CHAPTER III.
THE NAME ON THE SCRAP OF PAPER.
I was quite conscious, as I drove home the rest of the way alone, thatI had made of myself, doubly and trebly, a fool. But, if possible,still worse remained behind.
How the African gentleman, of whom I read the other day, manages with999 wives, I, for one, am at a loss to understand. When a man is ongood terms with one wife--and I had rather be on good terms with onewife than on bad terms with 999--occasions do arise on which heexperiences little difficulties. For instance, I had been in the habitof telling my wife everything--or, perhaps, it would be more correct towrite, practically everything. It would have been well for me if therehad been no reservations. As a matter of fact, I had said nothing abouttwo or three little incidents of my pre-nuptial existence. Notably, Ihad said nothing about Ellen Howth--though that, perhaps, was rathermore than an incident.
The result was that when I reached home I was in something of aquandary. The wife plied me with the usual questions, to which I wasunable to supply the accustomed copious and satisfactory answers. Shewished to know how my face came to be cut in that terrible fashion. Irigged up some cock-and-bull story about a broken window--a window hadbeen broken, but not altogether in the manner I led her to infer. Thenshe found that a button was missing from my overcoat. Anothercock-and-bull story had to be manufactured to account for that. It didnot require a woman's keen eyes to discover that there was somethingamiss about my general demeanour--that I "wore a worried look." Inendeavouring to satisfactorily account for that I blundered fearfully.We went to bed with a shade of coolness perceptible on either side. Ifelt that I had been ill-used generally, and Lucy felt that I hadill-used her.
The wife had bound up my face with a sticking-plaster. In the morningthe sticking-plaster was much in evidence. I had not had a good night'srest. I should like to know who would have done, after my adventures ofthe evening! I got up, not so much in a bad temper as oppressed withgloom. Lucy, as a matter of course, plied me with her questions allover again. We had a fencing match while dressing. The match wascontinued at breakfast, till the buttons almost came off the foils. Ihad resolved, in the small hours of the morning, to screw my courage tothe sticking point, and to make a clean breast of it to some one. Itold myself that the first plunge would be the worst, when I had takenthat all would be well. But, by the time I started for the City, I hadbecome so aggrieved with Lucy that my resolution, as it were, hadassumed a different hue. It was irresolution again.
I bought all the papers. I searched them to learn if anything or anyone had been found upon the Brighton line. I did not see very well howthere could have been, in time for the fact to have been printed in themorning papers. But a morbid anxiety constrained me to the search.Pilbeam, who always travels with me to town, displayed almost as muchinterest in the papers as I did. He wanted to know why I had boughtthem. He became facetious in his way--which is his way, and, thankProvidence, his way only. I listened to Pilbeam's facetiae while I wasmentally asking myself if it would be better--for me--for her to befound living or dead. In the one case I knew that she would denounce meat once to the police, and I should sleep that night in gaol--and then,what could I say or do? In the other, the odds might be slightly in myfavour. Under the circumstances, I naturally enjoyed Pilbeam's jokes.They were so funny, and so suited to my mood.
That was a dreadful day. There was no business doing. Had there been Imight have been saved from thinking--and from drinking. As a rule, Inever drink anything in town. But that day I had to. I was tooinvertebrate to keep going without it.
Soon after midday I was sitting in one of the City bars--one of thosein which men play chess and draughts and dominoes. I was leaning on oneof the little marble tables scribbling aimlessly upon a sheet of paper.Some one, standing in front of me, addressed me by my name. I lookedup. It was a man with whom I had occasionally done business--a mannamed Townsend, a tall, well-built fellow, with what one sometimeshears called the "beauty of the devil." He had always been something ofa mystery to me. Although I had done a good deal for him at one time oranother, he had never given me an address at which, in case ofnecessity, I could find him. His reference, which hitherto had been asufficient one, had been a City bank. He used to give me instructions,and then would call at the office to see what I had made of them. Hecertainly seemed to get hold of reliable information, principally aboutmining securities; but that he was no City man I was persuaded. Therewas about him an indefinable something which irresistibly suggested theWest End. He struck me as some butterfly of fashion with opportunitiesand tastes for punting of various kinds. That he confined histransactions to me I never for a moment believed, and in spite of hisbeing the best dressed and the handsomest man I ever saw, whenever hegave me anything like a large line, before I operated I was alwayscareful to have an eye for cover.
