. I had a studio near Cremorne Road. It wasn't reallya studio, but a sort of gutted top floor, big enough to have given adance in, and my bed was behind a curtain that was drawn right acrossone end. I used to give him tea there--Patum Paperium sandwiches heliked--and he was sweet. Once I'd an illustration to do for some stupidstory or other, about a sort of Sandow-and-Hackenschmidt all rolled intoone, and do you know what he did? He looked at my drawing, took it tothe window, and then laughed. 'I say, Julia, this will never do!' hesaid. 'When a man lifts a heavy thing like that he does it _from theearth_, you understand--you do everything that's worth doing from theearth. So you've got to see his feet are right. Anybody likely to comein here? No? Right; I don't mind you. Got anything heavy here? You getyour paper and pencil.' And he stripped to the belt and picked up mysewing-machine and posed for me. He did...."

  V

  I seemed to see the scene in bright illumination, him in that upper roomwith the curtains drawn across one end, his jacket and shirt tossed onto a chair, his great torso stripped to the buff, the sewing-machineheld aloft. She would be at her board or easel, sketching--pretending tosketch--I don't know what. He had merely said, "Anybody likely to comein? No? Right! I don't mind you!"

  It was true. He hadn't minded her. Otherwise he would never havedisplayed himself so gloriously before her eyes.

  "Did that illustration ever appear?" I asked without looking at her.

  I knew without looking that she smiled as she shook her head.

  "Not that one. You know it didn't. The first one was good enough forthem."

  And she still had the King Arthur sketch too.

  "And that was when he was thirty-three?"

  Now that she was off there was no stopping her, even had I wished it.

  "Yes. Did you know--will you believe--that he wrote his _Vicarage_ injust over three months?"

  "He was a furious worker."

  "That's just where you're wrong, George," she said eagerly. "At thattime at any rate. He was as cool as this ice. He just digested thosegigantic masses of information, and then, except for the trouble ofwriting it down, he never turned a hair. I'll tell you the things thatdid make him furious; those were his rottenest short stories, the thingshe used to have to do to pay his rent. He always knew they were thewrong sort of rottenness. Any kind of rottenness won't do for thepublic. You've got to be rotten in quite a specialised way."

  "Thank you."

  "But the bigger a thing was the easier he always found it. He used tosay that if a thing was hard work there was something wrong somewhere.Why, he'd take whole days off when he was at his very busiest. He cameinto my place one morning--the same place, Cremorne Road--beforehalf-past eight. I was just finishing breakfast; I hadn't done my hair;if you must know, I was rather a sloven at that time. He was in hisbreeches and cap and a soft collar. 'Down tools, Julia,' he said; 'we'reoff into the country for the day.' 'But, Derry, your book!' I said,rather aghast (he'd told me a day or two before that the _Vicarage_ wasa race against time or else bankruptcy for him in the autumn). 'Oh,that's all right; it's finished as far as I'm concerned; the pen'll dothe rest; come along just as you are.' So I put my hair up, and we wentto Chalfont, and got horribly midge-bitten, and there was an old manplaying the harp outside a little public-house where we had tea, and Iremember Derry jumped over a five-barred gate with his stick in his handand his pipe in his mouth...."

  She remembered every detail. I don't think she had ever once seen himbut she remembered what he had on, how he had looked, what he had talkedabout. These were the still depths I spoke of, of which the rest was nomore than the salt spray surface. I might be hanging about CambridgeCircus on the off-chance of his coming for a paper or a book orsomething; but I believe that in her heart something was alreadyrekindling, and that she was even then waiting to receive him again inthat upper room off Cremorne Road.

  "Well," she said at last, "this is all very well, but it isn't gettingus much forrader. Of course he may be thirty-five still. In that case Isuppose you'll carry on as you are doing. But let's suppose for a momenthe's back at thirty-three. I'm afraid that'll mean a good deal of workfor you, George. You've got to start on an entirely new set of places.Let me see, what year would that be? Yes, 1908. Where was he mostly in1908?"

  "In your studio apparently."

  "Oh, he was never there very much really. I dare say he only came at allbecause it was near and he'd drawn a blank somewhere else; he lived inPaulton's Square, you know. No, you'd have to look for him in theBritish Museum Reading Room, or the lobby of the House of Commons, orwherever the Blue Books are kept, or some other place where he'd bedigging out all that terrible _Vicarage_ stuff. Or if it happened to bea Thursday night you might try the Eyre Arms; he used to go up there tothe Belsize Boxing Club. Cheer up, George. I'm only showing you whatyou've let yourself in for."

  "Well, it's no good looking for him in the fourth dimension. He's got tobe in some sort of a place. And I admit that I was a fool, and that youfound him simply by sitting in Mrs Bassett's pocket."

