Romney Place slumbered in the afternoon sunshine. Most of the blinds of the Early-Victorian houses were drawn, symbols of quietude within. A Persian cat, walking across the roadway, stopped in the middle, after the manner of cats, and leisurely made her toilette. A milk-cart progressed discreetly from door to door, and the milkman handed the cans to hands upstretched from areas with unclattering and non-flirtatious punctilio. When he had finished his round and disappeared by the church, the street was empty for a moment. The cat resumed her journey and sat on a doorstep blinking in the sun. Presently a foxy-faced man, shabbily clad, entered this peaceful scene, and walked slowly down the pavement. It was Vandermeer, still burning with a sense of wrong, yearning for vengeance, yet trembling at the prospect of wreaking it. At Tommy’s door he hesitated. Of his former visit to the young man no pleasant recollections lingered. Tommy’s manners were impulsive rather than urbane. Would he listen to Vandermeer’s story or would he kick him out of the house? Vandermeer, starting out on his pilgrimage to Romney Place, had fortified himself with the former conjecture. Now that he had come to the end of it the latter appeared inevitable. He always shrank from physical violence. It would hurt very much to be kicked out of the house, to say nothing of the moral damage. He hovered in agonising uncertainty, and took off his hat, for the afternoon was warm. Now, while he was mopping the brow of dubiety, a front door lower down the street opened, and a nurse and a little girl appeared. They descended the steps and walked past him. Vandermeer looked after them for a moment, then stuck on his hat and punched the left-hand palm with the right-hand fist with the air of a man to whom has occurred an inspiration. Miss Clementina Wing also lived in Romney Place. That must be the child, Quixtus’s ward, of whom Huckaby had spoken. It would be much better to take his story to Clementina Wing, now so intimately associated with Quixtus. Women, he argued, are much more easily inveigled into intrigue than men, and they don’t kick you out of the house in a manner to cause bodily pain. Besides, Clementina had once befriended him. Why had he not thought of her before? He walked boldly up the steps and rang the bell.
Clementina was fiercely painting drapery from the lay figure—a grey silk dress full of a thousand folds and shadows. The texture was not coming right. The more she painted the less like silk did it look. Now was it muddy canvas; now fluffy wool. Every touch was wrong. Every stroke of the brush since her yesterday’s talk with Quixtus was wrong. She could not paint. Yet in a frenzy of anger she determined to paint. What had the woman invited to Quixtus’s dinner-party to do with her art? She would make the thing come right. She would prove to herself that she was a woman of genius, that she had not her sex hanging round the neck of her spirit. If Quixtus chose to make a fool of himself with Mrs. Fontaine, in Heaven’s name let him do so. She had her work to do. She would do it, in spite of all the society hacks in Christendom. The skirt began to look like a blanket stained with coffee. Let him have his dinner-party. What was there of importance in so contemptible a thing as a dinner-party? But this infernal woman had suggested it. How far was he compromised with this infernal woman? She could wring her neck. The dress began to suggest a humorously streaky London fog.
“Damn the thing!” cried Clementina, wiping the whole skirt out. “I’ll stand here for ever, until I get it right.”
Her tea, on a little table at the other end of the studio, remained untouched. Her hair fell in loose strands over her forehead, and she pushed it back every now and then with impatient fingers. The front-door bell rang, and soon her maid appeared at the gallery door.
“A gentleman to see you, ma’am.”
“I can’t see anybody. You know I can’t. Tell him to go away.”
The maid came down the stairs.
“I told him you weren’t in to anybody—but he insisted. He hadn’t a card, but wrote his name on a slip of paper. Here it is, ma’am.”
Clementina angrily took the slip; “Mr. Vandermeer would be glad to see Miss Wing on the most urgent business.”
“Tell him I can’t see him.”
The maid mounted the stairs. Vandermeer? Vandermeer? Where had she heard that name before? Suddenly she remembered.
“All right. Show him down here,” she shouted to the disappearing maid.
She might just as well see him. If she sent him away the buzzing worry of conjecture as to his urgent business would flitter about her mind. She threw down her palette and brush and impatiently rubbed her hands together. Into what shape of moral flaccidity was she weakening? Five months ago all the urgent business of all the Vandermeers in the world could go hang when she was painting and could not get a thing right. Why should she be different now from the Clementina of five months ago? Why, why, why? With exasperated hands she further confounded the confusion of her hair.
The introduction of Vandermeer put a stop to these questionings. She received him, arms akimbo, at a short distance from the foot of the stairs.
“I must apologise, Miss Wing, for this intrusion,” said he, “but perhaps you may remember——”
“Yes, yes,” she interrupted. “Ham-and-beef shop, which you transmogrified into a restaurant. Also Mr. Burgrave. What do you want? I’m very busy.”
The sight of the mean little figure holding his felt hat with both hands in front of him, with his pointed face, ferret eyes, and red, crinkly hair, did not in any way redeem her remembered impression.
“A very grave danger is threatening Dr. Quixtus,” said he. “It is impossible for me to warn him myself, so I have come to you, as a friend of his.”
“Danger?” cried Clementina, taken off her guard. “What kind of danger?”
“You will only understand, if I tell you rather a long story. But first I must have your promise of secrecy as far as I am concerned.”
“Don’t like secrecy,” said Clementina.
“You can take whatever action you like,” he said, hastily. “It’s in order that you may act in his interest that I’m here. I only want you to give me your word that you won’t compromise me personally. I assure you, you’ll see why when I tell you the story.”
Clementina reflected for a moment. It was a danger threatening Quixtus. It might be important. This little weasel of a man was of no account.
“All right,” she said. “I give my word. Go ahead.”
She took a pinch of tobacco from the yellow package and a cigarette paper, and, sitting in a chair in the cool draught of the door opening on to the garden, with shaky fingers rolled a cigarette.