"I've been looking for you," he said, as I glanced up at him. "Theytold me at the office I should probably find you here. I want you to doa little deal for me." He dropped into a chair on the other side of thetable. "What's this you've been scribbling here; anything private?"
He referred to the piece of paper on which I had been allowing mypencil to scrawl, I knew not what. "It's nothing; only rubbish."
He picked the piece of paper up; I was watching him as he did so. Ashis eyes fell on it, not a little to my surprise a most singular changetook place in his countenance. Although his face was clean shaven, and,therefore, as one would have thought, likely to give visual evidence ofany passing shades of feeling, it had always seemed to me the mostinscrutable of masks. Neither success nor failure seemed to make theslightest difference to him. His expression was ever the same. Thechange which now took place in it therefore, was all the moresurprising. In an instant there came into his face a look of the mostunmistakable terror. His eyes dilated, his jaw dropped open. He satstaring at the paper as if paralysed by horror.
"What the devil's this?" he gasped, when his attitude and his continuedsilence were beginning to make me conscious of discomfort, and,goodness knows, I had been, and was, uncomfortable enough without hishelp!
I had not the faintest notion what it was which had had on him sosingular an effect. I took the paper out of his momentarily nervelesshands. So soon as I saw what was on it, I too had something like a fitof the horrors. "Goodness gracious!" I exclaimed.
It showed in what sort of groove my mind had been working.Unconsciously I had been scribbling the name of the woman whom thestranger, when we had been together in the cab the night before, hadtold me he had been searching for in Brighton. There it was, "LouiseO'Donnel, Louise O'Donnel," scrawled all over the paper, perhaps fiftytimes.
"What an extraordinary thing," I murmured.
And, indeed, it seemed to me to be a very extraordinary thing; and byno means a pleasant thing either. Very much the other way. It showedwhat I was capable of doing without being aware of it. I did not likeit at all.
By the time I had regained some of my composure Mr. Townsend appearedto have regained some of his. He had called the waiter, from whom hewas ordering brandy. I ordered brandy too--a shillingsworth; what theygive you for sixpence would have had no effect upon me. We both drankbefore anything was said. Then Mr. Townsend looked at me over the topof his glass.
"May I ask, Mr. Tennant, what you know about Louise O'Donnel?"
The effect which the discovery of that name upon the sheet of paper--mysheet of paper--had had upon me was sufficiently capable ofexplanation. Only too capable. Why it should have affected Townsendsurpassed my comprehension. I hardly knew what to answer when he puthis question.
"Know! I know nothing."
"Is that so? Then how came you to write the name upon that scrap ofpaper?"
"I know no more than the man in the moon."
"Indeed. Then are you suggesting that its presence there is anillustration of the new kind of force which promises to be thecraze--telepathic writing, don't they call it?"
T
his was said with a sneer. Something about the tone, the manner inwhich it was uttered, reminded me forcibly of some one I had heardquite recently elsewhere. The resemblance was so strong that it came tome with the force of a sudden shock. To whom could it be? It came to mein a flash; the stranger of the night before. Directly he had appearedat the carriage door he had reminded me of some one. Now I knew ofwhom. He was sitting in front of me at that moment--Mr. Townsend. Histone was the stranger's, his manner was the stranger's; even his face,in some strange fashion, was the stranger's too. The stranger woreside-whiskers and a moustache, he was older, he was not nearly sogood-looking, he lacked Mr. Townsend's peculiar air of polish, but inspite of the differences which existed between them, there was theresemblance too. The more I stared--and I did stare--the more theresemblance grew. Mr. Townsend leaned towards me across the table. Theattitude was the stranger's.
"Are you trying to think of where you heard the name before? I see thatyou have heard it."
"Yes; last night."
"Last night!"
He was holding the glass in which the waiter had brought his brandyin his hand. As he echoed my words he brought it down upon themarble-topped table with a crash. It was strange that it was notsplintered.