  "I didn't do that at all," she remarked composedly.

  "Then I'm afraid I haven't understood you."

  "Then let me tell you. I didn't sit in Daphne Bassett's pocket. I sat inDaphne Wade's."

  I stared at her. Was she suggesting that while she herself had loved himsince childhood, he for his part had loved Daphne W
ade?

  "Surely you're wrong there. If there was ever anything between her andhim I'm no judge of men."

  "There may not have 'been anything.' But there was everything for allthat," she replied.

  "That's merely enigmatic. Never mind 'everything.' Tell me what thing."

  "All his dreams and ideals when he was a boy," she answered promptly."Isn't that everything in a man like him--the everything he's on his wayback to?"

  "But he never loved her in the least, nor she him, as far as I'm aware."

  "That I shall _never_ forgive her.... Don't you know yet why he neverknew anything about real women? It was simply because he was too wrappedup in his dreams. He was so full of them that he couldn't see anythingtruly for them. And now I'm afraid I'm going to dispel one of your mostcherished illusions, George. Do you know why his dreams all settled onDaphne Wade? Oh, it had nothing to do with loving her!... It was simplybecause she had that coloured hair. It _was_ rather like an aureole whenshe was a child. And her eyes _were_ blue. In fact she'd all theconventional angelic appliances except the wings, and he supplied those.She'd nothing whatever else--little fool."

  I frowned. Certainly she was entitled to speak of those early daystowards which his face was once more set, since she had known him then,and I had not.

  "Have some more coffee," I said. "I want to think this over."

  But she only laughed softly.

  "Oh, you needn't. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble by simply takingmy word for it. In any case it's getting on for thirty years ago. Oh,don't I just remember!... I was nine and he was fourteen; I was ten andhe was fifteen; I was eleven and he was sixteen. She's just a year olderthan I am. Our pew was half-way down the church, but she sat up one ofthe aisles, right under a stained-glass window there was. It used tomake that light on her hair. My hair was the wrong colour--I knew itthen--just a dark mop--but anyway it was full of life. It would stillhave been dark, of course, even if I'd sat under the window instead ofher, but I've sometimes thought it might have made a difference. Thenthere was all the rest; Dicksee's 'Harmony' sort of effect; all so cooland dim and saintly; and the organ and the Psalms. _That's_ what filledhis head, and I honestly believe that unless women are just animals tohim he sees them like that still--just about as much flesh and blood asthat window was. All she had to do was to have that hair and those eyesand to sit in the vicarage pew. Things are made very simple for somewomen."

  A long silence fell between us. Evidently she was back in that church,an adoring wrong-coloured-haired girl of eleven, shifting in her seat tosee, past intervening bonnets and bald heads, Derry's browny-gold crown,while he watched Daffy Wade and the window.

  "But," I said at last, "aren't you rather anticipating? I thought we'dsettled he was thirty-five or thirty-three. That's making him sixteenalready."

  She rose abruptly.

  "George, do you realise that we're the last people here and that they'veturned half the lights out?" Then, drawing forward her furs from theback of her chair, "It isn't making him anything of the sort. You'remore than thirty-five; but you sometimes _remember_ what you were atsixteen, don't you?... Come and put me into my Tube and off you go tobed. Who knows?--he might 'blow in' to Cambridge Circus----"

  * * * * *

  "_You sometimes remember what you were at sixteen!_"

  I wondered, as I walked slowly up Shaftesbury Avenue that night, whethershe realised what she had said. I hoped not. I prayed not; because herwords seemed to me to murder her own cherished hope--that he was safelypast that turbulent phase and back at thirty-three again.

  For that poignancy of remembrance, I am glad to think, is morefrequently a man's than a woman's. It is the man who, slipping away,away from his youth and innocence, down, down, slip after slip into themire of life, lifts his red and weeping eyes to what he used to be. Andwhen does that vision shine most agonisingly fair? Not in the hours ofhis philosophy, when nothing unduly elates him and nothing too muchcasts him down, but when he is in the slough as deep as he can get. Oh,I know it, for I have sinned myself, have myself wept, for thatimpossible heart-break--to be as I once was. And if Julia was right, andhe was not seeking Mrs Bassett at all, nor even Daphne Wade, but merelyhis remembered self at sixteen, then he was _not_ thirty-three at all.He had _not_ yet passed beyond that phase he had dreaded to re-live. Hewas still in the mud, to have had that tear-blurred vision; still asinful man of thirty-five who remembered the morning star.

  Well, Julia must not know that. This dark corollary was for myshouldering, not hers. And as I resolved to keep it from her I wonderedat the marvel her own inner life had been.