“Sit down. You can smoke if you like. You can also help yourself to tea. I won’t have any.”
Vandermeer poured himself out some tea and cut an enormous hunk of cake.
“I warn you,” said he, drawing a chair within conversational distance, “that the story will be a long one—I want to begin from the beginning.”
“Go ahead, for goodness’ sake,” said Clementina.
Vandermeer was astute enough to conjecture that a sudden denunciation of Mrs. Fontaine might defeat his object by exciting her generous indignation; whereas by gradually arousing her interest in the affairs of Quixtus, the climactic introduction of the execrated lady might pass almost unrecognised.
“The story has to do, in the first place,” said he, “with three men, John Billiter, Eustace Huckaby, and myself.”
“Huckaby?” cried Clementina, startled. “What has he to do with you?”
“The biggest blackguard of us all,” said Vandermeer.
Clementina lay back in her chair, her attention caught at once.
“Go on,” she said.
Whereupon Vandermeer began, and with remorseless veracity—for here truth was far more effective than fiction—told the story of the relations of the three with Quixtus, in the days of their comparative prosperity, when he himself was on the staff of a newspaper, Billiter in possession of the fag-end of his fortune, and Huckaby a tutor at Cambridge. He told how, one by one, they sank; how Quixtus held out the helping hand. He told of the weekly dinners, the overcoat pockets.
“Not a soul on earth but you three knew anything about it?” asked Clementina, in a quavering voice.
“As far as I know, not a soul.”
He told of the drunken dinner; of Quixtus’s anger; of the cessation of the intercourse; of the extraordinary evening when Quixtus had invited them to be his ministers of evil; of his madness; of his fixed idea to work wickedness; of his own suggestion as regards Tommy.
“You infamous devil!” said Clementina, between her set teeth. In her wildest conjectures, she had never imagined so grotesque and so pitiable a history. She sat absorbed, pale-cheeked, holding the extinct stump of cigarette between her fingers.
Vandermeer paid no attention to the ejaculation. He proceeded with his story; told of Billiter and the turf; of Huckaby and the heart-breaking adventure.
“Oh, my God!” cried Clementina. “Oh, my God!” He told of the meetings in the tavern. Of the hunger and misery of the three. Of the plot to use a decoy woman in Paris, who was to bleed him to the extent of three thousand pounds.
“What’s her name?” she cried, her lips parted in an awful surmise.
“Lena Fontaine,” said Vandermeer.
Clementina grew very white, and fell back into her chair. She felt faint. She had worked violently, she had felt violently since early morning. Vandermeer started up.
“Can I get you anything? Some water—some tea?”
“Nothing,” she said, shortly. The idea of receiving anything from his abhorrent hands acted as a shock. “I’m all right. Go on. Tell me all you know about her.”
He related the unsavoury details that he had gleaned from Billiter, scrupulously explaining that these were at second hand. Finally he informed her with fair accuracy of Huckaby’s latest report, giving however his own interpretation of Huckaby’s conduct, and laid the position of Billiter and himself before her.
“You see,” said he, “how important it was for me to obtain your pledge of secrecy.”
“And what do you get out of coming to me with this story?”
Vandermeer rose, and held his hat tight.
“Nothing except the satisfaction of having queered the damned pitch of both of them.”
Clementina shrank together in her chair, her hands tight over her face, all her flesh a shuddering horror. Then she waved both hands at him blindly.
“Go away! Go away!” she said, in a hoarse whisper.
Vandermeer’s shifty eyes glanced from Clementina to a stool beside his chair. On it lay the great hunk of cake which he had cut but had not been able to eat during his narration. She was not looking. He pocketed the cake and turned. But Clementina had seen. She uttered a cry of anguish and horror.
“Oh, God! Are you as hungry as that? You’ll find some money in that end drawer—” she pointed to an oak dresser against the gallery wall. “Take what you want to buy food with, and go. Only go!”
Vandermeer opened the drawer, took out a five-pound note, and, having mounted the stairs, left the studio.
Clementina staggered into the little garden; her brain reeling. She, who thought she had fathomed the depths of life, and, scornful of her knowledge thereof, rode serene on the surface, knew nothing. Nothing of the wolf instinct of man when hunger drives. Nothing of the degradation of a man when the drink fiend clutches at his throat. Lord! How sweet the air, even in this ridiculous little London garden, after the awful atmosphere of that beast of prey!
Quixtus! All her heart went out to him in fierce love and pity. Generous, high-souled gentleman, at the mercy of these ravening wolves! She walked round and round the little garden path. Things obscure to her gradually became clear. But many remained dark—maddeningly impenetrable. Something had happened to throw the beloved man off his balance. The Marrable trial might well be a factor. But was that enough? Yet what did the past matter? The present held peril. The web was being woven tight around him. She had hated the woman intuitively at first sight. Had dreaded complications. It was a million times worse than she had in her most jealous dreams conceived. If he were lured into marriage, what but disaster could be the end? And Sheila! Her blood froze at the thought of her darling coming into contact with the woman. All her sex clamoured.
Before she acted, every dark corner must be illuminated. There must be no groping; no false movement. One man would certainly be able to throw light—Huckaby, the trusted friend of Quixtus. The more she thought of him the more she was amazed. Here was one of the ghastly band, an illimitable scoundrel, the one who had openly suggested to Quixtus the most despicable, yet the most fantastic, wickedness of all, now the confidential secretary, the collaborator, the fidus Achates, of the sane and disillusioned gentleman.
With sudden decision she marched into the studio and took up the telephone and gave a number. Quixtus’s voice eventually answered. Who was there?
“It’s me. Clementina. Is Mr. Huckaby still with you?”
Huckaby had le............