"Last night, as I came from Brighton."
Mr. Townsend must have been in an oddly clumsy mood. As I spoke itseemed to me that he deliberately knocked his glass off the table on tothe floor. When he bent over it, it was to find it shivered intofragments. From the waiter, who came to remove the broken remnants, heordered a fresh supply of brandy. I had my glass replenished too.
"Have you a double, Mr. Townsend, moving about the world?"
He was raising his glass to his lips when I put the question. He spokebefore he drank. "A double? What on earth do you mean?"
"Because it was from the lips of your double I heard the name of LouiseO'Donnel."
"My double?" He put down his glass, untasted.
"I came up with him in the same train last night from Brighton."
"You came up with him in the same train last night from Brighton? Withwhom?"
"Your double."
His face was absolutely ghastly. He had gone white to the lips, and acuriously unnatural, sickly white. I could not make him out at all. Isuspected that he could not make me out either. I know that somethingabout him had for me, just then, a dreadful sort of fascination.
"I do not know, Mr. Tennant, if you are enjoying a little jest at myexpense. I am not conscious of having a double, nor am I conscious ofhaving come up with you last night in the same train from Brighton. Bywhat train did you travel?"
"By the 8.40 express."
"By the train, that is, which leaves Brighton at 8.40?"
"Yes; and which arrives in town at ten."
Unless I was mistaken, a look of distinct relief passed over his face.
"Oh, then, you certainly never came from Brighton with me. It occurs tome, Mr. Tennant, that you are not looking well. You almost look as ifyou had had a recent serious shock. I trust that it is only my fancy."
He looked at me with eager, searching eyes, which reminded me veryacutely of the stranger's.
"I am not feeling very well to-day, and that's a fact."
"You don't look very well. By the by, how came this double of mine tomention the name?"
Mr. Townsend nodded towards the sheet of paper, almost, as it seemed tome, as if he were unwilling to pronounce the name which was upon it.
"He merely mentioned that he had been down to Brighton to look for awoman named Louise O'Donnel."
Mr. Townsend's glass came down on to the table with the same startledgesture as before. If he was not careful, he would break a second one.And, since he glanced our way, so the waiter seemed to think.
"Been looking for her? What had he been doing that for?"
"That is more than I can tell you."
Mr. Townsend sat and stared at me as if doubting whether I spoke thetruth.
"May I ask you, in my turn, what you know about this mysterious LouiseO'Donnel?"
He looked down, and then up at me. He smiled, his smile striking me asbeing more than a little forced.
"That is the funny part of it. I, too, know nothing of LouiseO'Donnel--no more than you do."
"It seems odd that you should take so great an interest in a person ofwhom you know nothing."
"Does not the same remark apply to you?"
"Not at all. I heard the name mentioned last night, casually, for thefirst time. It seems to have lingered in my memory, and I appear tohave scribbled it, in a fit of abstraction, and, certainly, quiteunconsciously."
Taking out a cigar, Mr. Townsend commenced to light it with anappearance of indifference which was, perhaps, a trifle too pronounced.
"Very odd, very odd indeed, that both you and I should seem to evinceso much interest in a person whose name we have merely heard casuallymentioned. It occurred to me that, when you found the name confrontingyou, you appeared--shall I say startled?--as if it or its owner wasconnected in your mind with disagreeable associations. Perhaps,however, that was simply a consequence of the general ill-health fromwhich you say you suffer. And, I must say myself, that you don't lookwell. I hope that, next time I see you, you will be better."
He carried it off with an air. But I did not believe him. I feltpersuaded that he knew more of Louise O'Donnel than he chose toconfess. What he knew was more than I could say. But I felt equallypersuaded that he wished that he knew less. He went off without sayinganything further about the little deal which he had said that he wantedme to do for him. It had, apparently, escaped his recollection. I, too,had forgotten it till after he had gone. I had never felt less inclinedfor business in my life.
Scarcely had I returned to the office than the door opened, and, whollyunannounced, the stranger of the night before came in. He might,almost, have been waiting and watching for my return.