  For nearly thirty years it had consisted of Derwent Rose and of nothingwhatever else! None would have guessed it, none but I knew it, nothingbut Derry's unprecedented adventure would have dragged it from her. Shewas a busy painter, of but moderate talent, and with her living to earn.She could purr when she was pleased, but had claws ready to scratch withas well. And, deep and unguessed behind it all, lay the story of thoseSussex fields and lanes, of that dreaming and ecstatic and unheedingboy, of that same boy, grown-up and still unheeding, who had stalked inand out of her studio, borne her off to Chalfont, held aloft hersewing-machine. It seemed to me that her case was little lessextraordinary than his. I saw her as a woman who had never grown. Shewas as she had always been, her life stultified with beauty, a poisedand arrested development of love.

  And, unless I was mistaken, she had hardly sought to conceal her joythat, as it had been, so it was to be again.

  For he was journeying back to a place that in this sense she had neverleft; and so he was journeying back to her. What though he had neverloved her? At any rate she was now rid of her last living rival. Thathad been put to the test when Daphne Bassett had failed to recognise theman who had spoken to her outside the Post Office in St. James's. Shewould recognise him less and less as time went on. As for him, he wouldmerely go deeper and deeper into the heart of his inconceivablesolitude, and there, in the last and the centre of it, he would findJulia Oliphant waiting for him--waiting for her always loved and lordlyboy of sixteen.

  But how much must happen before then! For the first time I envisaged itin its heartbreaking beauty. Lovely, apparently inevitable the close ...but the way there? What, steeling her heart, must she see before thatmeeting?

  She must see a man whose last kiss was his first one, who unlived athousand adventures to become virgin in the end. She must see a manliving so unutterably long that he lived to write his first poem again.She would see a man who had fought through a war of flame and poisonpuckering his smooth brows over his first percussion-cap pistol. Shewould see the dust of his athletic laurels stir, reassemble, bloom anew.She would see the miracle of youth synthesised, the grail of his puritymystically reappear. Not even Joshua saw what those liquid and alreadytired brown eyes of hers must see--the sun of a man's life pause atnoon, swing contrary to its orbit, and move back to set where it rose.

  And all at once there came over me a whelming of passionate emotion forthis woman so singled out. It was the emotion one feels over an infantwhose eyes open for the first time on the world--compassion and ache andhapless tenderness and hope for the best. Would she be able to bear herdestiny? Would she, had such a thing been possible, have elected neverto have been born rather than bear it? Could I help her? If thingsshould unfold as they were well in motion to unfold, could any power onearth help her?

  I began to suspect that, unless she renounced him once for all, and thatquickly, no power on earth would be able to help her.

  * * * * *

  I don't know why I did not pack up my things and go back to Haslemere. Ino longer pretended to be looking for Derwent Rose in London, and I hadnot given one single sitting for my portrait. Yet, though I could nothelp Julia, I felt myself unable to leave her. If I did not see her foran evening I was disturbed, lost what to do with myself. Several ofthese evenings came, and still I lingered on.

&nbs
p; Then, I think on the fourth evening after I had given Julia dinner inJermyn Street, the history of Derwent Rose moved forward--orbackward--once more.

  I had thought of looking up Madge Aird that evening, but at the lastmoment had changed my mind. I did not feel up to Madge's liveliness. SoI hung round that now so-drearily-familiar neighbourhood instead--theneighbourhood between Leicester Square Tube Station and Tottenham CourtRoad. I walked till I was tired, and then, more for the sake of sittingdown than for any other reason, I entered a picture-house on the westside of Shaftesbury Avenue. I did not choose that one in particular. Itwas just like any other picture-house except that it had a small organbuilt into the wall high up in one corner. This organ was ceasing toplay as I entered. The principal drama of the programme was just over.

  As it chanced, I had arrived just in time for one of those rathercurious effects that are obtained when the film is put through themachine extremely slowly. You know the kind I mean. A racehorse in fullcareer picks up and puts down his legs as if they were fronds of seaweedmoving lazily in water; a golf-ball trickles uncannily across the green,rising and falling idly over each minute obstacle, and then floatsgently down into the hole. In spite of my languor I found myselfinterested in these analyses of motion. It is curious to seeinstantaneousness taking its time over a thing like that.

  Then that series also finished, and I felt in my pocket for my cigarettecase. As I drew out a cigarette and struck a match somebody behind meleaned forward and touched me lightly on the shoulder.

  "I say, isn't your name Coverham?" a man's voice said.

  The match was still in my fingers. I looked over my shoulder in thelight of it. Then I dropped the match.

  I had not found him. He had found me. It was Derwent Rose.